Can't import model into Plugin Manager

[ussoldier2002 109]

Hello,

I have had this issue before and I thought it was fixed. I have been creating baseball stadiums lately but now I can't export. I mean I can export but it doesn't show up in the plug in manager. I have created a new folder, used a different name, downloaded new skins and mattes but when I export the BAT nothing shows up. I receive no errors when exporting or anything. Luckily I have only laid down the field and one wall then export it just to see if it is working so I am not wasting a bunch of time. Does anyone have any clue as to what is going on?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Does the file name have any special characters in it?

[ussoldier2002 109]

55 minutes ago, Jasoncw said:

Does the file name have any special characters in it?

No special characters. It's simply named Baltimore Stadium.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Is it in a subfolder?

It's been a long time since I've used the Maxis plugin manager, PIMX/SC4 Plugin Manager is a lot better. Sometimes it can be unintuitive, but overall it makes normal modding tasks much much easier. You can download that and see if it shows up in there.

[ussoldier2002 109]

1 minute ago, Jasoncw said:

Is it in a subfolder?

It's been a long time since I've used the Maxis plugin manager, PIMX/SC4 Plugin Manager is a lot better. Sometimes it can be unintuitive, but overall it makes normal modding tasks much much easier. You can download that and see if it shows up in there.

Do you mean the plug in manager in a sub folder? I don't believe so. I will look up your suggestion and see if that helps. I will let you know soon. Thank you for your time!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I mean the .SC4Model file. I don't remember, but it might need to be in the root plugin folder, and not within another folder inside of the plugins folder? It's been so long that I don't remember all the little things that can cause this problem. I know that special characters was one of that I had personally ran into before, but you don't have any special characters so that's not it here.

Maybe @T Wrecks remembers.

[ussoldier2002 109]

1 minute ago, Jasoncw said:

I mean the .SC4Model file. I don't remember, but it might need to be in the root plugin folder, and not within another folder inside of the plugins folder? It's been so long that I don't remember all the little things that can cause this problem. I know that special characters was one of that I had personally ran into before, but you don't have any special characters so that's not it here.

Maybe @T Wrecks remembers.

Oh I see. So the model file did export to the plugin folder but it's not showing up in the plugin manager. The plugin folder is in the right spot as well. I have no idea what could be causing this issue.

[rsc204 21,805]

11 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

I don't remember, but it might need to be in the root plugin folder, and not within another folder inside of the plugins folder?

You remember correctly, the Maxis PIM will ONLY read content in the root Plugins folder.

I see there is quite a lot of content in the root folder, i.e. lots of models showing in PIM. To begin with, it will help to simplify matters if you move everything that isn't the model you are working with, into a temporary folder. Perhaps the name in PIM is not what you expect to see, so it looks like it's not there? Moving those other files would make that much easier to see.

If at that point there were no models whatsoever, clearly the model in question has some sort of problem. In which case I would first try to remake it from scratch, not the 3D modelling, just delete/move the sc4model file, then make a new one by re-exporting in SC4BAT. If that fails too, it suggests there is a problem with your model, causing the export to go wrong somewhere. At that point we really need to see the .sc4model file, so we can check if the contents of the file are in order or not. If you could attach it here or uploaded it somewhere and link to it, that would allow us to help you better.

[ussoldier2002 109]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

You remember correctly, the Maxis PIM will ONLY read content in the root Plugins folder.

I see there is quite a lot of content in the root folder, i.e. lots of models showing in PIM. To begin with, it will help to simplify matters if you move everything that isn't the model you are working with, into a temporary folder. Perhaps the name in PIM is not what you expect to see, so it looks like it's not there? Moving those other files would make that much easier to see.

If at that point there were no models whatsoever, clearly the model in question has some sort of problem. In which case I would first try to remake it from scratch, not the 3D modelling, just delete/move the sc4model file, then make a new one by re-exporting in SC4BAT. If that fails too, it suggests there is a problem with your model, causing the export to go wrong somewhere. At that point we really need to see the .sc4model file, so we can check if the contents of the file are in order or not. If you could attach it here or uploaded it somewhere and link to it, that would allow us to help you better.

I never thought to do that!! That's a great idea. I will do that now. I will upload the file here as well if you have the time to look it over.

Baltimore Stadium-0x5ad0e817_0xff76ec0c_0x60000.SC4Model

[ussoldier2002 109]

Ok, so here is the latest. I removed everything from my plugin folder and put Baltimore Stadium in by itself. Nowit shows up in PIM. Now I have to figure out what is causing that. I am assuming it is a conflict with another one of my BAT's.

[ussoldier2002 109]

Ok, so I ran some tests. I have a stadium named Columbia Park (files attached) and Baltimore Stadium replaced the BAT for Columbia Park even though Columbia Park has not been put back in the plugin folder. I really appreciate everyone's help on this issue.

Columbia Park Philadelphia Athletics 1901-1908-0x5ad0e817_0xff76ec0c_0x60000.SC4Model

Columbia Park Philadelphia Athletics 1901-1908-0x6534284a-0xdf143c86-0x6673b2f8.SC4Desc

Columbia Park_a673bbf9.SC4Lot

[rsc204 21,805]

2 hours ago, ussoldier2002 said:

Baltimore Stadium-0x5ad0e817_0xff76ec0c_0x60000.SC4Model

2 hours ago, ussoldier2002 said:

Columbia Park Philadelphia Athletics 1901-1908-0x5ad0e817_0xff76ec0c_0x60000.SC4Model

The problem is an ID conflict, note the two model files have the exact same ID (Red). This means SC4 will only load whichever loads later, because it and it's tools only sees the IDs.

If this has happened, almost certainly it's because you used the same scene (file) in SC4BAT to create the export. You should always use a new scene, because in doing so each model get's assigned it's own unique ID. For now, to solve the issue, start a new session of SC4BAT. Click on File / Merge, select all the objects from your previous save file, they will be imported into a new file. When you export from this new file, you should get a new, unique ID, resolving the conflict.

[ussoldier2002 109]

2 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

The problem is an ID conflict, note the two model files have the exact same ID (Red). This means SC4 will only load whichever loads later, because it and it's tools only sees the IDs.

If this has happened, almost certainly it's because you used the same scene (file) in SC4BAT to create the export. You should always use a new scene, because in doing so each model get's assigned it's own unique ID. For now, to solve the issue, start a new session of SC4BAT. Click on File / Merge, select all the objects from your previous save file, they will be imported into a new file. When you export from this new file, you should get a new, unique ID, resolving the conflict.

How did I not notice that? Probably because I didn't look at that ha ha ha!! Ok. Thanks for the advice. I will give this a shot. Thank you so much!

[ussoldier2002 109]

Well. So new issue. I created a new file. Created a new folder where I save my images used for the BAT and brought them over from the old folder. Now the new BAT is replacing a different stadium!!

[rsc204 21,805]

Each new file in SC4 BAT should generate a new ID. This is randomly generated based on the date/time, long and short it's only possible for duplicate IDs to be generated every 7 years or so. Even then, you'd have to create the ID at the exact same time to the second as someone else did. The odds of conflicting IDs are as such higher than winning the lottery. So if you are getting such problems, you must be doing something that's re-using IDs somehow.

In the first instance, I'd recommend installing a patch for SC4 BAT, found here (BAT Texture Fix). Not that since you are getting IDs which end in 0x60000, either you haven't installed this properly or at all. Hopefully that will be sufficient to prevent further ID conflicts in future with new files. Otherwise, you can manually re-ID the exported model files, but that's a bit more complex so let's leave that to one side for the moment.

[ussoldier2002 109]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Each new file in SC4 BAT should generate a new ID. This is randomly generated based on the date/time, long and short it's only possible for duplicate IDs to be generated every 7 years or so. Even then, you'd have to create the ID at the exact same time to the second as someone else did. The odds of conflicting IDs are as such higher than winning the lottery. So if you are getting such problems, you must be doing something that's re-using IDs somehow.

In the first instance, I'd recommend installing a patch for SC4 BAT, found here (BAT Texture Fix). Not that since you are getting IDs which end in 0x60000, either you haven't installed this properly or at all. Hopefully that will be sufficient to prevent further ID conflicts in future with new files. Otherwise, you can manually re-ID the exported model files, but that's a bit more complex so let's leave that to one side for the moment.

I will give this a shot. I had no idea there was a patch for this. Thank you again for your help on this.

[ussoldier2002 109]

Where do I put this? I put it in the plug in folder for the BAT and that gave me an error when I opened up the BAT. Then I put it in the SC4 plug in folder and I still have the same issue. I will delete the export and try again because I may have forgotten to do that before I tried this. I will let you know.

Never mind. I think I found it.

[rsc204 21,805]

Not sure if it includes instructions or just the file, but you'll know if it's in the correct place, because it must overwrite the previous file:

Quote

BAT Texture Problem Fix

A SCRIPT FILE FOR USERS OF THE BUILDING ARCHITECT TOOL.

To install, copy the files into your Gmax scripts folder (C:\gmax\gamepack\BAT\scripts\), overwriting the existing ones if prompted.

[ussoldier2002 109]

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Not sure if it includes instructions or just the file, but you'll know if it's in the correct place, because it must overwrite the previous file:

I did find the instructions and did what they said and put the files in the right spot and it still didn't work. My export is still overwriting a different stadium. I am at a loss at this point.

[rsc204 21,805]

Installing the fix won't do anything to alter existing files. So once more you need to merge the objects into a new file and re-export before the ID system (what this fix alters), will change.

[ussoldier2002 109]

18 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Installing the fix won't do anything to alter existing files. So once more you need to merge the objects into a new file and re-export before the ID system (what this fix alters), will change.

Ahhhh!! Got it. Ok. I will let you know what happens tomorrow when I get a chance to try again.

[ussoldier2002 109]

@rsc204 Thank you so much!! Your advice helped and everything is working. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!