15 replies to this topic

[mobisone]

ha ha ha my first creation in GMAX! i made a proper water tower for PADL
the largest landmark in Dillingham Alaska!

And a great Thanks to Technicolor Yawn for his help in teaching me!
      

[TechnicolorYawn]

Woo!!! Well done!


This is just the start - now begins the swearing, the drinking, the staying up till 5am...

[Capt. Bulb]

A sharp bank to the left is advised

Well done on your success, im looking forward to more creations from you!

[mobisone]

TechnicolorYawn, on Jun 21 2006, 02:36 PM, said:

Woo!!! Well done!


This is just the start - now begins the swearing, the drinking, the staying up till 5am...

ROFLOL that and Pulling Hair out! is that why your hair looks spikey ?

my next project is to build the old MARKAIR building at the PADL airport.
im gonna try and use photoreal textures from digital camra shots i took of the building.

      

[Capt. Bulb]

mobisone, on Jun 21 2006, 02:58 PM, said:

TechnicolorYawn, on Jun 21 2006, 02:36 PM, said:

Woo!!! Well done!


This is just the start - now begins the swearing, the drinking, the staying up till 5am...

ROFLOL that and Pulling Hair out! is that why your hair looks spikey ?

my next project is to build the old MARKAIR building at the PADL airport.
im gonna try and use photoreal textures from digital camra shots i took of the building.

      

Sounds like a big leap, good luck.

[Skydvdan]

TechnicolorYawn, on Jun 21 2006, 02:36 PM, said:

Woo!!! Well done!


This is just the start - now begins the swearing, the drinking, the staying up till 5am...

ROFLMAO!!!!

If that doesn't describe it to a tee, I don't know what does.

I have to send this to my buddy!!!!

[IBtheSarge]

TechnicolorYawn, on Jun 21 2006, 03:36 PM, said:

This is just the start - now begins the swearing, the drinking, the staying up till 5am...

And the gallons and gallons of caffeine to stay awake to finish just "one more little item, THEN I'll go to bed."  

[Skydvdan]

sarge, on Jun 22 2006, 09:03 AM, said:

TechnicolorYawn, on Jun 21 2006, 03:36 PM, said:

This is just the start - now begins the swearing, the drinking, the staying up till 5am...

And the gallons and gallons of caffeine to stay awake to finish just "one more little item, THEN I'll go to bed."  

LMAO!!!  How true.  I'll have a few of those this weekend.  Maybe even tonight.

[IBtheSarge]

Skydvdan, on Jun 22 2006, 10:22 AM, said:

sarge, on Jun 22 2006, 09:03 AM, said:

TechnicolorYawn, on Jun 21 2006, 03:36 PM, said:

This is just the start - now begins the swearing, the drinking, the staying up till 5am...

And the gallons and gallons of caffeine to stay awake to finish just "one more little item, THEN I'll go to bed."  

LMAO!!!  How true.  I'll have a few of those this weekend.  Maybe even tonight.

She filing the papers for the divorce tomorrow morning?
        

[Skydvdan]

sarge, on Jun 22 2006, 10:48 AM, said:

Skydvdan, on Jun 22 2006, 10:22 AM, said:

sarge, on Jun 22 2006, 09:03 AM, said:

TechnicolorYawn, on Jun 21 2006, 03:36 PM, said:

This is just the start - now begins the swearing, the drinking, the staying up till 5am...

And the gallons and gallons of caffeine to stay awake to finish just "one more little item, THEN I'll go to bed."  

LMAO!!!  How true.  I'll have a few of those this weekend.  Maybe even tonight.

She filing the papers for the divorce tomorrow morning?
        

Nah, I usually wait for her and the baby to go to bed around 8ish..

Edited by Skydvdan, 22 June 2006 - 11:50 AM.

[mobisone]

YAAAAA!
i passed the house tutorial for GMAX!

wow    that was hard work! LOL

weird thing, i faced my plane the same was i normaly do to square it up with the airport,
and it came out 45* off!

Anyway now i know how to apply advanced textures!
and form model!

[IBtheSarge]

mobisone, on Jun 23 2006, 03:11 PM, said:

YAAAAA!
i passed the house tutorial for GMAX!

Okay; now, how did you place it in the scenery?  Exported the object as a BGL with the lat/lon/hdg hard-coded into the BGL?

Keep going, you're doing good ..... BUT when you're ready to start placing objects, you're going to need to export it as an MDL, put it in a LibObj file, and then call it from the LibObj file with XML or one of the scenery placement programs like EZ-Scenery or Rwy 12 or SBuilder.  Otherwise, you will need a BGL for each copy of the object you place (1 copy, 1 BGL; 10 copies, 10 BGLs).  Keep that in the back of your mind; it WILL come into play later.

For now, though, it seems you're working your way through the tutorial in fine shape.  Congrats!  You've got more patience than I do.  

[TechnicolorYawn]

That doesn't matter too much - as far as I'm aware, when FS generates the ground objects, it melds all the local bgls into one scenery file in memory. Having lots of bgls doesn't create problems for FS, it just means slightly messy installations.

[IBtheSarge]

TechnicolorYawn, on Jun 24 2006, 09:28 AM, said:

That doesn't matter too much - as far as I'm aware, when FS generates the ground objects, it melds all the local bgls into one scenery file in memory. Having lots of bgls doesn't create problems for FS, it just means slightly messy installations.

The installation and rendering isn't the problem ..... but (personally) I'm a lot more likely to download and install a package where the originator minimized the filesize.  All those BGLs (instead of one LibObj file and one placement BGL) do add to the overall filesize, increasing the download time.

My packages range from 3mB - 10mB, depending on what I've included in the package.  If I were to have one BGL per placement, that size could easily range from 5mB - 15mB due to the number of objects I place in the scenery.  Each BGL has to contain the entirety of the object, versus one LibObj BGL with all the objects, once, and a placement BGL with the different lat/lon/hdg entries.

Of course, if you're not going to distribute the design, it really doesn't matter.  

Again, however; this isn't something he needs to worry about now, just keep in the back of his head for future reference.  Pretty good job he's got going there     Isn't it GREAT to see someone actually doing the tutorials instead of asking one of us to post the tutorial in reply to questions in these forums?

Edited by sarge, 24 June 2006 - 10:01 AM.

[Katahu]

sarge, on Jun 23 2006, 03:32 PM, said:

mobisone, on Jun 23 2006, 03:11 PM, said:

YAAAAA!
i passed the house tutorial for GMAX!

Okay; now, how did you place it in the scenery?  Exported the object as a BGL with the lat/lon/hdg hard-coded into the BGL?

Keep going, you're doing good ..... BUT when you're ready to start placing objects, you're going to need to export it as an MDL, put it in a LibObj file, and then call it from the LibObj file with XML or one of the scenery placement programs like EZ-Scenery or Rwy 12 or SBuilder.  Otherwise, you will need a BGL for each copy of the object you place (1 copy, 1 BGL; 10 copies, 10 BGLs).  Keep that in the back of your mind; it WILL come into play later.

For now, though, it seems you're working your way through the tutorial in fine shape.  Congrats!  You've got more patience than I do.  

Actually, you "don't" need to go through all that. If you carefully understand and read the SDKs provided by M$ [ie: gmax_gamepack_sdk], then you'll see that the concept of exporting the model from Gmax to FS9 is rather simple.

1. After mainly exporting usig Gmax, there will be a handful of files created by Makemdl.
2. Edit the *.xml [with notepad] file created by Makemdl [this is where you input the Lat and lon coordinates and well as height and direction].
3. Use the bgl compiler [included with the BGL Compile SDK] through a simple command code using the MS-DOS prompt. This will allow the compiler to see where the files are so that it can put the pieces together like a jig saw puzzle. Thus resulting in a finished and read-to-use *.bgl file for FS9 to understand.

No need to go through the complex process of using one third-party software just so that have to export the file "again" to yet "another" third-party software just to input the coordinates.

My advice though:

When using the SDK manuals, ignore the step that tells you to copy the bglcomp.exe to another folder. Keep it where it is and use it from there. Trust me, it worked for me.

[IBtheSarge]

Katahu, on Jun 26 2006, 02:12 PM, said:

1. After mainly exporting usig Gmax, there will be a handful of files created by Makemdl.
2. Edit the *.xml [with notepad] file created by Makemdl [this is where you input the Lat and lon coordinates and well as height and direction].

Per mdl created? or can you specify multiple locations for that one mdl in the xml that you edit?  If it's per mdl and you only want one copy of the object in the scenery, you'd only have one BGL generated.  But, if you want 30 copies of the object in the scenery, can you edit the .xml to specify all 30 locations, 30 different elevations, and 30 different headings so it's all in that one BGL? or would you have to do it 30 times and create one BGL for each placement?

With a Library Object file containing ALL of the mdls you create, you only need one BGL that contains all the data for all of the mdls you will use, and one BGL with all of the different locations where you want them to appear.  Two BGLS -- one LibObj and one placement -- for two dozen, 100, or 500 mdl objects of any mix, variety, or quantity.

Haven't worked that much with the more intricate details of the makeMDL_SDK; so if I can place 30 copies of one object, 10 copies of another object, 6 copies of a third object, 1 copy each of 8 other objects, and 12 copies of yet another object in a single BGL using the _SDK, I'll give it a try.

Edited by sarge, 26 June 2006 - 02:09 PM.