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FSX Export and Textures

J

jetair

Messages
10
Hello!
First of all, thank you Arno for making such an easy to use tool available.

I have not done any model making any time, so this tool has allowed me to understand the process finally. My question below therefore may be newbie / FAQ, but I could not find any answer so far.

I'm playing around with the tool by importing some KMZ files and trying the Export feature. Everything works fine, object shows up in FSX, but no textures are shown. If I export as .X and then quick check in DXViewer, that also shows no textures applied.

The textures show in the tool just okay, but I have a feeling since they are JPEG files, I might need to convert them? Is there any recommendation about this?
 
Hi,

You will need to convert them to show in FS. No need to convert before that, though.

Convert them to BMP files (DXT1 or just 8bit/256 colors). I have also found that any textures that are not "square" need to be.

For example, I resized a texture that was 256 x 150 to 256 x 256 and it showed up fine then.

Hope this helps,
 
Hi,

As said you will have to convert them manually. FS can not read JPG textures. I am working on some features to do this on the fly for you.
 
Thanks!
I have some follow-up questions, if you can help I would appreciate it very much.

Regarding procedure of conversion I tried to use imagetool.exe which comes with FSX SDK, however that cannot read the JPG files. Is there any more reliable (hopefully command line) method?

Secondly, once the texture is converted, should the file name be retained with extension .JPG or .BMP. It sounds silly, but the reason I ask is in the experiment I did, the .X file exported contained reference to the original .JPG filenames.
 
Hi,

You need to use a paint program. I don't know if MS Paint will do that (and it will probably look horrible after any resizing). Once you have it converted from a JPG to a BMP, you either use the same paint program to convert it to 8 bit/256 colors, or use DXTBmp or Imagetool to convert it to DXT1 (your choice).

I use Paint Shop Pro (payware) as my paint program (and others use Photoshop), but there are freeware alternatives like Gimp.

I believe I have changed the extension from JPG to BMP at the very end (i.e. without changing the texture name from within MCX first) and it showed up in FS9 just fine. I think that while the X file may have the JPG included, it appears that the MDL file may not?

Hope this helps,
 
Hi,

You need to manually edit the extension in the material editor of ModelConverterX. I am working on a way to automate this more to speed things about.

About the texture conversion, if you have the latest ModelConverterX development release you will find a texture converter in the special tools menu as well. It can read JPG and export directly to DDS. But it can not (yet) resize.
 
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