• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Building fences

Messages
795
Country
us-northcarolina
Hi all. Trying to figure out a more reasonable way to create perimeter fences for my projects. What I'm looking to do is create a fence that FOLLOWS all of the bumps and waves in the terrain. These airports are not at all flat.

Fencebuilder PRO for FSX is exactly the kind of thing needed.

The vector tool is not what I'm looking for. It just places discrete segments individually, and makes it look disjointed, especially on steep terrain. Additionally it refuses to display the custom fence model I made properly. One mesh with three materials, will only display one material at a time. I've sought help from Asobo for that only to be told "it has to be one mesh!". It IS one mesh but... it is what it is. I can't figure it out.

.... you can tell I'm aggravated 😅 I made a fence outline and have been going around the airport segment by segment, adjusting it in blender to match the ground elevation and re-loading it. It's taking FOREVER but the results will at least be nice.

Any advice? Anybody savvy enough to make a tool that can at least produce an outline with elevation that can be worked off of?
 
Hi all. Trying to figure out a more reasonable way to create perimeter fences for my projects. What I'm looking to do is create a fence that FOLLOWS all of the bumps and waves in the terrain. These airports are not at all flat.

Fencebuilder PRO for FSX is exactly the kind of thing needed.

The vector tool is not what I'm looking for. It just places discrete segments individually, and makes it look disjointed, especially on steep terrain. Additionally it refuses to display the custom fence model I made properly. One mesh with three materials, will only display one material at a time. I've sought help from Asobo for that only to be told "it has to be one mesh!". It IS one mesh but... it is what it is. I can't figure it out.

.... you can tell I'm aggravated 😅 I made a fence outline and have been going around the airport segment by segment, adjusting it in blender to match the ground elevation and re-loading it. It's taking FOREVER but the results will at least be nice.

Any advice? Anybody savvy enough to make a tool that can at least produce an outline with elevation that can be worked off of?

The Vectorplacement tools works placing objects along a line. Every objects is snapped to ground. If your object is longer than the curvature of the terrain, obviously it will float
You can suggest the team to update the Vectorplacement with a snapToNormal (the option is available for scenery objects, so, why not!).
(Btw I have my tools to place objects along lines, but isn't really user friendly )

About your mesh, are you sure it has a single node?
I have a couple of materials in my fence and the Vectorplacement displays it correctly (it has a single node)

Wouldn't you mind sharing the glTF ? Did you share it with the team to look for Asobo side errors?
 
The Vectorplacement tools works placing objects along a line. Every objects is snapped to ground. If your object is longer than the curvature of the terrain, obviously it will float
You can suggest the team to update the Vectorplacement with a snapToNormal (the option is available for scenery objects, so, why not!).
(Btw I have my tools to place objects along lines, but isn't really user friendly )

About your mesh, are you sure it has a single node?
I have a couple of materials in my fence and the Vectorplacement displays it correctly (it has a single node)

Wouldn't you mind sharing the glTF ? Did you share it with the team to look for Asobo side errors?
I'll be back at the house later this week and will send it right along. Also if you'd like to take a look at the blend file itself to make sure I have THAT part set up correctly?
 
This is a proper configuration accepted by the Vectorplacement tool



Screenshot (688).png




by looking at the gltf code, you can clearly see it has a single node (MESHOBJECT.004), the requirement for the Vectorplacement to work



XML:
  "nodes" : [
        {
            "mesh" : 0,
            "name" : "MESHOBJECT.004"
        }
    ],
    "materials" : [
        {
            "name" : "pole",
            "normalTexture" : {
                "index" : 0
            },
            "pbrMetallicRoughness" : {
                "baseColorFactor" : [
                    0.00895487517118454,
                    0.07658012211322784,
                    0,
                    1
                ],
                "baseColorTexture" : {
                    "index" : 1
                },
                "metallicFactor" : 0.22058823704719543,
                "roughnessFactor" : 0.18382352590560913
            }
        },
        {
            "alphaMode" : "BLEND",
            "doubleSided" : true,
            "name" : "mesh",
            "pbrMetallicRoughness" : {
                "baseColorTexture" : {
                    "index" : 2
                },
                "metallicFactor" : 0.36764705181121826,
                "roughnessFactor" : 0.2867647111415863
            }
        }
    ],
 
Done.
Basically the result of trial and error for a bit, making a reference object that followed the terrain. Built a nice fence in place of it.

Also just learned that Don Grovestine, creator of Fencebuilder Pro and Terrain Sculptor passed a few months ago... his tools were invaluable to my old P3D projects, and he was always the most helpful. Thank you, Don. Chiseling this one out by hand for now!
 

Attachments

  • 2.JPG
    2.JPG
    1.9 MB · Views: 214
Hang on a second, I added a few km of generic fence objects around my airport, carefully placing and aligning them, and on straight sections I saved time by copy/pasting 5 or 6 long segments at a time and then doing slight rotations to make them meet up with the previous segments. For my custom walls I simply made a few small, medium and large wall objects that I also aligned and rotated by hand.

Are you saying there's a better way to do make them go along a line? :)
 
Back
Top