Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

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Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby JamesLit » Fri Jul 24, 2015 8:24 pm

Hi all,

This could be a number of different things so I have just popped it here. So many different possible reasons for this happening...!

I am working on a loco at the moment which I'm now ready to put into the game. It's something I've been passed on by DT to help them with. It already had all the source stuff etc set up, I've worked on most parts of that to improve it etc as needed and wanted. The loco I have exported into the game several times now without an issue, but suddenly, seemingly for no reason, I cannot do so anymore. Well, sort of.....

Basically, it will export from 3DS Max 2010 absolutely fine using the Kuju plugins, including the animation as well. I have also brought a separate, identical copy of the model up to 3DS Max 2015 standards by remaking all the materials using the RWMaterials from the latest version of the plugin, which also exports fine, again including the animation. Once I bring it all up in BE2 and export, again, that goes absolutely fine - except...... the loco IGS file takes around 15-16s ish to export into the game, on its own. Previously, it would take around a minute. The resulting GeoPcDx file is about 1.1MB. Previously it has been much more - the tender is over 4MB for goodness' sake.....

Well, if it's only a megabyte then there must still be something to it for it to be that size rather than a few kilobytes... so if I go to look at it in game, I'm greeted with, drum roll please...

Absolutely nothing.

I have tried every single thing I can possibly think of. All the naming conventions have been checked over, and over, and over, and they are all correct. I have reset literally every single Xform on the entire model. I have ensured every single object is UV unwrapped (and properly). I've checked all the references for textures and everything, made sure that the XML is referencing all the right stuff... and nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

A tad disheartening as you might imagine. Anyone got any ideas? Would be greatly appreciated, as we're all sat here tearing our hair out - and frankly, we're absolutely bleeding clueless.....
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Re: Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby FastlineSimulation » Sat Jul 25, 2015 8:15 am

That sounds to me as if it's failing to export completely from Max. Check the dump as it exports, chances are it's griping about a non RW material or texture format that is lurking in there and terminating early.

It may be wise to just reapply all your materials too or even use a simple dummy one for everything to check the export.

It's also easily done to have one node with a name the game engine doesn't like but it sounds more like a failing export.

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Re: Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby Pauls » Sat Jul 25, 2015 1:31 pm

You might have to save a copy of the file to a safe place then start deleting objects and exporting the remainder to try and narrow down which one is giving you problems.

PS - sometimes a block delete of many objects can narrow the problem down quickly - then undo the delete and try another block delete - then when things export ok you might have narrowed the problem to an object within the delete that you have just done - hope that makes sense !

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Re: Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby JamesLit » Sat Jul 25, 2015 9:24 pm

Funnily enough Alex, it actually exports from Max absolutely fine, just like every other model I've exported. The resulting IGS file is just shy of 70MB which is about right for this particular model. We've also already been through the materials and all the names, as well as UV unwrapping etc as well. It also exports fine from BE2 which surely it wouldn't do if something was up with the export process from Max.

Have been going through each object with no luck so far so we'll see what happens. Very lengthy process.....
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Re: Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby JamesLit » Sun Jul 26, 2015 3:00 pm

Right, so I've whittled down the problems now to just the bones being used for the animation.

My understanding is that for the animation to work correctly, the bones must be exported along with the model. If I export the bones AS actual bone objects, rather than polys, they don't appear in game (as they shouldn't) but only the wheels turn (so nothing connected to the bones moves). If I set them to polys, it won't export from 3DS without them having a material. If I apply a material to them, it will export from 3DS but I have the same issue with BE2 when trying to export into the game. This happens irrespective of whether they have UV mapping (which so I understand is a requirement anyway).

How can I address this, any ideas?

Thanks all.

EDIT: in all of the above cases, during the animation export it does not show anything to do with the bones or rods, only the wheels.
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Re: Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby VictoryWorks » Sun Jul 26, 2015 8:50 pm

Bones are totally unnecessary for normal animations - they may be required for skin animations, but not for loco stuff.

When you create an ia file it is essentially a list of the selected object names, a list of frames and at each of those frames what the location and rotation of the objects are.
The naming convention used is the objects node name WITHOUT the LOD numbering.

The 2 things (igs and ia file) are so disconnected that you could create an ia file using a cube named 1_0000_Rod1 and then created a beautifully crafted 10,000 poly rod called 1_0064_Rod1 and as long as the centre point was in the same place it could use the ia file perfectly.

I do this for pretty much every locos valve gear animation.

This is the planes/circles set up I created for the S160. It's just basic shapes and centres so I can get the proportions correct and get the animation working correctly.
I can generate an ia file from these, and as long as the node naming matches and the centre points remain the same it'll work perfectly when the fully modelled parts reach the game.

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So if the bones are causing your problem, leave them buggers out :D
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Re: Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby JamesLit » Sun Jul 26, 2015 9:45 pm

Well, what can I say, that's interesting. :D

The guide I have been following gives me the impression bones are supported by TS considering it is written specifically for the use of bones within TS! However, despite having seen plenty about their use in the sim online, a friend of mine who works for DTG tells me that the game engine doesn't even recognise them....... but surely if you just made them an editible poly you they'd behave just like any other object - and apply a shader/texture combo to make them invisible or something, and bingo, surely? I assume they would need to be unwrapped, textured and named just like any other object (obviously under the pretense that they're somehow invisible or something, which I'm sure wouldn't be difficult!)...? Or is that just me? :lol:

Regardless I lost hope earlier, backed up a version with the bones still present and animated, and have now started just using constraints as I have been advised to do. However, despite being perfectly finely animated in TS, the exporter just will not pick up the fact that it's animated, so the logs don't show it exporting with the anim, so of course, it doesn't move in the game. I found that I had the same issue with the crosshead and connecting rod, so I simply added keys at the beginning, middle and end of their animation, and the exporter then picked them up (the anim was not affected). So I tried the same thing with the piston rod, but no luck! Sod's law..... :x

EDIT: actually, you know what... this is just getting weirder. I thought I'd have an investigate, so I went over to the model that still had the bones. I hid them and I knew the animation would still work - it did. So I did my little frames thing at the beginning, middle and end on the connecting rod, crosshead and piston rod... and no joy. I even tried animating the piston rod entirely using non-bone objects - but that didn't work either. I tried entirely using bones too and same problem. The model of it itself exports just fine!
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Re: Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby AndiS » Mon Jul 27, 2015 8:36 am

There is IT knowledge and IT wisdom. IT knowledge recommends following the documentation. IT wisdom has it that a function described in the documentation need not be a function implemented in the software.

I would just go down Pete's way and forget about all and any bones. It sounds sad at first, but on a second glance, having one (read: any) recipe that works is worth more that 100 pages of documentation. And it is clean cut terse instructions like his that you need to get going. They are so clear that they even discard all my wild dreams of doing something wild with the animations one day when I find time. If the IA data file just records object name, location and rotation, then really doing anything else can only be a waste of time, energy and disk space.
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Re: Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby VictoryWorks » Mon Jul 27, 2015 8:45 am

You can use the bones to record the ia file. All they do is tell the ia file what names/locations/rotations to record for each frame/object.
Just don't include them when you perform the model export.

I believe no matter what you use to animate you will still need to add key frames for it to work - one at the start and one at the end at least.
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Re: Tearing my hair out and exhausted all options! Export issues

Postby eyore » Mon Jul 27, 2015 10:18 am

I'm afraid your friend at DTG was misleading you, if TS2015 didn't support bones there would be no characters in the game.

I have only made one loco, therefore, I am far from being an expert, but I created the motion for my loco with bones and IK solvers and it worked ok. You can see the motion in action here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWVMx5HRPeY and the loco in game here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xfyWtgLN7E

There are some old Gmax tutorials here http://www.44090digitalmodels.co.uk/tutorials/gmax2.html which demonstrate using bones for loco animation. Somewhat out of date but the techniques are still valid and I particularly like his formula for animating wheels. There is also a superb 3ds Max Animation Tutorial for Railworks at UKTS File ID 26781 by Mike Adams.

If you use bones they do not need to be unwrapped or textured and they should be exported, but do not re-name them, just call them Bones01/02/03 etc.

However, Peter is far more experienced at loco building than I, so I would go with his ideas.
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