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Rotate to User, multi objects question

EdGeneer

EdGeneer

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unitedstates
Greetings...

I was wondering. I saw that there is a couple ways of rotating a single plane to the camera/user. (mdl tweekerII, or asm tweek)...

Question: Is this exclusive to singular obects in an mdl file, OR can the rotation be applied to all planes in a *.mdl file, and NOT rotate around the center of the mdl file, but the objects themselves....???

The reason I ask is, I can make trees and such, but does each object need its own mdl file? or can there be many obects in an mdl file and they all rotate around their own centers??? I have one instance where i need many of the same object, be it a single poly/plane to have all of them rotate to the user, but i dont want to tweek an *.mdl file for EACH instance of the object...

For instance, not only do I make rotating light poles, but my taxi lights are 2D and rotating... BUT do I have to make a mdl file and rotate EACH one seperately???? or can all the rotating to user objects be placed in one mdl file and each object in that file rotate to user???

I understand instances where several parts could represent one object, thus that object rotate together, etc, but is there a way to do this without 'tweeking' EACH seperate taxilight???? thats a hundred tweeks....

Thanks in advance...
 
Hi,

When you want the same object placed multiple times you only need one MDL file. So if you want 100 instances of your tree, one MDL file is enough. And thus also only one tweak.

But if you have multiple planes in a MDL file that all need to rotate to the user, that is also possible. But you will have to tweak things manually in the ASM file. You then need to make sure that each rotate to user command is transformed correctly to the local origin on the plane you want to rotate. This requires some maths I guess to do right.
 
So, It sounds like this would be difficult or for the most part, impractical... I dont care so much about trees, persay, they can be made in gmax as x'shapes and copied and located anywhere you wish, as an alternative. (granted, its 6 more poly's per tree...)

I was mostly thinking of 2D taxi lights. rotated to user, but with the large number of taxilights, it wouldnt make sense placing each light with a coordinate manually in an xml file. They also dont work as an x'shape like trees do. I want to avoid making 3D taxilights, as they would certainly kill frames in a high polygon count.

I was hoping someone had a quick remedy to the 2D taxilights option. (silly me) I can do it with EOD making an API for fs2004 fine, but want my scenery to be used in fsx, and ofcourse api generated planes with alpha transparancies dont seem to work propperly in fsx.

Thanks for your reply, arno.... :)
 
Hi,

When you would make an API macro you would still have to position it many times, that is almost the same as using the XML code to do that. I am afraid there is no easy solution to this one.
 
Is there a WYSIWYG *.mdl placer like there are for *.api's???

I remember Scenery Generator X claims to place mdl files and seems to show a usier interface similair to fssc, etc...

never used it though....

I could be mistaken if you claim its difficult to do.... I can dream though... it WOULD save so much in polygon count....

Thanks for your insight....
 
You could try WhisPlacer to place the MDL files, it has a nice GUI. It is for FSX though, not sure if that is the version you are working with.
 
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