Drawcall minimizer finished & release candidate

[arno]

Hi,

I have just committed a new development release, the most important function in this new version is that I have finished the drawcall minimizer. The minimizer should not also work correctly with night textures and other sub textures.

I have tried to test all functions, but I had to change quite some code to get the minimizer working as I wanted. So hopefully I have not introduced too many bugs in this new version. If you find any issues please let me know.

With this function added I have finished my plans for the ModelConverterX 1.2 release. So you can see the development release that will be available from tomorrow as a sort of a release candidate for the next stable release. After some more testing and some final bug fixes I hope to have the stable release ready before the end of the month.

[gary20]

Awesome Arno

Thank you for such an incredible program

Gary

[gsnde]

Hi Arno,

Will that also include a fix for the FS9 animation export?

[arno]

Hi Martin,

I am not yet sure about that, could be I will keep that for the next version. Unless I can find it easily. Problem is that I only have FSX here, so I can't even fully test the FS2004 animations in FS2004. I have to thrust that if they work in FSX they should also in FS2004.

[gsnde]

By the way - I checked the current version for the rotation animation. The animated parts (which were invisible during the tests with one of the last releases) are now visible again. But the are positioned on ground level instead of where they should be and they do not rotate.

[arno]

OK, I'll take a look today and see if I can find something.

[arno]

Hi Martin,

I got the animations to work better now. This will be in the next development release. I still have some parts that are displaced, not sure yet how to fix that.

[gsnde]

I am jumping to test that, Arno

[arno]

Hi Martin,

I have also fixed the offset issue now I think (or I hope ).

Let me take a look at your API in FS2004 and then I will make a new development release right away.

[arno]

The new development release with the FS2004 animations is available from now.

[gsnde]

You did it, Arno!

Radar rotates, all elements where they belong, gorgeous looking. Thank you

[arno]

Glad to hear it is working for you .

[scott967]

Arno, what would be a good way to test the draw call minimizer?

scott s.
.

[bob5568]

deleted as I figured it out

[arno]

Hi Scott,

Originally Posted by scott967

Arno, what would be a good way to test the draw call minimizer?

Any model that uses a lot of small textures would be a good candidate. This can be an old API or a COLLADA/Google Earth object. Especially those last ones often use many small textures. The attached screenshots show how I have reduced about 35 textures into 2 with the Drawcall Minimizer tool.

[arno]

Hi,

I just made one more change the to the drawcall minimizer. You can now set in the options what texture size you want to use. For some objects 1024x1024 was too big and that would result in a lot of unused texture space. So the default is still 1024x1024, but you can change it to another value if needed.

This change is available in the development release already. I would call the current version the release candidate for ModelConverterX 1.2. Of course bugs found will still be fixed, but new features will not go into this next stable release anymore.

[gsnde]

Arno,

I just noticed that most (but not all) FS9 compatible BGLs give an import error.

************** Ausnahmetext **************
System.ArgumentNullException: Der Wert darf nicht NULL sein.
Parametername: g
bei System.Guid..ctor(String g)
bei ASToFra.BGLXReader.ReadNameDict(String filename)
bei ASToFra.BGLXReader.Read(String filename)
bei ASToFra.ObjectReader.read(String fileName)
bei ASToFra.MainWindow.bwImporter_DoWork(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
bei System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.OnDoWork(Do WorkEventArgs e)
bei System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.WorkerThrea dStart(Object argument)

[gsnde]

Arno,

Most likely a logical consequence of the previous report - same crash happens when runnig the Missing Texture Finder from within MCX.

[arno]

Hi Martin,

Humm, I can't remember I changed anything in that code. Let me check...

[arno]

Hi Martin,

This seems to happen while reading the GUIDs and names from the TXT file that belongs to the library. Could you maybe send me this TXT file for one of the libraries that crashes? Then I can see where it goes wrong.