A question to Tim or Ken

[dominique]

Hi

 

I'm giving a try at making a PNG dirt airfied which is not in the sim database  . I've laid out the strip and adjacent village space and redrawn the coast with SbuilderX and begin to teach myself Sketchup to add the buildings. When you design a PNG house, how do you make the windows/doors : punching holes in the model or laying a texture on the wall with black rectangles where the openings are ? To minimize the impact on FPS, I mean.

 

 

 

 

[teecee]

Try Oziex..they have a specific area for those wanting to learn how to create scenery.. Teecee.

[dominique]

Try Oziex..they have a specific area for those wanting to learn how to create scenery.. Teecee.

 

Thank you for the tip, Teecce, appreciated. As an admirer of what Tim and Ken do in PNG, my first impulse was asking them. If they consider it as a manufacturing secret , then I'll see ! Wouldn't it be nice if we could get for PNG something like RTMM, freeware sceneries to complement OrbX stuff  ? Anyway, my first try is a long shot but it is as fun as simming. You  made some sceneries sometimes ago, didn't you ?

[Breeze]

That looks great Dominique.  Keep at it!

[Ken Hall]

Hi Dominique,

What you have done there looks great, as TeeCee mentioned there is a place to learn over at Ozx, both Tim and I started there.

But briefly, for your models learn Blender or GMax, both are free, never ever use sketch up, it will bring the sim to its knees, it is extreamly inefficient with the use of textures. A lot of work in our modelling goes into efficient use of textures

PNG has immense potential for development but I would appreciate some communication as to what strips your working on, no sense in doubling up. Tim and I are planing many more strips in the area so there is that posability of duplication.

The more coverage PNG gets the better the experience for all, I look forward to seeing what you create.

Cheers Ken

[Tim Harris]

Hi Dom,

 

Looks awesome!

 

Another vote for GMAX here, it might have a steeper learning curve but its the best (free) program for FSX models, and has a proper FSX SDK package for it, and any experience/methods learnt with GMAX can also be passed straight on to 3dsMax if you happen to catch the sceneryflu bug

[dominique]

Thank you both for the tips. I intent to do a few huts only and I thought that Gmax or Blender would be an overkill. I'll look into it. For the the moment, I placed your own huts, for my own use (I have no intention to distribute the project with any proprietary elements, no worry !) and I want to replace them by my own to make a freeware respecting your IP . Vegetation is not of a problem as there is a lot with free IP access (not as nice as yours but that will do) but huts are hard to find.

 

Ken, this is Long Island, off Madang. I loved PacSim's rendition which is, I can see it now, rather imaginative ! I try to stick more to the real thing which is, I'm sure, less glamorous. There's no documentation except a short Flying High in PNG vid and a decent zoom in GE. I was not sure that  you were interested in such coastal strips as you do mostly the highlands.

 

Before (with Scenery Tech landclass, Global and Vector which does not shine much here)

 

 

and After (with the help of GE, SbuilderX, CS2 and a little sweat)

 

 

 

 

 I already begun in parallel China Straits, 25 nm East of Gurney, totally undocumented, except for GE This is more ambitious as I have to correct some islands (horrible cliffs) around and add one forgotten by Vector. This is only a WIP so don't look at the obvious flaws including in the coloring and the incomplete autogen ! 

 

 

In a longer run, provided that you didn't make them before, I'll have a look at Salamo and Tuffi, if the bug has really bitten me !

[Vlad Maly]

Looks great!

[dominique]

A sequence of shots on the screenshots forum.

[Stillwater]

Your "before" and "after" comparison looks great, chapeau!

[fabs79]

Great looking pics dominique! Keep on the great work! I tried some scenery design myself and I know how time-consuming it is. Although I agree with Ken and Tim that Gmax, Blender and the like are far superior to Sketchup in terms of possibilities and performance, I´d suggest to try Sketchup for your first few models - reason being that it has a very gentle learning curve and you´ll see some nice progress within a few hours. Texturing can be very tedious, especially if you want to keep the number of draw calls low (that is using only very few textures per object). I tried Gmax but with  50-60 hours of work per week I just couldn´t spare enough time to learn using it. Maybe when you learn the basics of 3D modeling with Sketchup you can later switch to a more complex design tool.

Also if you focus on remote locations where a scenery consists only of a few buildings, performance optimization is possibly less important than in a dense urban area. Bust these are just my 2 cents

 

Have fun!

 

Best regards, Fabian

[dominique]

Great looking pics dominique! Keep on the great work! I tried some scenery design myself and I know how time-consuming it is. Although I agree with Ken and Tim that Gmax, Blender and the like are far superior to Sketchup in terms of possibilities and performance, I´d suggest to try Sketchup for your first few models - reason being that it has a very gentle learning curve and you´ll see some nice progress within a few hours. Texturing can be very tedious, especially if you want to keep the number of draw calls low (that is using only very few textures per object). I tried Gmax but with  50-60 hours of work per week I just couldn´t spare enough time to learn using it. Maybe when you learn the basics of 3D modeling with Sketchup you can later switch to a more complex design tool.

Also if you focus on remote locations where a scenery consists only of a few buildings, performance optimization is possibly less important than in a dense urban area. Bust these are just my 2 cents

 

Have fun!

 

Best regards, Fabian

 

Thank you Fabian  for the tips and compliment, appreciated. I will finish my first hut with SU because I was more than half through (or so I expect )  when I begun this post and I 'll see later on for others 3D modelers. I already applied some textures on my hut and it was pretty easy so far. I'll have to look at others 3D modelers though. I trained myself to ADE this summer in making a full LFKO in Corsica which a little more dense area but none of the buildings are mine there so I cannot compare.

 

What sceneries did you make if I can be indiscreet  ?

[fabs79]

Thank you Fabian  for the tips and compliment, appreciated. I will finish my first hut with SU because I was more than half through (or so I expect )  when I begun this post and I 'll see later on for others 3D modelers. I already applied some textures on my hut and it was pretty easy so far. I'll have to look at others 3D modelers though. I trained myself to ADE this summer in making a full LFKO in Corsica which a little more dense area but none of the buildings are mine there so I cannot compare.

 

What sceneries did you make if I can be in discreetly  ?

Just some POIs for FTX Scotland which I visited during a holiday and wanted to fly over in prepar3d.

You can find them in the orbx community scenery forum although I'm afraid they are for p3d only because I don't have FSX anymore.

[Sylvain Delepierre]

Hi Dominique,

 

I also use Sketchup. Never compared in game performance with Gmax models but all I can say is that it's possible to get a rather complex model with only one texture sheet. For simple huts I'm sure you will see no difference regarding performance and Sketchup is really so easy to learn. Just keep in mind to minimise your triangles and to delete all non visible surfaces.

 

Keep the good work coming. Looking very good so far.

[dominique]

Hi Dominique,

 

I also use Sketchup. Never compared in game performance with Gmax models but all I can say is that it's possible to get a rather complex model with only one texture sheet. For simple huts I'm sure you will see no difference regarding performance and Sketchup is really so easy to learn. Just keep in mind to minimise your triangles and to delete all non visible surfaces.

 

Keep the good work coming. Looking very good so far.

 

Thank you Sylvain, just what I wanted to hear  , I've to say that Blender or Gmax are kind of intimidating and if I can use SU for the moment, I'd be happy. As a newbie I'm in a phase where I try all the tools on real projects but some are easier to grasp than others.

 

Something I cannot do with SU is bending something, like a corner of deretict corrugated iron sheet (not just folding, that I can do). Maybe a tool using a mesh is helpful herre. Also I like the multiwindows of Gmax but SU is easier.

 

a first try

 

[Sylvain Delepierre]

Looking good so far. I like your textures. Beware of the overlapping surfaces on the roof. They will for sure cause flickering in the sim.

[Ripcord]

I have used sketchup for basic buildings. I can use google earth to build it to exact scale and save it and paint it just some color, without any super textures. Then export it to .dae and if I want to work with it further in blender I can.

Dom I love the photoreal dirt stip -- that is great work. Did you learn it over at OzX? I've been wanting to learn that and just haven't gotten that far yet.

Great stuff sir, please keep it going.

[dominique]

Looking good so far. I like your textures. Beware of the overlapping surfaces on the roof. They will for sure cause flickering in the sim.

Thank you Sylvain , I always appreciate your help. The texture come from .http://www.sketchuptexture.com/p/disclaimer-for-blog-content-www.html

 

The two overlapping sheets were made to give some depth  and a shantytown look to the model. Time to put them into the Converter grinder and have a look in the sim even if it is not finished, to learn that kind of pitfall.

 

Would you keep the holes for windows/door or lay a texture on top of the plank texture ?

[dominique]

I have used sketchup for basic buildings. I can use google earth to build it to exact scale and save it and paint it just some color, without any super textures. Then export it to .dae and if I want to work with it further in blender I can.

Dom I love the photoreal dirt stip -- that is great work. Did you learn it over at OzX? I've been wanting to learn that and just haven't gotten that far yet.

Great stuff sir, please keep it going.

 

Thank you Rip.

 

No I didn't go to the OzX forum, just a couple of looks at FSdeveloppers and the SbuildersX forum. I am learning the trade by myself, trials and errors, using a background pic from GE out of which I cut what I needed then recolored it with PS CS2 (the free version) and set it up with SBuilderX . I was famliar with CS2 but is was the first time I ever used SbuilderX, A month of work.

[Sylvain Delepierre]

Time to put them into the Converter grinder and have a look in the sim even if it is not finished, to learn that kind of pitfall.

 

Would you keep the holes for windows/door or lay a texture on top of the plank texture ?

 

 

 

Dominique,

 

The best is to try by yourself and see the resuls in the sim. That's how i learned.

 

As the french proverb says: "cent fois sur le métier tu remettras ton ouvrage"

[dominique]

 

 

As the french proverb says: "cent fois sur le métier tu remettras ton ouvrage"

 

How so very true

[Ripcord]

What is a good translation for this? 100 times on the job will hand you your work -- clunky google transation. Probably something like "Practice makes perfect" or "Keep doing it until you get it right". No, that's not exactly it either.

[dominique]

What is a good translation for this? 100 times on the job will hand you your work -- clunky google transation. Probably something like "Practice makes perfect" or "Keep doing it until you get it right". No, that's not exactly it either.

Yeah something like that !  The general meaning of "métier" is a job or a trade but not here. Here it refers to a weaving loom ("métier à tisser"). "L'ouvrage" is what is worked on the loom (the cloth). So it means, you will have to put back one hundred times what you've already done onto the loom (till you get what you want).

[dominique]

 

Dom I love the photoreal dirt stip -- that is great work.

 

A complement. The GE pic is not hi res as you can imagine, not the pro stuff that the OrbX dev have. I did some smart sharpening and added some craquelure effect besides the coloring. But I found that you havealso  to put visible vegetation low along the strip to distract a little the viewer. I tried to put patches of grass in the middle all along the strip, it was great to see but brought a thousand objects of more  to the scenery. It was a little too much...

[Ripcord]

A well-deserved compliment. Now that you have taught yourself to weave I hope to see some more 'fashion items' produced by you.

[Sylvain Delepierre]

What is a good translation for this? 100 times on the job will hand you your work -- clunky google transation. Probably something like "Practice makes perfect" or "Keep doing it until you get it right". No, that's not exactly it either.

 

It's an old proverb that comes from the middle ages I think.

 

In short undo, redo until you get it right

[dominique]

A well-deserved compliment. Now that you have taught yourself to weave I hope to see some more 'fashion items' produced by you.

You know what ? After the huts, if I can understand how to do something reasonably not too awful, I want to have the same kind of colorful drying clothes on a string that Tim or Ken made for the PNG package  ! It brings a great touch of realism to their sceneries. Love it.

[fabs79]

Thank you Sylvain , I always appreciate your help. The texture come from .http://www.sketchuptexture.com/p/disclaimer-for-blog-content-www.html

 

Would you keep the holes for windows/door or lay a texture on top of the plank texture ?

I think that depends on how important that model is for your scenery. If it very close to the runway and is clearly visible from the parking area, you might want to add some extra details like windows, a chimney maybe even something in the interior. If the model is further away and will probably only be seen from above or a long distance away, make it as simple as possible. So just four walls and a roof, use textures for windows and doors and so on. Especially if you want to use a model more than once, use simple geometry or you will hurt performance.

[dominique]

_{I think that depends on how important that model is for your scenery. If it very close to the runway and is clearly visible from the parking area, you might want to add some extra details like windows, a chimney maybe even something in the interior. If the model is further away and will probably only be seen from above or a long distance away, make it as simple as possible. So just four walls and a roof, use textures for windows and doors and so on. Especially if you want to use a model more than once, use simple geometry or you will hurt performance.}

 

OK, thanks, that is what I thought but was not sure, the added 3 geometry of the holes demanding more calculations.

[fabs79]

When you export your models and load them into model converter x, there is a button that shows you how many polygons and draw calls your model has. You can experiment with different designs and check how that influences your model's performance.

[dominique]

 I've just fired MCX for the first time this evening and I saw that nifty functionality !  With the minimize function I went from 21 to 9 drawcalls, I could do better than that still    !

[Sylvain Delepierre]

 I've just fired MCX for the first time this evening and I saw that nifty functionality !  With the minimize function I went from 21 to 9 drawcalls, I could do better than that still    !

 

9 drawcalls for just one building is way too much. For a small building you should have only 1 drawcall. You need to prepare 1 BMP file of 1024x1024pixels and position all your textures on it. After that you will have to reposition each texture accurately in Sketchup

[fabs79]

9 drawcalls for just one building is way too much. For a small building you should have only 1 drawcall. You need to prepare 1 BMP file of 1024x1024pixels and position all your textures on it. After that you will have to reposition each texture accurately in Sketchup

 

+1 to what sylvain said. 9 drawcalls may not seem much, but if you place dozens or hundreds of buildings with 9 drawcalls each your GPU will surrender sooner or later. The need to reduce drawcalls as much as possible is what makes texturing objects in Sketchup so tedious. You need to create a single file called a texture sheet. (can be .bmp, .jpg or whatever, Model Converter X can export all those to the .dds format. It should be a power of 2, that is 256x256; 512x512 or 1024x1024 and so on because FSX models cannot handle other formats, although MCX can convert other dimensions into a power of 2 but it`s not very effective). Than you place all your textures onto that sheet, you´ll get the best results if the relative dimensions of your textures match your object dimensions later. That means if you have a door that is 2x1 meters and your door texture is 200x100 pixels; if you create a window that is 1x1 meter the window texture should be 100x100 pixels and not something like 333x333 or the like, it saves you time resizing the textures in Sketchup later. Than you open your model in sketchup and put the same texture sheet on every single face of your object (also the inner faces that you won´t see later, if you leave a face "blank" the export function will create a color material for it which will be another drawcall). This will look weird until you edit the texture of every face and align it so every part of the texture sheet is in its correct place. This took me hours before I got the hang of it after a while. if you want I can try to find the old source files (Sketchup models and texture sheets) that I used for my scenery and mail them to you so you can see what I mean.

 

Cheers, Fabian

[fabs79]

BTW this is a good resource for textures:

 

www.textures.com

 

It`s free and their terms of use allow the textures to be used in 3D models for freeware projects.

[Tim Harris]

Hi everyone,

 

Scenery development discussion is actually outside of the scope of the Orbx support forums, and as this topic has now strayed away from the original question of which myself and Ken have both answered, so I will suggest politely that this is continued over at the FSdeveloper forums: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/

 

@ Dom, you are always welcome to PM myself or Ken if you have any specific PNG related questions

 

Cheers!

 

Tim.

[fabs79]

Sorry Tim, I was drifting away from the OT. I´m not visiting the fsdeveloper.com forums very often but I guess you`re right that those are more appropriate for discussions like these.

[dominique]

Hi everyone,

 

Scenery development discussion is actually outside of the scope of the Orbx support forums, and as this topic has now strayed away from the original question of which myself and Ken have both answered, so I will suggest politely that this is continued over at the FSdeveloper forums: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/

 

@ Dom, you are always welcome to PM myself or Ken if you have any specific PNG related questions

 

Cheers!

 

Tim.

 

Well Tim, I'm more interested by flight simulation scenery recipes than cooking , sorry ! Thanks for the offer to help more, appreciated.

 

Fabian, Sylvain, Ripcord, thank you for your contributions. I understand OrbX point of view (no complaint !) but it is a little frustrating as the conversation was interesting, isn't  it ?

 

 So, I decided to set up a small forum to followup and more for all those OrbXlanders willing to put their hands in the engine to make PNG strips or elsewhere but also share a little their experiences or fun with the sims of the FS family. I hope to give the URL of that brand new forum called Strips  is OK with the moderators. I've never setup or run a forum so be indulgent but the validation process should be smooth. Keep in mind that I live in UTC+1. If any problem drop me a PM.

 

http://strips.proboards.com/