Ahab's Workbench

Personal work in progress topics go here
Post Reply
Captain_Ahab
Rookie
Rookie
Posts: 48
Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:17 am
Favorite Aircraft: Cavalier Turbo-Mustang III
OS: linux
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 52 times

Ahab's Workbench

Post by Captain_Ahab »

I'm slowly learning how to do things while also poring over files of all the packs that have gone before
I've been playing with a Firebrand and I am almost ready to try animating things.
I should have color and decals done in the next couple of days, then animating begins ( I may even try the wing folding, but it.... interesting )
THEN I'll see if I've got a handle on this once I get it into the game to see how it renders out in play
updated screenshot
updated screenshot
the tail shows a brief experiment with panel lines... still trying to think of a nicer way to get it done. Snap-to-face and shrinkwrap alone won't do; I think I'll have to copy out the faces I want to put the decal onto, as a part, then knife-project those faces onto the decal in order to get the lines in the right spot for the decal to fold over the edges nicely

and maybe I'm a bit fearful of animating.... something I've never been good at
Last edited by Captain_Ahab on Mon Jul 12, 2021 4:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
decaff_42
Staff
Staff
Posts: 3838
Joined: Sat Oct 29, 2011 7:23 pm
Favorite Aircraft: SR-71 Blackbird
Location: Eastern United States
OS: Mac OSX
Has thanked: 844 times
Been thanked: 1726 times
Contact:

Re: Ahab's Workbench

Post by decaff_42 »

Looking good so far! Interesting to see your process on this. I'm in the camp of saving the "painting" to last so I can make a base model and then get a few different paint schemes done.

Doing camo though... it definitely is a lot easier to do camo with the model in one piece prior to cutting out the control surfaces and moving parts. Considering how infrequently I do camo...I may have to look at doing it your way more often for those projects.
Check out my website YSDecaff for all my tutorials and addon releases.
Visit my GitHub page for Python codes: https://github.com/decaff42?tab=repositories

YSFlight Addon Database - Find links to nearly every addon made for YSFlight!
Submit Addon To Database
Captain_Ahab
Rookie
Rookie
Posts: 48
Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:17 am
Favorite Aircraft: Cavalier Turbo-Mustang III
OS: linux
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 52 times

Re: Ahab's Workbench

Post by Captain_Ahab »

I have a 'blank' one on my drive. I'm of the 'save early, save often' camp
I am more than willing to share the .blend

I'm not too worried about whether or not the control surfaces are separated or not. I can always use ctrl-J to join everything together... paint, then separate the parts again with ctrl-L. I think in the future I'll draw the camo with vertices, then 'knife project' it onto the model after smoothing them out

I certainly wish there were import/export scripts for blender 2.9x
DecalMachine would be so useful here

still have to do the cockpit, prop, and rocket pylons
sometimes I just need to have a beauty shot to keep me motivated
Captain_Ahab
Rookie
Rookie
Posts: 48
Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:17 am
Favorite Aircraft: Cavalier Turbo-Mustang III
OS: linux
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 52 times

Re: Ahab's Workbench

Post by Captain_Ahab »

Some work on ground forces, just to keep me out of a rut
with a couple of exception ( AMX30 ) the MBT's are around 1,100 vertices and a similar number of faces
Face/tri count done after triangulate -> make _quad set
To be exported from 2.92 as .obj files, then imported into 2.49b and exported again as .srf's
Tank_Collection.png
User avatar
u2fly
Senior Veteran
Senior Veteran
Posts: 1485
Joined: Fri Oct 02, 2015 9:27 am
Favorite Aircraft: Antonov An-225 Mriya
Location: Ukraine
OS: Linux
Has thanked: 1051 times
Been thanked: 339 times

Re: Ahab's Workbench

Post by u2fly »

Captain_Ahab wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:10 am To be exported from 2.92 as .obj files, then imported into 2.49b and exported again as .srf'sTank_Collection.png
The best exchange format between newer Blender and Blender 2.49b is AC3D (*.ac) file format, which allows export all parts in scene in single file with preserving local & global coordinates, parenting, etc (if export each part separately to Wavefront OBJ it requires a lot of work on repositioning after import it to assembly).

Just install AC3D import/export addon for newer Blender: Blender 2.49 has AC3D import/export addon out of the box.

Also I recommend use updated YSFS scripts addon for Blender 2.49b:

U.S. Senator John McCain wrote:“Spending #NewYearsEve w/ brave #Ukrainian Marines at a forward combat outpost
- we stand w/ them in their fight against #Putin's aggression”

pic.twitter.com/vkz0gdozVV [archived]
(31 DEC 2016)
Captain_Ahab
Rookie
Rookie
Posts: 48
Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:17 am
Favorite Aircraft: Cavalier Turbo-Mustang III
OS: linux
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 52 times

Re: Ahab's Workbench

Post by Captain_Ahab »

I'm going to pass on that as it would be something else I'd have to download for only a single obscure purpose. Perhaps if I got into FlightGear or T.O.R.C.S., which also uses ac3d, I'd have a reason to have it.

.Obj reliably transfers the stuff I need to be transferred and is out-of-the-box on all the versions of Blender I've seen. I export as parts in a single file, yes, but before I export, I make sure all the parts' origins are at 0,0,0 which I have at a plane's cg, so everything loads in where it is suppose to be. Animation sort of has to be done in 2.49 anyways to use the scripts for assigning CLA's and STA's, so I don't care about importing animations*.
I know this all works because I've added a HA137 to my planes doing exactly this.

I only used 2.49 because I have no choice. Most of my time seems to be taken up with figuring out different workflows to account for having to use software that is nearly 12 years old just to get things into the game.

Personally, I feel the lack of 'modern' tools for the game is a barrier to attracting new players, as it gives the impression that the game is dead and completely unmaintained.

* I guess I could export as .obj, the animated parts and just use their first and last as keyframes in 2.49
<sigh> more workarounds
Captain_Ahab
Rookie
Rookie
Posts: 48
Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:17 am
Favorite Aircraft: Cavalier Turbo-Mustang III
OS: linux
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 52 times

Re: Ahab's Workbench

Post by Captain_Ahab »

played around with scnedit a bit
slowly getting the hang of it... a map of Espiritu Santo, a major US base in WW2
no bases or ground objects yet.... I'm still learning
I tried to get the hang of .ter files, so the map is made up of 10 10x13 elevation grids and all use the same texture
next time, a constant 'square' grid so everything matches up easier, say 16x16 grid
the texture is a non-tiling procedural texture ( not mine ) at 2k
not topologically accurate

I have an idea of how this all works now for basic scenery, so now I can try to improve it
gradient strips around the shoreline would be a good idea

the detailed texture doesn't quite 'fit' with the un-textured aircraft, but some work in GIMP can make that nicer to maintain a style... also to make a base texture that tiles
I did think it neat that the texture and the gradient can work together... should de-saturate the textures though
The island of Efate should be better
shot-2022-03-12_17-30-41.jpg
shot-2022-03-12_17-29-45.jpg
Captain_Ahab
Rookie
Rookie
Posts: 48
Joined: Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:17 am
Favorite Aircraft: Cavalier Turbo-Mustang III
OS: linux
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 52 times

Re: Ahab's Workbench

Post by Captain_Ahab »

I'm trying to get into this again despite the love/hate relationship I have with YSFlight.

Going back to that map of Espiritu Santo ( sort of ), I had to learn a bit more about texture mapping elevation grids. Mainly that no other map element can be seen on top of them, thus no runways, etc.

I'm using version 20180314 of ScnEdit and YSFlight 20180930 (Rev.670) & gl2 for play ( I don't really go for online games ... it works for me)

In ScnEdit under the 'edit' menu there is 'texture' where you can load in textures to use. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I think the textures have to be .png's and that the alpha channel/transparencies work. I wish the .fld files simply have a link to the .png file instead of also including the actual data in ascii form ( I think that's what it is )

Then you can assign a texture to an elevation grid when it is created, and under Object/ElevationGrid/Properties, you can assign, or change, one of the textures assigned to the grid.

When inserting a rectangle area, you can assign a loaded texture when the rectangle is created. I don't think you can add or change the texture for a rectangle area that is already created; you have to make a new area, I think.

For elevation grids, the gradient feature still works even when there is a texture assigned. In my pics, the texture is desaturated to be a grayscale image and colored with gradients in YSFlight.
shot-2022-10-18_16-29-08.jpg
In order to get an airport on an elevation grid, first I made some of the faces have a slope of 0, then set them an easily remembered height, then hid them. In their place I put a rectangular area with a bit of texture to kind of match what the texture on the hidden faces were, at the same height. This gave me a place to put normal map elements.
shot-2022-10-18_22-18-05.jpg
shot-2022-10-18_23-19-10.jpg
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests