Hi guys. I know I don't generally drop by, due to lack of time, but after losing the whole day today trying to fix that terrible "invisible model" issue on BfME - that generally happens after you try applying a new texture to an original model - I decided to share the solution with you guys.
The BfME engine makes any model that has a not-found texture disappear. Simple as that, it's some sort of protection to clearly show the artists that the game can't find an asset - which could be a minor piece of art hard to detect visually, for example. So if you add a new texture, don't expect the game to make it pink-purple if it doesn't find it - it'll totally vanish the model. :O A pink purple model will still show up if the texture is found (ie. is in added to asset.dat) but his file format can't be open by the game for some reason, happens some times with DDS files.
The second thing to keep in mind, and this was quite hard for me to figure out, is that the command line process of running your mod, differently from what EA disclaimed, do NOT read the additional asset.dat! Talk about a mislead.. the only way I could get the additional asset.dat working was with the .BIG-inclusion process - ie., create a BIG with your mod files, run asset builder in an empty folder with it, and include the resulting asset.dat
into your BIG. Then it does work but woot.. complicated process that is. I'd say that for major editing work the SY's method of appending your new asset entries to the original asset.dat is much more handy. For the final distribution I still recommend the original EA tool for obvious reasons.
Bottom line is: pay close attention to your asset.dat creation process, make sure the applied textures on GMax are 100% correct, do your BIG, recreate the asset.dat, and you'll be good to go. Well, that's it, hope this makes someone lose less hours of precious time than I did today
Best regards from Brazil,
-MaDDoX
Invisible models fix
