Now you see it...

[SMMDigital]

...and now you don't.

I'm having a problem with a large (142 meter) scenery asset that disappears when viewed at certain angles.

Looking straight on.



Looking about 20°off to the side.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that this has to do with the centered axis of the object. Any suggestions?

[spec5sx]

if you were using 3DSMax I would tell you to select all objects and reset transform before exporting. I'm not sure how that's handled in 3DCanvas though. Probably something similar.

[petebauer]

I am having the same problem with my tipple. I am pretty sure it connected to the center of the child objects, but solving it is very very tricky. I had some luck by recreating the part, 3DC makes it very difficult to keep those centers together. I am getting more and more paranoid about centering the parts as I add them. I know of no easy solutions, sorry.

Pete Bauer

[SMMDigital]

I am having the same problem with my tipple. I am pretty sure it connected to the center of the child objects, but solving it is very very tricky. I had some luck by recreating the part, 3DC makes it very difficult to keep those centers together. I am getting more and more paranoid about centering the parts as I add them. I know of no easy solutions, sorry.

Pete Bauer

Yes, it seems that the center axis' go all out of whack, especially if you are taking a bunch of parts that are spread out over a distance and putting them in a single group. One problem that i've found with my models is that when it comes to duplicating parts, i've been sloppy with making sure the center axis stays within the clone. For some reason, when you clone some parts, the axis thingamagiggy does not "stick" to the part, and if you don't hit the "center-on-selection" control then that axis can end up quite a ways away from the model.

I have a bit of a partial solution for this now that i've worked through the night on it. I went back and un-grouped every object in the hierarchy. I found that the centers for some objects were as much as 200' away. I re-centered these objects on their axis and replaced back on the model. For objects like the support post, for which there are five, I grouped them together using the group that contained the post closest to the center, so that the axis for the amalgamated group came out close to the center of the model.

This bit of centering did help - you can now view the model from all angles that were shown in the photos, but if you approach it from the top, in one certain direction, it still disappears. I'm figuring to get rid of it completely i'm just going to have to rebuild.

[qrfan3]

Hi Jerry

I am a very green newbie to 3DCanvas but have been reading heaps and watching tutorials to gain the info required for my new venture in modeling. I am in the process of converting some of my MSTS, TSM scenery items and sorting the issues with those for an experiment.
You are well advanced and have produce many quality Assets so what I comment on may be old news and second nature to you.
I have 8.2 and it appears this differs some with the previous versions a little. You are correct in that you have to re-center the axis every time you clone an object and the number of times you clone that same particular object the axis moves marginally in relation to each clone.
Another thing I have picked up on and again you being a veteran, you most likely check this every time....and was wondering if this may be the issue.
If you rotated or twisted parts of that object in building it, could the orientation of that grouped parts axis be out of line ( different & not the same ) to the default scene main axis and possibly causing this problem?
Nothing worse then having to redo or completely rebuild an asset, so hopefully am offering something that may have been accidentally overlooked.

Just my... ...worth.

Gordon.

[SMMDigital]

You are well advanced and have produce many quality Assets so what I comment on may be old news and second nature to you.

Just like the correlation between the ability to speak and intelligence, experience in 3DCanvas definitely does not mean mastery of it! I appreciate any suggestions that you have or anyone else has regarding this subject, except for maybe the totally obvious ones, like "Lady Gaga sounds better after two Salty Dogs and a pair of earplugs..." I have found several times myself overlooking something that I had repeated many times before while building an asset.

I'm still troubleshooting this, and it looks like the Clones are responsible for the problem. Guess i'm going to have to stop being lazy and make each part individually.

[petebauer]

Oh boy, does this sound familiar!!! I think you guys are on the right track. Cloning must be done VERY CAREFULLY. I have found that moving a clone is best done with the 'shift selection' operator, especially rotations. I have those damned little red 'centers' floating all over the place. My advice:
1. set the original part's center very early in the process.
2. Check the center on every part added as you go.
3. Pay attention to the hierarchy of the parts right from the start.

This will save a lot of time later on with big projects.

Pete Bauer

[Hawk]

I did a fair bit of modeling in TSM for MSTS and I've done a few models in 3DC.
One thing I found is if a part is disappearing in the sim it's most likely caused by the center axis not being centered. This is especially true for long objects.

I got into the habit of going through all the parts of a model and making sure the axis origin was set to the center of the object. Then I'd pick one (usually the base of the model), or I create a small 1 foot (meter) box and delete all faces but the bottom and use that, and I'd center the axis to object, move it to the bottom of the model and then set the axis to origin.

I think it has to do with the way the game reads the model and bases it's display characteristics on the axis origin.

This may or may not be pertinent to RW.

As for cloning a part in 3DC, I always used Paul (Decapod) Gasden's copy/paste technique found in his tutorial at UKTrainSim, and compiled into pdf format by David (Longbow) Gibbons and is available in the File Library here at RWA in the Docs & Tuts section.
The technique can be found on page 6 of the pdf.

[SMMDigital]

i've been doing little experimentation along the same lines of this topic and have come up with another question.

Last evening, I made a bulk tank loading platform, about 16'H x 20'L x 6'W, 3000 polys, etc. I watched the centers on all objects, and if I had to move multiple objects into a group, I tried to feed them into the group in and order that would put the group axis as close as possible to the center of that group. I have had no visibility problems whatsoever with this small asset.

After finishing that, I started a model of an uber-warhouse - 1000' long x 250' wide. I made it from a box primitive resized, then centered it to x0, y0. Just to see what would happen, I put a simple gray texture on it and exported it to RW.

Once in RW, had no problems viewing the asset from the front, looking directly at the center. When I turned 90 view in either direction, there was no problem. Interestingly enough though, as I "walked" the length of the building, it disappeared as I neared the end of it. This happened on each end. It seems as if there is a limit on how big an object can be and the distance from the assets center affects it's visibility.

Also, I "divided" the asset into four sections in 3DC each centered on 0'0, exported and "reassembled" in RW. This time, everything stayed put as I walked the building.