Best way to add new geometry to an EIAS project already underway and its EIM models

#1

Let’s say I model some complex objects in EIM, texture and animate them in EIAS, and then discover I ought to produce some additional object elements, so I get back to EIM and build them.

1.- It seems I cannot simply place them into their logical place in the EIM project’s object hierarchy tree (say, a tire object is parented to a wheel object or wheel folder): when I have tried that EIAS gets confused when reading the resulting FACT export file. It works well if the new elements are placed last in the list, out of any of the existing hierarchies.

2.- The only way I know of adding the new elements to EIAS is adding the entire FACT file geometry and deleting everything but these new elements. The result is a double FACT file entry in the project window, which I don’t know if it is a good or bad thing.

Are there better ways of doing this?

#2

Hi, Juanxer

In Project Window items can be reordered via mouse drag (not only parented / orphanned). It requries a “high precision mouse pilotage” but it works (we checked recently)

In Animator (but not in Camera) duplicating groups (instead of FACTs) eats less memory cause all copies use shared data of same Fact.

#3

I’ll try to explain myself better (rereading my post, I see it confuses the issues I wanted to ask about):

Let’s say I model a fighter plane in EIM using a hierarchy such as Fuselage folder, Wings folder, Tail, etc… I export it as a FACT file, load it into EIAS and start working on it. Hours of work later I realize I should have added missiles to the plane (silly me! :D), so I go back to the EIM project and build them. My first issue is:

-In EIM: it seems I should not place the new missiles into the old Wings folder. If I do so and re-export as FACT, Animator will report an error message when reopening the Animator project and reading the FACT file, as if it doesn’t depend on the groups’ names but their consecutive positions in the file to re-link the groups’ geometries. If I place the missiles last in the Layer View without parenting them into any preexisting folder, the resulting FACT file will be read OK and I’ll be able to reopen the Animator project just as it was before creating the missiles.

-Now, about actually adding the missiles to the Animator Project: as Animator is not able to import individual groups from a FACT file, I must add the whole FACT file to the project again, and delete every duplicate but the missiles. The untidy thing about this is that I get all fighter plane groups refering to one FACT file entry in the Project window, and the new missiles refering to another one, both entries corresponding to the same file. I don’t know if there is some way of reducing it to just one entry.

(I hope my questions are somewhat clearer now. English is not my native language, sorry :slight_smile: )

#4

Its been a while since I used modeller, but can’t you simply turn everything else off and just export the missiles as an additional fact file? That way you wont have two of everything.

You can write over an existing fact (already in use inside EI) so long as there are the same number of groups in the fact, if there aren’t you’ll get errors.

EI doesn’t have a way to ‘update’ a live fact file (a ‘replace model’ feature).
It would be VERY helpful though.

Ian

#5

in EIModeler go into the Preferences. in the “Export” tab check “Export Visible Only”.
turn your old models (that are already in Animator) off (invisible). Export as FACT.
you won’t have automated hierarchy, but as the Igors said, you can always reorder in Animator (aim for the group symbol, besides the name, below) in addition to just parenting the new models into your existing hierarchy.

i have to agree with Ian, “live” model files would be a more than great, but the workflow right now isn’t that bad once you know the pitfalls.

#6

I had completely forgotten that preferences option. Thank you.

#7

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