V10 scenery creation call to developers....you want to develop for V10?

[tkyler]

As initial V10 development comes to it's end, I'm starting this thread as a sort of informal "meeting room" to talk about V10 scenery with active x-pilot community members who are interested in development and to answer any questions they may have or help prepare those interested. I am also interested in establishing a unified method for scenery development among the x-pilot community, i.e. establishing standards that developers will follow....because what I have learned developing for Laminar over the last year has resulted in a very consistent and quick workflow.

The purpose of the standards are to ensure consistency and maximize efficiency of created scenery. The standards derive from my experience on default airport scenery for V10. The standards include such things as Blender file setup, Blender layer and scene organization, texture naming conventions, texture resolution and folder organization, Photoshop / GIMP layer structure and layer modes. Organization and planning is the key to developing for V10 and the Blender scripts that will be available to the community require a very strict following of structure within the blender file. It's the price to be paid for using blender as our scenery authoring tool but we can achieve things we have never been able to do in the past.

So to begin, a few questions:

1.) Who is interested in developing scenery for V10?

2.) Who is willing to adopt a unified approach and workflow to scenery development? (this means blender 2.49b for now)

3.) What do you feel is your best development skill: Modeling, UV mapping, Texture painting?

4.) Who is willing to take "assignments" as part of this effort....i.e. "Model skyscrapers, model landmarks or airport towers, convert planes, etc.

As XPFR have demonstrated, with teamwork and coordination, you can achieve some really spectacular results and I am ready for x-pilot and it's members to take the lead in scenery development for x-plane...but I need to get a feel for the "volunteers" first.

For those that are wondering, "what is the matter with the OpenSceneryX way"......well plenty. It has it's place though and is not obsolete, but it is not optimal and it is showing some signs of strain with it's size. The new lighting and shadow technology in V10 actually allows easier and more compact scenery development but at a cost of more careful UV and texture planning. These are the kinds of things I want to talk about here. This is not some effort to have a project with a beginning and and end, but rather, start the ball rolling for continual scenery development and contributions in a steady manner. Scenery is about to enter a new era for x-plane and I am very excited for what's to come. I hope others are too.

[OlaHaldor]

I'm interested. I'm a LightWave 3D user though, can't stand Blender. I know you can import LWO.

Modeling, props, buildings and other structures is my strenght. Cars, planes, and other vehicles should be handed over to someone else.

[Redfisher]

I'm interested. I'm a LightWave 3D user though, can't stand Blender. I know you can import LWO.

Modeling, props, buildings and other structures is my strenght. Cars, planes, and other vehicles should be handed over to someone else.

Bring it, Ola!!

[Simmo W]

Count me in Tom.

I'm quick with Sketchup texturing and modeling and can import those files into Blender and ages ago learned the very basics of Blender & UV maps. Best way to learn is to do though. I find 2.5 much easier to understand, is it possible to finalize a 2.5 file in 2.49?

I'm same as ola, never done vehicles. I'm good at grass, flowers, all the more important things :-)

I'll send out a message at the blog too.

Simon

[xp+10+reviews]

Tom,

You know I'll make all the models you want for as long as I can, and Simon can convert my SketchUp files to Blender.

Chip

[Sethesus]

I can make scenery for XP10. I mainly use SketchUp, I know how to texture in SU, but you just need to give me a texture first . And maybe, if I finish it on time, I might donate my KPDX scenery for inclusion.

Edit: I can't do cars or planes. Only buildings.

Edited October 10, 2011 by Sethesus

[Kieran]

I like the interest here.

I will most probably be busy with other things, but if you do need a model done, I might be able to get it done.

I can do cars and planes.

Cheers

Kieran

[tkyler]

The deal with using Blender 2.49b is that all the scripts that leverage V10 tech are written for 2.49b. That is not to say that they won't be ported to 2.5+ in time; however, 2.5 does not offer any significant tactical advantage as far as features go in my opinion...but I won't discount "comfort" for those who are happy with 2.5 either. It's inevitable the scripts will find their way to 2.5 eventually, but I have no idea when.

Re sketchup. I can't say I've honestly seen what a sketchup built model looks like in x-plane, nor how the textures applied in sketchup come across in Blender. Until I get my hands on a UV mapped sketchup model, I really won't know. I'm sure it's perfectly capable for modeling though....and if some authors don't mind modeling up some stuff and passing off the texturing, then that's a potential win-win; however, there are significant features in the Blender 2.49b workflow that HIGHLY encourage us to get all our 3D into blender at some point.....I'd even go so far as to say that everything needs to ends up in blender. It's perfectly OK to build stuff with other software, but whatever is used, it needs to find it's way into Blender to leverage the new export and attribute options BenS provided in the scripts. We should definitely investigate workflow and if anybody has a model they built in sketchup and have got it into blender, I'd be interested to get my hands on it. I'll talk more about these blender features later.

I will be going over some of the standards that I have adopted relatively soon here to things rolling...and also include a few screenshots of some of the V10 development work so that everybody can get an idea of how we're doing things at laminar and also the general direction I'll be pushing here. I will say up front, that the main areas of development strategy will be in the areas of shared UV space, minimum texturing resolutions by "type" and tightly packed textures. Authors will need to get their UV maps/textures as rectangular and and small as possible...packed tight like some puzzle. I'll post examples later. Because we'll probably be wanting to combine people's work together into single textures, it will be important that textures can be easily cut and pasted into larger textures. For those who are unaware, x-plane runs more efficiently with fewer large textures than a whole lot of small ones.

So what comes next from me will be a general description here, with screenshots, of work that demonstrates some scenery building techniques I've used for V10 and the advantage of using them. In this way, people can make some conclusions about their work and whether or not they want to work in this way. As far as the logistics of copyrights, how we share this stuff and redistribute it, well we're working on that. As I said, I'm not after any particular time-frame, only wanting to share some techniques....and those who want to learn can benefit, but the main thing I'm pushing here is a x-pilot centric effort that will be our own and fully managed for quality control.

As another heads up...if I had to choose some place to start something like this, I'd probably start by suggesting that control towers for the top 50 biggest airports get done. Another effort could go towards doing famous landmarks around the world...and yet another effort at building nothing but hangar variants. It's too early to act on any of this mind you as some up -front planning is in order, but these are the kinds of things we'll be wanting to do. I'll try and get the more informative post with screenshots up as soon as I can.

EDIT: Simon, no clue on the 2.5 > 2.49 thing....offhand I can see no issue but prudence would dictate a few tests to be sure.

Edited October 10, 2011 by tkyler

[arno54]

Blend files can be created/edited/saved in 2.5 then reopened in 2.49 for *.py exportation. The scripts are not compatible with 2.5 simply because 2.5 requires python 3.0 whereas 2.49 requires python 2.4.

There's no real advantage to model with 2.5 as the real progresss is about sculpt modeling and a better (faster) treatment for baking, but in the other hand, animations are far easier to set in 2.49 than in 2.5.

2.49, to date, is by far the best choice for xplane devs. 2.5 is to be considered first bt 2D specialists for textures creation (2D being much more difficult than 3D)

As for the "Xpfr model", there is a misunderstanding here. There'd be a lot to say about this but basically, I'd like to stress on the fact that there are very few redundant skills : each one has a field of skills, flight model / texturing / obj animation / lightings / photographs etc... and the worst IMHO in a group of devs is to have competitors in a definite field of skills (e;g. everyone wants to deal with building structs)

[AgreMeister]

I've been pretty busy lately, but when I have the chance I can do texturing.

Hope that XP10 surpasses the FS standards for both free and payware scenery, should be interesting to see how it plays out.

[tkyler]

I agree there is a misunderstanding Arno. My reference to the XPFR model is not one of skill management, but rather one of pursuing a unified goal...and not one so broad as to be unmanageable like "let's model the world". As to whether or not you have competition of skills, that is only relevant dependent upon work scope. The XPFR scenario does not apply in the scope of work that I am proposing.

Just what it is that I am proposing requires a bit more explanation which I'll give a little bit later.

Edited October 10, 2011 by tkyler

[tkyler]

What I am proposing to developers is the option to participate in contributing to a new x-pilot sponsored scenery library using workflows and techniques I use with laminar. It's well proven and certainly compatible. Laminar's library is limited by texture budget and manpower whereas the community is not. Developing the most optimal library that uses new V10 tech and does not suffer from OpenSceneryX's growing pains requires a bit more organization and discipline from developers and conformance to specifications; therefore,this isn't for everybody. I'd like to get this ball rolling during 2012 and will be setting out the specs independent of whomever participates. So this is not some official call in the sense that we need a certain size team to accomplish a very specific task....this is a call more like, "we're going to build a library in THIS way and whomever wants to help can". Time will take care of the rest.

[Simmo W]

Re sketchup. I can't say I've honestly seen what a sketchup built model looks like in x-plane, nor how the textures applied in sketchup come across in Blender. Until I get my hands on a UV mapped sketchup model, I really won't know.

Tom, all our KMMH was built with sketchup, check that out. Chip built all the structures, I edited to simplify (you'll see what I mean when he sends you his other files..) and then I textured (the default su texture method does not use one single file). My textures were far too high res, but I wanted to explore limits..

I like the idea re. Top 50 towers! With the Lego approach, such an idea will make each major distinctive.

Luckily the YSSY Sydney tower looks a B#%*+ to do, so Goran might do that for his home airport. If he thinks he has the skills.. :-) or maybe just Camden, that's a top 50?

Edited October 10, 2011 by Simmo W

[OlaHaldor]

Don't get me wrong Tom. I'll be happy to use Blender if there's a manual on how to do it the right way in order to get it done in the way you want it. But I'll use LightWave + LWCAD for modeling, and Blender strictly for whatever needs to be done after that.

Sydney tower? Looks like a fun challenge.

[tkyler]

It only has to be organized and exported from Blender Ola. You can model in lightwave, generate a nice compact texture map and export that out as a wavefront, LWO or even xplane obj...whatever gets it into blender with UV/texture intact is fine. There have been occasions where I've received some work from other laminar teams and I basically import the 3D and cut/paste their texture into a master texture...adjust the UVs, set up the required parameters and viola!. So you don't have to use blender at all if you don't want to...but in such a case, you'd be handing your work off to somebody who is to be exported to the library.

[OlaHaldor]

I understand. Well, whatever needs to be modeled, I'd love to be part of it for Laminar. UVs and textures aren't among my strengths I'm afraid, even though I've been playing a lot with it.

Simon got me going on the Sydney tower now.. damn you..

[tkyler]

well don't do this one....its shipping with xplane 10!

Edited October 10, 2011 by tkyler

[OlaHaldor]

Would be great fun in any case. Learning by doing. But good to see it's coming with the package!

Oh btw I think I'm on another tower then. I just googled it. I have no idea if that's really the one Simon was talking about.

Edited October 10, 2011 by OlaHaldor

[Xflyboy]

Tom,

That tower has some really nice detail!

Looking forward to what XP10 is bringing.

You can delete this if you wish, I know it's for scenery development, but I just had to say how nice the detail is

Edited October 10, 2011 by Xflyboy

[tkyler]

Thanks. As nice as it is, it's still relatively low resolution IMO. I have about 3 1/2 2048x2048 to contain the entire airport library. Imagine what we could do with about 10 of them (providing good planning

[Simmo W]

Would be great fun in any case. Learning by doing. But good to see it's coming with the package!

Oh btw I think I'm on another tower then. I just googled it. I have no idea if that's really the one Simon was talking about.

That's the one Ola, you'd be good at that. Ha, it's worse than I remember- one of the most distinctive in the world. Built in time for the Sydney Olympics.

[flyinhawaiian]

Can someone put together a tutorial on how to use sketch-up or blender on how to make say, a hangar? I'd like to try my hand at scenery, but have no idea how to use those programs.

[Simmo W]

Can someone put together a tutorial on how to use sketch-up or blender on how to make say, a hangar? I'd like to try my hand at scenery, but have no idea how to use those programs.

Sketchup is easy to learn, moderate to become proficient. Try my 2 tutorials, if u can understand my accent..

http://xplane10.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/scenery-tutorial-sketchup-is-too-easy/

[Kaphias]

Sketchup is easy to learn, moderate to become proficient. Try my 2 tutorials, if u can understand my accent..

http://xplane10.word...up-is-too-easy/

It sure is, thanks Simon for the tutorials. Here's the results:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w95/Kaphias/HangarFull.jpg

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w95/Kaphias/HangarDoor.jpg

[Ben Russell]

"sketchup tutorial video" into Google, videos tab, yields 7,440 results.

Edited October 11, 2011 by Ben Russell