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Gone fishing !?

Francois

Francois

FSDevConf team
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After exporting my Sketchup boat and importing it into MC, some major parts have gone AWOL !!! Could this be caused by 'doublesided' painting of single surfaces? I am baffled...... looks fine in Sketchup :-(
 

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Double sided or not should both be supported. Any messages in the event log?
 
That should not matter. And you applied a material on those polygons? Else sketchup will still show them in a blueish colour, but they are not exported.
 
Yes I applied material on all of them, except for the sides of the benches, the floor and seat of the pilot and the two white uppoer sides... strangely enough these are all there !
Also when I look AT the right side I see my texturing, but when I look from the inside, I see THROUGH !
 
Okay, I found something. The grey parts of the model were painted with a 'new material' that I made in Sketchup by 'eyedropping' the color from my texture tile.... THAT apparently does not work and results in transparent textures in MCX, while looking perfect in Sketchup. I deleted the material in Sketchup (replacing it with default colour) and exported the model again. Now all surfaces show in MCX !
 
Kevin, my staff always rolled their eyes when I started testing their apps already 35 years ago...... leave it to a 'specialist tester' to get unexpected results every time !!! ROFL !!
I think somehow I copied the material tile and got part of the 'background' to show transparent? No idea how it happened precisely.
 
So I THOUGHT I had it down now, after re-installing Arno's tools and re-doing the texture resize and format change, then adding everything back into FSX via Library Creator.

But....... oh boy ...... now OTHER parts are missing !!!

I am getting the suspicion that somehow Sketchup colours are now not transferred (at least not ALL of them)....

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Hi Francois,

If you can send me your file, I can check if there are some weird material settings in their or so.

In general it's best to not use colors, but that's from drawcall point of view. Because each color is another drawcall, so it's better to use a piece of your texture sheet with that color.
 
Yes, the COLLADA file should be enough.
 
But if I don't use colors I cannot use the 'paintbucket' tool can I? I will need to paste the texture sheet and position it on each and every little bit of surface in the model?
 
If this is FSX, then yes, you must texture every little bit. It's a very common problem for untextured (colors only) parts to go missing in the sim.

A simple way to do this with "single color" parts:

1. Add a little square of the color you want to use somewhere on your texture.
2. Select all the parts that should use this color (if you can't texture multiple parts in Sketchup, then do it one part at a time).
3. Texture the part(s), increasing the texture size until the entire part fits inside that little square of color.
4. Repeat as needed.

Hope this helps,
 
Hi Francois,

I'll check the file tomorrow.

Yes, texture mapping is a bit annoying in sketchup, especially if you want to use only one sheet. Although I love to model in sketchup, doing the texturing is a PITA.

You can also use the drawcall minimizer in modelconverterx afterwards to get rid of your colors. It will replace them by textures. But it's more efficient if you integrate the colors on your existing texture sheet.
 
Luckily Arno, you can do your modeling in Sketchup, import into MCX, export as 3DS, and then texture in GMAX or 3DMax. :)
 
Understood. As to that last remark, only if you have the software and skills for (gMax and) 3DSM ;-) I don't so am 'stuck' with Sketchup for now. I'll try the coloured-square tactic next.
Thanks guys !
 
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Okay, so I got it to show in 3DSMax..... but now my own textures are gone..... LOLOL !!!

I guess I am not made to be a developer.....

Anybody here ever looked at the Lynda.com tutorials on 3DSMax and Photoshop? The free stuff I found on the Internet so far either doesn't cover what I need or is presented by whizzkids that forget to EXPLAIN what they are DOING and showing ..... and their mouse actions don't show. It is all nice and dandy to see what CAN be done, but without actually knowing HOW it just gets frustrating very quickly.

;)
 
Hi,

You don't really need to see your textures in 3DSMax; they will still show up after export to FS. But if you want them displayed, see below.

If you imported it via a 3DS file:

For anything that needs to be smoothed that looks blocky:
1. Select that part.
2. Add an Edit Mesh modifier from the stack at the right.
3. Click the little black + sign next to Edit Mesh
4. Choose Vertex sub mode.
5. Edit/Select All
6. Set the number next to the Weld button (on the right side of the screen) to 0.005
7. Press the Weld button.
8. Click the screen to deselect the vertices
9. Choose Polygon sub mode.
10. Click the Auto Smooth button near the bottom of the right side (scroll down).

You can do this with multiple parts selected to save time, but if you do make sure to right click the stack and choose Collapse All when finished, so you don't confuse 3DSMax later.

First you will need to get your textures into a format that 3DSMax can read (24 bit BMP and TGA are two common formats). I paste a set of them into the same folder I saved the 3DS file (and eventually the 3DSMax files), and convert them if necessary.

To get your textures to show up on the model in 3DSMax:
1. Click the red ball button along the top (Material Editor)
2. Click the Pick button.
3. Click on a polygon that is textured.
4. In the material that results, click the little blue and white checkered box.
5. The texture should now display on your model.
6. If not, go to the Maps section of the material window, and check the name of the texture.
7. If it is ~ with some letters after it, click that name.
8. In the box that results, click the wide button with that name on it.
9. In the box that results, double click the black Bitmap box.
10. Browse to the folder with your textures in it, and choose it.
11. If your model has more textures, repeat 2-10 until your model is completely textured again.
 
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