• 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.

MDL Tweaker II preview

arno

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
34,342
Country
netherlands
Hi all,

I thought it would be a good moment to share some of the progress I made on MDL Tweaker with you. The attached screenshot shows a preview of the current version of MDL Tweaker II.

This tool will enable you to do tweaks similar to the old MDL Tweaker, but much more. For example seasonal textures, correcting normal of polygons, etc will also be possible without touching the source files yourself.

With the current alpha version I have I can now read and write the MDL files without errors, so the next step is to add the tweaks to the MDL file before writing it :). When there is more news or an early version to test I will let you know. But (as most of you know) I have less time at the moment due to my job, so progress is not going as fast as I would like.
 

Attachments

  • MDL_Tweaker_II_preview.jpg
    MDL_Tweaker_II_preview.jpg
    59 KB · Views: 1,082
That's good news, Arno! Will it be possible to set a different texture set based on day-of-year instead of just season? The seasonal processing in FS is fairly limited, and often doesn't coincide with the terrain textures. I've found that in far north areas like Alaska, I have to first determine what day of the year the seasons actually change, then tweak the MDL file to include different building textures appropriate to that time period. It would be a HUGE help if MDLTweaker could do that as well.

thanks,
 
Hi Bill,

spotlope said:
Will it be possible to set a different texture set based on day-of-year instead of just season?
Click to expand...

Yes, that is certainly something I have planned. You will probably get an option to use either the season or the day of the year variable. Unless I can figure out how to read the seasons.bgl file, the user will have to provide the days at which the seasons switch manual.
 
arno said:
Hi Bill,



Yes, that is certainly something I have planned. You will probably get an option to use either the season or the day of the year variable. Unless I can figure out how to read the seasons.bgl file, the user will have to provide the days at which the seasons switch manual.
Click to expand...

Gee, I hadn't even thought of parsing the seasons.bgl file and decoding it for automatic use. Wouldn't that be a helpful thing? I'm sure MS didn't make it easy, though. Do they ever? :banghead:
 
spotlope said:
Gee, I hadn't even thought of parsing the seasons.bgl file and decoding it for automatic use. Wouldn't that be a helpful thing? I'm sure MS didn't make it easy, though. Do they ever? :banghead:
Click to expand...

I will give it a try when I find some time. But it could very well be that that is something for MDL Tweaker X or so :).

This evening I implemented another feature that has been requested a lot. The kill shadow code, as Dick has posted here on the forum. You can now remove the shadow from a MDL file with just one click of your mouse. The two attached screenshots show the result :).
 

Attachments

  • Image2005-05-18 2250.07.437.jpg
    Image2005-05-18 2250.07.437.jpg
    35.2 KB · Views: 889
  • Image2005-05-18 2302.07.011.jpg
    Image2005-05-18 2302.07.011.jpg
    34.9 KB · Views: 843
MDL Tweaker

Hi Arno, chomping at the bit here for the new version of MDL: tweaker with the killshadow, any news yet :)
 
Hi,

Not too much news at the moment, I have been rather busy the last week, so not much progress.

Also I started to re-write part of the internal code to make it more efficient, that is almost fiinshed now. After that I can continue with adding the new features again. Once I have a version that is useful (but maybe not 100% finished) I will release an beta version.

But I am also working on adding GenericBuildings to ObPlacer XML at the momoment. So can't say how fast everything will go.
 
Arno, again I'm speechless! You're a :wizard:

I'm really looking foreward to the new version. Not only but most of all the "kill shadow"-function will be a great thing for me! :) :)
 
Hi,

I am now spending most of my time on the new ObPlacer XML, that will also allow GenericBuildings. Once that is done, I will move back to MDL Tweaker II and spend my time on this tool :).
 
Kill shadow and normal editing? I GOTTA HAVE IT! I need it NOW NOW NOW! MUUUUUST HAAAAAAVE - whoops, sorry, I'm OK now.
________
Water bongs
 
Last edited:
:D no problem.

I planned to continue working on it after my vacation, but due to a PC crash I will have to spend a few days on fixing that PC and installing all software. But after that I will continue on MDL Tweaker (but from monday I have to work again as well, so less time to spend).
 
I have made a (not yet fully functional) alpha version available, have a look at this thread.
 
I have made some progress on MDL Tweaker II again, it looks that nice that I must show you these pictures :D. As you can see I have added a preview, this reads the MDL file and displays it on screen for you.

At the moment the MDL reader code does not know all BGLC commands yet, so only simple MDL files (without animations, etc) can be read correctly at the moment. Also the performance of the OpenGL preview is not perfect yet, I have to optimize that a bit.

You might also notice that I changed the interface, but at the moment it is a bit of a mess, as I mixed elements of the old and the new interface. So I need to clean that up a bit as well.

Once I have made enough progress with these things, I will release a new alpha version for testing purposes.
 

Attachments

  • Image_2005-09-14 2312.30.094.jpg
    Image_2005-09-14 2312.30.094.jpg
    78.7 KB · Views: 795
  • Image_2005-09-14 2312.54.349.jpg
    Image_2005-09-14 2312.54.349.jpg
    57.6 KB · Views: 758
Last edited:
Wow, i think you are the first to add a preview of an mdl, at least what I know about. Fantastic! :eek:
 
Janti said:
Wow, i think you are the first to add a preview of an mdl, at least what I know about. Fantastic! :eek:
Click to expand...

I have seen it once or twice. But that was in test versions of some tools, so maybe these are not yet released.

I hope the preview is a useful feature, or else it was at least a lot of fun to code it for me :).
 
New alpha available now, so you can play with the preview yourself :).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top