DeleD Community Edition

bibz1st · Member Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

I am using deled lite ( latest exe ) lithunwrap and dark basic classic.
sometimes when exporting my level in xformat from deled it will not load into lithunwrap, I get the message " dx mesh failed to load " and it will not load in dbc either, however it will import back into deled, then if I re-export it, it may or may not work in other two programs.Also if I do get it to work in lithunwrap, after optimizing ( if I dont optimize it, dark basic will not load it because of too many polys )and saving back out to xformat it will not load back into deled. Sometimes deled gives me the message about x files in binary and sometimes not when trying to import. Can you give me any clues as to why this is happening ?
many thanx
P.S when the new uv section is done will it be possible to drag any side of a texture to make it fit onto a face rather than scale a bit /move a bit/ scale a bit more/move a bit more etc...

Paul-Jan · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 10:38 am Post subject:

The main reason why this is happening, is that the .X file format is rather loosely defined, and even more loosely interpreted by different applications, meaning problems with X files not loading are rather common Sad

. However, all is not lost, let's address the three compatability issues you report here:

1. Lithunwrap doesn't always like the .X files DeleD exports. We need to find out what particular part Lithunwrap is having troubles with. This comes down to fiddling around with a text editor in the .X file until Lithunwrap will load it. You can try this yourself, or send us one of the files that don't work and we'll see if we can get (the demo-version of) Ultimate Unwrap 3D to swallow it. It might take us a while to get around to doing this though, so if you need this 'quick', feel free to give it a shot yourself (note to other DeleD users working with Lightunwrap: if you can help out here, that would be great!).

2. Darkbasic Classic doesn't always like the .X files DeleD exports. Could this simply be the maximum polycount restriction, or do you think something else is going on? Addressing this issue will take the same steps as noted above at 1. However, I am not sure if the trial-version of Darkbasic is very close to your Darkbasic Classic, so in this case we might not be able to investigate this at all.

3. DeleD sometimes thinks the .x files exported from ligthunwrap are binary and refuses to load them. .X files basically come into two major flavours: binary and text. DeleD only supports the text version, and performas a quick check to see if the file is, indeed, text. If you open up the file in notepad, does it look like text or binary? Of it does look like text, could you please send it to us? (paul [at] delgine [dot] com)

Thanks for any additional feedback you might be able to provide, it would be really nice to have these issues solved! Very Happy

bibz1st · Member Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

thanx for the pointers, I will give it a try myself and leave you good people to carry on doing the important stuff.I dont think its the polycount of DBC because the previous version of my level which is not that different from the one that doesnt work will load into DBC and I can continue adding other objects from other sources with no problem

Paul-Jan · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 4:20 pm Post subject:

Hope you can figure things out, let us know how it goes! Smile

bibz1st · Member Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

re lithunwrap:
I think it was just that I was saving the file out as binary and compressed;
re DBC:
I dont have a clue why this is not working properly, at first I thought maybe individual objects cannot be above a certain poly count for DBC so I split my level into two sections and loaded them seperately into DBC and everything was ok, that must be the problem. Not so, after re-editing part of my level and actually reducing the number of polys then saving over that object, it failed to load and I got a severe exception in DBC and message about not being able to load Dd help or something.
I have looked at the non working part in wordpad and it looks ok from what I can tell ( I dont really know what I'm looking for, it looks very similar to the working part of my level )
I should say that it does reload into Deled, so I tried re-exporting but no joy

bibz1st · Member Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

I exported the offending object using OBJ exporter, imported that object into Cinema4D and then exported from there back to an X object and it almost works in DBC, I say almost, what i mean is the actual object is there but all the faces are turned the wrong way round and the original textures are not there.
It seems that Deled is not exporting things consistently ( thats a guess )

Paul-Jan · Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 5:40 pm Post subject:

First of all, I strongly doubt DeleD would export things 'inconsistently', any two exports of the same object through the same exporter will yield the same result. Once you edited the file, you probably triggered something DBC doesn't like.

Second, by exporting using the OBJ exporter (the one by Ryan Fleet, right?) into Cinema4D, you proved that exporter worked correctly (in that particular case at least). The fact that the .X file exported from C4D doesn't show up correctly inside DBC means that either C4D doesn't export properly, or DBC doesn't import properly. Given the fact that it also has problem's with DeleD files, makes the last guess a bit more probable. Very Happy

bibz1st · Member Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

I have got a working level now, I dont know why but here is the sequence of events..
1. make level inDeled
2. save as a DMF
3. export as .X loaded into DBC ok
4. open DMF to work on level, add some rectangles and cubes , scale some polys, move some verts
5. export as .X (still kept original DMF )
6. load into DBC...crash DBC
7. reload original DMF, make some different changes this time
8. load into DBC and it works
I cant explain it, I know its not the poly count cos my level only comes to about one thousand and thirty polys and one of the Dmf's that ships with Deled has about five thousand and that works ok in DBC.
I'm just glad its working now,
sorry about my earlier post about inconsistent exporting, obviously I dont know what I'm talking about

Paul-Jan · Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 6:40 pm Post subject:

Ah, thanks for reporting that! Good job on getting it to work properly, even though we really don't know why. Wish we could get our hands on a DBC with debugging enabled, so we could see exactly what it is about that intermediate .X file it dislikes.

bibz1st · Member Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

was continuing with my project when it happened again, I noticed that when I reloaded my object back into deled the texture that I had placed during a re-edit had disappeared and been replaced by a texture that was off another part of the object. So I made a simple cube and textured it with the texture that disappeared ( got that ? ) exported out, loaded into dbc, it didnt lock up but even though the cube had apparently loaded it did not show up on screen, so I retextured cube back in deled with another texture and it worked so I assume rightly or wrongly that it may be the bitmaps I have been using that are to blame, is that possible ?

bibz1st · Member Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 13

if this is a double post please ignore...if not....
is it possible that the bitmaps I have been using could be to blame ?

Jeroen · Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 9:20 pm Post subject:

Quick reply: texture filenames should not start with a number. DeleD's exporter checks on this, but it would be worth checking out in your own testcases as well. Also check on other special cases in your filenames, like spaces and such.