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Forest Editor Meshes do not Save :(

by William McDonald · in Torque 3D Professional · 11/13/2012 (5:05 am) · 10 replies

Well this was a reported bug back in 2009, however the solution is not the same. I recently downloaded a fresh copy of the MIT version of Torque 3D from GitHub. I brought in some of my lovely tree models I got from Garage Games a year or so ago and have been relearning the world builder. Get to the point where I'm adding the meshes into the forest editor, make a new brush add the element select the imported mesh and place the trees down:
i11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/subofyourwill27/1.jpgi11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/subofyourwill27/2.jpgLooks good.

Then I save and exit and reload...

i11.photobucket.com/albums/a178/subofyourwill27/3-1.jpgWhere's the tree?

As you can see the brush is there, the element is there, but no mesh. After doing two days worth of slamming my head against a wall, I discovered that the managedItemData.cs file is not being updated when I save, while the brushes.cs file is, but if I manually add the necessary information to the manageItemData.cs is remembers it and loads fine, but of course asking me to manually type in every mesh file via notepad is completely unacceptable, but at this point I cannot figure out why it's not being recorded to. I looked through everything even mentioning manageItemData.cs and it looks ok. So I'm not sure how to fix this, any suggestions?
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Torque Owner William McDonald
Suckerfree Games

About the author

I am the grand bureaucrat of SuckerFree Games. I now have one game in distribution, "Kobold's Quest" and another is soon to be published, "Dungeons the Eye of Draconus". My day job is as a Videographer.

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    Associate Ron Kapaun
    3tdstudios.com
    #1
    11/13/2012 (5:36 am)
    William,

    I had this happen once and as I recall it had to do with either dashes (-) or some other special character being used in the shape name.

    For instance; PineTree-01 would not properly update and save but, PineTree_01 would work. I took a quick look at the source files on the Conifer Pack and the original files are not using any of these, did you perhaps rename one?

    Just a thought.

    Ron

    Torque Owner William McDonald
    Suckerfree Games
    #2
    11/13/2012 (5:46 am)
    Ron,

    Nope, I wish it was that simple.

    The file I just retested with was:
    "DeadPine_Down.cached.dts"
    saved it. Checked managedItemData.cs and it was not updated by the save. Decided to restart anyway, and yep, the mesh was forgotten again.

    Thanks for the suggestion though :)

    Signed,
    William A. McDonald

    Associate Ron Kapaun
    3tdstudios.com
    #3
    11/13/2012 (6:01 am)
    William,

    Try using the .DAE and not the cached.dts version. I know I usually use the DAE and never touch the cached.dts when I add elements to the editor. Also, delete the reference in the meshes section, and reload it. I know I used to get snagged on that all the time.



    Again, just putting things out there...

    Ron

    Torque Owner William McDonald
    Suckerfree Games
    #4
    11/13/2012 (6:10 am)
    Ron,

    Wow... Well that worked! I added the DAE, put it in an element in a brush, painted it, saved and the managedItemData.cs finally updated :D Reopened the level and it's still there! Thanks for the suggestion! Weird though, I thought Torque 3D had DTS support.

    Signed,
    William A. McDonald

    Associate Ron Kapaun
    3tdstudios.com
    #5
    11/13/2012 (6:15 am)
    William,

    Well that solves part of the issue. Basically, I think this means that there is an error hidden in the cached dae. In the folder, delete the cached dae for that tree, then bring the model into torque as a static shape, probably will have to redo the textures and such, do all that and the cached DAE will be reconstructed. Hopefully, you will find the error or it will be fixed in the process.

    Ron

    Associate Steve Acaster
    [YorkshireRifles.com]
    #6
    11/13/2012 (7:01 am)
    Just to note, I manually remove the ".cached" from my DAE-to-DTS files ...

    Associate Ron Kapaun
    3tdstudios.com
    #7
    11/13/2012 (7:11 am)
    Steve, good point. I should start doing that as well.

    Ron

    Associate Steve Acaster
    [YorkshireRifles.com]
    #8
    11/13/2012 (11:54 am)
    Also to Note: If you point to a DAE it will use the *.cached.dts file if you have removed the DAE for shipping. But the .cached.dts file was not supposed to be used independantly - unless you change the file name to "myObject.dts" - in which case you can't have level objects pointing to the DAE.

    Associate Ron Kapaun
    3tdstudios.com
    #9
    11/13/2012 (4:06 pm)
    Steve,

    Hmmm. I did not know that. So in essence you have to rename your DTS in order to NOT provide your DAE (in the instance where you do not want your source available)?

    I ask because all my packs have the DTS and DAE in everything since I am not worried about the source, but in a game I can see this being an issue. Am I right?

    Ron

    Associate Steve Acaster
    [YorkshireRifles.com]
    #10
    11/13/2012 (5:35 pm)
    Quote:
    you have to rename your DTS in order to NOT provide your DAE
    No the other, you take OUT the DAE, the engine looks for the .cached.dts BEFORE it looks for the DAE to make a new cached.dts from. Your .mis file still lists the object as "object.dae" that's all. So .dae is not needed once you have the cached.dts.

    I just rename cached.dts to dts 'cos I think it looks messy. I don't have anything named .dae in my files. :P