How do I make realistic looking buildings?

[Airside Developments]

Hi all,

I have started work on making ENRY. I have modeled and textured all of my buildings in Sketchup, but when I put them into my sim (P3D V3) I notice that they do not look as good as other developers buildings... They don't cast shadows on the ground and I can't find any settings in Model Converter X to alter this... They also seem to not receive and or reflect light properly as they all look rather flat and blocky (if that makes sense). Some of them also have flickering textures which I cannot seem to resolve... I have read online that all of these issues can be resolved by modeling using the P3D SDK... I am however unable to find out how I would do this... See the attached images for examples...

Thanks in advance,

Airside Developments

 

[tgibson]

Hi,

The problem is not in the sim, but in your textures. You need to add shading and texture to your bitmaps. Take a look at this thread for some examples:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/tree-shadows-building-textures.441385/

One simple way to get this is to use actual pictures of windows, siding, etc. from sites that provide such images. Since I am not an artist, I use this method as a way to get around that. An example of such a site:

https://www.textures.com/

If you have access, you can also use pictures of the actual building if you can get them flat to the camera and in good sun.

Another way to do this is to load your current object into a program that allows rendering with lights, shadows, etc. and then capture those images and use those instead. This can be difficult to find inexpensively, though.

Hope this helps,

 

[dave hoeffgen]

Another way to do this is to load your current object into a program that allows rendering with lights, shadows, etc. and then capture those images and use those instead. This can be difficult to find inexpensively, though.

Blender can do this and it's free

 

[pinkjr]

Blender can do this and it's free

C'mmon....Sketchup LOL!

 

[gfxpilot]

You can use sketch up quite well. The art is using images as textures as well as using the tools in SU to form the key shapes. Remember, you will have component's of an airport that will only ever bee seen from height, flying passed in/out of the AP. The key points are to use paintware like gimp,Photoshop, elements to take a picture you have of the building or as similar to that building , add some shade, dirty marks,rusts marks etc to build "character" . this is especially useful for creating and adding a darker shot of walls with night effects (name_LM). If you have trees close to a building add a small shadow to the building wall. Remember it won't be noticeably seen if you have a night texture to add to it.

 

[pinkjr]

sketchup baby!

 

[gfxpilot]

That's incredible. It would be amazing to see a tutorial for that type of work

 

[=rk=]

Simple procedure:
Build model in Sketchup
Render model in Sketchup using free demo (Lightwave, V-ray, etc)
Capture screen images of perfectly shaded and shadowed model
Project captured images onto model

voila

 

[Airside Developments]

So as I understand it, if I export my model from Sketchup then into blender, then into Model Converter X, the sim should render light correctly?? There is also my issue with the buildings not displaying any shadows... :/ Thanks for all the advice so far!

 

[tgibson]

No. It has nothing to do with rendering in the sim, it has everything to do with baking the rendering you see in the programs above into your textures and using those instead of the original textures.