Arno Gerretsen

This years MVP summit

You might already have read on the blog of Owen or Nick that the MVP summit of this year is starting soon. Unfortunately I will not be able to be there. That is a pitty, as I would have loved to meet Owen, Nick and the other MVP's in person. But after traveling to the DevCon last November I have to save some traveling budget again, so maybe next year I can be there.

What about a 3DS exporter?

During discussion with a ModelConverterX user recently the subject of being able to import the objects into GMax or 3DS Max came up. If you want to continue editing your work that is indeed something that would be very useful. Now I did take a look at the 3DS format and it seems very well possible to write an exporter for it. Actually in about one evening I already made the base of it. Below you see a screenshot of a museum object that I imported into GMax from a 3DS file exported with ModelConverterX. As you see the materials are not yet there, as I have no written them to the 3DS file yet, but the geometry is getting through very well already. 

 In the next few days I hope to extend the writer further to also include the materials and other more advanced features. Of course an export-import process like this will never be perfect. For example the original parts that you had in your modelling tool will not always appear when importing in GMax. That is simply because this kind of information might not be stored in the API or MDL file that you imported. But at least it might be better than starting completely from scratch, especially if you only want to make some minor changes.

One other issue I am thinking about is the more legal part, as this would allow people must easier to edit other people's work. That might give a copyright problem, although it is always the question if the user or the tool is to blame for that. At least it is something that we have to be aware of.

But in total I am quite enthusiastic about this, it might even help us to get our models out of GMax when that tool is no longer supported for FS in the future. By being able to write in a common format as 3DS the way to import into other tools is a bit more open.

New ModelConverterX release

I have just released the next alpha version of ModelConverterX. The main new feature is the support for the SCASM binary commands that are used a lot by FSDS. This feature alone already would justify a new release, as this will greatly improve the number of SCASM macros that can be converted correctly.

Besides that I have added a new object reader, that can read FSX MDL objects. This reader is probably not so useful for most users, as they want to export to FSX MDL objects, not import them. But if you want to convert some FSX MDL objects to OpenFlight for example it might be useful. As this is an initial version of the reader, it will not read all MDL files at the moment. But objects without animations or other complex stuff should work fine.

To get the latest version and read a bit more about the future plans, please take a look at this thread on the forum. 

Hey, is that a manual?

I think almost any programmer will tell you the same, writing the manual or documentation for some work he has done (or is doing) is not the most fun part. So usually that part lacks a bit behind the program being made. For me that is also the case. Especially for the tools that are still in beta phase, the manual is often lacking or very minimal.

But today I changed that a bit, as I wrote a quick manual for the DrawCallMonitor tool I released a while ago. You can find this manual on the Wiki. Although it is a quite simple tool to use, I hope the manual provides a little more background information.

As this manual was short, it was easy to write. But I will promise you I will try to expand the ModelConverterX manual as well soon. 

Start of spring

Today was supposed to be the start of spring, but looking at the weather outside (snow, rain, cold) it seems not really to be the case yet. There is even some chance that we get a white Easter this year, maybe that can compensate for the lack of white Christmases lately.

But this might also have a positive effect, I might have some more time to program a bit during the Easter days now. Then I can catch up with the time I lost when the flu kept me in my bed two days this week. Tonight I already continued a bit on the ModelConverterX tool and basically added the support for the binary SCASM commands that FSDS uses a lot. It is working now, but the code needs some cleanup later this weekend. With this basic I can also continue on the FS2004 MDL reader and a BGL object reader. So there is more to come.

SCASM and binary commands

The next feature I will be working on for ModelConverterX is the support of the SCASM commands that enter the binary BGL/MDL code directly. With these commands you can enter certain hexadecimal values directly in the created file.

You might expect that this is a feature that would only be used by the real expert who wants to create some very special functionality, as you can easily screw things up if you are not sure what you are doing. But that is not the case, these commands are used quite often in API objects.

Especially FSDS makes a lot of use of them. If I remember correctly, this is because by the time FSDS was released a newer SCASM version was needed to be able to use the LoadBitmap and RGBSColor commands. But Abacus was also selling their ASD tool which come with an older version of SCASM. So to make sure that ASD could work with the macros generated by FSDS, FSDS had to write the LoadBitmap and RGBSColor commands with those direct binary commands.

The code I have started to write now will be able to analyze those binary commands, so that ModelConverterX can process them correctly. And with the same code I will also be able to read objects directly from the BGL file later on. So that might be another useful new function. 

DrawCallMonitor

The fact that the amount of drawcalls used by your object has a big influence on its performance is becoming more and more known in the community. A while ago I wrote about the performance I gained when optimizing one of my objects. If this still sounds very new to you, I would advice you to take a look at this article on the FSDeveloper Wiki.

Today I wrote a little tool, based on the code to read MDL objects that I developed for ModelConverterX, that can give you a little more insight in how well your object is optimized. This tool will read your MDL object and then show you some statistics about it. For example the amount of drawcalls and texture vertices that are used in the different LODs of your object.

ESP as Serious Game