MshEx Troubles

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Fiodis
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MshEx Troubles

Post by Fiodis »

I've tried to export a warship model through MshEx, and after a point MshEx crashed. What would be a possible cause of this? I'm sure I heirarchied everything correctly and checked the right export settings. There is this in the MshEx topic:
You can only use a max of 5000-6000 triangles
Which is polys times two, but how do you get the number of polys? And what does it say there about cluster materials? The reference image is gone.

EDIT - If the problem is the model's size and polycount, dissecting it into segments, like Pandemic did with the stock ships, would solve the problem, yes? I'll try that out now, it just came to me.
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by Fluffy_the_ic »

To get the number of tris, hit ctrl+enter. Tris aren't actually polys x2. It's based on the number of points. If you took a 1 poly grid and sliced it, you'd find that you get less tris then if you just split edges, but kept it as one poly.
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by Fiodis »

Odd; that method gives me a tri-count of 2,722. Way below MshEx's 5,000-6,000 limit. Anyone have any idea what's going on?
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by Fluffy_the_ic »

How many texture projections are there?
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by Fiodis »

What exactly do you mean by that? I'm trying to export it in pieces, the one that crashes it is the huge main body piece. It uses custom UV's. Do you mean how many UV points show up in the editor?
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by Fluffy_the_ic »

No, but if you have custom UVs...
Do you have more than one set of UVs?
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Frisbeetarian
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by Frisbeetarian »

Did you export it as an .obj, reimport it, then export it with Crosswalk?
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by RepSharpshooter »

Fluffy_the_ic wrote:To get the number of tris, hit ctrl+enter. Tris aren't actually polys x2. It's based on the number of points. If you took a 1 poly grid and sliced it, you'd find that you get less tris then if you just split edges, but kept it as one poly.
Polygon to triangle conversion isn't that complicated. A polygon is simply any shape with 2 or more sides.

Polygon:
1 Triangle = 1 triangle
1 Rectangle = 2 triangles
1 Pentagon = 3 triangles
1 Hexagon = 4 triangles

Etc. If you say 'polys = tris times two' you're assuming all the polys are Rectangles, which is not always the case.

Frisbeetarian wrote:Did you export it as an .obj, reimport it, then export it with Crosswalk?
I'd recommend doing that, as this prepares it the best for mshex.
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by Fiodis »

The problem was solved yesterday by breaking it up into smaller pieces.

Why does putting it through .obj format make it easier for MshEx?
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by RepSharpshooter »

Fiodis wrote:The problem was solved yesterday by breaking it up into smaller pieces.

Why does putting it through .obj format make it easier for MshEx?
Because XSI does a bunch of ridiculous things with Geometry, such as assigning it multitudes of redundant Texture Coordinate, normal, and other sub components, whereas the regular modeling world only uses 1 of each type. Exporting it to an obj file merges all of these redundant components into 1, which SWBF2 and mshex can understand.
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by Fiodis »

RepSharpshooter wrote:
Fiodis wrote:The problem was solved yesterday by breaking it up into smaller pieces.

Why does putting it through .obj format make it easier for MshEx?
Because XSI does a bunch of ridiculous things with Geometry, such as assigning it multitudes of redundant Texture Coordinate, normal, and other sub components, whereas the regular modeling world only uses 1 of each type. Exporting it to an obj file merges all of these redundant components into 1, which SWBF2 and mshex can understand.
Is that why every SWBF2 model I import into XSI through MeshTool as a .obj only has 1 component and 1 set of UV's?

Also, is it worth going through the trouble of saving as a .obj, then importing, then exporting as .xsi? Most models I export without going through that process and they turn out fine. This was the only one I had trouble with, and I suppose that's cause it's big. So: ought I re-import every model I make as a .obj?
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Re: MshEx Troubles

Post by RepSharpshooter »

Meshtool merges all of the modl chunks into one, partly because the obj format is a bit confusing to work with coming from the msh.

Just do what works. If using just crosswalk works, then do that. If that doesn't work, try the obj method.
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