I think every designer exporting objects to FS2004 has seen the error message on the right at least once. It happens when you export a small object to a FS2004 MDL file with MakeMDL.

The reason is that somewhere inside MakeMDL, when calculating the octtree for the crash detection, some assertion is triggered. Of course this is nice to know, but it doesn’t help you as you still have that same error.

The standard fix for this in GMax is to add a fully transparent dummy box that is big enough. This will make sure that the object gets compiled by MakeMDL. And the polygons of the fully transparent box don’t end up in your MDL file, MakeMDL will filter them out for you since they are fully transparent.

Today I have updated the FS2004 MDL exporter of ModelConverterX. When you try to export an object that is small (small enough to trigger this error), it will automatically add a dummy box for you. So you don’t need to worry about it anymore. As a result you shouldn’t be bothered with this assertion message anymore in the future.