Hiding/unhiding parts of model

[Wriker]

I am trying to hide & unhide part of a model, for example one side of a box, by
setting model[aModel].resource.front to FALSE to hide it, and back to TRUE to
unhide it. This works, except that it loses it shader when I set it to FALSE.

Is there another way to temporarily hide parts of a model, without losing
shader properties? Setting blend to 0 doesn't work, because then it hides ALL
sides of the box (I guess because all sides use the same shader).

[openspark]

How hard is it to create an object which...

* uses a property to remember which shader was used on that mesh
* hides the mesh
Then
* restores the mesh
* restores the shader

....?

[Wriker]

Harder than you'd think. It restored not even half the shaders, for some reason.

--hide
pRememberShaders.addProp(aModel, gWorld.model[aModel].shaderList)

--unhide
gWorld.model[aModel].shaderList = pRememberShaders.getProp(aModel)

If I output pRememberShaders to the message window, it does appear complete.

[a?ex]

<blockquote>quote:<br><hr><i>Originally posted by: <b><b>Wriker</b></b></i>
Harder than you'd think. It restored not even half the shaders, for some
reason.

--hide
pRememberShaders.addProp(aModel, gWorld.model[aModel].shaderList)

--unhide
gWorld.model[aModel].shaderList = pRememberShaders.getProp(aModel)

If I output pRememberShaders to the message window, it does appear
complete.<hr></blockquote>


You stored a reference to the list.
The variable points only to the list "shaderlist". If the list entries change
the changes will be reflected in the variable too.

You'll need the duplicate command to store the CURRENT state of the list:
pRememberShaders.addProp(aModel, duplicate(gWorld.model[aModel].shaderList))

this should work. nonetheless you must be careful. as the list contains
pointers to the different shaders. if you delete one of these shaders, the list
item will be void afterwards. So you can't rely on all being valid shader
objects throughout the movie.

If it was me, defensive programmer, I'd store the NAME of the shader I am
interested in as a string and when I try to reste it later, I first check if a
shader with the given NAME still exists in the 3-D member object.

That's a matter of code design. There are different approaches.

HTH