My new scenery is disappearing!

[Travis]

I have created a new scenery object which I have placed near the equator in Columbia.  Whenever I load it up, it will only show up when I am in Slew mode.  If I get out of Slew mode, it immediately disappears, even when I am sitting on the ground next to it.

What might be causing this?  The scenery was created in Gmax, and I am using MdlCommander and MiddleMan to export.  Might that be an issue?  The scenery is also very large (something like 16 km across), but I set the view distance in the export process to 50,000.  Could this be affecting it as well?

[Ivan]

...
No experience with GMAX, but my advice is to break it up in smaller parts

[andyjohnston.net]

16 km across...one object...oh yeah, that would be the problem.

I've created a few big scenery object myself, my largest one was probably somewhat smaller than that (although it was for 2002, I doubt much has changed.)  it would only pop into view when I was almost right on top of it.

As nice as it would be, the engine just won't support anything that big.

[Travis]

Okay, so that one ain't gonna work . . .

So I started a new one.  This one is much more decently sized.  Its just a little eye candy for Cape Canaveral.  But now I have a new problem.  The scenery is supposed to move, so I'm attempting to use Tick18 to animate it, but it doesn't move in the sim.

The motion in Gmax goes from 0-1023 (1024 frames) and the animation starts at 1 and ends at 1023.  I followed the guidelines for scenery creation in the SDKs, with everything in the scene being linked to a dummy object, and the Tick18 making a rotation animation.

But it won't work!  Help?