109 replies to this topic

[TechnicolorYawn]

wildwobby, on Nov 14 2005, 12:51 AM, said:

OMG!!!
Did you do the whole scenery like this? or combine it later?!?!?!

This is amazing!!!!

Thanks

With small airports, I make the whole thing like this, in one scene, as its easier to see how everything fits together in relation to each other. It also lets me join everything up without any gaps.

If I was doing a larger airport using this technique, you'd start to run into trouble with frame-rates and LODs (levels of detail). With the whole thing as one big object, FS can only draw the whole thing at the same LOD. This is ok when the entire airport is only a mile by a quater mile, but for something like Dubai (which is around 40 miles across at one point) you'd need to have FS draw different parts with different LODs to keep things running smoothly, so you'd have to split it up into different parts.

This is one of the reasons I'm sticking to small to mid-size airports for now, as I really enjoy making them all as one scene.

[Vlad]

Very nice Chris! Coming along beautifully.

Edited by Vlad, 15 November 2005 - 09:44 AM.

[Goose]

ok, I am making some KSQL senery and you said make it in one sence, so how do i get everything to scale. And what do i need to do that?

[AlfaSIM-OCX]

Is this great stuff free of payware? And where can I get it...

Alex

[TechnicolorYawn]

It'll be freeware, and available on the usual download sites.

To get everything to scale, I use a map projected onto a square underneath my scenery. The I just build on the map to ensure everything is in the right place.

[AlfaSIM-OCX]

You have some outstanding graphics skills. A+. I can do art and stuff like that also, but I am way too lazy. At this moment I am missing MATH 316U (Linear Algebra).

Alex

[Goose]

TechnicolorYawn, on Nov 16 2005, 02:59 AM, said:

It'll be freeware, and available on the usual download sites.

To get everything to scale, I use a map projected onto a square underneath my scenery. The I just build on the map to ensure everything is in the right place.

ok thanks, how do i get the map progected? And what kind of image do you recomend?

Edited by Goose, 16 November 2005 - 06:59 PM.

[TechnicolorYawn]

Create a big plane, and make a texture of the map to put on it.

Then select the map object, right click, and choose Freeze Selection. This stops it being selected.

[Goose]

Sorry but how do i texture?

Never mind i got it.

Edited by Goose, 16 November 2005 - 09:20 PM.

[TechnicolorYawn]

I've cracked the night textures. I have a friend who's a design student, and is using 3DSMax! And he's been letting me at it in the evenings..

I can now render my scene, and use that to make amazingly realistic night textures, with shadows and everything. I've found that 3DS has a tool called 'render to texture' where you can light an object and then 'bake' all the lighting effects onto the texture. As you can see it works brilliantly

Check out the shadow of the streelight on the building.

Edited by TechnicolorYawn, 17 November 2005 - 05:46 PM.

[Goose]

those look really good.

[TechnicolorYawn]

[zencat]

Spectacular!

[Micah]

That lighting is amazing

[TechnicolorYawn]

Edited by TechnicolorYawn, 19 November 2005 - 10:46 AM.

[ucantcme]

Looking very good TCY...SO you used GMAX for all that?

[TechnicolorYawn]

Yeah - everything you can see there is made with Gmax, with the excpetion of the lights.

[RoniisH]

looks absolutely outstanding. that lightning is absolutely outstanding TCY

[db07mufan]

oh my god, thats really payware quality.

your a pro! Love the night effect.

Do you mean i can get those night textures by just using 3D studio Max without redrwawing all the textures altogether?

[TechnicolorYawn]

You need a bit of fiddling in a Paint package to get the night textures.

First of all, I get everything together in the same scene in 3DS, and add lights of the appropriate type.

Then, for the buildings I use 'render to texture' which will unwrap the object into a flat image, and light wach part accordingly. From this I can cut each part out and resize it to fit my original day texture in Gmax. You could just use the unwrapped texture mapped onto the original object, but I created all the objects in Gmax before I had a go in 3DS (I only have access to that at weekends and some evenings) so a bit of messing about is needed.

For the ground parts, I just make each part the oly peice visible to the camera (so other objects don't get in the way) and render the top view. Then I save the resulting image, cut out the peice I want and use that as a Gmax texture.