P3D v5 Adding/retaining mouse rects in an aircraft mdl

[DragonflightDesign]

I have a ModelPart that I want to remove, but I want to retain the mouse rect so that a click action can still be activated. I know the mouse rect number, so positioning is not a problem. I've read the manual very, very carefully but there doesn't seem to be any (safe) way of removing the ModelPart while retaininng the mouse rect, or of adding just a mouse rect to a New Animation. Does anyone have any sage advice on this particular impasse?

 

[arno]

Hi,

I believe a mouse rectangle should always be on a model part (of I'm wrong there some aircraft developer will correct me I hope). So you want to move the mouse rectangle from the part you remove to another one?

 

[=rk=]

Can't you just remove the texture? Then the part is there, but it's not.

 

[DragonflightDesign]

@arno: Not quite. I want just a mouse rectangle that is clickable in the VC. No texture or anything else that would display an item onscreen.
@Rick: no, you can't. MCX supplies a dropdown of available textures but no 'none' option and you can't manually remove the current incumbent. I have considered editing the raw .x file, but having done that before, I can't say it's very enjoyable 😄

 

[Henk Schuitemaker]

It is what Arno says, mouse rectangles must be on the model part. You could add a dummy part, e.g. a simple small cube around the area which must be clickable. Then add the mouserec tag to the cube and make the material setting transparent. The cube does not need a texture.

 

[DragonflightDesign]

So... I need to directly edit the .x file to remove the texture names and see what happens. I shall report back - ! 😄

 

[DragonflightDesign]

Na. Nada. If you remove the texture names, it fails to compile. If you substitute a space to persuade the xtomdl compiler that there is a valid filename, it screws up all the other textures. Conclusion: Henk is right. It can only be done during the design stage.

 

[tgibson]

If that area uses a specific portion of the texture and the material is not being used for another purpose (reflection, etc.), you might be able to make that area's alpha channel black and thus make it transparent (you may need to change the material's settings to create the transparency). Then you don't need to remove the part or the texture.

 

[DragonflightDesign]

I tried that Tom and yes, it really should work, but I ran into a hierarchy problem. Because MCX insists on moving those ModelParts to be under the main SceneGraphNode during export (although I dragged them under a related child SceneGraphNode before exporting), I end up with a hole punched through the side of the panel. Arno thinks there may be a possible problem with the MCX export and has asked for an MRE (minimum reproducible example) but I wouldn't know where to start. That's why I tried all those other approaches up to and including modding the .x file.

 

[arno]

It might also be that MCX moves the nodes on import and that in the exported MDL they are at the right location. Do you see the issue with the hole in FS as well or only in MCX when you reload the model?

 

[DragonflightDesign]

Hi Arno

Here's the sequence:
After a normal compile of the 3DS Max .x and .xanim file the two errant parts are here (slots 2 and 3):-

I drag them both into the first child SceneGraphNode here:

I then export from MCX as a P3D 4.4 mdl file and the two ModelParts are moved back under the parent SceneGraphNode but much lower down (slots 53 and 54). I've also noticed that some other ModelParts are moved from their original places and put under the parent SceneGraphNode - does MCX do some type of streamlining?

To answer your other question: I didn't check the part in MCX. The hole is punched in P3D. I can reproduce and get some detailed screenshots if that would help?

-Dai

 

[arno]

Hi,

It seems the node you drag them to has no animations or other special conditions, so in that case the optimization that MCX does on the scenegraph structure will put them back under the root node. That should not be an issue, as it is ensured that the visual appearance stays the same. MCX tries to make the structure as clean as possible, it is not an exact replicate of the structure in the MDL file.

 

[tgibson]

Can you turn off Optimize in the Settings?

 

[arno]

No, you can't turn it off completely. The way the MDL reader is programmed depends on the optimization to be done. It builds a kind of "sloppy" model structure based on the MDL file and it depends on the optimization to turn it into something efficient to render and work with.

 

[DragonflightDesign]

Moving the ModelParts back under the main SceneGraphNode isn't a problem; it just caught me by surprise. The real problem was that they were not behaving after the initial export as discussed in PM. My workaround involves not removing the single ModelPart (MixtureLeverLockingBar_down - the one not in view). Trying to remove the visual side of the ModelPart was one attempt to solve the problem but if it can't be done, I can live with it.