A C 3 D X - P L A N E P L U G I N

v e r sio n 3.21r 2 fo r A C 3D 6.12+

Reference Manual
REVISION 1.2
Monday, 26 April 2010

s ce n e r y. x- p l a n e. co m Ben Supnik
 Table of Contents

A C 3 D X - P L A N E P L U G I N 1
INTRO ........................................................................................................................................................................................1
INSTALLING ..........................................................................................................................................................................1
USING THE PLUGIN...........................................................................................................................................................1
LIMITATIONS ........................................................................................................................................................................2
TEXTURES AND AC3D .....................................................................................................................................................2
COCKPIT OBJECTS AND PANEL TEXTURES............................................................................................................3
ONE-VS-TWO-SIDED GEOMETRY AND FLAT-VS-SMOOTH SHADING .......................................................4
EXPORT ORDER ..................................................................................................................................................................5
EDITING X-PLANE SPECIFIC PROPERTIES................................................................................................................5
OBJECT ATTRIBUTES: HARD POLYGONS, POLYGON OFFSET, MATERIALS, ETC....................................5
Polygon hardness ..........................................................................................................................................................................5
Polygon Offset ................................................................................................................................................................................6
Blending .............................................................................................................................................................................................6
Materials.............................................................................................................................................................................................6
Disable Drawing .............................................................................................................................................................................6
Hard Walls..........................................................................................................................................................................................6
Dynamic _LIT Levels .....................................................................................................................................................................6
LIGHT ATTRIBUTES: LIGHTS AND SMOKE...............................................................................................................7
None.....................................................................................................................................................................................................7
Black Smoke, White Smoke .......................................................................................................................................................7
RGB........................................................................................................................................................................................................7
Custom ...............................................................................................................................................................................................7
(All other choices)..........................................................................................................................................................................7
GROUPS: LEVEL OF DETAIL AND LAYER GROUPS...............................................................................................7
ANIMATION..........................................................................................................................................................................1
Low Value/High Value..................................................................................................................................................................1
Value 0..Value 1..Value N.............................................................................................................................................................1
Angle 0..Angle 1..Angle N ..........................................................................................................................................................1
Anchor ................................................................................................................................................................................................1
Dataref ................................................................................................................................................................................................1
Show Animation ............................................................................................................................................................................1
For each dataref .............................................................................................................................................................................1
Resync .................................................................................................................................................................................................2
MANIPULATORS.................................................................................................................................................................2

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 UPDATING OLD .AC FILES..............................................................................................................................................2
PERFORMANCE ...............................................................................................................................................................................2
CALCULATE X-PLANE LOD COMMAND ..................................................................................................................3
CALCULATING BATCHES ................................................................................................................................................3
CHANGE TEXTURE COMMAND ..................................................................................................................................4
REMAP TEXTURE COORDINATES ...............................................................................................................................6
MAKE TRANSPARENT COMMAND ............................................................................................................................6
MAKE NIGHT LIGHTING COMMAND ........................................................................................................................6
MAKE TREES COMMAND ..............................................................................................................................................7
MAKE ONE-SIDED COMMAND ...................................................................................................................................7
MAKE UP NORMALS COMMAND ...............................................................................................................................7
CONVERT DIRECTORY TO OBJ8 ..................................................................................................................................8
BULK EXPORT......................................................................................................................................................................8
BY-TEXTURE EXPORT........................................................................................................................................................8
RELOAD TEXTURES...........................................................................................................................................................8
X-PLANE EXPORT SETTINGS.........................................................................................................................................8
Default layer group (and offset)..............................................................................................................................................8
Export Geometry ...........................................................................................................................................................................8
Default LOD ......................................................................................................................................................................................9
Bulk Export Prefix...........................................................................................................................................................................9
Texture Export Prefix ...................................................................................................................................................................9
WARNING MESSAGES......................................................................................................................................................9
CHANGE HISTORY ...................................................................................................................................................................1

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 AC3D X-PLANE PLUGIN

Intro

The X-Plane import/export plugin for AC3D (XPlaneSupport.p) is a plugin for AC3D that supports the reading of X-
Plane Object version 7-8 files. These files should be compatible with all versions of X-Plane (although some fea-
tures are only supported in version 7.40 and beyond for OBJ7 and 8.20 and beyond for OBJ8).

This plugin provides both import and export of X-Plane Object 7/8 files into and out of AC3D, and also a few useful
commands for working with Objects.

This plugin requires AC3D version 5 for Mac or PC. AC3D 4 users can upgrade to AC3D version 5 for free.

INSTALLING

This version of the X-Plane plugin (version 3) requires AC3D 6.1 or newer. If you have an older version of AC3D,
please download the older plugin instead. Simply copy the AC3D plugin file XPlaneSupportWin.p or
XPlaneSupportMac.p (depending on your operating system) and the file XPlaneSupport.tcl into the "plugins"
folder for AC3D while it is not running, then start AC3D.

The plugin also requires two text files: DataRefs.txt and Commands.txt - these are computer-readable lists of X-
Plane's current datarefs and commands. You can get them both from the Resources/plugins folder of X-Plane 930
and newer.

USING THE PLUGIN

When the plugin is installed the export menu gains two new options:
"X-Plane 7 Object File..." and "X-Plane 8 Object File..." and the Import dialog will have a file type "X-Plane 7/8 Objerct
File (*.obj)" in it. (Note: In early versions of AC3D 6 you may need to remove the Alias Wavefront Object importer plugin
which is also listening for the file extensions .obj . This does no longer apply to AC3D 6.5.)

To import an object, simply choose import and select your .obj file. It will be imported and appear in the main
windows.

To export an object, simply pick the export menu item for the version you want to save and save your file.

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 LIMITATIONS

This importer/exporter does not support:

➡ ATTR_no_depth (you shouldn't use it anyway!)
➡ It will not build quad strips, tri strips, or tri fans for version 7 objects.
(Please note that these are not supported in OBJ8.)
➡ There is not yet a way to preview night lighting inside AC3D.
➡ Movie quads (for OBJ7 - these are not supported in OBJ8.)
➡ Ambient and specular materials (they do not work in X-Plane anyway).

Please note that the color of a line will be exported from the material in AC3D.

Importing and Exporting can lose information. Your best bet is to save your work in AC3D format
(.ac) and export to OBJ; do not use OBJ as your master format for editing, rather just as a final output
format.

TEXTURES AND AC3D

Object 7 and 8 files can have only one texture; make sure you use the same texture for every object in your model.
The easiest way to do this is to select all objects via the Object Hierarchy window (click on 'World') and thenpick
your texture from the Object->Texture submenu.

AC3D requires a plugin to read .png files; it can read .bmp files by default.

When an object file is loaded, the texture will be loaded if it is in the same directory as the .obj file itself.

Textures are normally saved without any relative path information. For example, if the texture file for my object is
"jetway.bmp", only "jetway" is written to the OBJ7 file, and the texture must be in the same folder as the object (X-
Plane 8) or the "Custom Object Textures" folder (X-Plane 7).

If you want to specify a texture in a subfolder for X-Plane, you can use the "texture export prefix" setting (in the X-
Plane export preferences). You can use a prefix that includes slashes to specify that textures belong in subfolders.

For X-Plane 7 users: Because this texture handling is different from X-plane's, you may want to keep textures with
your objects until you are done editing your object, then move the bitmap or png file and change the path for
your object when you are ready to package up the object in your custom scenery package.

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 COCKPIT OBJECTS AND PANEL TEXTURES

WARNING FOR EXISTING USERS: version 3.2 of the plugin has manipulator controls. You must set
your panel textured objects to be manipulatable or they will not respond to the mouse in the sim!
This is a one time change you must make to any .ac file when you adopt the new plugin! See "Ma-
nipulators" below.

AC3D will let you use a panel texture to create a cockpit object with instruments that animate. To do this, you tex-
ture part of your object with either the panel texture from your airplane or a panel preview texture. Panel textures
are located in the cockpit/-PANELS- or cockpit_3d/-PANELS- folder. (The plugin will not use an old-style panel file
name from the root of your aircraft. It also will not use BMP-based panels. Don't use BMP!)

my object.obj
cockpit
-PANELS-
Panel.png

With this plugin you can also use a panel preview. A panel preview is an image of the panel textures for your ob-
ject - not just the background, but all of the instruments and moving parts too. Panel previews have the name
Panel_Preview.png and live in the cockpit/-PANELS- or cockpit_3d/-PANELS- folders. You can make a panel preview
in X-Plane 930 by pressing control- option-shift-space with your airplane loaded. The advantage of panel pre-
views over the panel backgrounds is that they provide a better indication of what your finished panel will look like.

When you import an OBJ, the importer will first look for panel previews, then panel backgrounds.

PERFORMANCE WARNING: changing between the panel and regular texture in an object hurts
framerate; see the section on performance for how to avoid this problem.

WARNING: for OBJ7 objects, you can only place the panel texture on quads. AC3D will warn you if
you try to export an OBJ7 object that violates this rule.

In X-Plane 9 you can use up to 4 "regions" of your panel. Using panel regions instead of the whole panel switches
X-Plane to use modern lighting on the panel texture, and can sometimes improve peformance.

To set whether you are using the whole panel or regions, pick "X-Plane Panel Properties..." from the X-Plane menu
and check "Enable panel regions". You can then set the number of regions and their coordinates (in pixels).

When you import an OBJ with a panel (or panel regions), the panel properties will be readin from the imported
object. BUT the panel properties are saved as a PREFERENCE, not as part of your .ac file (due to a limit in the ac3d
plugin system). For this reason, be sure to reset your panel preferences when changing which airlane you work on.

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 If you either have a texture map that goes outside a region or a texture map that crosses two re-
gions, the export may look corrupt in X-plane. Be sure that all of your UV maps are limited to only
one region.

This limitation applies per _object_ in the AC3D hieararchy. If you want to use two regions, use two
objects in the ac3d hierarchy! For more information on panel regions: please see this page:

http://wiki.x-plane.com/Panel_Regions

The settings shown in the manipulator screen will vary depending on the type of manpulator shown. For manipu-
lators that require a 3-d relative axis in object space, a "guess" button will appear. When you click this button, the
plugin will inspect the surrounding animations and attempt to choose a manipulation axis appropriate to match
the animation.

The guess feature is not perfect and will sometimes be unable to guess or will come up with wrong results. For
best results, set up your key frames and dataref values (for both the key frame and the manipulator) before guess-
ing.

ONE-VS-TWO-SIDED GEOMETRY AND FLAT-VS-SMOOTH SHADING

X-Plane objects are by default one-sided and smooth-shaded. The importer/exporter correctly handles two-sided
and smooth shaded objects in AC3D and OBJ7 files. Warnings:

Two sided polygons are slower than one-sided polygons; only set a surface or object to be two-sided when it is
necessary. In particular, the cost of changing from one-sided to two-sided polygons is expensive. It may be better
to simply use one-sided polygons and duplicate any geometry that must be visible from both sides.

Smooth shading is not always smooth; the actual shading is a function of the 3-d program. But changing the
shading model is slow, so it may be best to only use smooth sahding and use AC3D's crease-agnle function to tune
the look of your object. What you see in AC3D is what you will get with an OBJ8.

OBJ7 shading is always flat looking, regardless of AC3D look and shading settings. Since OBJ7 shading cannot be
changed, tune your object for its best OBJ8 look.

Also there are some serious performance considerations regarding these features so be sure to read the PER-
FORMANCE section carefully before using them!

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 EXPORT ORDER

The AC3D exporter exports your object in the order that the hierarchy window reads vertically. In other words if
your hierarchy window shows:

Then the objects are exported in the order: Box, Rect, Cylinder, Disk,
Sphere. The order of your object is very important both for correct
rendering of translucent textures and for performance; see the PER-
FORMANCE section for more info. Use groups, objects, and the
hiearchy window to control ordering.

EDITING X-PLANE SPECIFIC PROPERTIES

The X-Plane plugin adds a new menu, "X-Plane" to AC3D with X-Plane specific functionality. The plugin also pro-
vides a way to edit properties of X-Plane objects that are not supported directly by AC3D.

You can view and edit X-Plane specific properties using the "X-Plane Object Properties..." command, which will show
the X-Plane object inspector. As you select different objects, different options will be visible.

For any selection of up to 5 objects, you will see 5 sets of properties horizontally in the inspector. Click "apply to
all" to edit all 5 at once.

If you have more than 5 objects of the same type selected, you will see one property editor for the first object - you
can use the "apply to all" button to edit large numbers of objects at once.

If you have more than 5 objects of different kinds, the pane will simply indicate "multiple objects selected".

OBJECT ATTRIBUTES: HARD POLYGONS, POLYGON OFFSET, MATERIALS, ETC.

For objects you can set the following properties. Please note that object properties can affect performance and
can be complex - see the performance section at the end of this document as well as the X-Plane scenery website.
For manipulations, see later in this document.

Polygon hardness
Polygon hardness indicates whether the polygons of this object will interact with X-Plane's physics model. The
default is "none" for no interaction. By picking other hardnesses, you can make the surface be physically interac-
tive and select what surface type the polygon acts like (e.g. grass, dirt, etc.). The surface type "object" emulates the
perfectly smooth surface that X-Plane 7 and 8 provided.

For X-Plane 9, you can also mark a hard surface as a "deck". If a hard surface is a deck, the user can fly under the
hard surface and land on top of it. If a hard surface is not a deck, the user can land on top of it, but attempting to
travel under the deck will result in the plane crashing into the hard surface.

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Polygon Offset
Polygon offset can be set from 0 to 5 - use this to help polygons that overlap the terrain from Z-thrashing.

Blending
X-Plane normally uses alpha blending to draw objects. By unchecking this option you can tell X-Plane to make the
polygon either 100% opaque or transparent. When blending is off, a cutoff level is shown - only pixels with more
than this percentage opacity will be shown. Author-set blending cutoff levels are supported starting with X-Plane
850.

Materials
Normally the X-Plane AC3D plugin does not generate material commands. However if you check this, then the
current AC3D material will be exported as part of the object.

Please note that the only aspects of the AC3D material that are supported are: the diffuse color, the emissive color,
and the specular color (which is treated as gray-scale since X-Plane only supports specular hilighting, not setting
the specular color in RGB).

Disable Drawing
Normally an object is drawn. By clicking "disable drawing" you can set an object to not be drawn but still be click
tested, etc. USe this to create "physics and mouse" only objects. Note that unlike hide animations (which hide an
object for physics, drawing and clicking), checking "disable drawing" only affects drawing, but always takes effect!
Draw Disable is supported in X-Plane 930 and higher.

Hard Walls
For cockpit objects, check this box to make a triangle impassible to the 3-d camera. You can use this to keep the
pilot from walking through the cockpit walls. We recommend using draw-disable + wall to make a much simpler
mesh to define the "constraints" of the cockpit. Hard walls are supported in X-Plane 930 and higher.

Dynamic _LIT Levels

Normally the LIT texture is drawn at full brightness. If this is checked, a dataref text field appears; you can enter a
numeric dataref that will set the brightness of the LIT level for this object. The dataref must return a value from 0
to 1.

Lit level changes are a fairly expensive state change, so try to consolidate similarly-lit objects whenever possible!
Dynamic lit levels are supported in X-Plane 930 and higher.

Dynamic light levels do not affect panel-textured or panel-region-textured triangles.

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 LIGHT ATTRIBUTES: LIGHTS AND SMOKE

Point lights in AC3D are used for both lights and smoke generation points in X-Plane. When you select a light, a
popup menu lets you edit what it is used for:

None
If you set a light's type to "none" it will not be exported. If you are using AC3D's lights to create real illumination
effects (e.g. to simulate the sun and moon) use this to have the light be ignored.

Black Smoke, White Smoke

These choices will cause the point light to be expored as a smoke-generation point. You can set the puff size.

RGB
This sets an RGB-style light. The red, green, and blue values can be set from 0 to 1 (or a few special values - see the
OBJ8 specification). (Note: it is better to use named lights to create special effects than to use special RGB values.
Please see below.)

Custom
This creates a custom light animated by a dataref. This is only useful for expert modelers - see the OBJ8 specifica-
tion for the meaning of LIGHT_CUSTOM commands.

(All other choices)

The rest of the choices in this menu are "named lights" - that is, premade light definitions that X-Plane knows how
to create. This is the best way to create lights, as X-Plane will use the best available rendering technology to create
the light.

GROUPS: LEVEL OF DETAIL AND LAYER GROUPS

When you select one of the top-most groups in an object, you will see the "level of detail" parameters. Use these to
set the level of detail range for a group.

If you leave the level of detail distances at 0 for each distance, then no level of detail will be exported and X-Plane
will select a level of detail for you.

To get a feel for how this works, try importing the KSBD sample object. Note that after import, multiple versions of
the object are visible; you may want to hide a version of the object (this can be done by right-clicking on an ob-
ject in the hierarchy window and picking 'hide') to reduce clutter on the screen.

Groups can also have "layer group" information. Layer groups are an advanced concept - for more info, see the
OBJ8 specification.

If you set a group to have a layer group other than "none", the plugin will export an ATTR_layer_group attribute.
Please note that there can be only one ATTR_layer_group for an entire object, so if you have conflicting layer
groups specified, the results will be inconsistent.

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 ANIMATION

Probably the biggest new feature in the AC3D plugin is animation. Please read this section carefully because ani-
mation support for the plugin has been completely rewritten.

Animation in an X-Plane object always happens inside an animation group. An animation group is represented by
a group in AC3D that you create with the "Make animation group" command. Animations will only function when
they are inside an animation group.

You create animations using the commands in the X-Plane menu. Animations are represented in AC3D by lines -
the meaning of these lines depends on the type of animation.
➡ Translations: the line represents a relative movement in 3-d space.

➡ Rotations: the ilne represents the axis to rotate around.

➡ Show/hide: the animation line is just a placeholder.

Once you create an animation object, selecting it will show the animation properties in the X-Plane property edi-
tor:

Low Value/High Value

For a show/hide animation, this is the range that the dataref must be in to cause the object to appear or disappear.

Value 0..Value 1..Value N

These are the values that the dataref must take on to map to the various key frames of the animation.

Angle 0..Angle 1..Angle N

For rotations, this defines the angles to rotate for each dataref, mapped to each value.

Anchor
For translations, this defines which point in the translation (0, 1, 2, etc.) represents no movement of your model.
The default is 0.

Dataref
For any type of animation, this is the dataref to link to. If you type part of a dataref name into the dataref combo-
box, you can search among all datarefs for matches. You can click the "go" button next to the value 0 and value 1
fields to change the current preview of your model to this time.

The "add" and "delete" buttons can be used to add keyframes. Objects start with two key frames, animating line-
arly between them. By adding more key frames you can create more complex relationships between the dataref
value and the animations.

Use the "Animation time..." command to show the animation time controller window. This window has the follow-
ing options:

Show Animation
Check this to enable animation previews.

For each dataref

The slider will move the previewed value of the dataref, animating your model. The "select" button will add any
animation command lines that use this dataref to the current selection.

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Resync
Sometimes the current list of datarefs won't match your model - click resync to update this window.

WARNING: the animation preview will affect where you see your model but will NOT affect AC3D
editing. You should turn off animation preview when editing to assure that AC3D's user interface
works correctly.

MANIPULATORS

You can read about the concept of manipulators here:

http://wiki.x-plane.com/Manipulators

With the ac3d X-Plane plugin, the manipulation is a property of each object you create. Simply pick the manipula-
tion type in X-Plane inspector window. Additional fields will appear to let you customize the manipulation, when
appropriate.

Important: in ac3d, panel clicking and panel texture are not the same - you must specifically set the panel manipu-
lation on any panel texture that you want to be clickable! This is new to version 3.2 of the plugin - you will have to
update your .ac objects.

UPDATING OLD .AC FILES

If you have an AC3D .ac file with animations from the old 2.0-style plugin you must update your model in order to
see datarefs and have the special X-Plane attributes be exported. Simply pick "Update from old plugin" once to up-
date.

PERFORMANCE
Performance of your OBJ model dependes on the number of times that you change state, whether that be due to
animation, attributes, etc. X-Plane does not change the order of the object, and AC3D exports the object in order
of the hiearchy window. It is therefore important that you organize your hierarchy to minimize the number of
state changes.

You will get a state change whenever the following things change:

➡ Polygon hardness, polygon offset, blending on/off.

➡ One vs two sided geometry, smooth shading.

➡ Panel vs normal texture.

➡ Any animation command (both the beginning and ending.

So it is best to group these things together. Please note that you will not get a state change if a property doesn't
change; having two objects in a row with the names

_POLY_OS=1
_POLY_OS=1

will not cause a change between them because the _POLY_OS has been specified in both, but does not change
from the first to the second.

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 Be careful with 1/2 sided geometry and smooth shading - since these are set per surface, it is possible to have a
huge number of changes of these without noticing! Your best bet: set all of your objects at once to have the mode
you want.

Also if you use smooth shading but an object does not look smooth due to crease angle, it will look exactly the
same in AC3D and X-Plane. Therefore your best bet is to ALWAYS use smooth shading and use the crease-angle
function in AC3D to decide what looks round and what looks like it has flat sides.

Changing to the panel texture is the most expensive state chagne, so be sure to group all of your panel textured
objects together!

One good way to see how much state change you have is to look at your OBJ file in TextEdit or WordPad after ex-
porting it. Skip to the end; each "TRIS" command means that state was changed and drawing restarted. Ideally
you will have only one TRIS command for the whole file, or at least as few as possible.

CALCULATE X-PLANE LOD COMMAND

This command attempts to calculate the farthest level of detail distance that is appropriate for your object, based
on it its approximate size. Select the entire object and select "Calculate X-Plane LOD" from the tools menu. A
message box will suggest an LOD such as "Recommended LOD Distance: 1134 meters." This is just a recommen-
dation; you may want to increase or decrease this distance for your preferences.

To actually apply the level of detail, create a a new LOD group using the X-Plane menu and use the X-Plane Proper-
ties dialog box to edit the LOD distances.

CALCULATING BATCHES

A batch is a set of triangles or lines that all have the same properties, and thus can be drawn by the GPU without
CPU intervention. Generally speaking, more batches means lower framerate - the number of batches of triangles
X-Plane can submit to the graphics card is a limiting factor on fps.

The ac3d plugin can estimate the number of batches for a selected set of objects. Simply select some or all of your
model and pick "Calculate Batches For Selection."

This prediction has some limitations:

➡ It does not count batches caused by changes between 1-sided and two-sided geometry, or flat-smooth
shading. To avoid extra batches, set your entire workspace to 1-sided or 2-sided (if 1-sided, you can duplicate
and flip triangles to make two-sided geometry). Keep all objects smooth-shaded and use crease-angles to
control the smoothnes of objects.

➡ It does not count batches caused by changes from lines to triangles.

➡ It doe not cause batches caused by animation.

➡ If you select multiple LODs, it will count them all as if they would all be drawn at once.

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 ➡ If you select objects that are not adjacent in the hierarchy, the estimate will not take into account the (possi-
bly quite negative) effect of unselected surfaces.

Generally the most accurate way to count batches is to export your object and count TRIS and LINES statements.
But this command can give you a quick indication of problems; often copying and pasting can result in very ineffi-
cient ordering of objects and state changes.

The ac3d OBJ exporter will try to optimize state change when it saves your model (and x-plane will further opti-
mize state change if possible) but neither the exporter nor X-Plane will change the draw order of your object,
which comes from the hierarchy. Thus a hierarchy order that changes state a lot will directly lead to low framerate.

You can use the "Optimize Selection" command to reorganize the selected objects to minimize the number of
batches. The optimize selection command will only reorder objects if the number of batches can be reduced. Ob-
jects will be shifted the minimum amount to optimize. However, a number of serious warnings:

The heuristic for optimization is based on the batch count above, so every one of the confounding factors that
(animation, unselected objects) can lead to false optimizations, or a refusal to optimize.

Objects are moved into the most specific group that contains the entire selection; this can ruin a carefully organ-
ized large project.

The optimization command doesn't understand animation - usually it will pull geometry out of aniation groups,
effectively ruining animation.

The optimzier will not change unselected geometry, allowing you to optimize parts of your geometry.
I recommend using the optimizer as follows:

First, organize your object into major groups, based on animated vs. static geomertry. Keep translucent geometry
(that must be at the end) and polygon offset geometry (that must be at the beginning) separate.

Then select each homogenous sub-group and use the optimizer to minimize changes in blending control.

CHANGE TEXTURE COMMAND

You can use the change texture command to change the texture of your object without disturbing the texturing
of each polygon. In order to do this, the new texture (the _replacing_ texture) must fully contain the image of the
object's current texture (the _replaced_ texture). This image of the current texture cannot be squished, stretched,
color adjusted, or rotated in the new texture. However, the space in the new image around the old texture can
contain anything. The new and old textures must both have (or not have) alpha.

Select the object(s) you want to do the texture replace on and select the "Change Texture..." command from the
tools menu, and pick a .BMP or .PNG file that will be the new texture. For every selected object whose texture is
contained in the new texture, two things will happen:

That object will now use the new texture as its texture.

The texture coordinates of every surface in that object will be adjusted so that the object's appearance does not
change, even though the layout of the new object is different.

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 Two example uses of this command:

You have a house object with a 256x256 texture, and you want to add some trees, but you do not have room in the
texture to add the tree bitmaps. You create a new 512x256 bitmap, with the old 256x256 bitmap on the left side.
Select your house and pick Change Texture and select the new 512x256 bitamp. All texture coordinates are modi-
fied so that the house uses the new bitmap. You now have the whole right side of the 256x256 bitmap to use for
tree bitmaps.

You have a house object with a 256x256 bitmap, and a car object with a different 256x256 bitmap. You want to
combine them into a house with a car parked as one object, but they use different bitmap files. You create a new
bitmap in photoshop with the house on top, the car on the bottom, that is 256 x512 pixels tall. You then import
both the car and house into AC3D and position them where you want. You select all of these objects and do a
Change Texture to the new 256x512 combined bitmap, and now the house and car use one big bitmap. You can
then export this new house adn car scene as a single object with a single bitmap and use it in x-plane.

(This second technique is powerful when you are working with a lot of detail in an urban setting and you want to
reduce the object count to increase framerate.)

s ce n e r y. x- p l a n e. co m – Ben Supnik

5
 REMAP TEXTURE COORDINATES

This opens up the texture coordinate remapper. By entering texture ST coordinates in this window you can
change the textures of an object.

For example, if your texture is 512x128 but you decide to expand it to 512x256 (putting the old texture in the top
half of the new one) to make more space for yourself, you would use these remap values:

Old Left: 0 New Left: 0

Old Bottom: 0 New Bottom: 0.5

Old Right: 1 New Right: 1

Old Top: 1 New Top: 1

Use "remap selected" to change the current selection.

Use "remap directory" to change an entire directory of .ac files.

WARNING: remapping a directory will delete the current model as the entire directory is opened, converted, saved,
and closed!

MAKE TRANSPARENT COMMAND

This command changes the magenta color of a .bmp-based texture into transparent pixels to simulate what you
would see in x-plane. Select the object and pick "Make Transparent" from the tools menu. All textures used in the
selected objects are changed. This command may only be used on RGB textures without alpha. Like X-Plane, this
command only converts perfect matching #FF00FF magenta.

MAKE NIGHT LIGHTING COMMAND

This command attempts to merge the texture of an object with its night lighting counterpart to show you what it
would look like lit. Select an object and pick "Show Night Lighting" from the tools menu. All textures used in the
selected objects are changed to look like night lighting.

You can use the 'reload texture' command from AC3D's texture menu (under the object menu) to reload the nor-
mal daytime texture.

s ce n e r y. x- p l a n e. co m – Ben Supnik

6
 MAKE TREES COMMAND

The make trees command provides a quick way to make "3-d trees" from quads. For each quad selected, the make-
trees command makes four one-sided copies rotated 90 degrees each around the middle of the quad to form a +
shape. The whole configuration is then rotated a random amount. The quads are marked as 1-sided.

NOTE: the reason that four one-sided quads are used (rather than two two-sided) quads is two-fold:

1. This allows the whole object to be one-sided, avoiding the use of ATTRibutes. See the one-sided command for
more info on the advantage of smooth shading.

2. When the geometry is two-sided, one half of the tree texture will be visible on both sides of the tree. With two
one-sided quads, less repetition is visible.

The normal vectors of the trees are pointed straight up. See the up-normals command for more informatino on
the advantage of up-facing normals.

The quads are set to smooth shading. Generally you should set the entire object's shading to be smooth.

MAKE ONE-SIDED COMMAND

There is an advantage to keeping an entire object one-sided or two-sided; one-sided geometry offers more flexi-
bility, more realistic lighting, and faster performance assuming that not too many polygons need to be duplicated.
The "make one-sided" command copies every selected two-sided surface and reverses its vertex order to form a
one-sided surface.

MAKE UP NORMALS COMMAND

A "normal" vector is an arrow attached to each vertex or surface of your model that tells X-Plane how the sun lights
up your object. Usually the normals point directly away from your surfaces, causing realistic lighting. (For exam-
ple, if you create a building, the sides will be brighter at sunrise and sunset, while the top will be brighter during
the day.)

If the normals are changed other lighting effects can be achieved. In particular, a normal that points straight up
will cause a variation of brigthness based on the overall time of day, with the brightest times at noon.

One problem with typical 3-d trees (formed by the crossing of two vertical rectangles) is that at sunset one of the
quads will be very brightly lit (because it is facing the sun) and the other will be quite dark (because it is not). The
result is a mismatch in the color of the tree quads (light vs dark green) and a strange looking tree.

By setting the normals of the entire tree to point straight up, the entire tree picks up a general brightness from the
time of day, but does not have incongruent lighting.

s ce n e r y. x- p l a n e. co m – Ben Supnik

7
 CONVERT DIRECTORY TO OBJ8

You can convert an entire directory of .ac files to OBJ8 files. Pick this command and select a directory. The plugin
will open every .ac file and save it as an OBJ file with the same name in the same directory.

WARNING: this command will trash whatever model you have open!

BULK EXPORT

This command will export every "top level" object (object in the top of the hierarchy) as an OBJ. The object's name
is used as a file name.

If you have a complex model like an airport that is exported as multiple OBJs, use this to export the whole thing
quickly.

BY-TEXTURE EXPORT

This command exports one or more objects based on the textures used, allowing the entire workspace to be ex-
ported with a minimal number of objects. Geometry that has no texture or does not require a texture (lines, lights,
panel-textured objects) are exported to the first object that is emitted.

RELOAD TEXTURES

The reload textures command will reload all PNG files, showing any changes that have been made on disk.

X-PLANE EXPORT SETTINGS

A few settings can be customized for the plugin:

Default layer group (and offset)

Normally a layer group must be specified per object. But if you set this preference, any objects that don't have
layer groups will be exported using this layer group (and offset) instead.

See the OBJ8 spec (ATTR_layer_group) for more info on layer groups.

This feature can be used to export a whole series of objects all with a special layer group.

Export Geometry
If this is unchecked, no polygons will be exported from your object. This defaults to on, and 99.9% of the time you
should leave it on!

s ce n e r y. x- p l a n e. co m – Ben Supnik

8
Default LOD
Normally if you don't specify LOD in an object, no LOD is placed in that object. By putting a number other than
zero here, the plugin will export an LOD range of 0..N for any unlabeled objects.

(If you have a large number of objects that all nee artificial LOD restrictions this can help!)

Bulk Export Prefix

This string will be prefixed to the name of any file that is exported, from the bulk conversion, bulk export, or file-
export menu items.

You can use a partial file path to export into a directory. For example preview/ is a valid prefix that would cause
everything to be saved in a subdirectory called preview.

Texture Export Prefix

This stirng is prefixed to the names of any textures that are output.

WARNING MESSAGES

The AC3D may spit out some warning messages when you export an object:

"Warning: 3 objects did not have textures assigned. You must assign a texture to every object for X-Plane
output."

This warning happens when one or more polgon surface is missing a texture. X-Plane draws all polygons with tex-
tures, so if you don't assign a texture and adjust that surface's texture coordinates, you will probably see random
junk in x-plane. Select all objects and pick a texture from the Object -> Texture menu to fix this.

"This model uses more than one texture. You may only use one texture for an X-Plane OBJ."

Not counting a special panel texture for cockpit objects, you can only use one texture per X-Plane object. Pick one
texture and assign it to all non-panel surfaces to pick this.

WARNING: if you have a texture assigned to line geometry, it must be the same textures as polygons have,
even though this texture is ignored.

"This model has non-quad surfaces that use the panel texture. Only quad surfaces may use the panel tex-
ture in OBJ7."
"This model has non-quad surfaces that are marked as hard. Only quad surfaces may be hard in OBJ7."

Hard polygons and panel-textured polygons are only available for quads in OBJ7. In OBJ8 this is not an issue. One
note: this warning message will come up any time you may possibly have triangles without these properties.

s ce n e r y. x- p l a n e. co m – Ben Supnik

9
 However since the AC3D exporter does its best to combine triangles into quads when exporting to OBJ7 and they
are hard or panels, you may find that while you got this warning, the actual OBJ is partly or fully okay. It is always
safest to use quads though if you need to export to OBJ7.

With all of these warnings, AC3D will try to select any offending surfaces or obojects to help you locate the prob-
lem. AC3D may not be able to select all of the problem areas at once; so it may take repeated exports to diagnose
all problems. Also, you may need to put AC3D into Surface or Object selection mode to get a better selection for
diagnostic purposes.

s ce n e r y. x- p l a n e. co m – Ben Supnik

10
 Change History

KNOWN BUGS: VERSION 3.0R1 9/17/07

➡ OBJ7 import/export does not handle panel tex quads or hard ➡ This is a rename of 3.0b3 with latest code.
quads.
VERSION 3.0B3 6/25/07
➡ Ac3d texture repeat/offset cannot be used with panel textures
➡ Optimization utils
for exporting.
➡ Animation window scrolls
VERSION 3.2R2 ➡ LOD group name label was wrong in property editor
➡ Panel export works with Panel_general.png naming ➡ Objects can be renamed directly in the X-Plane Properties Editor
convention.
➡ Dataref.txt parsing isn't fooled by quoted strings. VERSION 3.0B2 5/15/07
➡ Prefix can be provided for texture export.
VERSION 3.2R1 ➡ Workspace can be epxorted by texture.
➡ No changes, relabel to final. ➡ Textures can be reloaded.
VERSION 3.2B5 ➡ Bug fix: texture paths fixed.
➡ Fix to panel region exports with heavily modified manipulator ➡ Bug fix: object properties can be edited in vertex mode.
settings. ➡ Bug fix: precision of numeric fields limited.
➡ Bug fix: TEXTURE_LIT not written if there is no _LIT.png on disk.
VERSION 3.2B4
➡ Bug fix: show/hide animation can be previewed.
➡ New manipulators for 930b13
VERSION 3.0B1 8/15/06
VERSION 3.2B3
➡ Total rewrite of how x-plane properties are managed
➡ LIT level commands are scaled.
➡ Previev of animation
➡ Fixed manipulator import.
➡ Support for materials, smoke, named lights, custom lights, show/hide
➡ Added automatic manipulator axis detection
animation
VERSION 3.2B2 VERSION 2.1B2 2/15/06
➡ ATTR_light_level syntax adjusted fto stay in sync with X-Plane.
➡ Fixed texture repeat-offset export (was ignored since 2.0).
➡ Panel region export fixed.
VERSION 2.1B1 1/20/06
VERSION 3.2B1 ➡ Reorganized attribute handling
➡ Panel_preview textures are supported
➡ New commands: group export, make trees, one-sided geometry,
➡ Plugin will find the panel texture in a much wider range of downward normals
locations, including the 3-d cockpit. ➡ Bug fix for crash on OS X 10.4.4 with QuickTime 7.0.4
➡ Animation sliders can be set to only show animation for visible
geometry VERSION 2.0B2 9/27/05
➡ Support for OBJ syntax from X-Plane 921 and 930 ➡ Bug fix for animation export.
➡ Bug fix: importer produces less vertices. VERSION 2.0B1 9/20/05
➡ Bug fix: line endings on Windows fixed ➡ Pretty much a total rewrite of Obj I/O code for XP7.
➡ Bug fix: panel region doesn't have decimal at end. ➡ Support of the annotation system for non-AC3D native properties.
➡ Bug fix: no error message if you pop open dataref menu when ➡ Addition of the Animation-group command.
datarefs.txt not in plugin folder.
➡ Supports light import/export
VERSION 3.1R1
VERSION 1.1 11/30/04
➡ Support for ATTR_hard_deck
➡
➡ Bug fix in importing hard surfaces!
➡ Support for cockpit quads.
➡ Compatibility with AC3D 6.3
➡ Bug fix: ATTR_nocull renamed to ATTR_no_cull
VERSION 3.1B1 ➡ Bug fix: Objects are treated as smooth shaded by default.
➡ Animation is faster ➡ Bug fix: Smooth shading and culling reset at the end of each LOD.
➡ Key Frames ➡ (Note: this is only needed for older versions of x-plane.)
➡ Sub-Panel Interface
➡ Select all animation button
➡ Select all lights menu command

VERSION 3.0.2
➡ Update old object updates lights
➡ Bulk update command
➡ Better optimization of rotate animations

VERSION 3.0.1R1 9/20/07

➡ As an optimization, the OBJ8 exporter no longer writes the
unnecessary ATTR_shade_flat

s ce n e r y. x- p l a n e. co m – Ben Supnik