Display problem with CMOD

[Stuffer]

Hey all,

I have a displaying problem with a 3D model that I created with C4D and exported it to 3DS.
Because of the fact that 3DS seems to not include textures I supplied the model with textures in anim8or and exported from anim8or by Seldon's script.
Yet still the model doesn't exactly look as it has looked in anim8or.

Here's what I have in anim8or. Nice texture, smooth golden bars.


But in Celestia I get this displayed: no texture, just another color shade. Texture is in the medres-folder, though. And the one bar looks like only a shell. The strange thing about the bar is that it looks like a shell from every point of view. Also the golden ring at the upper end of the bars is missing.


Does anybody know how this can happen?

I would be grateful for help.
Thanks
-- Stuffer

[chris]

Not sure about the texture... What format is it? Are there any messages about it in Celestia's console log?

The issue with the pipe is that it has triangles with the wrong orientation. Celestia only renders only one side of a surface, cutting the amount of geometry it has to render in half. CAD programs often assume that all surfaces are two-sided, resulting in solids appearing like 'shells' or planar surfaces disappearing completely when viewed from one side. Anim8or may have some sort of tool to reverse the orientation of faces in an object. That should make the model look OK in Celestia.

--Chris

[selden]

In Anim8or, you can view the orientation of the surface normals:

in "point edit" mode, select all faces. The ones with their surface normals pointing toward the viewpoint will be drawn yellow. The faces with their surface normals pointing away from the viewpoint, i.e. the faces that won't be drawn by Celestia, will be drawn blue.

The easiest way to fix them is to
1. select all faces
2. select the menu item "flip surface normals" so the "bad faces" are yellow and the good ones are blue.
(blue faces can't be selected by clicking on them *grump*)
3. individually select the now-yellow faces
4. select the menu item "flip surface normals" so the "bad faces" become blue
5. when all visible faces are blue,
5a. select all faces
5b. select the menu item "flip surface normals"

save your edit.

[Stuffer]

Thanks guys.

The flipping worked perfectly.

The console said that Celestia looked for the texture in the Celestia/textures/medres-folder and not in the extra/addon/medres-folder.
When I copied it to that folder it worked. The different shade comes from a bad color I didn't see in anim8or. Fixed by simply putting it to white. Serves my purposes.
But why is it that Celestia didn't find the texture in the extras folder?
Do I have to specify the path to the texture in the *.CMOD if I want to locate it in the extras folder?

Thanks a lot for your help.
Stuffer

[selden]

Stuffer,

If your Addon's ssc file is in
/extras/myaddon/
then the textures for its models must be in the folder
/extras/myaddon/textures/medres/

In general, it's best if each Addon has all of its files in that Addon's own directory and not mixed in with the files for other Addons.

[Stuffer]

Ah, thanks Selden.

That's what I intended to do. Seems that I mixed it up a bit.

perfectly working now.

[selden]

Stuffer,

You're very welcome.
I'm glad it works now!

[Chuft-Captain]

(blue faces can't be selected by clicking on them *grump*)

Yes they can. It's just that when there's a yellow face in front of it, then anim8tor prefers the FRONT face:



However, in this case, in order to select the REAR blue ones you just have to prevent the FRONT (yellow) ones from being selected, by "locking" them, like so: