Missing/out of position parts in FSDS

[irmurray]

Hi all,

I am creating scenery models with FSDS 3.5.1 and MakeMDL, but I am experiencing "random" deletion or misplacement of parts.

The attached image shows a hangar model in FSDS (top), but when compiled as a scenery MDL, the main part moves out of position (bottom right). It appears OK if I render the model as an AIRCRAFT (bottom left)!!

With other FSDS models, I also get (seemingly) "random" parts missing from the visual model in FS. Adding or deleting parts makes a different random set of parts not appear!

This seems to happening to about half of my FSDS models - some are OK.

I am really pulling my hair out with this, as there appears to me no rhyme nor reason for it - any help/suggestions appreciated!

Thanks,


Iain.

[BASys]

Hi Folks

Iain -
AFAIK the rendering as disassociated parts
can be caused by the model attempting to reference missing textures.

HTH
ATB
Paul

[irmurray]

Hi Paul,

can be caused by the model attempting to reference missing textures

Certainly not the case in the examples which are causing my problems - in the example, the "aircraft" version and "scenery" versions are both textured OK, and this is true for other problem MDLs I'm working on.

I should say, I've even tried deleting and re-creating the "hangar" part in this model, and also replacing it with a plain box part, and I STILL get the problem.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.


Iain.

[FelixFFDS]

Do you have linked or keyframe animated parts?

[irmurray]

Do you have linked or keyframe animated parts?

No, no animation in these MDLs or any others close by.

Regards,


Iain.

[irmurray]

Hi all,

Just to ask the general question ... is anyone else experiencing this random deletion / repositioning of parts? Or is it just me?

Regards,


Iain.

[Farfy]

Hi irmurray
You are not alone I have had this problem to, I have not been able to see a pattern as to what is causing it. All I have been doing is delete the part that is out of place and remake it. But I dose seem to happen late in the project and normally to one of the first few parts.

Farfy

[kjb]

FSDS gets confused when you move and especially rotate parts. Try moving the axis for each part to the center by holding the shift key and dragging the axis. Once you have them all centered and on the ground, the part should compile correctly.

[pierrot1951]

Hello

I often encountered this problem with unpredictable position of some parts; for instance, when creating terminal with prebuilt box parts, all is ok in preview, but in FS some box take place of an other.

The only improvement I found is to first create every part and save as part (fsp file), without any texture.
Then, in current fsc project, I load every part I need, at its saved origin position ; now, you can clone, scale, rotate, move them correctly. This method seems to work so far; you can test it.

Pierrot - FMEP

[irmurray]

Thanks for these suggestions about parts - glad I'm not alone!!

I've tried a number of variations with a couple of my faulty MDLs, and although the suggestions do make the parts appear in different places, I still can't get them to appear where they should be.

Most obviously, the problem part of the hangar is located at 0,0,0 and has never been rotated or translated. Following the suggestion, I tried creating another hangar as a new project, saved it as a part, loaded it into my original project in place of the original part ... and it appears ON TOP of the doors, not behind them!

One solution is to use XtoMDL (the objects compile OK with that), but the MDLs are then incompatible with Arno's MDL tweaker, so I can't set the view distance, which is important to be able to do.

There isn't an upgrade to MakeMDL, is there?

Thanks for any further suggestions.


Iain.

[jdhaenens]

I've had that problem as well, and discovered that what worked for me is prior to sending an object through the compiler, I would select each part and center the axis to the part, then reset axis (NOT PART) rotation.

I haven't had the problem since.

JimD

[warmingham]

Hi Iain,
You might like to look at this thread - http://newsite.fsdeveloper.com/forum...ht=adam+abacus
In case it doesn't take you there - do a search for "Adam of Abacus" or any of my posts, since this is one of my posts.
Basically it is all to do with the axis.
1. Make sure they are all in the middle where they are supposed to be.
2. Try compiling a joined model to mdl with the axis centred in the middle of the object.
I have had this recently but it comes out ok when I close fs9 and then reopen again.

[irmurray]

Hi Warmingham and JimD,

MANY thanks for these tips - did the trick!

In my hangar model (see above), I centred the axis to the part for all parts, and that was enough to fix the model.

For the other faulty model, the same trick fixed only one of the missing parts, the other two problem parts I deleted and copy-and-pasted new parts, and that did the trick.

Thanks again for sharing this information - much appreciated.

Regards,


Iain.

[John Stinstrom]

I had this problem with a number of my models and it is nearly 100% with model made with FSDS2 and imported into FSDS3.5.1 The folks at Abacus instructed me to add a 'parent' part to the model and then associate all my parts to the parent:


From: Adam Howe [adam@abacuspub.com]
Sent: 10/30/2007 11:10:09 AM
To: johnstinstrom@aceweb.com [johnstinstrom@aceweb.com]
Subject: Re: Customer Support
This problem has been noted a few times. The only sulution to date is to set up a parten'child relationship for every part in the project. Use the Part Properties menu on each part to set it to a parent part. It might help to have a single partent for the entire project.

I'll pass this over to the author to see if he has any further comments.


Regards,

Adam Howe
Abacus Customer Support


This has largely solved the problem HOWEVER when placing the object with EZ Scenery (also from Abacus) I frequently find the model still looks 'exploded'. If I reboot FS9 after placing the object then things look ok but the faulty visual representation makes placement annoying and more time consuming that it should be.