3DSimED Version 2 Updates

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If you are looking for version 1 updates of 3DSimED and TrkMaker click here.

Support files for SketchUp Export/Import (unchanged since 2.4).

Version 2.17 Release Notes

F1-2011 track import support, tracks had missing objects and Abu Dhabi no longer causes 3DSimED to crash.

Corrected a problem with the import of .MTS from F1 2002, 2001 and GTR was setting the vertex alpha to 0.

In some circumstances, the swapping of texture channel coordinates could result in the incorrect results. 

Version 2.16 Release Notes

F1-2011 track import support, the F1-2010 import code did not find all the objects and textures used by F1-2011 tracks.

RFactor improved export. Materials take diffuse colour and a number of shaders have been altered to ensure the DX7 stage is not assigned a DX8 shader.

F1-CC and F1-2002 exported objects have improved material handling.

Modifying a face should no longer destroy the vertex colour or alpha of the vertices.

To download the latest version Click here for more details

Version 2.15 Release Notes

F1-CC and F1-2002 exported objects had incorrect material mappings and emissive & specular RGB were set to white.

The Home->OpenGL Options now allows occlusion queries to be disabled without first having to import a model.

Various improvements to improve reliability on Intel mobile graphic chips but there seem to be a number of bugs with the Intel drivers that cannot be worked around - they cannot be recommended for 3DSimED.

To download the latest version Click here for more details

Version 2.14 Release Notes

Car models from Dirt 3 can be imported.

Improved import of ISI format (rFactor, GTR2, F1-CC etc.) tracks when texture scaling has been applied to the diffuse texture coordinates.

PTF Import. Walls with multiple texture maps are now correctly imported.

Correction of import of .3DS when objects have pivots points not set to the local origin. 

Version 2.13 Release Notes

Version 2.13b

When importing NFS Shift cars texture channels were often skipped with only channel 0 correct.

A problem with the Swap Texture Channel function of the ReScale Texture feature of the Material Edit dialog could cause channels in all materials to be swapped, not just the selected material.

Version 2.13a

Support for NFS Shift  2 - cars and tracks can be opened.

Workaround for right-button crash on ATI cards with selection set to  One Pass and GLSL shading enabled. The workaround appears to have also made selection much quicker.

Improved calculation of binormals and tangents used for bump mapping when saving to rFactor, GTR2, and other ISI formats.

Encrypted .GMT files should now give warnings when imported. If they are imported as a result of opening a .VEH or .SCN then a list of encrypted .GMTs will be given.

Improved support for Grid2 & Dirt2  texture coordinates used for wheels/tires.

Version 2.12 Release Notes

View Object allows an object to be selected for editing.

Custom shaders are no longer expected to be prefixed "L2", the  ShaderLevel=2  is now used to determine which shader is for DX9.

All the normal smoothing functions are quicker.

Smooth By Group will vertex smooth if all faces in an object are in the same group - this reduces the vertex count.

New Paste Texture Coords function allows texture coordinates from the clipboard texture channel 0 to be pasted to channels 1 to 3.

Resize would give incorrect results with nested objects.

Export as .3DS preserves vertex counts and gives clear warning should the count of vertices or faces for any object go over 65335.

Export as .3DS now has object instancing. However, this is not understood by Blender so a new option 'Blender Compatible' has been added to .3DS Export which writes a separate object for every instance.

Export as .3DS name handling has changed if the 8:3 Texture Names option is selected.  Material names will use the first 16 characters and texture names simply take the first 8 characters for title, there's no longer any renaming with numbers.

Export .3DS now writes the material color, the transparency of a material, and no longer writes ".3DS" as the texture map name if there is no texture map for a material.

When working with .SCN files from rFactor, .TRKs from GTR2 etc., the Visgroups over 64 are now no longer lost.

Update SCN or TRK now searches for the  MeshFile name when updating, this allows the inallowing the Instance to  have a different name.

V8 Next challenge cockpits can now be imported.

Cars from WRC 2010 demo can now be imported. Note that the textures for most materials require setting by hand.

The Edit Point dialog now uses 6 decimal places rather than 3.

Version 2.11 Release Notes

Improved support for F1-2010 tracks. Objects such as tire walls are now imported, and corrections have been made to the scaling of imported objects.

Correction of problem with the collision planes of exported rFactor tracks. As a result of this fix smoothing groups are now longer read or written to rFactor objects.

Primitives->Add Object can now replace the geometry of objects. Adding an object with the same title as one in the drawing will result in the use being prompted to overwrite the object in memory.

Version 2.10 Release Notes

Improved support for F1-2010 cars and tracks.

Import of Wavefront .OBJ.

Smooth By Group option added for Normals. Smoothing groups are read from GMT (rFactor, GTR2, Race07 etc), 3DS, and OBJ.

Auto Smooth option for Normals which uses the angle between faces to determine hard and smooth edges.

Distance from last memorized point shown on status bar.

When saving .3SE an option to use relative paths will be given if texture maps paths are found to be in a relative path to the .3SE path.

Fix for incorrect material shaders when importing NFS Shift cars.

Version 2.9 Release Notes

Support for DIRT 2 cars and tracks.

Vertex colours are now rendered when using Fragment Programs or GLSL.

Memory handling has been improved to reduce the memory required to import large models.

GFX file support to allow customs shaders to be added. 3DSimED will attempt to read any GFX files found in the HardwareShaders sub-folder.

MS Train Simulator support for .s shapes .w wordlfiles and routes.

The cursor now changes from a find box to a crosshair if geometry is found beneath the cursor.

Fix for Copying object to clipboard, objects previously on the clipboard were not being cleared.

A workaround for an ATI bug with selection when anti-aliasing is on.

Version 2.8 Release Notes

Improved support for NFS Shift cars and tracks including XBox 360 format.

Import of V8 SuperStars Next Challenge .BIN files. The import of cars works well, but track import will need improving in future versions.

The Tools->Data Reports->Model Info now includes the extents of objects.

Version 2.7 Release Notes

New import of Flight Simulator X .MDL files allows use of gMax, a free download equivalent to 3DS Max 4, for editing models (note that the FSX gamepack for gMax is required). There is also limited support for FS 2004 Scenery models exported from gMax (this requires the Fs2004 gamepack for gMax).

Right-click selection intermittent crashes on NVidia cards fixed.

Problems with Windows Explorer Right-click/context menu fixed.

Edit->Materials->Replace includes the option to assign a material to geometry with no material.

Import Race On  .GMT problem fixed. This was associated with objects having incorrectly defined texture blending.

Texture map names are now capitalised when exporting ISI formats. This improves the handling of special materials such as mirrors. 

F1-2001 .MAS with packed .BMP files can now be expanded. 

When updating N2003 PTF, animation is preserved.

Improved import of 3DS which use object instancing.

Exported ISI .GMT files were larger than necessary if no UV mapping was present.

Edit Object Explode and Isolate now much quicker for large objects.

Improved import of NFS Shift. Objects such as tyres are now correctly textured.

Export to GPL .3do improved.

Codemaster Dirt track import greatly improved.  

Import of V8 Superstars now includes trackside objects such as vehicles.

Version 2.6 Release Notes

Import of NFS Shift cars, tracks and individual .MEB objects.

Export to NFS Shift .MEB

Import of V8 SuperStars .BIN files (cars and tracks).

Shader support for rendering has been improved to include OpenGL fragment programs. Fragment program output is very similar to GLSL but is supported on a greater range of graphic cards as well as many on-board graphic chips. To enable fragment programs use the Home->OpenGL Options->Load Fragment Programs function; you may also need to select the Display->OpenGL Options->Fragment Program Rendering option if your system support GLSL shader rendering.

New Edit->Paste Vertices function allowing XYZ, normals etc to be copied from another model.

New Material Edit->Re-scale Texture->Swap Texture Channel UV function allowing channel coordinates to be swapped.

New Tools->Data Report->Materials giving a report on the materials’ attributes.

Tools->Data Report->Model Info gives more information about the model.

Tools->Data Report functions output is now to a notepad style window allowing the reports to be browsed, edited and archived.

The X-Axis is now drawn in red, the Y-Axis green and the Z-Axis drawn in blue.

Improved file error handling when exporting or saving models.

Texture maps of animated materials were not copied by the Export->Export Textures function.

When writing  ShadowReceiver=TRUE to a scn file no space was appended so the next argument in the line would be ignored.

Problems with object orientation when importing from GRID have been corrected.

Use of the Windows API function getaddrinfo has been altered to ensure 3DSimED will work on Windows 2000.

Version 2.5 Release Notes

New: Export GPL TSO in both GPL native .3DO and .ASE for ASE23DO.EXE.

New: Tools->Texture Map Conversion for all maps used by the materials within a scene or model.

Improved: Imported GPL .3DO now show the collision planes.

Improved: Export commands that include objects now have the option not to export hidden objects.

Improved: Option when converting textures to write GPL 16-bit mips

Improved: Material Diffuse RGB can be set.

Fix for problem with Browse Folders dialog which could crash preventing the exporting of objects etc.

Fix to ensure 3DSimED no longer looks for the VS2005 run-time libraries.

Fix for skipping the first record when importing a GPL .3DO.

Fix for writing DX9 shader for Diffuse & Normal maps & specular RGB, when exporting rFactor, GTR2, RACE07 .GMT files.

2.4 Release Notes

Import and Export of Google SketchUp SKP files.

PNG graphic file format support.

Enhanced Folder Browse window with a 'Recent Folders' button.

The Object Edit dialog has a new function to copy the presently selected instance of an object to the 3DSimED clipboard.

Fix for problem with saving animation sequences for ISI formats.

Fix for missing view toolbar on dialogs.

Fix for texture browser not initially showing the current texture on XP.

Fix for saving GPL drawings to other formats.

Fix to allow rFactor materials to reference JPG files.

Version 2.3 Release Notes

3DSimED now has a ribbon interface and the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts, a Quick Access Toolbar and visual style. Read more about these new features.

Running on Vista no longer requires administrator permissions for file associations.

All settings are now saved to the registry which will explain why you will have lost the settings you had from earlier versions which were saved to 3DSimED.INI in the Windows folder.

The texture browser now works correctly on Vista.

Recent Folders that were unavailable could cause 3DSimED to crash.

With OpenGL GLSL shaders used for rendering, the Memorize XYZ would intermittently fail.

Rain reflection shaders were incorrectly written to Race 07 .GMT models.

Some of the GLSL shaders which required a mixture of diffuse maps would incorrectly render.

Some Grid tracks had missing parts of the road surface when a track has a number of configurartions.

Version 2.2 Release Notes

There is now the option to write 32 bit BMP files from the texture browser.

If the animation sequence was edited it was not saved to objects when exporting.

Exporting a .3DS a model that was imported from .3DS could crash 3DSimEd.

The texture scaling prompts for the channel scale was incorrect.

A recent folder or file which was no longer available could cause a crash.

Version 2.1 Release Notes

Below the notes is a download link.

The handling of materials and their editing has been greatly improved. Almost all shaders available in rFactor, and other ISI format sims, are now supported including the blend shaders. Multiple texture map channel coordinates support has also been included. 3DSimED can render the almost all of the shaders providing the graphics card runs OpenGL GLSL.

Objects saved in ISI format (rFactor through to Race 07) have far better frame-rates with max details and shadows.

Workaround to stop crashes on Radeon 4870 running catalyst 8.8.

Display menu has new option to switch Animations on/off.

The right-button context menu has a new function to hide the material.

Display menu has new function to Un-Hide material which was hidden with right-button context menu.

Display menu has new function to Un-Hide object which was hidden with right-button context menu.

Saving of objects in ISI formats rFactor through to Race 07 is quicker.

The status bar displays the full path and filename of recent files when the mouse pointer moves over the recent files on the File menu

Isolate includes objects within the isolated object.

The rendering of material hilighting is faster.

Expo and shadow objects were the wrong size after exporting from 3DSimED.

GRID and DIRT PSSG files can be opened and the geometry imported.

Texture maps can be extracted from and replaced in GRID/DIRT .PSSG files.

Greatly improved Ford Racing 3 import.

The File Menu now has a Recent Folder list which allows the user to change the current working folder.

The conversion to TGA allows writing bottom-up as well as top-down raster lines.

Animations can now have frames numbered greater than 9.