SceneryDesign.org Over the last months I have been working on improving the FS2004 aircraft MDL export from ModelConverterX. While working on this I have made some changes that affect the general usage of ModelConverterX as well, so I want to give an overview of them in this post. Attachpoint orientation While making sure that landing lights […]
FS2004 aircraft mdl export
Some features are on the ModelConverterX wishlist for quite a while already. For example the feature request to export FS2004 aircraft mdl files with working animations and such is on the list for over 10 years already. And given that FS2004 is less popular nowadays I thought I might never come around to implement this […]
Animation mapping
The latest development release of ModelConverterX has a new feature that can help in converting models between different sims. Often these simulators use different names for their animations. For example FS2004 and FSX have different names for certain types of animations. Before ModelConverterX used a hardcoded mapping when importing these models, but now this mapping […]
FSW MDL support & Material editor filtering
Last week Dovetail (finally) released a SDK for Flight Sim World (FSW). I have now updated ModelConverterX to support the FSW MDL format as well. This means you can read and write the FSW MDL files. To write them (or the FSW BGL files) you need to have the SDK installed. I can’t garantuee that […]
Reading aircraft.cfg files
I have added a new feature to ModelConverterX, besides the MDL format, you can now also read the aircraft.cfg file. Each of the models defined in the CFG file will then be read into the tool. And the liveries are based on the settings in the CFG file. This will give more accurate liveries than […]
Exporting FS2004 aircraft MDL files
One feature often requested is the ability to export FS2004 aircraft MDL files as well. I have now set a first step in the direction of this functionality. If you download the development release tomorrow you will see that you can export both FS2004 scenery and aircraft MDL files. But before you get too enthusiastic, […]
Grrrr, stupid MakeMDL error!
I think every designer exporting objects to FS2004 has seen the error message on the right at least once. It happens when you export a small object to a FS2004 MDL file with MakeMDL. The reason is that somewhere inside MakeMDL, when calculating the octtree for the crash detection, some assertion is triggered. Of course […]
Multiple object placements
The next development release of ModelConverterX contains a number of changes related to object placement. The main change is that you can now place multiple instances of the same object from within ModelConverterX. The placement is no longer done from the Object Information form, instead a new Object Placement form has been added. You still […]
Let there be rectangles…
I have added a new processing step to scenProc that allows you to turn polygons into rectangles. This step is mainly useful when creating autogen vegetation for FS2004, since the vegetation must be rectangular there. What the step does is just take the polygon and try to fill the shape with rectangles of the size […]
Reading X files
I have added a new function to ModelConverterX. It can now also read X files. This can be a X file generated by the FS2004 or FSX gamepack, but also a X file generated by another tool that does not contain the FS specific information. The following features will be read from the X file: […]