Hi.

I wrote a question about this in the editors forum.
I investigated a bit more and this is what I found.

When I import and save as MDL a 3DS in the MED editor updated in the 7.60 pack it will not show when placed in the game.

I reinstalled an old update on top of the current one. Using MED version 6.884 ,from update 7.07, and the same procedure shows the model perfectly fine in game.

I always make my models in max and export them as 3DS so I don't know if the problem is the 3DS format in the latest 7.60 update or it is the latest MED saving wrong files.
Somebody mentioned it could be related to the textures...I don't know.

Any comments on this will be good as I will have to carry on working with the old update until there is an explanation for this.

Thanks

Invisible entities is one frequent question in the forum, it is often the same problem:

Press F11 twice, when you see the blue box around your entities, you know they are there.

If they are there, then open them in MED and check if they are just totally transparent. You can set them transparent two ways, either by using a transparent skin texture with alpha channel, or a transparent material. You will see then them in the windows in MAX and in MED because transparency is not used there, but you wont see them in a real game.

If that is so then give them a not transparent texture, and also remove the totally transparent material, and you now can see them.

Hope this helps.

This is 100% a bug, I will describe that later in my thread.
Workaround, load your texture manually (Edit->Manage Skins->Skin Settings->Texture File ...)
and resave the model again.

http://www.public.gamefactor.eu/MED_import_fbx_bug.swf

No, this is not a known bug - rojart was referring to a different importer. But it could be a yet unknown bug of the 3DS importer.

Check if your entities are transparent, as Spirit suggested. If they are, check the material setting within your 3DS file, and the transparency channel of your texture. Make a bug report with details about your original texture format, alpha channel content and material settings. I can then verify if it's a bug or not.

Hi.

What makes me suspect that there is a problem with MED is that old models created with older versions of MED work fine and the new ones don't show at all.

My textures are 24bits TGA without alphas and sometimes I work with DDS for shaders. All textures are power of 2

The current models I am working with don't use any alpha.

What material settings in the 3DS do you mean?

I will check your sugestions and keep you posted.

The 3DS format contains materials. If they are 100% transparent, you won't see your models in the game, although you can see them in the editor. This is a frequent mistake when exporting models from some model editor to the 3DS format.

Hi.

I just reinstalled the latest update and reexported from 3D MAX making sure there wasn't any transparency in the material applied in MAX. The model still doesn't show. I tryed the double F11 and I can see some empty blue boxes. so I guess the objects are there.

I don't get any special material options when exporting a 3DS from MAX. Is there any way of accesing this material settings in the 3DS?

Could it be set by default by MED to transparent? Can you change these settings in MED?

I have also tried the flag:
my.invisible =off;

Do you have the posibility of trying with MAX? I don't get any option and whatever I do it keeps not showing. The same procedure in the old version works fine. I would like to positively know that MAX exported 3DS work fine and I just have to change something in the export process.

Thanks

@jcl, yes I forgot to add that happens only with the dds textures from 3ds importer.

http://www.public.gamefactor.eu/MED_import_3ds_dds_bug.swf

Oberon3d: No, I can't check your problem in MAX, but you can easily check the material and texture setting in MED and see then what the problem is. Maybe it's indeed a 100% transparent DDS texture as rojart suggested.

Hi.

Well it looks like it is fixed now but... I haven't changed anything on my process.

I have installed an old version and then replaced with the latest one twice and now it works as it always did.

Anyway thanks for the help. I also haven't given much attention to the material settings in MED until you pointed it out in that animated tutorial. I guess I will be having a deeper look into them from now on.

I guess it might not have been a bug after all

Thanks a lot jcl.