Search results for 'app:weblogs' matching tags 'General' and 'ModelConverterX'

Yes this blog is still alive

arno — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Just to let you know this blog is still alive. Just recently I did not have too much time to post interesting things here. But that does not mean I haven't been (silently) working on new things. Here are some of the things I have been working on recently and once they are finished you will read more about them on this blog as well:

Improving the reading of aircraft MDL files in ModelConverterX, especially when it comes to the animations of the aircraft.
Improving the ModelConverterX preview. I have been experimenting with using shaders and that seems to be a great way to allow reflections, bump mapping and that kind of advanced features to show in the preview as well. I might even get the skin and bone animations working in the future.
I have also been doing some scenery design with SketchUp, working on some new objects for the NL2000 scenery.
Oh, and last but not least, we have been preparing for the baby that can be born any day now.

That should be enough to dust off this blog for now. When I have finished some of the items listed above, you will be able to read all the details here again.

How to deviate from your roadmap...

arno — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 05:00:00 GMT

I usually keep a list of bugs and features that I want to work on first for ModelConverterX. This is sort of my roadmap to the next stable release. But as it goes with a hobby project like this, sometimes the fun things push you away from the planned roadmap. Let me give you an example.

Last week I made a video tutorial about placing effects using ModelConverterX. In some of the discussion that evolved after this a user, I won't say it was you Bill, mentioned that it would be cool to have the actual effect also displayed in ModelConverterX. This was a nice idea of course and I think it was already somewhere on my todo list. So let's just check that it is and go back to the higher priority items on the roadmap, right?

Well not really, this idea kept spinning around in my brain. I started reading the special effects part of the SDK again and searching with Google how to make a particle system. At this moment I even think that it shouldn't be too hard to implement the display of the actual effect. So I'll be heading back to my paper and pencils after I finish writing this blog post to work out the design a bit more.

And do I find this annoying? Well, not really. This is what makes it fun to make tools for FS. By such comments you get new ideas and all the time explore new parts of FS. I think I have a much better understand how effect file work now already. And once I have finished this feature I think I should understand them even more. So don't feel guilty to mention such ideas in discussions. Just don't hold your breath for the stable release, while I jump around to implement some of those cool ideas...... (did I hear somebody say X-Plane support there in the distance as well) ........

Quick status update on the different projects

arno — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 05:00:00 GMT

Here is a quick status update for some of the projects I am working on. I know I have not blogged much recently. That is mainly because it is quite busy at my work recently, so that affects the amount of free time a bit. Unfortunately I don't expect this will change very soon.

In order of priority the projects have for me at the moment, these are some of the things I am working on:

SketchUp tutorial

At the FSWeekend in November there will be a FSDeveloper stand again (like last year). This year I plan to let visitors try their luck on modelling scenery objects with SketchUp in the stand. With that in mind I have started working on a new tutorial that will explain in detail how to make your own house for FS using SketchUp. I want to have this tutorial ready before the FSWeekend.

gPoly

After a long time of no progress, I have been able to do some work on the gPoly tool again as well. Currently I am adding one more feature (drawing lines). When that feature is added I think there is enough functionality for a first public alpha version. Although I will need to polish some features a bit more to make them useful to other people than myself.

While working on gPoly, I am trying to follow the Test Driven Development (TDD) approach that I have been reading about recently. That turns out to be an interesting experiment and I hope it will result in easier to maintain software in the end.

ModelConverterX

Also for ModelConverterX there are still some open issues. These mainly deal with finishing the aircraft importer, especially the functionality related to the conditions under which certain parts display need to be made a little more user friendly.

Where did March go?

arno — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:00:00 GMT

I made my last blog post at the beginning of March and now it seems the month is almost over already. Where did all that time go? I guess it is partly because it has been quite a busy month at work and I also spend some time on finally finishing our wedding photo album.

But there is also some progress on FS related issues. I have slowly been working on ModelConverterX, mainly looking at the drawcall minimizer. And it seems just the other day some issue appeared concerning the materials in the FSX MDL format. I am looking into that at this moment.

Besides that I am also working a bit on the NL2000 project, trying to hunt down some bugs that hurt the performance a bit. We want to make the performance of version 4 as good as we can of course.

Jetlag almost gone

arno — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 06:00:00 GMT

We are back home for a few days now, after enjoying a two week vacation in California. We had a lot of fun there and now that the jetlag is almost gone, it is time to spend some time on my FS tools again.

Initially I plan to focus on ModelConverterX a bit more. I want to finish the function to minimize drawcalls and will try to fix some bugs in the COLLADA reader. Since my posts about using Sketchup it seems many people give it a try, and they find many new bugs as well.

After that I want to focus more on gPoly again. I got some great new ideas for this tool and I am looking forword to continue coding on it. My first focus will be on the functionality to actually export the polygons you draw to FS, since without that the tool does not have that much usage.

A too powerful tool?

arno — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:00:00 GMT

A tool like ModelConverterX is very powerful in converting objects between different formats. But the fact that it can read BGL or MDL files as well also means it becomes relatively easy to import the work of somebody else into GMax and modify it to your needs. This gives some tension, on one hand you want to create a flexible for the users who is converting the work he has made and allow him to enjoy his old work in FSX. On the other hand you don't want to encourage people to steal the work of others, manipulate it a bit, and then distribute it as there own.

ModelConverterX already shows a user license when you first start it that reminds the user to only use it with objects that he owns the copyrights from and is thus allowed to convert. But let's be honest, who is reading that kind of license before clicking on the agree button?

I do not want to limit the tool too much, since there is also a lot of legitimate usage of it. So I have decided to add a little reminder while you are exporting. If you are converting your own objects just wait till it disappears when the export is finished. If you are trying to steal somebody else's work I hope it makes you feel guilty (at least a little bit)...

Back home from Canada again

arno — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:00:00 GMT

This morning I came home from my bussiness trip to Canada, so currently I still have a small jetlag. But that is not the reason of this blog post, I have made available all the changes I made to ModelConverterX in a new development build now. This new build includes the features I blog about before. The main changes are:

Added beginning of a FS2004 scenery MDL reader. Currently only the geometry and materials will be read correctly, but I am working on transformations and more advanced features already.
The improved material editor GUI.
Fixed problems with reading 32 bit textures.
Improved the rendering of models with transparent textures, there should be less (hopefully no) drawing order issues now.

Especially for the FS2004 reader I am curious to hear how it is working with your FS2004 MDL files. So let me know if there are issues or suggestions.

FSX material settings

arno — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:00:00 GMT

Over the last days I have been working on extending the material settings supported by ModelConverterX. I have now come to the point that all of the specific settings that you can make with a FlightSimX material can be edited with ModelConverterX as welll. If you download the latest development build you can try it out.

Adding this function has two main benefits. First it is possible to make more accurate settings for the material when converting API macros. For example the options for constant lighting or no shadows can be enabled now. The second benefit is that the material settings can be studied when importing an already existing MDL file. In many cases this can give a good insight in which combination of settings works best.

There is one thing that I did not finish yet. I am still working on adding good descriptions of the settings, based on those given in the SDK. These descriptions show in the Material Editor when clicking on a certain property. As tomorrow I will be leaving for a short vacation to Portugal, this will not be finished this week.

Time for an update

arno — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:00:00 GMT

It has been a while since I wrote on this blog, other things kept me a bit too busy lately. So it is time for an update!

I am still working on the next release of ModelConverterX. I had hoped to have the version 1.0 release ready by now, but the last few bits seem to take slightly longer than planned. The only main feature I am still working on is the LOD Creator one. I want to add functionality that considers the texture mapping of the object as well. This however means I have to update my matrix inverse code and that is what I am working on now (I'll save you the math details).

After the version 1.0 release I am planning to close down the beta testing group that is around now and make the latest development build available to everyone. So that users have the option to download the latest stable release (that is stable) or the latest development release which has all recent features (and maybe some bugs). But first I need to focus on finishing the current version for release.

Levels of detail

arno — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT

You might already have noticed that last weekend I released a new update for ModelConverterX. It contains just some small, but important bug fixes for the version 0.50 release.

So with those annoying bugs gone, I have started to concentrate on the next version again. The first feature I am working on is expanding the support for levels of detail. In the version 0.50 release I added support to read them from FSX MDL files and to display them in the preview. That is nice of course, but what is more important is being able to export them again. So on this version I want to add that functionality for the FSX MDL and OpenFlight writers.

Another feature I want to add is the automatic creation of the lower level LODs. I have been reading some papers on this subject and I think it should be possible to add such a function to ModelConverterX. I find especially the papers by Michael Garland quite interesting. I will start implementing that kind of logic soon and hopefully the results will be nice. I'll keep you informated about that.

But besides the LODs there are more features on my todo list and from next week I will also be on vacation for 3 weeks. That means you should not expect another ModelConverterX release soon.