SceneryDesign.org I am quite happy that I (sort of) got animations to work in ModelConverterX now. It is just a very simple test animation I made and there are some bugs in it left. But this is quite a big step. I never got this far in MDL Tweaker before. See a small video capture below. […]
The animation puzzle
This evening I continued with the FSX MDL reader for ModelConverterX. With the LODs done, my next challenge was to read the transformations correctly as well, as some objects now show displaced parts. This was easier said than done, as understanding the way transformations are assigned, also means understanding how the animations work. Luckily, after […]
Objects with a LOD
I have added another improvement to ModelConverterX, it can now read the levels of detail from a MDL file and also display them. This is nice to see how Microsoft has made their LODs. At the moment this functionality only works for the FSX MDL reader, as there is not a very structured way in […]
Shadow model
While working on the FSX MDL reader for ModelConverterX I came across something interesting. I had some models that showed up a bit weird to say the least. It turned out that I was reading both their exterior model and their shadow model. But wait, did you say shadow model there? In the MDL format […]
Sneak preview
Since I released alpha version 13 of ModelConverterX, I have been working on the next version. For that release I have mainly planned improvements to the usability of the tool. So that means the user interface gets cleaned up a bit, functions are made more logical etc. Another example of the things I am implementing […]
Finished the next version at last
In the last days I have been working hard on the next release of ModelConverterX, which I put online today. Every time when I thought I had fixed all bugs, some new problem appeared again. But now things seem to work good enough again. I am happy to get this new version online and I […]
Example of attached lights and effects
I just added the functionality to create FX effect files to ModelConverterX. This now allows the tool to write new FX files with the correct colour for light points that are used in the converted object. I am not an expert on making effect files, so maybe the FX could be optimized a bit further. […]
Attached objects done
This evening I have been able to take one more step on the problem of attached objects. After cleaning up the ModelConverterX code a bit more they are now really working. It is quite cool to be able to attach effect files now to your object and convert those already in the old SCASM macros. […]
Attached effects
Although Adrian Woods has an interesting post about how to add attachpoints to your X file, it still took me most of the evening to get things working. First I probably picked a wrong effect that does not work for scenery, but I also forgot to add the mesh to the X file frame of […]
Lines done, but what about effects?
I have made some more progress on ModelConverterX by now. The extrusion of the 2D lines into 3D shapes is working fine and in the options the user can specify the shape he wants to extrude with. That can range from a flat plane (2 vertex circle) to a circle with more vertices so it […]