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P3D v4 MCX Repeatedly Crashes With The Same Error

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ca-ontario
Hi, I've run into an issue with the Material Editor in MCX causing crashes when trying to convert a FSX aircraft model into a P3D v4 model with PBR textures. I am using the Materials Editor to assign the new values for a P3D model and for some reason the values are not sticking. I make the changes I need to each texture sheet (including naming the new textures) and click 'Apply' before moving on to the next texture sheet and then I repeat the process all over again. Sometimes the program throws up an error message and asks to close and sometime it looks like it accepted the changes. If I close MCX after making my changes and then immediately re-open it again then some (but not all) of the changes have reverted back to their original settings!

MCX Repeatedly Crashes With The Same Error

It used to work fine and was working fine earlier in the week but I noticed that it had started to act-up when checking the new model in the sim and things were looking very odd in terms of texture placement and shading.

I was using the last stable version of MCX and today I switched to the latest beta build and they both fail to do a clean export in the same ways.

I am unsure of the correct methodology when doing a conversion and could do with some guidance in case my problems are self-inflicted. Here is my modus operandi when making a conversion.

1. I open the model and Material Editor in MCX.
2. I select the texture I want to change and work my way through the various settings to convert a FSX model into a P3D model.
3. I click the 'Apply' button at the top of the editor window and then move on to the next texture sheet.
4. When all the required textures have been modified I export the model.
5. If I immediately open the new model some of the settings have reverted back to the previous values.

I am making sure that I have edited the aircraft.cfg file before converting the model and I also make sure I have a new folder with placeholder textures with the correct names in place ready for the new model.

In 3. above should I be applying the changes for each texture sheet before moving on to the next texture sheet or should I only apply the changes after all of the changes have been completed?

Can anyone shed some light on why this is happening or what I am doing wrong. I have successfully converted a couple of aircraft in the past two weeks but now I am having issues and nothing has changed on my PC or with the sim.

It's a puzzler for sure! 🤔
 
Hi,

What's the error message you got?

You mention clicking the apply button,.but that button is only to apply the selected material template, not to apply changes you have made.

To store the changes you made you need to export the object to MDL again. Else they are not stored.
 
Hi Arno, thanks for the fast reply.

I will try to get a screenshot of the error message if/when it pops up again.

Regarding the 'Apply' button I found nothing in the manual or in any tutorial online that states what that button actually does so I wrongfully assumed that it applied the changes you made to the form before moving on to the next texture sheet.

I was exporting the model after all the changes had been made but on re-opening the MDL file in MCX some changes were there and some were not.

I can only assume I am doing something wrong at my end but without a definitive tutorial on how to convert a FSX MDL file into a P3D v4 MDL file with PBR materials I'm in the dark and working on trial and error at this point! :confused:

I will keep trying and I will report back on any success or failure!
 
I just tried again and MCX crashes within a couple of minutes after changing the settings on one texture sheet and selecting another texture sheet to change.

These are the options I see at the top of the Material Editor panel:

Material Editor 1.jpg


It defaults to 'Set default transparent' whenever I open the dialogue box. I'm not sure what I should be using but on previous successful exports I selected 'Set Default Opaque' for diffuse textures and things worked fine but now MCX crashes. I also tried the 'PBR Composite Texture' option and it still crashes.

Which setting should I be using?

I did capture the error message window this time and this is what it displays:

Material Editor 0.jpg

When I click on the 'Details' button a long text message appears and I have copied and pasted that text into a text file for each of the two errors I got a few minutes ago (one with 'Set Default Opaque' selected and one with 'PBR Composite Texture' selected). I have attached both error messages in a zip file.

Hopefully the text files will help identify the problem.
 

Attachments

Hi,

The dropdown box with the material template (options like Set Default Transparent or PBR Composite Texture) is just to select one of the material templates. When you press the Apply button the selected template is applied to the currently active model. But which template you have selected has no influence on how editing the material properties functions. So I don't think it is related to your crash.

Are you sure that all material attributes that you edited are supported by PBR materials? If you edit attributes that PBR materials do no have, you will see that their values are not stored on export. Also some attributes are only stored in the MDL when other attributes have specific values. Maybe you have an example of which attribute is not stored when you export to MDL.

I'll check the strack trace to check if I can see why the crash happens.
 
Hi,

The crash is happening in the 3D preview of ModelConverterX, it seems that after the changes in the material you made. Do you remember what kind of change you made? Did you for example change a texture filename when the error happens?
 
The error happens after I have made changes to the the texture file names as you suggested.

I have a text file of the changed file names on my second monitor and when I want to change the name in the MCX box I highlight the new file name in the text file and copy and then drag-over the old name in the MCX name box and paste. In the case of the 'metallic' texture name I just paste the new name into the empty box.

It is when I then move to a new texture sheet that the crash happens. Is the problem because I am copy/pasting the file name instead of typing it into the MCX box?

These are the only changes I make in the Materials Editor:

Colors
Albedo color - Changed to 255.255.255 (I got that info from a tutorial I found on how to convert a FSX model to P3D v4+)

PBR
Is PBR Material - Changed to True
Metallic has occlusion - Changed to True
Metallic has reflectance- Changed to True

Textures
Albedo texture - Existing FSX texture file name is changed to new 'P3D with PBR' file name by copying and pasting (i.e. 'canopy_t.dds' becomes 'canopy_alb.dds')
MetallicSmoothAo texture - Empty box is filled with new 'P3D with PBR' file name by copying and pasting
Normal texture - Remains untouched as I am just using the original FSX 'bump map' located in the common 'Texture' folder

At this point I go to select the next texture file to change in the editor and that is when the crash occurs.

Note:
For reference, I do have folders in the 'aircraft' folder that have the new texture name and new model name.

The new texture folder has the renamed files in place which are copied over from the FSX texture and renamed to the new names. I started doing this in case MCX needed to see the files in place before I created the exported model.

The new model folder is a renamed copy of the FSX model I am working on (some aircraft obviously have more than one model folder depending on version etc.) that is set up with the new model names and is awaiting the converted models from MCX.

The texture entry in the aircraft.cfg file is already in place with the new model and texture folder information called out appropriately.

At this point I am not even able to export a converted model anymore because MCX crashes before all my changes are made.
 
I think you just found a bug. I'll try to reproduce the crash, thanks for the detailed information.
 
Thanks Arno, I have also discovered that the one setting that constantly reverts back to 'False' after I've set it to 'True' is the 'Metallic has reflectance' value.

I don't know if that is specific to the FSX model I am currently trying to convert or not because the two previous models converted correctly after a couple of user error issues on my part.
 
I'll check that setting and see if it sticks here.
 
Did you see in the description that t"he "Metallic has reflectance" attribute is only supported from P3D v5? So that means you need to use at least the P3D v5 XtoMDL to be able to export it to a MDL file.
 
Ahh, I did not see that Arno, my bad! :oops:

I only have P3D v4.5 so I won't bother with that setting in future.
 
Yes, for v4 you can ignore these attributes, they were only added later. If an attribute is only from a specific version that is added in the description of the attribute.

But glad to read that we figured out now why they did not export.
 
Is that why they didn't export? Because I turned on 'Metallic has reflectance'?

The 'Metallic has occlusion' seems to work OK in P3D v4.5 (at least it sticks when re-checked).

I will try to activate just the 'Occlusion' option and see what happens.
 
Yes, the options that are for P3D v5 will be ignored by XtoMdl versions from before v5.
 
Thanks for the help Arno! 👍

I was finally able to export again and this is the result in P3D v4.5 with PBR textures!

reno_1.png

reno_2.png

reno_3.png

reno_4.png


She's a beauty! :p
 
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