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Ambitious Scripting Project: FSX exporter
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Ambitious Scripting Project: FSX exporter // Scriptorium
Post by ProfessorKhaos // Jul 1, 2007, 8:09am
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ProfessorKhaos
Total Posts: 622
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Hi all,
As some of you may recall I'm a bit of a flight simulator fanatic and have built a number of scenery objects from crates and oil drums to entire island chains (small ones but superdetailed, thus using scenery objects instead of terrain). The original objects were usually built in trueSpace and then imported into GMax in order to use GMax's export feature to save the object into an .XML file for later compiling via Flight Sim's SDK into .BGL files. This usually created issues of one sort or another and often resulted in rework on the GMax side.
I think there may be a means to do it better within trueSpace itself. One key to being truly successful will be the ability to assign tags to certain locations in order to properly embed instructions in the .XML file output.
There's quite a vibrant group of flight simulator scenery and aircraft designers out there. Most of them use GMax directly. The pros use 3DStudio Max. A few legacy programs existed for earlier flight simulators but they were quite kludgey in terms of use and made 3D design decidedly difficult.
Anyone interested in helping? It could take a while.
Glen |
Post by Jack Edwards // Jul 2, 2007, 5:44am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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ProfK,
If you can't get anyone else to help with this one. I'll see what I can do. I think parts of this would be universal and useful for exporting more than just one format.
I'd see the project as broken down into 3 distinct parts.
1.) Extracting the data streams for the object.
2.) Formating the data into the expected file format
3.) Writing out the file.
I think with XML type formats this process should be a fair bit easier since the output type is text and standard I/O routines should be able to solve our problems.
A bit more ambitious project that could spin off from your idea here would be exporting a whole scene so that it could be read into Yafray or maybe even Renderman compliant renderers.
-Jack. |
Post by ProfessorKhaos // Jul 3, 2007, 12:42pm
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ProfessorKhaos
Total Posts: 622
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Actually, this does bring up a generic question of some interest to me. Surely there must be code somewhere in tS7+ that streams information for general import/export of objects, scenes, etc and passes info to rendering engines.
I wonder how much would be available as a starting point to work from. |
Post by notejam // Jan 22, 2008, 5:17am
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notejam
Total Posts: 191
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I have noticed in the LE editor that if I pick any light and click it, an object render attributes brick shows up, but nothing is connected to its inputs.
If I right click on the render scene icon in the modeler window, it opens the render panel. Now if I expand the object render attributes brick, and move some of these sliders in the render panel, they change settings in this render attributes brick. Now the Object Render brick has lots of inputs one could program, but how is the Ojbect Render brick getting its input from the render control panel, when there are no inputs connected?
Maybe this will give some clues that there is some other path that is passing data and the LE will not display it, or maybe there is some other way to get at it from the LE |
Post by stan // Jan 22, 2008, 5:44am
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stan
Total Posts: 1240
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notejam, are you in artist or developer mode in LE?..if I right click the render button the 'photo render' options open, but there are no sliders..do you mean the 'scene' panel which is the big brother to the object render attributes panel?
checking 'enable obj mode' makes the object render attributes panel active |
Post by notejam // Jan 26, 2008, 5:35pm
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notejam
Total Posts: 191
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I think I made a mistake with this. I was in model window, put down a sphere. right click on render button at top of screen, panel opens for render with no sliders.
Then go to le editior, click on any light, and then right click on its render object block that has no inputs. now you have underneath your panel settings for render, the sliders for this block, and thats where I made a mistake, I thought this was all one and the same render options, and did not realize I had two different panels displayed one below the other.
Maybe turn on the script recorder, and render a scene, will capture and show what the control panel for render is hooked up to. |
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