3DSMAX - EDM Exporting

2. Move model so center of mass of the plane is at the 0,0,0 coordinate (the point in the center of the viewports)
3. Rotate model so forward direction is x positive and upward is z positive. (y axis will be pointing to left of the plane)
4. Apply the standard Legacy Materials with its textures to all meshes, it might not show up correctly in 3dsmax but will work.
5. All materials should already be "made cool" but do it again just to be safe via EDMtool (utilities tab), select a material and hit "make cool" button in the edmtool.
6. Check below for the "external cockpit" part
7. Add desired connectors
8. Add animations
9. That´s it, now export to "nameofaircraft".edm

#### b) Collision edm

1. Create a copy of the most important parts of the Plane body. Or create objects from scratch that represent the body parts of your airplane.
2. You can make this very detailed or just be happy with a single collision object. For example refer to this: max example
3. Right click on all created objects and click properties and add TYPE= "collision\_shell"; to user defined properties To create node based collisions you have to use the right names for the nodes which you can find in the damage.lua (Scripts\Aircrafts\_Common\Damage.lua) For example if you only want your left engine to fail create a node called ENGINE\_L at the place where the engine is and add TYPE= "collision\_shell"; damage\_argument=11; to the user defined properties
4. Now export only the collision objects as a new edm as "nameofaircraft\_coll".edm

#### c) Cockpit edm:

DCS has an external cockpit that will be visible when using the external view and an internal cockpit that is only visible during cockpit view(F1) so in order to get the cockpit right we need to address both cockpit variants. This is only neccessary if you have a very detailed cockpit that you dont want to render all the time. Else ignore this step.

##### External view cockpit: (this is part of the Mainbody edm)

1. select all objects related to the cockpit that you want to turn invisible in cockpit viewmode.
2. Create a copy for later use for the internal cockpit if you dont have a seperate mesh for the internal cockpit(put aside for now)
3. Then apply invisibility track with arg=114: Youtube
4. Your cockpit should now turn invisible when selecting frame 100 while frames 0-99 are still showing as visible. You can later check inside the modelviewer with the arg114 slider if it works. It should turn invisible when the slider is set to 1
5. you can apply ProOptimizer(modifier) to the selected objects to reduce the vertices or delete parts that you deem unintersting.
6. extract with the rest of the mainbody (see Mainbody edm)

##### Internal view cockpit: (this will be its own edm)

1. Select all Objects related to the object. move it a bit down, The cockpit will later be attached to your eyeView settings that means wherever you set your standard eyeview the cockpit will spawn there. Hence we lower it a bit to make sure you can look outside.
2. Now export only these objects to "cockpit\_nameofaircraft.edm"

### 2. Advanced Features

#### Connectors

Connectors are dummy objects that allow you to attach other objects outside of this edm to your model, usually called by script. For example, weapon pods or pylons can be directly attached to connector nodes.

1. Create a Helper, choose Dummy,
2. Place dummy with in x direction as forward (if unclear fix it later once you see it´s wrong ingame)
3. Give it a name of your choice, later called by Luas. So something you can remember. Certain connectors like display connectors need very specific names. You can find them in the modelviewer of the edms they are part of.
4. Place connector to desired location , e.g. gunpod connector to place where your gun will shoot the bullets out.
5. Right click on object and attach user defined property: TYPE="connector";

List of possible connector types(INCOMPLETE): You can open EDM files in the Modelviewer to see how they are set up to work correctly

1. Gunpods (check any airplane edm)
2. Displays for cockpit (check cockpit edms)
3. Lights
4. Pylons
5. etc.