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Autogen in FS X

O

osman

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74
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germany
I tried to understand the autogen.html and found it not too complete in its explanations. I understand that with Annotator.exe I can design autogen features for textures which have no autogen or I can modify the existing agn file for a texture; this seems to be useful only if one wants to use localized textures for an addon scenery (which might be useful just because of the possibility to change the autogen). In order to draw most categories of objects one will need a list of the relevant GUID's - and that seems to be not too easy to find (except for library objects). If you want to use the "trial and error" technique you can use the command line utility AgnDump to get an xml file for an existing agn file. This gives you a quite interesting idea about the contents of an agn file, but I did not find an explanation for its contents. I understand that the GUID's used in that file refer to "regionalization" entities, which list a set of GUID's with their relative weights for each region of the world, but after arriving at this point I was stuck, because I did not find out what hides behind those GUID's (type of building, material used, height etc.)
The bottom line is: if you want to use polygonal buildings etc. for making new agn files, you have no choice but to make them and to try out what they look like.
In my opinion the textures for medium and especially for large cities make much to much use of polygonal buildings which seem always to have ridged roofs ( and row houses apparently have them too!) which is absolutely unrealistic for cities in the mediterranean and the MiddleEast world, where flat roofs prevail by far. I wonder if there would be any way to change that behaviour.

After a long study of the Extrusions.xml I think that I understood the system. As a guid for the polygonal buildings you can use all the GUIDS which are in the Extrusions.PolylineBuildingGroups used as an "id" for one of the subgroups which are named "Regionalization". The sim will find the relevant target GUID for the region your scenery is in and will look up that GUID in the list given in Extrusion.PolylineBuildings, and there the sim will find the Extrusion profile and the material set to be used. The GUID of the Extrusion profile you can directly look up in the Extrusion.Extrusions list; for the material set the process is slightly more complicated because the material used will again depend on the region your scenery is in.
The list of the possible GUIDS for Polyline buildings is not too long, but it allows to adapt much better to regional or local architectural style than what apparently has been done in the default .agn files.
GUID Friendly_name
{58406840-8649-4d4f-92cd-42a2338705ca} Mansard Roof 3 Story Building
{2589a851-fcc9-4288-93a2-8acd1556f43a} Mansard Roof 4 Story Building
{58767a2f-2df7-4253-9545-b28ff9d313bf} Mansard Roof 5 Story Building
{ef59eb8d-0bf0-4f09-b1ac-6c7cef198688} Peaked Roof 3 Story Building
{b6460ae5-abe3-4655-9acd-635f80a921d9} Peaked Roof 4 Story Building
{27826f19-666e-465a-9ddd-5c3abd1714d2} Peaked Roof 5 Story Building
{99ee3fe6-544f-41fa-a6ce-88c786ece27f} Flat Roof 3 Story Building
{6ea48079-77a2-468a-8550-629716779de9} Flat Roof 5 Story Building
{5fd82669-63dd-4703-8679-9f6e60c564b2} Flat Roof 4 Story Building
{ed29fabc-999a-42d6-af88-eff8d6761339} 5 Story Varied Roofs
{0e009004-e26d-41e3-99d4-d3f84bf72ce0} 4 Story Varied Roofs
{7db43364-3faa-49b6-ba25-98273a656243} 3 Story Varied Roofs
{51abf55e-2007-4e24-83e5-fe0cb4fc131c} ALL Stories Mixed Roof Types Mixed Colors
{d076224f-2314-4a21-8472-977f2658208c} 3 Story Varied Roofs ALL RED
{1c866796-1b97-4f13-9003-7dbc2d9944fe} 4 Story Varied Roofs ALL RED
{c1c8fb39-8421-4642-9cea-139de63b8268} 5 Story Varied Roofs ALL RED
{0ba341a1-5dc0-463d-aa49-34fecf05579b} ALL Stories Mixed Roof Types ALL RED
 
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The handling of the autogen Annotator in FS X is somewhat more complicated than I thought in the beginning, and the explanations in the SDK are useful but not really complete.
I you open the Annotator in fact there are two programs opened: one is the Annotator itself, the other is the AutogenConfigEditor. In the beginning I did not understand the reason for that, but it became clear when I started to experiment with the Annotator.
The Annotator opens two windows: one is the so-called Control strip, the other is the main window, into which you can load one of the textures from the FS X scenery\world\texture directory; the corresponding .agn file is loaded together with the .bmp file, if it exists.

From the five groups of objects you can draw and which are l listed in the Control strip three require a GUID. For the buildings this GUID controls the shape of the roof, and a default is loaded automatically (which will result in a GUID of only zeroes to be entered into the file). For the Vegetation (either rectangular or polygon) and for the PolylineBuildings you need a GUID to be set before you can start drawing. These GUID's cannot be entered directly, but there it is where you need the AutogenConfigEditor. If you want to draw vegetation, you have to open "AutogenDescriptions.xml" from the Autogen source xml subdirectory which will result in five additional windows opened; among these windows you must select the "Vegetation Groupings" window and within this window you will have to select one of the "Groupings"; then you can go back to the Control strip and click on the "Set Guid" button.
A similar process is used for the Polyline Building's: in this case you must open the "Extrusions.xml" in the AutogenConfigEditor and choose from the "Polyline Building Groupings" window.
If you want to change the default roofs in the Building group, you can open the "RoofDescriptions.xml" and choose from the "Building Roof Groupings".

In the SDK it is said that you can select a Building Texture and /or a RowHouse texture by opening the "Properties" dialog from the Annotator file menu. Up to now I had no luck with that: if you choose a building texture (from the Bld*2.dds files in the FS X\texture directory which have the appropriate format), the Annotator will not save your file; if you choose a RowHouse texture (from the Bld*3.bmp files, which again have the right format), the Annotator will not complain, but your choice is not reflected in the output *.agn file. In fact I do not see how such a choice (which would override the regionalization of textures) should be recorded in the format of the *.agn files since only the Bld*2.dds textures have a GUID allocated in the materials.xml.
 
Hello Winfried,

Many thanks for these informations.

I made also some tests and noticed the file saved (if there is a specific texture choosen for buildings ) is just closed after the name of the texture (agb):


00000000:52 49 46 46 00 00 00 00 41 47 4e 58 56 45 52 53RIFF....AGNXVERS
00000010:04 00 00 00 33 33 13 41 47 42 54 45 04 00 00 00 ....33..AGBTE....
00000020:61 67 62 00 ...... agb.

is this a bug ? (I remenber the one With Annotator 2002 where the name of the texture had to be specified without bmp extension ).


Another one : did you try to use a specific Library of objects with Annotator ?

in Fs X, this works with default libraries ( historical buildings etc...) or fs9 projects in Fs X ( photo.bgl resampled and annotated with Fs9 SDK + library of objects compiled with fs9 bglcomp and associated modified default.xml)

But with a photo.bgl compiled with the new resample and annotated with the new Annotator (all seems ok) : but no specific objects appears in Fs X...

Worse : nothing else appears on the entire tile ( all other buildings and trees disappear)

- the Modified Default.xml (to add the new class in the corresponding region) seems correct (works with fs9 style project).

- Even tested with a Library of new objects (xtomdl) compiled with Fs X bglcomp and placed in scenery/global : same result.( The library seems valid : objects are visible with bgl by standard xml placement)

If you have any idea, I am interested : can't test anything else !

Happy New Year to Every body...

Best regards , pascal
 
Hi Guys

I've found the same and have submitted a bug report on MSconnect for both the "building texture" and x2mdl models not working. Perhaps you could confirm the bug reports I made on the feedback forms.
ID 248983 & ID 248930

Thanks in advance

Darren
 
I think that probably changing the texture does not work because in the annotation files I found no texture names at all, but only GUID's. I suspect that they wanted to ensure that regionalization works for the textures, so even the materials are not referenced directly, but groupwise, so that the sim can apply the texture which is linked to the region you are flying in. The same seems to be true for the library objects: here again the GUID references a group, not a specific object. If you want to place specific objects on yout photoreal scenery you will have to use bglcomp.
If you have a photo.bgl file annotated and the annotation does not work: did you check it with the utilities in the sdk? Are the custom objects there when you make a xml file with agndump?
 
hello,


Darren : Thanks for the info.

Osman : I don't want to place specific objets , but just to use a specific library of objects for Autogen With Fs X ,as I did in Fs2004.

example of Britain houses (maisons bretonnes) with annotator 2004, houses are specific Autogen objects :

mb2.jpg



mb3.jpg



As I said before, this works in Fs X with Fs9 stuff (here Lannion-photo fs9 bgl, LFRO in Fs X) :

lannion9.jpg


One improvement : the number of houses displayed is greater than 300 (as limit in fs9), But I cannot use the Fs X SDK to get a photobgl ( 1024 resolution) in the new format annotated with a specific library of objects.

Yes, the Xml file resulting from Agndump seems valid (with the Guid of the specific library) :

...
<Autogen2Rect>
<Autogen2RectGuid>{f36b1dbc-4201-792e-3dea-bcaae76c1e9b}</Autogen2RectGuid>
- <Anchor>
<X>-0.199572</X>
<Y>-0.391901</Y>
</Anchor>
- <Normal>
<X>0.055476</X>
<Y>0.998460</Y>
</Normal>
<Width>0.035000</Width>
<Depth>-0.015000</Depth>
</Autogen2Rect>...

to be continued...

Best regards and thanfs for your comments, pascal
 
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