FS2004 aircraft mdl export

[arno]

i was thinking that you could bring up the Attached Object Editor from within the Hierarchy Editor if you right click on Attachpoint Name and choose an Edit Attachpoint menu item.

Yeah, that might also make sense to do indeed. Same with the material editor.t

BTW, when I try to search for Attachpoints in the Hierarchy Editor, they appear when I type in att but not atta. Very odd.

Let me check, it is the attachpoint name and the attached effect name that is being searched for.

I've checked and the converted FS9 interior model of the Electra does contain attachpoints - 4 of them, two taxi lights and two landing lights. Interestingly the taxi lights are listed as AttachedLight, while the landing lights are listed as AttachedEffect. I'm not sure it matters to the model though. The exterior model only contains two attachpoints, apparently, two landing lights at the wing tips (different location from the ones in the VC, which are between the engines under the wing).

The light_mapping.ini file determines how the lights are read. Landing lights are converted to effects by default, since that would ease a conversion from FS2004 to FSX (the internal representation MCX uses is most close to FSX). For the taxi lights I could not find a proper effect, so those I keep as attached lghts. When exporting to FS2004 a reverse mapping is done based on the same INI file.

However, the original FSX model contains 8 attachpoints, not six. And they appear to be flipped during conversion to FS9 - in the FSX exterior model there are 2 taxi lights, 2 landing lights between the engines, and 2 red/green navigation lights at the wing tips. The VC only contains two landing lights at the wing tips.

Let me have a look if I can reproduce that.

The animation ini file says that rudder_water_deploy should be reversed. I don't know if that tag is actually reversed, I've never used it. I have always used lever_water_rudder.

Ah, maybe I should add that second tag as well then. Let me check that.

BTW, for the last few versions of MCX when I close an Editor dialog box only the screen portion behind where the box was located will rotate with the mouse, the rest of the screen is frozen. After a few seconds the entire screen will rotate again. I can force this by going to windowed mode and back to full screen.

Humm, I have not changed that much in how the preview works and I have not seen it before. But I'll keep an eye on it.

 

[tgibson]

Test 3 Repeat: FS9 DC-6B to FSX.

I changed the Options to Internal Model and exported the FS9 DC-6B VC to FSX. The VC looks and works just fine, the 2D gauges are not flipped like in the FSX to FS9 conversion. I tried converting the exterior model again and the animated parts are still moved to the center of the plane. I tried Import/Export/Import several times and that didn't fix it.

 

[arno]

Glad to hear the VC when going from FS2004 to FSX works fine. That means at least the reading of the mouse rectangles and such is working fine.

The animation issue is on the to-do list. I hope to be able to check it somewhere in the next days.

 

[arno]

Hi Tom,

I have started investigating the different open issues now.

I have a question about the cockpit glass that is not transparent in FS2004. That is because the FSX glass material uses the diffuse alpha channel both for reflection and for transparency. The glass texture is also set as specular texture. This means that on the conversion to FS2004 it is set for reflection (like we disucssed before). But that means the alpha value is no longer used for transparency. And therefore it is not transparent in FS2004. Do you have an idea how to work around this?

 

[arno]

Hi Tom,

One more question. I started looking in the different deflections of the control surfaces. I think part of the problem is that FS2004 uses the deflection limits as defined in the aircraft.cfg file to limit the automatically generated animations, while FSX uses keyframes.

I thought I had implemented these deflection limits already, but it turns out that was not the case. So until now MCX uses some default angles (for an aileron that is -30 till 30 degrees). While the DC-6 has for example -15 till 19.5 defined in the aircraft.cfg file. I am in the process of updating MCX so that it uses the limits from the aircraft.cfg file.

Just a question about this, when the deflections are not symetrical, like for the DC-6 example. Would key 50 still be 0 degrees. So for example from time 0 to 50 it goes from -15 to 0. And then in time 50 to 100 it goes from 0 to 19.5?

Do you think this would solve the issue you reported or is that more than using the limits from the aircraft.cfg file?

 

[tgibson]

Regarding your first comment about the FSX DC-6B cockpit windows.

AFAIK the presence of a specular texture says nothing about transparency vs reflection in an FSX model? If that is correct, the presence of a specular texture being sufficient to denote a texture being reflective is only valid in FS9 models, not FSX or later. Also, FSX materials can indeed be reflective and transparent at the same time, giving a nice glass effect. This was a common glass material published on the internet. In this case the transparency is determined by the Alpha Test settings (Always, 1, True) and the property Set Final Alpha Value at Render Time set to TRUE. It appears to me if the Alpha Test Function is set to Greater or Always (and others?) the material will be transparent. In this case the reflective quality of the material will need to be discarded and the FS9 material made simply transparent.

Regarding control surfaces. I'm not really sure what the correct solution should be, but I would think that since the FSX model uses keyframed animations the FS9 model could as well? The FS9 SDK mentions keyframed animation tags for all control surfaces (l/r_aileron_key, elevator_key, rudder_key). Those could be used to match the movements in the FSX aircraft, no matter what the aircraft.cfg file says.

But if it's easier to use the aircraft.cfg file that would be fine, it would just be needed for users to understand that. And yes, I would assume that keyframe 50 would always be the centered position.

Keep in mind that the FSX DC-6B is a model that was converted from the FS9 model by MCX, so the program may have generated different keyframes for control surfaces than was present in the original FS9 model, and converting that back to FS9 may add yet another conversion issue. Since this is an unlikely scenario (just use the FS9 model!), going from an FSX native aircraft like the Electra to FS9 might be a more useful test.

 

[tgibson]

BTW, when I added an alpha value of 252 to the FSX DC-6B blurred props diffuse color before conversion to FS9 that did fix the parts disappearing behind the blurred props problem.

Also in converting the FSX DC-6B to FS9, when I removed the specular texture, set Blend Environment by Specular Texture to FALSE, and applied Set Default Transparent the cockpit windows became transparent.

 

[arno]

AFAIK the presence of a specular texture says nothing about transparency vs reflection in an FSX model? If that is correct, the presence of a specular texture being sufficient to denote a texture being reflective is only valid in FS9 models, not FSX or later. Also, FSX materials can indeed be reflective and transparent at the same time, giving a nice glass effect. This was a common glass material published on the internet. In this case the transparency is determined by the Alpha Test settings (Always, 1, True) and the property Set Final Alpha Value at Render Time set to TRUE. It appears to me if the Alpha Test Function is set to Greater or Always (and others?) the material will be transparent. In this case the reflective quality of the material will need to be discarded and the FS9 material made simply transparent.

Yes, for FSX that is no issue indeed. I think I agree with you, when a material is both used for reflection and transparency, the transparency should probably get priority when converting from FSX to FS2004. I'll make that modification in MCX.

Regarding control surfaces. I'm not really sure what the correct solution should be, but I would think that since the FSX model uses keyframed animations the FS9 model could as well? The FS9 SDK mentions keyframed animation tags for all control surfaces (l/r_aileron_key, elevator_key, rudder_key). Those could be used to match the movements in the FSX aircraft, no matter what the aircraft.cfg file says.

Since not for all animations there are keyframe variants available, I think it is easier to use the automatically generated ones of MakeMDL. When exporting animations that MakeMDL can generate by itself to FS2004 MCX does remove the keyframes already.

I think the issue you saw between FSX and FS2004 is more that when going from FS2004 to FSX the information from the aircraft.cfg file was not used and as a result of that the animations in FSX had a different (and incorrect) range.

And yes, I would assume that keyframe 50 would always be the centered position.

OK, let me make sure it works like that.

Keep in mind that the FSX DC-6B is a model that was converted from the FS9 model by MCX, so the program may have generated different keyframes for control surfaces than was present in the original FS9 model, and converting that back to FS9 may add yet another conversion issue. Since this is an unlikely scenario (just use the FS9 model!), going from an FSX native aircraft like the Electra to FS9 might be a more useful test.

I thought so already, given the key frames I saw on the ailerons and such. So I will mainly use the DC-6 for FS2004 to FSX conversion tests and then the Electra for the reverse.

BTW, when I added an alpha value of 252 to the FSX DC-6B blurred props diffuse color before conversion to FS9 that did fix the parts disappearing behind the blurred props problem.

Yes, I have already implemented this logic. It will be in the next development release. I will try to push one before Christmas.

 

[arno]

Hi Tom,

While looking at the control surfaces I also came across the aileron trim, elevator trim, etc. As far as I can see FS2004 model often use a definition that drives the animation based on grads, while in FSX there is only a percent definition. Is this something you would normally manually change which animation is used when doing a conversion from FS2004 to FSX?

 

[tgibson]

I didn’t model the exterior trim tabs so I don’t have experience with those. My SDK doesn't show automatic animation of anything but elevator trim, but I found that trimtab_l_aileron and trimtab_rudder worked (in the VC). I probably should have just used key frame animations.

 

[arno]

I later saw they were indeed part of the VC, let me focus on the issues with the exterior model first.

 

[arno]

Hi all,

I have just pushed a new development release, it will be online in about 30 minutes from now.

Hi Tom,

Here is a quick overview of the different issues that you reported that I have (hopefully fixed):

• Fixed issue that tire animations were not recognised correctly in FSX model and therefore not exporting to FS2004.
• Write diffuse color alpha for material with transparent texture to ensure that MakeMDL generates the right drawing order.
• Check the 64k limit for FS2004 files for the internal and external model separately.
• Fixed issue with mapping prop_pitch0 animation when exporting to FS2004.
• Animation travel for control surfaces taken from deflection limits in aircraft.cfg file.
• VC texture no longer flipped when exporting to FS2004.
• When alpha channel is used for both transparency and reflection, the transparency takes priority now when exporting to FS2004.
• Added option to export the active representation for models with multiple representations (this is the default value now).
• Made sure active representation is remebered when editing an object in an editor.
• Livery correctly updated when navigating between multiple objects with the green buttons.
• Full path of object shown in the title bar.

The main big issue still on my list is those animations at the center, that's one I still need to check.

 

[tgibson]

I have just pushed a new development release, it will be online in about 30 minutes from now.

Merry Christmas to me! Wishing you a great holiday season, Arno.

Fixed issue that tire animations were not recognised correctly in FSX model and therefore not exporting to FS2004.

Appears to be working.

• VC texture no longer flipped when exporting to FS2004.

This appears to be fixed.

• When alpha channel is used for both transparency and reflection, the transparency takes priority now when exporting to FS2004.
• Added option to export the active representation for models with multiple representations (this is the default value now).

I had to change this Option manually, I assume because I had a previous development release installed before. This appears to work fine. An FS9 DC-6B was successfully converted to FSX exterior and interior models in two easy steps.

• Made sure active representation is remebered when editing an object in an editor.
• Livery correctly updated when navigating between multiple objects with the green buttons.

These work fine now, although it takes some time for MCX to update the Livery drop down box.

• Full path of object shown in the title bar.

This is helpful, although when loading an aircraft.cfg file it never tells me what MDL file is loaded, and from what model folder. This doesn't have to be in the title bar (although that's fine) but could be in the model information box instead.

The main big issue still on my list is those animations at the center, that's one I still need to check.

And this happened to me again during the DC-6B FS9 to FSX conversion. This affects the exterior model, the VC appears fine - even the outside parts like the props.

Test 1: FS9 DC-6B to FSX.
Results above - exterior model has collapsed many animated parts in FSX (not in MCX), VC model appears fine. Import/export'/import does not appear to fix it.

Test 2: FSX Electra to FSX.
I imported the aircraft.cfg file to get the exterior and interior models. Most things appear fine upon export back to FSX, but the animated airstairs for the exterior and interior models are both displayed in the exterior view. I could see this because they are modeled differently. Other identical animated parts may be present, I don't know how to see that. If the converted exterior model is loaded into MCX you can see both sets of stairs extend with the animation slider. The model size increased from 5133 KB to 5658 KB.

Same problem with the VC - both exterior and interior model stairs are visible in MCX. Interior model size went from 5210 KB to 6154 KB.

I believe this is the same problem I showed a picture of above - things included in the VC that should not be there. Now I see there are things in the exterior model as well from the interior model.

Test 3: FSX Electra to FS9:

Loaded the FSX Electra using the aircraft.cfg file. When attempting to export to FS9, MCX reports that the "internal representation" contains 9935 vertices and cannot be exported. Nice!
I reduced the number of parts in the interior model to the point where MCX no longer gave me that error message. When MakeMDL compiled the model I got these errors and no MDL file was produced. There were many more of these same errors A2071 above this listing:

I had to remove more parts from the interior model to get it to compile than I did converting the FSX interior model by itself. Again this is probably due to all the extra parts included in the interior model that should not be there. I have a picture of it above. When loaded into MCX, the resulting FS9 interior model displays extra parts not in the FSX interior model that I had removed parts from in MCX. Many but not all animated parts are included. It appears these are probably from the exterior model. If this could be avoided I would probably not have to remove so many parts. I do not see any extra parts in the exterior model (i.e. only one set of airstairs).

Once compiled the exterior model looks fine. The elevator trim tabs work the same as in the original FSX model. The 2D gauges in the VC are now right side up. The 3D mouse rectangles do not work.

Hope this helps,

 

[tgibson]

Test 4: FS9 DC-6B to FS9:

The VC 2D gauges now display correctly and their mouse areas work fine. The 3D mouse rectangles do not work.

The exterior model looks and works fine except for that below.
In FS9 the inside of the passenger and underfloor doors, the entire interior cabin, and the chocks and maintenance stairs are partially transparent. Never seen that before. I do not see the transparency when the converted model is displayed in MCX. These are all textured using the interior..bmp texture. This uses interior.bmp and interior_L.bmp, with no specular texture. I noticed that the diffuse color was 51,255,255,255, so I removed the alpha to make it 255,255,255. This did not fix it after export. I then reloaded the cfg file to reload the exported MDL file and the diffuse texture was still 51,255,255,255. Thus my removal of the alpha entry did not translate into the converted model. The original FS9 source model has 255,255,255 as the diffuse color, no alpha. While this texture is supposed to use transparency, the alpha value to ensure proper parts order should be closer to 251, rather than 51. Also, it would be nice to be able to change that in MCX.

All engine's still prop blades using lever_prop_pitch only rotate one half of that in the original model.

The nose wheel does not rotate, the main wheels do.

The nose gear rotates twice as far as it does in the original source model.

 

[tgibson]

Test 5: FSX DC-6B to FS9
The cockpit windows are now transparent, so the transparency priority is working OK.
The diffuse color of the interior material is 51,255,255,255 as in test 4, so mostly transparent.

 

[tgibson]

Test 6: FSX Electra to FS9 next try:

To try to get around the problem of MCX adding parts from the exterior model to the interior model, I first Isolated and Exported most of the VC cockpit to a separate MDL file. I then removed all of the "extra" parts from the VC that I know will need to be removed to reduce the part count so MakeMDL will accept it. I then exported the model to FS9, which worked. When I imported this new model into MCX, there were the uneeded parts from the Exterior model displayed in the interior model. I then removed all of the uneeded parts, and Merged my saved cockpit MDL file back into the Interior model. The Merge dialog box was confusting because it stated I was adding ELECT_01 (the entire plane) to my ELEC_VC_parts.mdl, but I went ahead anyway and it seemed to work.

I then exported the model, which worked! I loaded the plane into FS9 and checked out the VC. It all seems to be there, and the 3D animated parts (like throttles) respond to my yoke commands. However, the 3D mouse rectangles are missing so I cannot control 3D objects. However, the still prop rotation is incorrect, the prop blades wobble around instead of rotating.

The exterior model is a bit of a mess, because all those parts I deleted from the interior model of the converted FS9 plane are also deleted from the exterior model! So all of the parts in the picture I posted above are missing from the exterior model. The still prop blades wobble instead of rotate. I also eventually lost the texturing of the exterior except for the engine nacelles, suggesting a memory leak? I reloaded the plane to get the textures back and FS9 crashed with a black screen. I tried reloading FS9 with that model and it hung as the plane loaded. I then changed planes, loaded that one, and changed to the Electra and that loaded OK. When I then tried to close FS9 it hung.

When I load the resulting FS9 Electra into MCX the parts in the exterior model are missing there as well.

 

[arno]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the detailed testing again. Hope you had a good Christmas as well, we just returned from a visit to family as well.

I had to change this Option manually, I assume because I had a previous development release installed before. This appears to work fine. An FS9 DC-6B was successfully converted to FSX exterior and interior models in two easy steps.

If you changed the default value from PreferExternalModel before, I think indeed that you would have to set it to PreferActive yourself. In that case your last choice was remembered.

These work fine now, although it takes some time for MCX to update the Livery drop down box.

Yes, I noticed that too. The preview updates correctly, but the text only changes once you do some mouse action (e.g. rotate the model).

This is helpful, although when loading an aircraft.cfg file it never tells me what MDL file is loaded, and from what model folder. This doesn't have to be in the title bar (although that's fine) but could be in the model information box instead.

I have updated the logic now that when loading via the CFG file that the title bar will show the MDL filepath instead of the CGF filepath.

And this happened to me again during the DC-6B FS9 to FSX conversion. This affects the exterior model, the VC appears fine - even the outside parts like the props.

Does it happen all the time? I did try a DC-6 FS2004 to FSX conversion here as well, but the model shows up fine in FSX with all animations in place.

Test 2: FSX Electra to FSX.
I imported the aircraft.cfg file to get the exterior and interior models. Most things appear fine upon export back to FSX, but the animated airstairs for the exterior and interior models are both displayed in the exterior view. I could see this because they are modeled differently. Other identical animated parts may be present, I don't know how to see that. If the converted exterior model is loaded into MCX you can see both sets of stairs extend with the animation slider. The model size increased from 5133 KB to 5658 KB.

OK, let me check that.

Test 3: FSX Electra to FS9:

Loaded the FSX Electra using the aircraft.cfg file. When attempting to export to FS9, MCX reports that the "internal representation" contains 9935 vertices and cannot be exported. Nice!
I reduced the number of parts in the interior model to the point where MCX no longer gave me that error message. When MakeMDL compiled the model I got these errors and no MDL file was produced. There were many more of these same errors A2071 above this listing:

That usually means you are still above the 65k limit. If MCX not longer reports the error then its internal representation is below that limit, but it sounds like MakeMDL might have optimized the model further which maybe added some extra vertices again. Let me see if there is something I can do about that.

I had to remove more parts from the interior model to get it to compile than I did converting the FSX interior model by itself. Again this is probably due to all the extra parts included in the interior model that should not be there.

Good point, those extra animations might not help indeed as well.

The 2D gauges in the VC are now right side up. The 3D mouse rectangles do not work.

Good to hear that works fine. Yes, exporting the mouse rectangles is still on my todo list.

In FS9 the inside of the passenger and underfloor doors, the entire interior cabin, and the chocks and maintenance stairs are partially transparent. Never seen that before. I do not see the transparency when the converted model is displayed in MCX. These are all textured using the interior..bmp texture. This uses interior.bmp and interior_L.bmp, with no specular texture. I noticed that the diffuse color was 51,255,255,255, so I removed the alpha to make it 255,255,255. This did not fix it after export. I then reloaded the cfg file to reload the exported MDL file and the diffuse texture was still 51,255,255,255. Thus my removal of the alpha entry did not translate into the converted model. The original FS9 source model has 255,255,255 as the diffuse color, no alpha. While this texture is supposed to use transparency, the alpha value to ensure proper parts order should be closer to 251, rather than 51. Also, it would be nice to be able to change that in MCX.

I would need to check what goes on, but I think the texture has an alpha channel. At the moment MCX writes the value of the alpha channel as the diffuse alpha. But it seems that gives the transparency twice. Maybe it is better for the drawing order to just write 251 or 254 or something more close to 255.

All engine's still prop blades using lever_prop_pitch only rotate one half of that in the original model.

You mean that all 4 engines use the same lever_prop_pitch or they have the right numbers? Let me check what I can find for their animation travel.

The nose wheel does not rotate, the main wheels do.

I will check, I think I saw it has the c_wheel animation last time.

The nose gear rotates twice as far as it does in the original source model.

You mean the rotation when the nose gear is extended or retracted? Let me see if i can find something about that.

 

[tgibson]

Does it happen all the time? I did try a DC-6 FS2004 to FSX conversion here as well, but the model shows up fine in FSX with all animations in place.

When I had this problem converting planes using previous versions of MCX it did not happen with all planes, only some of them. The DC-6B was one of the problem planes.

You mean that all 4 engines use the same lever_prop_pitch or they have the right numbers? Let me check what I can find for their animation travel.

They each have the correct engine number in the tag.

I will check, I think I saw it has the c_wheel animation last time.

No, this is the c_tire animation.

You mean the rotation when the nose gear is extended or retracted? Let me see if i can find something about that.

This is the c_wheel animation.

 

[tgibson]

I have been thinking about MCX mixing up the exterior and interior parts, and am guessing that this might be due to the parts hierarchy?

In GMAX when you create an FS9 aircraft model, you first create two master parent nodes, Exterior and Interior. All external parts are linked to the Exterior node, all internal parts to the Interior node. All parts are linked to one of these master nodes.

When I open an FS9 plane in MCX, the External and Internal parts are scattered through the listing. Perhaps this is confusing MakeMDL?

 

[arno]

I have been thinking about MCX mixing up the exterior and interior parts, and am guessing that this might be due to the parts hierarchy?

No, it was a bug in my function that filtered for a specific representation. I have fixed that by now. I'll probably push a new release soon.