• 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.

FSX Gmax export errors - PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

Messages
40
Country
netherlands
Hello everyone,

Let's begin with a standard opening to a post like this: I'm (kind of) a newby to scenery design. For a while now I've been playing around with it. I've read a lot of post on this and other forums, watched lots of tutorials on YouTube, learned Airport Design Editor and played around with other programs to build scenery. All was going really well and because my home airport got governmental approval to expend, I decided to up my game and learn Gmax to try to build my own scenery from the ground up.

I've worked with programs like it before, so learning Gmax wasn't to big of a deal to me. There's only one thing that is starting to get really frustrating to me. On attempting to export objects to .MDL format, doesn't matter if it's a ground polygon or 3D object, I get numerous errors. Although I found I'm not the only one with this same problem, I can't seem to find a definite answer to fix this problem. I've read many posts here on the forum, tried many fixes, re-installed the SDK and Gmax like this Wiki (http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Installing_FSX_GMax_gamepack) describes, but it doesn't seem to work. So I'm asking for your help.

I'm running the FSX Acceleration pack. On re-installing the SDK, I've first installed the normal SDK for the disk, copied the Gmax folder to an external harddrive, installed the SDK SP1A, then the SP2 from the Acceleration pack installation disk. After re-installing Gmax, I've installed the gamepack from the SDK, just like te Wiki discribes. I even started a new project and redone my tiles for my ground polygons. I've added a FriendlyName and GUID, still the same problem. I've tried to find the decimal and country/languages setting like Arno suggested in similar post, but it doens't seem to have any effect.

The pop-up errors I'm getting are as follows:
  1. ConvertData failed
  2. Failed to run exporter!
  3. Failed to export model - 'C:\gmax\gamepacks\FSX_GmaxGamePack\Test'
  4. Export model failure
That's it. I don't get to see other pop-up windows with an overview of all the failures and attempts to export a model like others post in there forum posts.

It shouldn't be of any concern, but just to clarify, I'm running windows under Bootcamps on my Mac. It's the 32-bit version with 32-bit SDK installed. Should be fine I think.

Does anyone have a fix or suggestion what to do?
 

tgibson

Resource contributor
Messages
11,324
Country
us-california
I don't know if the Mac may be the problem, could be. But make sure that your export filenames do not have any unusual characters, spaces, or begin with numbers. Some exporters don't like that.
 
Messages
40
Country
netherlands
I'm choosing Windows on startup, so MacOS isn't running at all. Windows is running normal, only on iMac hardware... And for the file name, in my last case this couldn't be the issue. The Gmax file was named 'Test', like the error says, as was the FS model I tried to export.
 
Messages
10,088
Country
us-arizona
You must have the SDK linked properly or it wouldnt have given you the export option, so that cant be it.

Is your model quite large in polygon counts? If it is, if you have 'one' material covering a zillion parts, this will cause the infamous 65K poly limit, which applies to parts having the same material and the poly count going over 65K. To check this, find the export log and see if there is a mention of a 65K poly limit. If so, this is it. The way you get around this is to create a second material, same textures, but differences in minute settings like specular, etc. Then assign it to half of the other textures parts.

Hope you find the issue. I hate it when this happens.



Bill
LHC
 
Messages
40
Country
netherlands
Well Bill, I'm lost here... Yesterday I re-installed Gmax ones more, just to double check I haven't made a mistake there ant to make sure I'm using the default settings. I just tried to make a box, gave it a texture and exported the model. For the first time though it exported the model properly. But when I do a test with just 4 of the 32 ground polygons of my airport, the same thing happens over and over again.

When I create my polygons I'm following a tutorial step by step. I've downloaded a satellite image with SBuilderX, sized 10240x10240 pixels. Cut it in 100 tiles sized 1024x1024 FSX is using. I've made an alpha channel, applied it to the image, made .BMP's of it for Gmax and DDS-files with ImageTool from the SDK for FSX.

So, like the tutorial tells me, I'm creating a plane in Gmax with 10 segments on the X and Y axes. I'm converting the plane into an editable spline or polygon. I'm planning to cut away the segments that will surround the airfield so I'm left with only the 32 that will show when the alpha channel is applied. For this test though I'm only using the 4 most centre tiles of the airfield as shown below in the screenshot from Gmax.

Gmax-Tiles.png


Like the image shows, I applied the textures to the planes, UVW mapped them and collapsed all. I gave it a FirendlyName and GUID and saved the model as 'TTest.gmax'. I'm using the same 'TTest' name when I'm trying to export it to an .MDL Flightsim Model. It doesn't matter whether or not I'm applying 'Export Skin' or 'Export FS10 Materials' to the model export options, I still get the original 'ConvertData Failed' and following errors.

As I understand it, I have only 4 polygons in this case, so I'm not exceeding the 65K limit you describe. I presume you're talking about the amount of poly's, not the file size of the image you apply to a plane? All I'm getting is the errors as described in my first post, so I don't get to see an export log at all. I even tried to export a model with only the left bottem (which the left bottem corner is placed on the centre of the airfield), with the same result.

Maybe the tutorial fails to mention some extra steps which are causing the Gmax not to run the exporter. I see many tutorials on the web for creating ground polygon tiles for FS2002 and FS2004. The one I'm using is describing the process for FSX and P3D. Please tell me if I miss anything. There's nothing more annoying to me then not knowing what you're doing wrong...
 

tgibson

Resource contributor
Messages
11,324
Country
us-california
Attach the single polygon GMAX file (zipped up) to this forum thread and someone may take a look at it.

I have gotten this error in FS9 when trying to export the wrong type of file (aircraft instead of the correct scenery) and if I have added a Self Illumination material to a scenery export. Perhaps something similar.
 
D

Deleted member 1281

Guest
Sometimes this can be due to the notorious "decimal separator error", especially when using a non-English keyboard -- you need to set the "." as the default separator in your windows system.

To check this, open Control Panel > System > Regional Settings > Numbers > Decimal Separator and check it is "." (period) not "," (comma).
 
Messages
40
Country
netherlands
YES!!! Mjahn, thank you for pointing me to the right place, this was it! Like I said in my initial post, I've read about it, but was not able to find it. I'm not as familiar with Windows as I am with MacOS.

Interesting thing I discovered: after changing the decimal separator setting, the first time I started GMax and right clicked on my plane to change it to an editable mash, the pop-up which was always red for me, changed to green, like the following picture shows. For others that may encounter the same problem, this might be an indication the settings of Windows isn't right for GMax to run properly.

RightClick.png


Tom, Bill, mjahn, thanks al lot for the input. Really appreciate it!
 
D

Deleted member 1281

Guest
Other indicators are Country ident and being a first-time user. As a matter of fact, if you google your error keywords + FSDeveloper the solution is likely to stare you in the face, as it comes up more or less regularly here.
 
Messages
40
Country
netherlands
I had seen some comments in this forum about the matter and I had changed my country settings before to both English and US. Both to no effect. I had to go into the additional settings (in my version of Windows, don't know if that changed over the years) to find the numbers panel you described with the decimal symbol. Like I said, I've seen the comment about the decimal symbol before, but it was unclear to me if it was a Windwos of GMax setting and where to find it. But again, really appreciate all the help guys! Now I can get back to become a happy developer again instead of an IT guy solving problems. ;)
 
Top