So I wanna build an airport

1st Official Post

    Hi

    So I wanna build an airport, seemed like a good idea at the time, groan. One mans dream and quickly a nightmare.

    I have managed to work out how to import buildings and some of the airfield data (plugins didn't seem to work so i added them manually using notepad++). Took me ages to get the scale right in the modelling program. I converted the satellite data using geoconvert and geoconvert helper (thanks to all), set up my scene using max and the real life runway size. Positioned a background using the runway as reference, positioned some small cubes at the corners of a large building, exported and looked in the sim, quite a long way out. spent some time repositing the cubes till they lined up on the satelite images in the sim, then rescaled the modelling background image to match the cubes and the airfield reference point cube.

    Airfield reference cube, use this to locate the airport in the sim and make sure its at the 0,0 in the modelling program. This should also be the same as real life location, these detals were added to the TMC file manually

    Cannot get ground/runway or decals into the sim, no matter what I do.

    Decals, are they exported as scene or a model, not clear in tutorial, but didn't work either way. Probably a material thing or vertex weight.

    Ground/runway, is it a child of anything like objects are or just by itself

    Material naming is a real headache and a bit of joke.

    Tutorials are ok to a point, they give differing information specially in the material department

    Well thats it for now and if there are any other airport builders out there give me a shout. Its difficult on my own.

    Steve

    PS, anyone know how to slew in fs2, would save me having to fly a cessna around all the time

    • Official Post

    What 3D modelling application are you using?

    I'm going to be releasing a step by step tutorial on how to do the entire process in 3DS Max. Currently, it's not optimal if you are trying to build an airport in AC3D but that will be improved some over time.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    Quote from drhotwing1

    What 3D modelling application are you using?

    I'm going to be releasing a step by step tutorial on how to do the entire process in 3DS Max. Currently, it's not optimal if you are trying to build an airport in AC3D but that will be improved some over time.

    For those who want to make buildings, terminals, etc., would have to have a copy of 3DS Max?. Seems to be quite expensive!.

    Any hint?.

    Cheers, Ed

    • Official Post

    The processes will be improved to use AC3D for this in the future. I believe you can get a copy of AC3D for $89. AC3D will work for modelling but it just doesn't have the features as Max or Cinema 4D.

    To make a complete airport in Cinema 4D or Max you need to use vertex coloring for the groundpoly and use decals for the runway markings, taxi lines, etc.

    Currently, to make a complete airport in AC3D you will need to make a ground layer (ground), then an image layer (grd), then place your models on top (obj). This can be done but it's somewhat piecemealed.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    Quote from edpatino

    If we could get a copy of AC3D for about $89, which seems reasonable (to me, of course), could it be possible to have your tutorial for AC3D?. I'm afraid very few people would benefit from a tutorial in 3DS Max or Cinema 4D.

    Cheers, Ed

    I have to concur with Ed; I'm looking at an AC3D purchase for scenery work on airports and my hometown city models, but cannot justify the price of 3DS Max or Cinema 4D. Hope to see a tutorial on AC3D soon...

    Ken

    HI

    Long time max user, my normal thing is aircraft development so this scenery is proving somewhat entertaining.

    Managed to get the runway to show up, turned out it was either using red for the vertex colour or the inclusion of the ambient map, big thanks to Hartman for the info.

    • Official Post

    Once the airport SDK is updated to make it a bit easier for AC3D users a tutorial will surely follow that explains everything. We didn't publish the tutorials for the current process simply because we know that it's not the ideal way to get airports into Aerofly, and there are a bunch of issues and graphical anomalies the current way.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    Hi

    To the developers and wizards

    Any Idea what the strange textures are here. All I have done is extrude an edge from the taxiway you can see and I have then extruded out a shape for the apron using the edges I formed. This is how I made the taxiway and that works fine mostly, I do have this pattern at one highspeed taxi. They all share the same material.

    Also some triangular edges are visible on runway, taxiways, as if the underlaying mesh is poking through

    Thanks

    • Official Post
    Quote from larrylynx

    Hi

    To the developers and wizards

    Any Idea what the strange textures are here. All I have done is extrude an edge from the taxiway you can see and I have then extruded out a shape for the apron using the edges I formed. This is how I made the taxiway and that works fine mostly, I do have this pattern at one highspeed taxi. They all share the same material.

    Also some triangular edges are visible on runway, taxiways, as if the underlaying mesh is poking through

    Thanks

    Can you please tell me what modelling program you are using?

    There are quote a few steps to get this to work properly no matter which program you are using.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    Quote from larrylynx

    Hi

    To the developers and wizards

    Any Idea what the strange textures are here. All I have done is extrude an edge from the taxiway you can see and I have then extruded out a shape for the apron using the edges I formed. This is how I made the taxiway and that works fine mostly, I do have this pattern at one highspeed taxi. They all share the same material.

    Thanks

    Ah that's a SCIF, since it's a "civilian" sim, they appear like this automatically, you're not supposed to know or see what's there really8o

    (of course I'm joking, I really have no idea. I haven't tackled airport making yet.)

    Michael

    Hi airport builders,

    if you want to use AC3D instead of 3Dmax or Cinema4D, please give us some more time.
    Due to vacation we have shifted the process and tutorials to the coming weeks.

    But the plan comprises building of a runway, which smooths the elevation model and removes bumps and steps.

    Usage of the object catalogue to place buildings into the scenery and even cultivation (kind of autogen).

    Of course you can already manually import 3D objects from AC3D into aerofly, as I have shown with the NAS Whidbey scenery.

    The tutorial is here:

    https://www.aerofly.com/aerofly_fs_2/d…/sdk:scenerydev

    Rodeo

    HI Jeff

    I am a max user, managed to work out the problem, the more I added polygons the worse the uv mapping became, I simply applied a new uv mapping modifier and everything worked ok.

    I have just finished the ground for around the runway/taxi etc, not yet textured or imported so another headache looming. Now i know why i love modelling, pushing all those vertices around, great fun.

    Not sure if I should but I have broken the model into many parts, makes modelling far easier and more manageable. I can always attach things later. it seems to import into the sim just fine, except for those small triangle artifacts. Maybe thats the result of many parts and insufficient auto height.

    Well bed time for me

    Steve

    • Official Post

    OK, there is a very specific way to do this in 3DS Max. I'm working on a tutorial right now. Please give me a little bit more time with it. I will give you a general push in the right direction though (note: very general). Keep in mind that there are a lot of steps in between.

    1) keep your models (objects), groundpoly (the ground), and decals (your runway/taxiway lines etc.) as separate jobs yet all in the same project.

    2) Capture a reference image of the airport that you are working on, make a plain the proper size and add the texture image of that capture to it. There is a good process that I use for this that will line everything on top up perfectly when converted over to Aerofly.

    3) begin to make your models of your hangars, terminal, buildings, etc. and place them in their proper spots on the reference image

    4)The models need to be named individually and textured to meet your needs then all grouped up. The group should be xx_obj (this is what you will export for your airport models tgi. all textures must be in your airport project folder along with the tgi that you exported from this group

    5) Next is making your groundpoly. Here's the quick and dirty of the groundpoly. The groundpoly is made up by making splines for your outside perimeter, your apron, and your runway(s), then converted to polys that have cuts so that they are accept textures (there are a bunch of steps for this that will be outlined in my tutorial). The groundpoly will then use vertex coloring (black and red); simply put, red colored areas show whatever texture you have assigned to that area, and black will be transparent areas showing only what's underneath in Aerofly (geoconverted area, DLC area, or default scenery) .

    Once you complete the groundpoly it needs to be named xx_runway. The export selected as xx_rwy and added to your tsc file

    6) what ever textures that you used for your groundpoly must also be added to your project folder

    7) Then is your decals. decals are basically flat plain objects that you can add textures to, combined together and given __priority0-9 numbers based on which decal overlaps which. Once finished with this you can export it as xx_decal

    8) add everything together in the project folder and run the converter_config tool. Your results will be in your scenery\places folder and should all line up in Aerofly.

    My step-by-step will tell you everything about this from start to finish in detail. If you are familiar with how 3DS Max works, this entire process isn't as hard as it actually sounds.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    Thanks for that. We'll keep waiting.

    Cheers, Ed

    Hi Jeff

    Looking frward to the tutorial, may I ask for a lengthy section on material naming. Please remember to include the Ambient map trick, that caught me out for some time till I did some forum searching

    Not a great fan of spline modelling nor booleans for that matter, can leave long triangle polygons. Prefer to use edge extruding, that way I can control where the polygons are put, make for a cleaner mesh. I used to develop aircraft for Prosim737/A320 and no one ever noticed all the complex animation but were very vocal about a stray polygon causing shading errors.

    Is it mandatory for the ground to be one object, ie runway, aprons etc all stitched together or can they be separate objects. I am presently using separate objects then selecting all these objects and exporting as the runway file, egpp_liverpool_rwy.tgi in my case. Seems to work ok but I do notice odd triangle shading errors, guess its a common theme today =O. All vertices are snapped together so in theory the meshes cover the same place just not as one

    Steve

    • Official Post
    Quote from larrylynx

    Hi Jeff

    Looking frward to the tutorial, may I ask for a lengthy section on material naming. Please remember to include the Ambient map trick, that caught me out for some time till I did some forum searching

    Not a great fan of spline modelling nor booleans for that matter, can leave long triangle polygons. Prefer to use edge extruding, that way I can control where the polygons are put, make for a cleaner mesh. I used to develop aircraft for Prosim737/A320 and no one ever noticed all the complex animation but were very vocal about a stray polygon causing shading errors.

    Is it mandatory for the ground to be one object, ie runway, aprons etc all stitched together or can they be separate objects. I am presently using separate objects then selecting all these objects and exporting as the runway file, egpp_liverpool_rwy.tgi in my case. Seems to work ok but I do notice odd triangle shading errors, guess its a common theme today =O. All vertices are snapped together so in theory the meshes cover the same place just not as one

    Steve

    Steve,

    yes the tutorial will include texturing and texture naming as they need to be specific. Also the ambient texture trick.

    We don't use 'boolean' at all as that tool is rather touchy.

    As for the ground, since the ground gets exported as one tgi it's much simpler to just stitch it all together. I will show you a technique to follow to make all of that easy. It's all in the material ID's and multi-texturing.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    • Official Post

    Hi, I'm not an expert on this but I have written the original SDK tutorial for scenery, so I know a little bit....

    The sunken terrain is normal, it is lowered so that clipping with you mesh is minimized. As far as I remember you need to reduce the vertex weight to zero on the parts of your mesh that shall keep the original ground photo texture. Then, I think, the terrain is only sunken down below the area with vertex weight 1.0...

    Can you do me a favor and try to collide with your ground mesh outside of the runway and taxiway mesh? I think you will collide with the mesh and it is just transparent because it doesn't seem to have a texture...

    Rodeo and drhotwing1 (IPACS) will probably have more to add to this.