ModelConverterX 1.1 release

[arno]

Today I finished the release of ModelConverterX version 1.1, as it was a long time ago that a stable version had been released. Actually so long ago, that I lost track of all the improvements made compared to version 1.0. The most important improvements are:


Added a FS2004 scenery MDL reader
Added a COLLADA reader
Added a Wavefront OBJ reader and writer
Improved the user interface
And many many smaller changes (in total about 90 issues from my issue list have been addressed in this version)


You can get this latest stable release here (http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/downloads.php?do=file&id=76).

[ALain152]

Great !
Thank You Arno

[robystar]

Anything you had in mind as a Xmas gift?:D

PS Terribly busy working on making buildings with Sketchup to use in FS.
As long as there are no animations involved, GSU is a lot faster, more user friendly and FPS friendly than Gmax. At least, that is my idea.
Great tool.

[scott967]

Have you had any problems with sketchup image textures? I'm in learning mode, and I just applied colors to my faces and it went fine, but then when I started adding a texture it didn't import correctly.

scott s.
.

[toprob]

I've actually found a few uses for this little gem, and I'm interested in where it is heading.

Talking about Sketchup, I am interested in going the other way -- GMAX to Sketchup -- as I've promised to place one of my airport models on Google Earth. It would be nice if I could use the original models, rather than redoing it from scratch.

I can use MdlConvertX to convert to 3DS, but is there another way which anyone can recommend?

[robystar]

Re: Have you had any problems with sketchup image textures?

The only thing that is a bit cumbersome is that you have to convert the texture jpg into bmp, change the texture names in MCX, and change the GUID, but it does not give problems. I do get an error message each time I want to change the name and GUID but when I ignore it and continue, everything goes well.

[robystar]

Hi,

After having continued working on a building and having updated MCX to v1.1, I now get the following error on import:

An error occured during importing the selected file

Message:
De objectverwijzing is niet op een exemplaar van een object ingesteld.

StackTrace:
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.FindNode(Node start, String url)
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.FindNode(String url)
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.ProcessNode(Node node, SceneGraphNode root)
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.ProcessNode(Node node, SceneGraphNode root)
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.Read(String filename)
bij ASToFra.ObjectReader.read(String fileName)
bij ASToFra.MainWindow.bwImporter_DoWork(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)

Strange and I do not know if that has to do with something I added in Sketchup or with the new stable release.

[robystar]

Error overcome.
For everybody's info: unchecking "preserve component hierarchies" in sketchup exporting options solved the problem.

[arno]

Hi Rob,

PS Terribly busy working on making buildings with Sketchup to use in FS. As long as there are no animations involved, GSU is a lot faster, more user friendly and FPS friendly than Gmax. At least, that is my idea.

I think for many people it is true that Sketchup is a lot easier to learn and you can get same quality results. The FPS does not matter though, since if you model carefully the results are the same :). It is just the process of getting to that results that became more user friendly.

[arno]

Hi Scott,

Have you had any problems with sketchup image textures? I'm in learning mode, and I just applied colors to my faces and it went fine, but then when I started adding a texture it didn't import correctly.

As already mentioned the texture conversion will have to be done manually. Sketchup uses JPG textures most of the time. I have it on my wishlist to add texture conversions to ModelConverterX as well, but that will be a little bit later.

[arno]

Hi Robin,

Talking about Sketchup, I am interested in going the other way -- GMAX to Sketchup -- as I've promised to place one of my airport models on Google Earth. It would be nice if I could use the original models, rather than redoing it from scratch.

I can use MdlConvertX to convert to 3DS, but is there another way which anyone can recommend?

I do have export support for COLLADA on my wishlist as well, so in the future that would help you.

For now I think 3DS is your only choice. It seems Sketchup does not support importing Wavefront OBJ, else that would be a good one to try as well.

[arno]

Hi Rob,

Error overcome.
For everybody's info: unchecking "preserve component hierarchies" in sketchup exporting options solved the problem.

Thanks for the info. I'll try to export with that option on and see if I can find out why the reader crashes, since it should not do so :).

[arno]

Hi Rob,

Hi,

After having continued working on a building and having updated MCX to v1.1, I now get the following error on import:

An error occured during importing the selected file

Message:
De objectverwijzing is niet op een exemplaar van een object ingesteld.

StackTrace:
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.FindNode(Node start, String url)
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.FindNode(String url)
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.ProcessNode(Node node, SceneGraphNode root)
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.ProcessNode(Node node, SceneGraphNode root)
bij ASToFra.DAEReader.Read(String filename)
bij ASToFra.ObjectReader.read(String fileName)
bij ASToFra.MainWindow.bwImporter_DoWork(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)

Strange and I do not know if that has to do with something I added in Sketchup or with the new stable release.

Can you send me a DAE file that has this problem? Since the export option that solved it for you is on by default and not all objects give the crash, it might be something with the model as well. If I have a file to debug I can make the COLLADA reader better.

[robystar]

File is on its way.

Rob

[stevo]

Excellent work Arno, and the new dev version with the day/night texture switch is superb.

Stevo ;)

[robystar]

Another thing that gives me some headaches:
the translucent textures are no longer translucent upon conversion, obviously I'd say, because they are jpg's that have to be converted. But it does take some doing to get them translucent again in FS.
But maybe I overlook something obvious for a change?


PS: this is in no way to be considered as critics. It is just a minor inconvenience that might or might not be remedied and does not affect the overall value of the program. On the contrary, I think that this extra COLLADA functionality will give some new impetus to FS as it links Google potential to an otherwise (developmentwise) dead MSFS.

[arno]

File is on its way.

Thanks, found it and fixed this crash (can't guarantee you won't find others with different COLLADA files). Will be fixed in the next development release.

[arno]

Hi Rob,

Another thing that gives me some headaches:
the translucent textures are no longer translucent upon conversion, obviously I'd say, because they are jpg's that have to be converted. But it does take some doing to get them translucent again in FS.
But maybe I overlook something obvious for a change?

With those JPG textures ModelConverterX will not detect the alpha channel, so you will manually have to set the material settings to use the alpha channel. This is done by hitting the "Set Default Transparent" button in the ModelConverterX material editor. And of course you need to make sure the alpha is in the texture you use in FS.

But how did you specify the transparency in Sketchup? I am not sure if JPG textures can have alpha at all. Or did you make the whole polygon transparent, can be that is not read correctly by ModelConverterX (would also not work that good in FS).

PS: this is in no way to be considered as critics. It is just a minor inconvenience that might or might not be remedied and does not affect the overall value of the program. On the contrary, I think that this extra COLLADA functionality will give some new impetus to FS as it links Google potential to an otherwise (developmentwise) dead MSFS.

All feedback helps to improve the tool and the COLLADA reader is a recent development, so I am sure it can still be fine tuned more, it still has some rough edges. So keep the feedback coming :).

[Southwest]

Just awaiting the FS9 Aircraft Mdl now :)

Thanks Arno.

[scott967]

It just keeps getting better. At the risk of thread drift, it seems like in sketchup that each use of a texture results in sketchup creating a new texture file when exporting the dae. Is there some way to get sketchup to use a single texture sheet for multiple applications?

scott s.
.

[robystar]

As far as I can see the translucent textures are indeed translucent in the SKP files but then, they are exported as jpegs and of course turn opaque.
Check the texture in sketchup and you will see it is transparent.
And indeed, as Scott remarks, each time you make some changes to the skp file and load it into MCX, the textures have changed into texture0.jpg, texture1.jpg etc and you have to rename them again. But that is a minor inconnvenience as it easily remedied.
Thanks for pointing out the 'set to transparent' as default. Did not think of that. Will check that as well as the original texture contains alpha for sure.

[robystar]

I am probably doing something wrong but I wanted to verify this.
The translucent texture I am using is either completely opaque when I set default to opaque in MCX or completely invisible when setting default to transparent (I converted the jpg to dxt3 with DXTBMP and used an alpha template).

UPDATE: setting default as transparent and inverting alpha in dxtbmp did the trick. So issue solved.

[robystar]

New question:
Is there a way to mitigate the hard shadow of the object texture imported? You cannot do that in Sketchup so it would have to be done in MCX if possible at all.
Not that I am addicted to it, but I am stuck at home because of the snow.

[arno]

Just awaiting the FS9 Aircraft Mdl now :)

It's still on the wishlist, but I think that feature will take some time to be implemented.

[arno]

It just keeps getting better. At the risk of thread drift, it seems like in sketchup that each use of a texture results in sketchup creating a new texture file when exporting the dae. Is there some way to get sketchup to use a single texture sheet for multiple applications?

Not sure about that, I guess it might be a manual thing that you have to do when converting to FSX MDL. At that stage you could replace it with the correct texture file.

[arno]

Hi Rob,

Is there a way to mitigate the hard shadow of the object texture imported? You cannot do that in Sketchup so it would have to be done in MCX if possible at all.

Can you explain the problem a little more, I am not sure I understand it?

[robystar]

Depending on where the light comes from a texture is either in the light or in the shadow. You can have a soft shadow where the difference between the lit textures and textures in the shadow is small, or a hard shadow or no shadow at all. See attachment where the object is colored grey but the top part above the doors is almost white.

[arno]

Hi,

In FS you should also get this kind of shading, if that does not work out it might be that your normals are not set correctly. You can check that in ModelConverterX.

[robystar]

Hi,

In an hour or so I am going to freeze my balls off, singing on a Xmas market for charity purposes. But I would prefer to invite some homeless in and stay the night or as many nights as necessary in our guesthouse, instead of suffering -10ºC (with windchill -15º).
But that should be between brackets.
Thanks for the info but in the meantime I managed to work better with the modelconverter that has more possibilities than before (apparently your last stable release includes more things than the various development releases).
What I wanted to suggest, if that is possible, is to have an "undo" possibilitiy?
Meantime I have been experimenting with Sketchup and another issue could be (unless I have overlooked something again) that colors imported cannot be rendered transparent or semi transparent.

[arno]

Hi Rob,

In most models textures with alpha channel will be used for transparent colours. But I will check, I think there is a problem in the COLLADA reader at the moment that the level of transparency might not be read in correctly. And after I fix that, I need to check if it will export again correctly to FS. I'll put it on the todo list.

The most recent development release always has all functions in it, for sure more than the latest stable release.

[Timmo]

Yep there are some issues such as these (a search here on Sketchup should give you a good list)

The best way, in my opinion, is to simply discard all the exported SU textures and re-create them in Gmax (the actual UVW mapping will persist, but the texture definition will be new). This is OK if you have modelled in SU with a view to use in FS but if the original model has come from, say, the 3D warehouse, all the textures wont exist on a single 1024*1024 etc sheet.....so you shift the problem from difficulty of modelling to difficulty in texturing.

The other 'issue' with sketchup is that, due to its simplicity, it is easier to make really junk geometry....I originally had visions of 'yay, now everyone can model their local aerodrome, send it to me for conversion and we will quickly populate the FS world'. The reality was, for the one aerodrome building I got from another novice modeller, it would have been quicker to simply start from scratch than it would have been to fix the mistakes etc

[robystar]

Hi Arno,

Re:"In most models textures with alpha channel will be used for transparent colours"
I was not talking about textures but about importing colors in MCX.
I think that using colors instead of textures makes the object less heavy but one of the things I do not know how to do then is how to make these colors (semi) transparent as there is no texture file to add alpha to.
Re: "In FS you should also get this kind of shading,..."
Yes I do, that is the problem. Is there a way to decrease the shading?

[arno]

Hi Rob,

I was not talking about textures but about importing colors in MCX. I think that using colors instead of textures makes the object less heavy but one of the things I do not know how to do then is how to make these colors (semi) transparent as there is no texture file to add alpha to.

I think there are some options in the FlightSimX material for this, but I need to check. But for the performance it is worse to use a lot of colours, since each of them will add a new drawcall to your object. So if you are instead using one texture sheet it will give better performance.

Yes I do, that is the problem. Is there a way to decrease the shading?

Not that I am aware of. Sometimes the difference between the sides of the object is a bit big, but that can not be influenced.

[arno]

Hi,

The other 'issue' with sketchup is that, due to its simplicity, it is easier to make really junk geometry....I originally had visions of 'yay, now everyone can model their local aerodrome, send it to me for conversion and we will quickly populate the FS world'. The reality was, for the one aerodrome building I got from another novice modeller, it would have been quicker to simply start from scratch than it would have been to fix the mistakes etc

Yes, it is not a magic tool. But if you use it with care you can make objects for FS with it. And I think it is easier to use for most people. But if you just start adding geometry and materials it will not work that good in FS.