Wings 3d x-file exporter acting funny

[shinigami]

I pulled the x file up in Deep Explorer and it says that there are no faces.

[Shadowstar]

I could try messing with the scale, but when I looked at it in the shipset viewer I zoomed in all the way and there was still nothing there.

[Ed Kolis]

Hmm, no faces... That's really odd! I'll have to install the October 2006 DirectX SDK so I can view the model... Blender gives an error when trying to import it but I don't know if that's a problem with the model or with Blender... but if there are no faces then something is definitely wrong! I thought I checked the x file to see if the faces were defined, and it looks like they are, so I wonder what could be going on...
Just on a lark, try setting the triangulate option when you export to .X - I noticed you had all quads in your model, and perhaps applications require .X files to be triangulated (I've heard they have to be), even though the format technically supports faces with any number of sides (or at least it's SUPPOSED to, from what I read on it when I wrote the exporter...)

[Shadowstar]

Ok, tried that and still no luck. I can't imagine it could be a problem with the model. It exports to 3ds just fine, and I tried it with a completely different model and it doesn't show up either. I've tried triangulation, and quadrangulation but neither seems to have any effect.

I'm attaching the triangulated one.

[Ed Kolis]

OK, sorry for giving you the runaround - I've just been really busy with schoolwork lately, and I've just been suggesting things you can try because I haven't had time to look at the .x file very much. I guess the exporter is just screwing up somehow, and I can see where the faces are defined as groups of vertices (it's the section where you have a bunch of numbers in groups of 3 all in order)... I wonder if the faces are being exported inside-out for some reason? I know this exporter used to work, with Wings version 0.98.35... I wonder if something in Wings changed in version 0.98.36 that broke it? You should be able to download old versions of Wings from the sourceforge site; maybe try exporting it from 0.98.35? (You will have to copy the wpc_x.beam file over from 0.98.36 though, since it wasn't included in that version - it should be in the wings/plugins/import_export folder...)
Again, sorry this isn't working for you...

edit: Aha, I think I found it... your model does not have any material assigned to it! Try assigning one of your images that you have in the .wings file as a texture (or just convert vertex colors to materials), and then export... Looking at the wings forums I found one of my old posts in which I explained that objects without a material assigned won't export properly, and I seem to have forgotten about it! (Well, I am at school and I don't have wings installed here so maybe your model DOES have a material and I just couldn't tell because it was all gray like the default vertex color, but if it doesn't, give it a shot! )

[Ed Kolis]

All right... I opened up your xfile in the October 2006 DirectX mesh-viewer, and it looks perfectly fine... I wonder why SE5 won't recognize it? :?
Did you recently patch SE5? Perhaps it was the patch that killed it - maybe something in the game changed about how it reads xfiles...:?

[shinigami]

That's really odd, then. 'Cause I can't get it to load right in DE and I've never had any problems with it before.

[Shadowstar]

Hmm... I figured Wings 3d would automatically assign the default material to the model after creating the texture in the UV mapper. When I load it in Deep Paint, it seems to have a material attached, but maybe DP's just assigning it a default material when it loads.

I have the Steam version of SE5, so it updates automatically.

I will have to try deliberately assigning a material to it and see if that makes a difference. Don't have time now but I will post again when I do.

[Shadowstar]

Been sidetracked a lot lately, but hopefully I'll get some time to deal with this soon. Starscape needs to get made, heh...