[gpz]

 Eldorado.Railroad, on 19 January 2022 - 06:53 AM, said:

How I wish this was a standalone tool and NOT integrated into Visual Studio

And your wish came true. It is not Visual Studio, but Visual Studio Code, which is a totally different product. Blame the Microsoft's naming department. Their further intellectual products are the names Explorer, File Explorer and Internet Explorer. :-) VS Code is available for Linux natively, although I don't know whether the above extension does too.

[caldrail]

I have a feeling I might get shot down, but as a long time user of the .s file, I really don't see why it's necessary to change to a format that supports more complexity. The problem has always been with MSTS right from the start, that people rely on making models as complex as possible when an improvement in texturing makes a shape look just as good. Look at some of these models from Eastern Europe. They are works of art. They didn't need heavyweight file formats. Okay, I can accept that improvements in shaders wouldn't go amiss, but millions of polys is not the way to go.

[pwillard]

Well, provided I renamed the GROUNDVEHICLE file to have a GLB extension versus a GIB extension, it loaded fine into Blender.

https://i.imgur.com/SS8RRl3.png


And this is reasonably low poly. Note: I only loaded it... I have not tried to mess with the mesh. ALSO, like I said... it's the PBR texturing I'd be looking forward to... not model complexity. Being able to make use of textures that add the details we want *should* be a goal.

[ExRail]

 Eldorado.Railroad, on 19 January 2022 - 06:53 AM, said:

I cannot run the latest version of Blender in Win7,

Refusing to believe that, I searched for 'Blender 3 on windows 7' after I got the 2.93 up and running,
and this came up. 3.0 seams to be working on my windows 7 pc.

https://github.com/n...Compat/releases


2.93 api-api-ms-win-core-path
https://github.com/n...-core-path-HACK

[Serana]

 caldrail, on 19 January 2022 - 08:09 AM, said:

I have a feeling I might get shot down, but as a long time user of the .s file, I really don't see why it's necessary to change to a format that supports more complexity. The problem has always been with MSTS right from the start, that people rely on making models as complex as possible when an improvement in texturing makes a shape look just as good. Look at some of these models from Eastern Europe. They are works of art. They didn't need heavyweight file formats. Okay, I can accept that improvements in shaders wouldn't go amiss, but millions of polys is not the way to go.

Once again, accepting a new shape file format doesn't mean we will stop supporting S file format.
It also doesn't mean the goal is to add more polygons in a model (that's still a choice a content creator can make, either in S file format or glTF file format).


With glTF, we are giving a way for content creators to apply more advanced effects to the models.
One of the big improvements are what we call Physics Based Rendering (PBR).
With it, you can make a model look for example shiny, rusty or wet realistically just by adding additional textures.

Another goal is to have native support for most current 3D modelling software. We wouldn't need to modify converters for MSTS shape files each time we want to support a functionality of those software (for example, PBR textures).

[Eldorado.Railroad]

 pwillard, on 19 January 2022 - 08:22 AM, said:

Well, provided I renamed the GROUNDVEHICLE file to have a GLB extension versus a GIB extension, it loaded fine into Blender.
.....

And this is reasonably low poly. Note: I only loaded it... I have not tried to mess with the mesh. ALSO, like I said... it's the PBR texturing I'd be looking forward to... not model complexity. Being able to make use of textures that add the details we want *should* be a goal.

Pete,

Thanks for the effort! A couple of questions:

1. What version of Blender?
2. This model, in an online viewer is textured/etc! Did those textures not show up in Blender?

Thanks again,
Steve

[Eldorado.Railroad]

 ExRail, on 19 January 2022 - 08:52 AM, said:

Refusing to believe that, I searched for 'Blender 3 on windows 7' after I got the 2.93 up and running,
and this came up. 3.0 seams to be working on my windows 7 pc.

https://github.com/n...Compat/releases


2.93 api-api-ms-win-core-path
https://github.com/n...-core-path-HACK

Officially:
https://www.blender....d/requirements/

"

• Since Blender 2.93 Windows 7 is no longer supported. Microsoft discontinued Windows 7 support in January 2020

"

I would be wary of running anything unofficial like that on a Windows machine. Apparently all the source code for the "fixed" binary is there, but I would have to look at the code to see if there is anything "suspect". Any takers out there?

Steve

[pwillard]

I was using Blender 3.0.

You were looking at the non-textured view which is one of the standard views. Since I saw a lot of unexpected warpage... I didn't bother looking at it any other way so I didn't check the textured view.

I'm not sure Blender 3.0 is real happy with the import... blender was "locking up" on me after I Imported the model. I need to see if it's the same behavior after a reboot.

So I dropped back to using 2.93 and imported and had no issues. In both cases... it did load materials as well.

https://i.imgur.com/LiegXxh.png


NOTE: The primary reason that Blender says it now doesn't support older Windows 7 OS is that the PYTHON language dropped *support* for Windows 7 with version 3.9. It does not mean that Python 3.9+ won't actually RUN in Windows 7... you are just *on your own* as the Python Organization no longer cares if you have problems since they have no interest in fixing issues with a dead OS. So. It will work... don't complain if it stops.

For those that are not aware, an embedded version of Python is integrated into Blender and among other things, is the programming language for all add-ons within Blender.

[gpz]

Is it a race, guys? Here's my picture:
https://imgur.com/a/DNJjI4j.png
Image (How to paste the image? The site didn't allow me.)
Glb support added, will commit shortly.

[pwillard]

Nice.

After a reboot... I did work with Blender 3.0. Still slightly *not quite right", but was able to extract the textures and such. Not that it was a requirement, but I was entirely unable to smooth edges on the model so far.

I noticed that the screenshot makes the textures look rather darker than what you see inside Blender or in the texture itself.

RE: Image: If you upload to IMGUR, there will be an option to copy the BBCODE version of the external image reference... which is what I use. (The attachment -external link- police will yell at me someday) But note that I *login* and use the ALBUMS feature which gives you the BBCODE option... A generic IMGUR upload does not.

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