Carbon Cub

It seems like the textured areas are completely black when in shadow, when sun is shining on them they look correct. Could this be related to texture format?

Quote from Tomfa

Fantastic job bravo!

Just a suggestion, wouldn't it be better to crop the GPS more upwards?, in my opinion I see it too low.

Thanks a lot!😀 Yes I think that should be possible to change. Now the gps is just static, but the placeholder position can be moved.

Quote from aenbacka

It seems like the textured areas are completely black when in shadow, when sun is shining on them they look correct. Could this be related to texture format?

Have you tested this with different shadow settings?

Quote from TomB

Have you tested this with different shadow settings?

Just by using different time of days and takeoff directions.

Here you can see two examples, taken in opposite runway directions; having the sun coming in directly will display the panel correctly, but in opposite direction the panel instruments are black.

Just a wild guess, is there a normal map defined for the instrument panel and glass surface of instruments?

Quote from jayeye2011

Just a wild guess, is there a normal map defined for the instrument panel and glass surface of instruments?

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That was a good guess, could indeed be the problem. Thanks gonna check😀

Apparently Blender can use many different types of maps, who knew? What each does, your guess is better than mine. Does AFS4 use them, again your guess is better than mine.

How do you generate them? Find a youtube video (a lot are done with gimp or similar programs)

I haven't found I got on very well using a bump map on the cockpit inside, just a reflection map and specular map with an Ambient occlusion map blended into the colour texture. Looks ok on my models I felt. You can always blend metal textures into the colour, specular and reflection textures to give it a more lived in look.

KR Matt

Quote from MDIvey

I haven't found I got on very well using a bump map on the cockpit inside, just a reflection map and specular map with an Ambient occlusion map blended into the colour texture. Looks ok on my models I felt. You can always blend metal textures into the colour, specular and reflection textures to give it a more lived in look.

KR Matt

Thanks for the info We have been investigating the texturing issue, and it seems to be related to the illumination / emissive textures. Attached is an example of the dashboard illumination texture used, does it seem to be in correct format?

Have you looked at the DR400 textures supplied in the SDK? It was looking at those that helped me to work out what to do.

That does not look right for a texture with _illumination suffix.... more like a _light one. Both the illumination and the light texture are involved with how the object looks in the dark when the lights are on. It shouldn't have any effect how it looks in daylight.

To be specific about those two textures... the illumination texture is used to apply a diffuse lighting effect to the cockpit interior, and requires a point light to be set up for it in the TMD. The light textures is for lit up labels on gauges, buttons & dials etc, which are switched on by the panel light. I didn't bother with using the illumination, I just used the light textures, to light up all the dials and buttons etc for night flying... and that suited the Military style aircraft I was working on.

More critical to how the object looks in daylight are the color, ambient, normal, reflection, specular and specular alpha textures:

Color.... obvious this is your repaint texturing

ambient... Ambient shading application. I really like how this make things look. Its a lot of extra work because everything needs mapping out single space and then rendering the AO map for each object... which can take quite a while... I think my Spitfire fuselage object took about a half hour. When the grey scale AO mapping is done it can blended over a white background and you have your ambient texture.

Normal.... bump mapping of panel lines, Rivets fabric, wood and surface texture. Created from a greyscale (but RGB) texture by a photoshop plugin in my case (but other software options are available for that). I only use this for external objects. It does not work for me on internal surfaces or transparent items like canopy glass.

specular and specular alpha... greyscale textures work together to produce shine. On Spit both where very dark to give matt finish. It seems to me darker grey is less shine, lighter grey more shine. These snippets from another model so you can actually see something...

specular alpha

reflection... This texture creates reflection when sunlit. Greyscale blended over a red back ground. Lighter, More Red and saturated more reflection. Darker, less red less reflection seems to be rule. Here is a snippet from Navy Buffalo where I wanted paintwork matt and metal shiny reflective..

light... mostly a black background with details in red or whatever colour you want the labels lit up in

Anyway hope this is of some help

KR Matt

Quote from MDIvey

Have you looked at the DR400 textures supplied in the SDK? It was looking at those that helped me to work out what to do.

That does not look right for a texture with _illumination suffix.... more like a _light one. Both the illumination and the light texture are involved with how the object looks in the dark when the lights are on. It shouldn't have any effect how it looks in daylight.

To be specific about those two textures... the illumination texture is used to apply a diffuse lighting effect to the cockpit interior, and requires a point light to be set up for it in the TMD. The light textures is for lit up labels on gauges, buttons & dials etc, which are switched on by the panel light. I didn't bother with using the illumination, I just used the light textures, to light up all the dials and buttons etc for night flying... and that suited the Military style aircraft I was working on.

More critical to how the object looks in daylight are the color, ambient, normal, reflection, specular and specular alpha textures:

Color.... obvious this is your repaint texturing

ambient... Ambient shading application. I really like how this make things look. Its a lot of extra work because everything needs mapping out single space and then rendering the AO map for each object... which can take quite a while... I think my Spitfire fuselage object took about a half hour. When the grey scale AO mapping is done it can blended over a white background and you have your ambient texture.

Normal.... bump mapping of panel lines, Rivets fabric, wood and surface texture. Created from a greyscale (but RGB) texture by a photoshop plugin in my case (but other software options are available for that). I only use this for external objects. It does not work for me on internal surfaces or transparent items like canopy glass.

specular and specular alpha... greyscale textures work together to produce shine. On Spit both where very dark to give matt finish. It seems to me darker grey is less shine, lighter grey more shine. These snippets from another model so you can actually see something...

specular alpha

reflection... This texture creates reflection when sunlit. Greyscale blended over a red back ground. Lighter, More Red and saturated more reflection. Darker, less red less reflection seems to be rule. Here is a snippet from Navy Buffalo where I wanted paintwork matt and metal shiny reflective..

light... mostly a black background with details in red or whatever colour you want the labels lit up in

Anyway hope this is of some help

KR Matt

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Matt,

Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation, it helped me get a much better understanding of the purpose of all the different textures. Concerning the illumination, it could that the missing light source could explain the behavior we have seen with the cockpit dashboard.

BR,

Andreas

Little followup; we tried to export the example DR400 aircraft from the sdk using the Blender export plugin, and got the same issue with illumination (black cockpit areas). See picture below. Is this some issue with Blender?

It could be a problem with IPACS blender export, but maybe check you actually have the panel lights switched on. These are the panel and instrument light switches... include a variable brightness... Left is panel, right is instrument

with panel light off and instrument on it looks like this...

with panel light fully bright looks like this...

KR Matt

Quote from MDIvey

It could be a problem with IPACS blender export, but maybe check you actually have the panel lights switched on. These are the panel and instrument light switches... include a variable brightness... Left is panel, right is instrument

with panel light off and instrument on it looks like this...

with panel light fully bright looks like this...

KR Matt

Display More

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the suggestion, gonna double check that the lights were on. Just strange as by default the lights normally are turned on in the cockpit.

I'll be surprised if it is that simple... as you say they are usually on by default, but always worth a check. Otherwise you'll need Jan to chip in. The lighting is definitely an area that could do with some clear documentation by IPACS. I made a lot of mistakes and had to bother Jan a lot with questions when I was working on it the first time with the Buffalo. Anyway hope you have success... the Carbon Cub will be a gem.

KR Matt

Quote from MDIvey

I'll be surprised if it is that simple... as you say they are usually on by default, but always worth a check. Otherwise you'll need Jan to chip in. The lighting is definitely an area that could do with some clear documentation by IPACS. I made a lot of mistakes and had to bother Jan a lot with questions when I was working on it the first time with the Buffalo. Anyway hope you have success... the Carbon Cub will be a gem.

KR Matt

Thanks for your help, it is really appreciated:) It takes time to get into Aerofly development, but I find it very interesting. Always good with some challenges😀

So now the textures seem to finally be working, seems to have been a Blender version issue (exporting using a newer version not working,

3.3 working fine). A short video of cockpit and some different views

Well done, looking mighty fine now. Glad you got to the bottom of it

KR Matt