Military AI Works

FS texture checker
http://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index ... ic=12616.0

Sorry if I don't post the file here, the author wants it to be uploaded on the AIG forums only

I have been feeding back info on this and the tool is a bit of an eye opener.

This really should be used by ALL aircraft modellers to check their final work.
You would be amazed at how many quality modellers have created a situation, unwittingly, where you PC uses unnecessary processing constantly searching for missing textures. I don't know whether you would be able to notice the increase in fps at busy places if you used the old html cheat modified here, but it is possible.

The two main areas that catch out modellers and painters are the fact that if you compile a model to use a lightmap then it will expect to find a lightmap for ALL textures used by the model. A common example is that if you have a prop texture then it expects to find a prop lightmap as well.
The other main cause is that modellers use placeholder textures in their development, but either don't delete all of them or rename all of them when they are done.

These problems affect current used MAIW models including new ones.

If there are no light textures for your model that you can place in the FS9 global texture folder, how do you solve the problem?
Quite simple Create a single 1x1 pixel dxt3 bmp then create a copy of it and rename it to the missing texture, for example NBAI_CHINOOK_L.BMP and copy it to the global texture folder. It is only 62 bytes in size.
How many issues are there? Well on my initial run the output report was 881Kb in size. I have got it down to 71Kb

Its great for bmps. The problem is that it can't seem to find .dds textures for FSX, or at least I can't get it to.

Select the version in the top right corner.

I did that, it still doesn't pick up the textures I know are there. It merely states that the entire texture folder is missing (which it isn't)

Ah well, perhaps it may be updated for .dds some day.

Ask about it on the forum and you will probably get a fix if it's a program problem. He has done quite a few updates.

Steve,

Does it find missing effect textures?

Mark

No this only searches individual aircraft texture folders and if it doesn't find a file that the mdl looks for then it will search for it the global texture folder.

A common example is that if you have a prop texture then it expects to find a prop lightmap as well.

Interesting Steve. I wasn't aware that anybody would tick the box for a lightmap on a prop model map unless the prop was part of the main texture holding the fuselage mapping, etc. My biggest problem is remembering to tick the box to add a lightmap. I've at least forgotten to do that about four times now and had to recompile the models again to include it.

Sounds like a good tool just the same! Need something like that for complex scenery checking.

Mark

I've started using it and have corrected about 1/3 of the missing or incorrect textures.
After fixin' all the AI, I am thinking of goiing through the flyable a/c to see what's what.
Can only do one at a time as supposedily it looks at a/c without a panel folder.

I have used this tool and it is showing a few missing/wrong textures for MAIW planes. A example is the NOAA P-3 Orion. The textures I have for those planes are named jai_wp3d_l, jai_wp3d_t, and prop-hs (all the NOAA planes are named like this). Now I do not know what is wrong or missing with those textures.

There is nothing wrong or missing with those textures.
Please bear with me here, as I am not a modeller, but as I understand the modelling process sometimes the modeller will use textures that he has used before as a sort of placeholder whilst they work. those particular elements get transferred onto their final texture sheet but the part doesn't get updated and it still looks for the old texture. This is most common when a modeller makes a new variant of an existing model.
The other example is that the modeller decides to make a change in the name of the texture sheet, for some reason, and again not all the parts get altered.

In this case my guess would be that Jake started using the standard P-3C texture for the WP-3D and then when he altered the texture name not everything got picked up.

Like I said all the best AI modellers have been caught like this.

Yes, now I understand.

Yes we modellers do use parts from our other models which may be pre-textured and yes it is easy in the long process of development to forget about those pre-texture parts down the track when it comes time to texture map the model to a paint kit. Generally a modeller will check there basic model by using the global texture name change in FSDS to assure that all texture mapping and texture sheets to used are accounted for and correct but again it is so easy to over look this process, either in the inital stage of completion of the basic model or at a later time during an update or upgrade of the model such as when a loadout is used/transfered from another models source file.

Generally when a pre-textured part is transfered to a model and that parts texture is missing it will show the plain default grey material colour used by FSDS program and is a give away that the part's texture has an issue. I often use a bright red material colour in FSDS to expose these areas where an oversight has been made and even then its not perfect if that borrowed parts texture is in the main FS texture file.

Steve, keep this proggy handy, you'll be getting some good use from it.

Mark