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MSFS20 MCX Features

I have some initial observations about the tool with a small amount of experience using it. I corrected a large number of sub models assembled into an airfield complex and of course it worked fantastically. There is no "one click fix all button," there doesn't need to be, but, I got a little confused carving down through the list of ModelParts.

At first, everything was red, with distortion mode enabled, so I had trouble telling which part I'd selected, until I clicked "normalize texture coordinates" and then it became obvious. But once all the big red areas had been turned white, I still had a ways to go. If I drilled in and looked at small parts, some I could find red and I could flip between highlight in texture render mode, and distortion mode, to tell if I had the right part, but I think you can see where this leads, but beyond that, I think the small, unlocatable parts, are not that critical for correction.

So the questions are: is it ok the normalize everything? It seems like it. Also, is there a more practical way to categorize distorted parts that I missed?
 
Would it not be more logical to shade these parts a color other than red? Perhaps orange?
 
Hi Rick,

I think the highlighting of the selected part does not work in this new shader, let me double check that. And if the red is used for highlighting, it might be a good idea to use a different color for the distortion like Tom suggests.

Would it help if I add an option somewhere to run it on all modelparts? It should not hurt to run it on parts that don't have distortion, except for the calculation time that takes. I could add that in the Tools menu for example.
 
I think it might not be best to run on all parts. I've developed a workflow by keeping the model open in Sketchup and when I encounter red polygons while viewing in distortion mode in MCX, I click that same part in SU to find the texture name, then a text search in Hierarchy editor identifies the ModelPart. Still a bit tedious, but this feature laterally salvages models.

So, well worth it, but when I've cycled through all the red poly's, there are some that have flickering pinkness to them. These, I'm learning are the tiled textures, rivet patterns, or random dirt, usually. What I am seeing is that on some occasions the normalizer repairs them, they become completely white, but on other occasions, they become redder, which I can only assume is an increase in distortion, from the algorithm, in which case the slight pink distortion might not even be noticeable, but it seems like each should be evaluated case by case.

You could maybe have a threshold, only the deep red distortion will be affected by a universal adjustment, or you could maybe allow the user to control the fidelity of the distortion/normalization ratio, similar to the way we adjust the LOD creator.
 
Hi,

Interesting that you see polygons where the distortion becomes worse. I would not expect that too happen.

I guess you can also use the mouse select mode to directly jump to the right model part in the hierarchy editor. No need to check the texture in SketchUp first.
 
The part was a large ship deck with a tiled texture. If there are limitations, one would expect MCX to encounter them as well and thank you about the mouse clicking, I was not aware. I am learning that the Sketchup UV skewing can be somewhat arbitrary, one part has it and another one identical to it, does not.
 
I have modified the shader now, the distortion will be shown in black in the next build, so that red can be used to show the selected part.
 
Not when it's fully black, but that should not happen too often. I tried other colors but that also didn't work that well.
 
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