3DC 4.23 Beta 1 Available

Thanks MainLines

So i went and downloaded the beta, installed it as instructed, and fired it up. Opened up my model, then selected a .tga for the texture. Worked great, so far so good. Cropped what i needed, set the translucency to 3, then zoomed into the inside of my baggage car and used the face paint tool to paint the inside. Export went flawlessly, ran my ffeditc, then put the new file into the game. Fired it up, selected my test train, and loaded it. Panned around the outside, inside of the car was still visible through the windows. Now for the test. I uncoupled my car from the train, then panned around to the inside of the car (neat little andquot;glitchandquot; in the game, actually one that turns out to be useful). So i panned to where the interior windows were visible, and there they were – TREES!!! Glorious, wonderful TREES!! A small pan revealed a station, and some cars parked there! The town showed beautifully through the tint of the windows, and all i could think was andquot;Thank You, Richard!andquot; You have made a passenger train lovers day! (ie, the modifications to 3DC’s translucency worked) I did not have a chance yet to try out the distance levels, as my car has several merged parts and two textures, as MSTS cars look MUCH better with .bmp’s compared to .tga’s.
Thanks again, GREAT job!

Hello all,

3DC 4.23 Beta 1 is now available. It is primarily oriented towards improving MSTS support.

What’s New

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o) Full support for translucency in Microsoft Train Simulator export.

o) The Microsoft Train Simulator export can automatically generate Distance Levels.

The main restriction with this is that each object must use a single texture. If multiple textures are applied to a single object problems will result. Also, models should not be merged as this can cause failures.

The final distance level removes all objects except those contained in the main frame so it is best to have the bulk of your model contained within the main frame so that the general shape will look correct. This final version will only be seen at great distances so minor objects such as wheels etc. will not affect the shape significantly.

o) Direct support for Targa (tga) textures

Note that large Targa files can be slow to load.

o) The Microsoft Train Simulator export mipmap level was changed to match the most commonly used level (-3).

o) Microsoft Train Simulator export files are now automatically converted to Unicode.
There is no need to run txt2uni.exe.

o) Copy, Cut and Paste now work on the Object Properties window.

o) In the case of a crash during the loading of 3DC you can now optionally stay in standard mode rather than being forced into compatibility mode.

o) Better clean-up of temporary files in the case of a 3DC crash.

o) The numeric format for the Microsoft Train Simulator export is now correct for non-English speaking regions.

o) Front, side and top views can now be displayed instead of the standard grid.

o) The Lathe and Extrude tools now permit a side view of the desired object to replace the standard grid.

It is availabe at: [img:1cz97t23]http://www.amabilis.com/downloads/3DC423Beta1.zip[/img:1cz97t23]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amabilis.com/downloads/3DC423Beta1.zip">http://www.amabilis.com/downloads/3DC423Beta1.zip</a>&lt;!– m –>
and is approximately 1.7 MBs. You must have 3DC 4.22 installed before this beta. Installation is explained in the ReadMe file. If this updates causes you problems you can easily revert to your previous version if you have followed the installation instructions. ***** note that 4.23 Beta 2 is now available so this download now longer works.

Note that this is a BETA and the MSTS export has undergone extensive changes.

Have fun,

Richard

Good to hear things are going well. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

You can actually use the distance levels on a merged object. It just may or may not work well (or at all-I have one object that hangs the system-not too good). As for the two textures… it only matters if two textures are applied to an individual object not the entire car. But if you have merged objects it is very easy to end up with two textures on one object.

Richard
PS you might want to re-download. I sneaked in a couple more changes when I thought no one was looking andnbsp;. They are related to improving the speed of targa cropping and allowing the grid images to be replaced with custom images.

The same thing happened to me when i downloaded yesterday… It just beeped and didnt run andnbsp;:'(

Simon

jeffmorris/stuo

It could be that you will need the full download when it is available. Perhaps the file doesn’t want to register with Windows for some reason. I wouldn’t worry about it quite yet. I’ll double check this on my test machine.

MRRextreme

No, not exactly. You will have andquot;somethingandquot;. The next beta will include the option to have two levels of detail (standard and coarse) instead of the progressive 6 that the current version has. Also, just because an object has been merged does not mean that it won’t work. There is the possibility of failure, but more likely it will just not produce as good of results. If you want to see if it will work without installing the beta just try the Reduce operation on your models to see what effect it has on point usage (just remember not to save andnbsp;).

On a side note, why do you need to merge objects? Is that so you can perform an operation on the merged group? I can’t off hand think of another reason since objects that are grouped on the the same frame are effectively merged.

Richard

Richard, I downloaded 3DC 4.23 beta 1, renamed 3DC.EXE to 3DCBAK.EXE, copied the files to folders as instructed, and tried to run 3DC 4.23 but I heard a sound and nothing happened. I can run 3DC 4.22. My computer has Windows ME, DirectX 8.0A, and GeForce 3 video card. Jeffrey.

I just ran a test on my boxcar which has several merged parts.
The export worked fine and loaded into MSTS without error.

If I am interperting the resulting .s file correctly, I got the following number of vertices for each of the distance levels:

100m – 1262
300m – 1072
400m – 1014
500m – andnbsp;958
700m – andnbsp;900
2000m – 550

<!– s:( –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt="" title="Sad" /><!– s:( –>
Richard I downloaded the beta and installed on top of 4.22

The program would not launch, it just beeped once, everytime I tried to run it. All versions of 4 prior to this have run just fine.

Have reverted back to V4.22

Stuart

System
AMD 800MHz Athlon
256MB ram
32MB Elsa Erazor III Pro using version 4.13.01.1240 (latest)
card is a nVidia TNT2 Rev A chipset

I make a lot of models using the merge operation. andnbsp;Are you saying the LOD option will not work on these models? andnbsp;How else would you combine objects together to make LOD work?

So it sounds like if I have non-animated parts of a car that I want to dissapear in the distance like stippup steps, handbrakes, couplers, etc. these should be made seperate objects linked in the hierarchy to the main object.

Larry

I was not trying to perform an operation on a merged object other than to paint its faces and have all the objects on the same frame. andnbsp;If the group operation works with LOD, I will start using the group operation instead of the merge operation. andnbsp;

Also people seem to be having problems with the 1.7M add-on. andnbsp; <!– s:oops: –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_redface.gif" alt=":oops:" title="Embarrassed" /><!– s:oops: –> andnbsp;I have not tried it yet. andnbsp;

Thanks for the update <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

I merge parts because, if I remember right, the MSTS documents say that the number of seperate objects in a model should be kept to a minimum which I interpreted to mean anything that is not animated should be part of the main object.

MaineLines,

I woudn’t worry too much about the parts count. andnbsp;The Dash9 has 18 parts! andnbsp;Most of them are animated, but andquot;INSIDEandquot;, for instance, is not. andnbsp;I would think MS has some stricter recommendations just to cover their rear in case something doesn’t work right.

Richard,
Unfortunately, the main body on my car has two textures. andnbsp;The reason for this is that bitmaps look a whole lot better in the game than targas, so most of the body is a bitmap, but the doors, as the have windows, uses a targa file. andnbsp;MSTS limitations!!

MainLines:

Good to hear that it worked even with merged parts. That looks pretty much like I would expect as a progression. The last stage removes the child objects (wheels, bogies etc.) that wouldn’t be visible beyond 700 meters. More detailed objects such as steam engines would likely see larger reductions. Not bad for an automated process (if I do say so myself).

Yes, those small items should be put in another frame. They can all be collected together into a single frame, you needn’t have one for each item.

MRRextreme:

Based on my knowledge of the S file format the number of objects really isn’t relavent but the number of frames and the number of textures is. And the reduction does work on merged objects (with a few exceptions) but I believe it will work somewhat better (less points) with non-merged objects.

buzzben:

The next beta (due today-I am doing this in fast motion) will have improvements that will allow you to have some benefit of LOD even with multiple textures. I guess there isn’t any way you can split your object up so that there is only one texture per object?

All:

The next beta will warn you if there is an issue found and then let you proceed even if you have multiple textures. Depending on the circumstances you may find that it will look fine, since only the progressions larger than ]100 metres away will be affected. You can try it and if you don’t like the result you can convert using the standard method.

Richard