My buildings are showing up half submerged when appearing in MSTS. How do I get the building to appear wholly above ground? Thanks!

Rich G.

Here's how to fix that.

You could Select WIREFRAME mode. I think it's easier that way.

1)  Select the SHIFT tool from the right-hand side "edit" menu.
2) Select your MAIN object. It changes color.
3) Constrain the Y axis (TOP MENU Y buttons toggle the X and Z buttons off, leaving Y on)
4) Press and Hold the CTRL KEY
5) DRAG the CENTERPOINT widget downward till it's below "ground" level.
6) Release the CTRL key.

DONE.  

Now, when MSTS places the object in the world, it will sink to the ground level you have specified.

Thanks Pete. Will do!

rg

I just realized that this is really hard to do on large objects... like say a 70' tall building.  In fact it's near impossible to even find the AXIS WIDGET.

Here's a solution.

1) Drop a cube primitive in the screen.  

NOTE: Shifting the axis point to "ground" level now and then scaling up will NOT leave the axis widget where you left it :-(

2) Scale up to say 45' x 70' x 45'

3) It's halfway underground now due to the centerpoint, so move the bottom of the cube up to ground level by adjusting the cube properties "Y" value to 35 (half of 70).

4) Move your view so you can see the bottom of the cube. You will probably need to zoom out to cope with the new cube size.

5) Using the face selection tool, select the bottom face.

6) Now we use the plugin. Open the Plugins menu and select the "Shift Center On Selection" plugin.

Your Axis Widget is now moved to the "Bottom Face", making it compatible with the Microsoft Train Simulator Wizard axis requirements for inserttion into a route.

This might require you to download the "SHIFT CENTER ON SELECTION" plugin from the AMABILIS download area.

Honest, I had installed this plugin ages ago and never bothered to try it till I attempted to solve this problem for Rich.  Oh the time it could have saved me trying to adjust the AXIS WIDGET.

Pete

Another solution for pre-existing models...

Create a cube on the scene and position it's axis where you would like the building axis to be..

Using the hierarchy view, drag the building object into the same group as the cube.

Right click on the building and select Grouping/Make Child

Now select the new child group in the hierarchy view and drag it into the scene group - your building object will now be centred where the cube centre was.
(you can now delete the cube)

This method is really useful for building freightanim objects which need to be centred on the model axis...

I use the shift centre plugin all the time, I hope to convert it to an operation for 6.0.2 which will make it simpler to use.
Pete - You may also find the Butt Bounding boxes plugin also does a good job of shifting either groups or objects (and not the group)

I didn't realize that shifting the axis on a large object was so near impossible using the shift tool, since I have never done anything larger than 24 meters long by 4.5 meters tall.

I didn't want to have him adjusting snap intervals and grid size in the ppreferences menu just to shift axis points.

I was seriously considering recommending the Parent/Child method to Rich Garber, but I didn't want it to become an overly complex solution. (It's not so simple to a new user)  

Rich's Garber's  idea that the Centerpoint axis widgie should re-sized in relation to the overall object size is actually I nice idea for a future enhancement, but Richard didn't seem to keen on the idea when Rich G. asked about it.

Things change, you never know.  Version 6.011 is finally making me want to give up version 5 now that it behaves the way I like.  

And It would really be need to have some of our favorite plugings become operations... go for it.

Paul,

There are some limitations on operations that will likely make that particular plug-in not doable as an operation. Operations work only on objects not group positions, etc. The exception is when applied to groups of objects in which case 3D Canvas itself tries to be clever and repositions groups where it thinks they should be. Having said that, it may be possible to make operations work on groups. I haven't tried that. But... if they did work on groups the changes to the group would not be "replayable".

pwillard,

quote:

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Rich's Garber's  idea that the Centerpoint axis widgie should re-sized in relation to the overall object size is actually I nice idea for a future enhancement, but Richard didn't seem to keen on the idea when Rich G. asked about it.

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It's not that I am not "keen" on it. I am actually quite keen on it. I'm just more keen on other things. Next on the list is to make 3D Canvas more hospitable to "add on" writers. Then I have the MSTS2 exporter to write, a couple more export formats to support, integrating the surface tool into 3D Canvas, make operations work on surfaces, finishing the new renderer, supporting DirectX shaders etc.

Richard

Regarding new features....

Hehe, ;D Richard,  I explained that you were the only developer to Rich G in a separate discussion and that kind of surprised him.  

I think we should all understand by now that you have a roadmap that you are following and that changing the way certain things behave is sort of a first-in first-out process unless it's a serious bugfix.

Some requests are so OUT-OF-THE-BLUE that we need to understand that you need to push back thinking about till some time in the future.

Keep up the good work!