• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

3DS export bugs

arno

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
34,640
Country
netherlands
Some bugs have been reported about the 3DS exporter. Sometimes GMax does not want to read the created 3DS file. Tonight I looked into these issues a bit and it seems to be related by the length of some lists being defined as an unsigned 16 bit integer, which means they can contain a maximum of 65536 items.

So if you have a part with more than 65536 triangles or vertices, than the created 3DS file will be invalid and gives the error. I am going to think of a fix for this issue, I'll probably have to split up parts that go over this limit.

If you also have problems with 3DS files, but they are not so complex, please let me know. In that case there might be other bugs as well.
 
Hi Arno,

I tried on several models less than 2000 polys. Export seems ok. when I import into 3dsmax9, the 1st pop up ask wether I want to merge or replace, and second only says "invalid format file".

I decided to export in obj. I can import the shape but model is rotated 90°:
- front view shows actual top view,
- top view shows actual front view upside down...
- model seemsis no more textured.

Dunno if I'm clear enough

My goal really is to convert my models into Xplane8/9 .obj format ;)
Do you have that in your bag ? :)

Regards
 
Hi Alain,

Do you have a simple test object that has this import trouble? That might help me with the debugging.

About the OBJ rotation, I have not seen that kind of issues yet, but we first need to see if this is an issue with the OBJ export or the import side.
 
Hi Alain,

Thanks for the test object, I could export it to 3DS and import it correctly with my latest build. So I guess I might have fixed that bug already.

About the XPlane OBJ format you mentioned before, that is on the wishlist for ModelConverterX, but I don't think I will be able to add it soon. Would be a nice feature to have though.
 
Hi,

I think I have fixed the bugs with the 3DS exporter. So please try the development release of tomorrow. Here it works for all big and complex objects as well now.
 
Hi,
It works ! But here what I noticed:
- dispite fs9.mdl is LODed, MDLConvX only sees and exports LOD100
- fsx.mdl LODs are seen and exported fine
- Material structure, materials and textures are never set in 3ds for fs9 and X
Will look further tomorrow;)
 
Hi,

ALain152 said:
- dispite fs9.mdl is LODed, MDLConvX only sees and exports LOD100
Click to expand...

That's right, ModelConverterX can not yet read the LOD structure from FS2004 MDL files. They are defined with a whole range of conditions, I need to work on that.

ALain152 said:
- Material structure, materials and textures are never set in 3ds for fs9 and X
Click to expand...

They should be, but you need to click the blue/white checkerboard button in the material editor to actually see them. Also, the texture names in the 3DS file are limited to 8.3 character notation, so most likely you will have to check if they are found correctly. But that is not something I can change, those are the limitations of the 3DS format.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top