3ds Max 7 Exporting

[crawl55]

Ok....I have a problem.  I have 3ds Max 7, aand I think it would be a shame if I could not use it for my modeling in FS.  Well, I finally ran across a Direct X exporter "Pandas" so that I can use the file directly from max to make mdl.  Well there are a few problems that I am having.  The first one is that when I run the file in makemdl, I get this error message......

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Running model

Start! (C:\3dsmax7\meshes\x files go here\exec.X)
Loading X C:\3dsmax7\meshes\x files go here\exec.X...
Processing...
ERROR: Scaling null has a translation, ignoring it
(Part ) Found colocated vertices within triangle
   (23.204967,-13.848958,111.317413)
   (23.204845,-13.849546,111.317619)
   (22.961761,-13.890744,112.527237).
(Part ) Found colocated vertices within triangle
   (23.204967,-13.848958,111.317413)
   (23.487907,-13.800344,109.909920)
   (23.204845,-13.849546,111.317619).
Model units are 1024.00 units/meter
Error!
Error!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, i havent been doing this all that long so I have no idea what that means.  I went through and scaled all the parts , I clicked in the reset transform and scale buttons under the hiarchy tab.  Now other than that, i dont know what else to do so any help would be appriciated.  Thanks

Alan

[Felix/FFDS]

your co-located vertices means just that.  Apparently you have two vertices (or more) that are barely touching, and need to be welded.

Select the part, note that the message gives you in each case the coordinate of two very close together points.  Select, if possible those two points and weld them together.

Alternativelty, select the part, select all vertices and click weld.  If you get the same export co-located vertices message for the same points, work with the weld threshold.

[crawl55]

Thankyou for your help...Ill try that!

[crawl55]

I did what you said and makemdl worked just fine, but in the sim, the model was huge, part of the engine cowling was missing and there was no texture?  what could the problem be?

[Felix/FFDS]

Did you scale your model correctly?

Did you set your system units in preferences to 1 unit = 1 meter (you can model separately in feet, etc, but your system units should be 1 unit = 1m)

[crawl55]

Let me check on that...but what should I do about the no texture in FS???

[Felix/FFDS]

No texture could be something as simple as your texture is in 24-bit color (16M colors) which is about the only format FS doesn't support.

As a test, convert your texture to simple 8-bit (256color) bitmaps.

Also, make sure they're in the \texture subfolder of your aircraft folder.

[crawl55]

I swear that I forget about the simpleist things sometimes.  That is exactly what the problem is!

Thanks again!

[crawl55]

What do you think might cause my model to look like it is missing faces? can it be too complex?  can there be to small faces or to many of them?