Airport creation with 3DSMax following the wiki tuto

  • Dear IPACS team,

    I took the chance this week-end trying to add my first aerodrome to AFS2 following the Wiki instructions for 3DSMax.

    I managed to create and texture the ground polys for the runway, using the Kingman textures.

    The mesh worked fine, nicely flattening the bumps on both the concrete and the grass runways.

    However I get an ugly, misplaced runway in AFS2, while it is quite perfectly aligned to the background texture in 3DSMax, everything being nicely aligned to the true north.

    Any idea what went wrong ?

    [Blocked Image: https://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/393072aeroflyfs22017121723392365.jpg]


    [Blocked Image: https://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/951590LSGYrwy.jpg]

    Thank you in advance to whoever can help me...

    Cheers

    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

  • Have you done the alignment trick using the coordinates in FSET and making the reference image from it.

    Also, make sure that you set up 3DS Max properly to reflect 1 unit = 1 meter.

    Once you create the proper reference image it's easy to align everything to correct the issue that you are having here.

    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

  • Have you done the alignment trick using the coordinates in FSET and making the reference image from it.

    Also, make sure that you set up 3DS Max properly to reflect 1 unit = 1 meter.

    Once you create the proper reference image it's easy to align everything to correct the issue that you are having here.

    Thank you for your help,

    Well yes, I set 1 unit =1m and aligned with the FSET coordinates following the tuto, at least that's what I believe I did, because something obviously went wrong.

    My ground picture seems to align nicely in 3DSMax, it doesn't look distorted or tilted. It's the same picture I used for the GeoConvert insert seen in AFS2.

    I'll check again.

    BTW 2 more questions :

    1) the 3DSMax workflow seems to be a sequence of "modifiers" to add to the initial drawing in order to eventually get a mesh of textured polygons (runway) and invisible polygons (outside). Selecting a previous modifier in the hierarchy for checking/editing sends a warning that editing modifiers could cause oddities.

    So, what is your recommendation here ? Can we check and/or edit sublayers of modifiers (for instance change the texture or my polygon alignment) ? Or should we systematically restart from an earlier level because once you add a modifier the previous ones shouldn't get edited anymore?

    2) I'm not familiar with 3DSMax, but had a lot of troubles setting a simple rectangular shape on my runway. I couldn't figure out how to simply click and drag corners of my shape to graphically make them fit to the background picture. I had to manually set the real runways dimensions in meters and move it above the background, but I'm sure there must be a way to work graphically, isn't there ?

    Thanks in advance

    Steve: yes, definitely better start with a simple airfield, the workflow in 3DSMax is intricate enough for a first row until you start figuring out the general philosophy. The fact the tuto refers to menus of an older 3DSMax version doesn't make it easier...

    Cheers

    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

    Edited 2 times, last by Trespassers (December 18, 2017 at 11:27 AM).

  • BTW 2 more questions :

    1) (...) Can we check and/or edit sublayers of modifiers (for instance change the texture or my polygon alignment) ? Or should we systematically restart from an earlier level because once you add a modifier the previous ones shouldn't get edited anymore?

    2) (...)I couldn't figure out how to simply click and drag corners of my shape to graphically make them fit to the background picture. (...) but I'm sure there must be a way to work graphically, isn't there ?

    Hi gents,

    Does anybody have an answer to these 2 questions?

    Thanks in advance

    Best regards...

    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

  • Ok, I found out a mixup in X/Y in my background picture was the cause for this misplacement.

    Thank you in advance to whoever can propose answers to my questions above.

    Cheers

    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

  • Hi Antoine

    Whilst its nice to have sublayers of modifiers I tend to collapse the stack as it makes things easier for me. Simply convert the object to a edit poly and carry on. You can edit lower down in the stack but its effect will be passed up the chain. It can effect UV's etc so be careful, which is why I collapse things.

    To manually change to size of an object or shape you need to click the scale icon and pull the axis arrows. Make sure you select just one arrow as it can scale in more than one direction without you knowing. You can also use the scale option to align vertex that may have strayed if your trying to keep them in a straight line, simply select the verts you want aligning and scale them down in the axis you want., scale them down to zero and they will all be aligned..Right clicking on any of the move/rotate/scale boxes brings up a dialog where you can enter absolute values if you know them. Say you want to alight to verts, select the one thats correct, right click move icon box copy the x,y, or z that you want, select the other vert and paste in the figure from the first vert.

    Steve