Sloped airports Ground Polygons

[RED COOL]

Hello
I'm wondering how can we make GP for sloped airports, I mean GPs are 3D objects flattened to the ground and sloped airports do not have a flat ground geometry
which makes me think about how can we apply creatures to our GPs? note that every user has his own mesh settings and mesh files which makes the GPs different for everyone.

Hope you have answers to this interesting topic
have a good day
Cheers.

 

[Nagmaal]

Ground Polly's will always be flat, even when you model it angled, it will stagger.

So I am doing my own version of the method that was used with ORBX PAKT airport.
Basically the entire ground area is one big 3d Modeled mesh, divided into pieces, Painted with Substance Painter, and then assembled in Model converter X(save as a object not a ground poly) .
This all sits on top of a Slanted airport ADE file, where everything is made invisible.
Still ruining into lots of issues I am working my way around, but its looks promising so far.
The final layer would be some volumetric Grass on top.

Some Work in progress photos below.

 

[Taz5150]

Hey Nagmaal,

Could you briefly comment on the work-flow/ process? I'd appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Nagmaal]

Hey Nagmaal,

Could you briefly comment on the work-flow/ process? I'd appreciated!

Thanks!

Hi Taz

I am kind of still trying to figure out things like the workflow and settings etc, but I can give you the basic idea. Its kind of like the old way of doing it was, instead now its an object instead of a ground Poly.
I can give you kind of a basic work flow.

1. Get the best Satellite photos you can. It is essential in many aspects.
2. Build your AFCAD in ADE. Make sure to put your elevation changes in logical places. This saves lots of time when fine tuning the mesh later.
3. Test your AFCAD file. When your happy everything works make it not visible. What you have now is a invisible skeleton.
4. Model you Ground mesh in your chosen software. (I use Blender)
5. I split my mesh up into 100x100m blocks. (This gives me 20 pixels per meter at 2k & 40 pixels per m using 4k textures.) I split hard surface and ground because it makes it easier in Substance painter.
6. Make your UV maps.
7.Use Photoshop to texture the Details using your satellite photo as reference and base. Its a little different when using substance Painter, but wont go into that.
8. Then import you model and textures to Model converter X, Use the object wizard and not the Ground Polly wizard.

Current issues with my method.
1. Fine tuning mesh to AFCAD can be a pain in the but.
2. Very time consuming compared to the current method.
3. More resource demanding.
4. Still trying to find a seasons work around.
5. Not worth doing with airports that have very slight elevation changes.
6. Alignment between models can be a problem. Still looking for a good solution.
7. Still looking for a way to make sloping Aprons work.

 

[RED COOL]

I understand that the Ground Poly you are making is actually a 3D modeled ground with elevations edited by hand
the method sounds good however I have a question that I can't get out of my mind
do you use a platform property in MCX to be sure that the plane doesn't just go through the mesh?

 

[Taz5150]

Hi Nagmaal,

Thank you for such great description. I am basically stuck on step 4, trying to get my local mesh into Sketchup so I can design on top of it.

Geo-located terrain elevation is given by sketchup, but not at the resolution of my mesh in P3D (so my model does not fit with the mesh perfectly). I am still finding ways of importing P3D mesh in Sketchup (DEM import is kind of broken and I have been able to do some DXF imports ... working on contours right now).

You suggest to use the object wizard and not the GP one; does that mean that you export the model as an object? I thought it had to be exported as an FSX flatten or P3D bgl scenery ...

Thanks you so much.

 

[Nagmaal]

I think you might be understanding my method incorrectly.

My entire airport was built from runways, aprons ect.. I used Known elevation points and interpolated the rest from other information I have. I then used flattens to control the ground around evrthing . Each of their points have a precise height that works with the taxiways , runways etc.
What I then have is an airport ground that works, but does not look very nice. But it works, even the AI use it correctly.

What you have then is an an airport that works perfectly but looks like default.
Below you can also see some of the runways and Taxiways have been maid invisible.

So the mesh i make is essentially a Beautiful hologram that sits on top.

So when I model my mesh, I know, where each and every elevation change happens. I start modeling of a Geo correct Satellite image, so i know what size everything should be.

When I am done modeling and painting I bring the pieces into model converter X

This is just my method, and it might not work for someone else, or even at all. But so far its the only method that does what i want it to do.

Hope this helps. I skimped over a lot of stuff in this explanation, if you want more detail, just let me know.