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How to texture custom runway with gmax

C

Corey

Messages
17
Country
jamaica
First let me thank for the help so far, I got the gmax 2002 game pack working with 2004.
Now I want to make a custom runway I made a plane, I have made 3 different textures of runway markings, tire markings, tire blend. The question is can I put all of these texture on the one plane, and if so how do I do that. Thanks for the help
 
This works in 3d programms like 3ds Max and Cinema 4d, but I don't think the FS engine supports this feature. You sure can use multi textures, to use several textures on an object (A ground poly with 10 1024*1024 px textures for example) but only one texture per poly is used. I used several planes (with some extra height above the ground poly) to add taxiway markings and dirt over the custom runway tex. Give the textures of the dirt an corresponding alpha and it'll fade in smoothly.

Hoping I'm right :D
 
Hi everybody,

Geiger.Daniel said:
I used several planes (with some extra height above the ground poly)
Click to expand...

If you use FS2002 gamepack you can place all the planes in 1 gmax file and at zero height because the flight simulator engine automatically superpose them (only with FS2002 gamepack, i think). When you export the file, the export module order the textures alphabetically.

In FS, the plane textures started by Z.. will be on the top and started by numbers will be buttom, so like this:

RUNWAY_MARKS.BMP
RUNWAY_TEXTURE.BMP
SKID.BMP

If you use these texture names, the marks wont be appear on the runway because the abc. The runway_marks.bmp under the runway_texture.bmp.

BUT! You can modify this easily if you keep the ASM files when exporting. You only have to commute the blocks started with "DRAW_TRI_BEGIN" and ended by "DRAW_TRI_END" commands where the FS exactly draw the polygons. You can identify the blocks with the "MATERIAL x,y" command above the "DRAW_TRI_BEGIN" command where you can see the texture number. After that you have just scroll up to the texture list and take the correct number. Be careful the first texture number is zero not 1!

I wrote a little and easy program for it where you dont have to modify the ASM code manually. With this i dont have to take care of the texture names.


Here is my runway:

custom_runway.jpg


The ground polygon is the down. There is a plane with concrete texture above the ground. After that i placed the single line marks with loft method and the other runway marks are different planes. Above the marks there is a plane with tire-blend texture. And on the top there is another plane with the skid texture. All textures have an alpha channel to set the transparency.

Corey:
i dont suggest to paint all marks, skids, etc in one texture because in this case your runway will be blurred in FS. I suggest to you to make different planes with different high resolution textures for the detailed runway. My textures are in 1024x512 and the smaller marks are in 128x256 format to make it detailed in FS.

Regards,
Peter
 
omg lambda...that looks AMAZING! :eek: What airport is this and you really did that?

Still shocked... I hope my ground will at least look a bit as good as this... :o
 
Geiger and Lambda thanks for the reply. i just start using gmax, i am much better with FSDS. that picture looks great. sorry to be a pain, but can u give me step by step how to do this in gmax, i have all the textures just need to know how to apply them. my runway main is 256x512 format DXT1 Alpha none, runway tire blend 128x256 Format DXT3 Alpha none. thanks for the help
 
I think you have to learn gmax a bit. There is a detailed tutorial included with gmax about how to create a scenery. Here is a tutorial about how to modify the exported ASM source code to get real ground polygons. I tell some more info because i had got a lot of problem when i created runways at first :) so first of all you have to know that the lights created by AFCAD, etc always will be under your ground polygons. So you have to make your own light system by coding in ASM or you can use an invisible runway coded in SCASM, above your ground polygons to create default lights. I think the last is more easier. You can find a lot of topic about this in this forum. If you want to make single lines for example i used single lines for the runway centerline, you can use this method many thanks to Jeff :) In gmax the easiest way to create ground polygons if you use the PLANE tool. There are different methods to position your runway by coordinates (i assume that you just want to make a runway and you dont have other ground polygons). The measures in gmax and FS are not exactly the same i think (this mean that 1 meter in gmax is not exactly 1 meter in FS). So you have to make some try in FS to get the correct runway size. If its ok, i think for the easiest way download an AFCAD file to your airport and open it with AFCAD. In the runway properties you can get the runway center coordinates and the heading. Write down this and in gmax position your runway center to the 0,0,0 point and faceing to north (up). When you export your runway use the coordinates and heading. The other way to position your scenery, ground polygons, etc in gmax is a bit complicated but i think that is the best way if you design a big or detailed airport. Look at this.
 
thanks going to try all of this now will let u know it go`s i did the building in FSDS will show somw screen shots later, working Sangster Int Airport (MKJS)
 
did some test got it working ok. but the runway i made in gmax is much larger,how do i scale it down
 
GMax shows you the size and coordinates as you build. Probably you have the settings to set to meters (that is what MakeMDL prefers). So in that case the coordinates you see in GMax are in meters as well, so that should make it very easy to design an object as big as you want it.
 
layer numbers

I can say that I understand grund poly twek except one small detail.
Which layer numbers can be used in ASM tweaking?
4,8,12...????
I would like to know them all. And one last question: Which layer number is the best to use for runway?
:scratchch :stirthepo
Thanks in advance!
 
Isn't the layer number assignment in the asm file an alternate to establishing drawing order to the naming process or the modification of the draw_tri code discussed above?

Bob B
 
after 5 hr i am getting it little by little,the only prob i am having now is to put on the runway markings an tireBlend
 
Bob my friend....
This is what Arno's tutorial has to say about layer numbers.
Thats why your post confuses me even more.

OBJECT_0_START label word
IFIN1 OBJECT_0_FAIL, image_complex, 2, 32767
ADDCAT OBJECT_0_SCALE, 8
OBJECT_0_FAIL label BGLCODEAs you have probably seen, the ADDCAT command also has an extra parameter. This is the layer number at which you want your polygon to display. If you are trying to place some polygons in a specific order you can use this number to give them the correct sequence.

One final note. This change only works if your source only contains ground polygons. If you have a mixed source with ground polygons and 3D objects the result will not be as you want. Due to the way GMax structurizes the source code it is not easy to add both a ADDCAT and a ADDOBJ command in one source. For this solution to work correct both commands should call the piece of code they apply to. So the ADDCAT command should call the piece of code with the ground polygons and the ADDOBJ command should call the code of the 3D objects. But in the file GMax makes this code is not separated.

The best way to solve this problem is to make two source file, one for the ground polygons and another one for the 3D objects. This can be done by selecting all objects belonging to these categories in GMax and then using the ``Export selected...’’ option of GMax.
Click to expand...
 
bob5568 said:
Isn't the layer number assignment in the asm file an alternate to establishing drawing order to the naming process or the modification of the draw_tri code discussed above?

Bob B
Click to expand...

Yes but in this case you have to use many different layers. I discussed the method above because i think its not a bad way and i had got a problem when i made my first runway. I made an addon for a scenery but this scenery already used layer above 40. The ground polygons above layer 40-50-60 dont visible correctly sometimes they are disappear or never appear. So i had got just this ASM drawing order trick and its well-tried for me.
 
Hi,

If you want markings on the runway, I think you can best put them at a higher layer (and use textures that are slightly transparant).

The method Peter suggests should work fine, but an alternative is to make sure you assign a different layer to each type. The ASM code I post below shows you how you can use different layers in one ASM file. Each layer loads the _0.asm file of the polygons you want on that layer. These files can be generated by using export selected from GMax.

Code: 
OBJECT_0_START label word
    ADDCAT      OBJECT_0_PHOTO, 4
    ADDCAT      OBJECT_0_NOISE, 8
    ADDCAT      OBJECT_0_APRON, 12
    BGL_JUMP_32 OBJECT_0_END  

OBJECT_0_PHOTO label    BGLCODE
    SCALE_AGL   OBJECT_0_RETURN, 20000, 1146, 131072, 0005A12D5h, 0E82Dh, 0045BEF70h, 0AD0Ah, 0, 0
    include    ehdr_photo_0.asm

OBJECT_0_NOISE label    BGLCODE
    SCALE_AGL   OBJECT_0_RETURN,  5000, 1146, 131072, 0005A12D5h, 0E82Dh, 0045BEF70h, 0AD0Ah, 0, 0
    include    ehdr_noise_0.asm    
    
OBJECT_0_APRON label    BGLCODE
    SCALE_AGL   OBJECT_0_RETURN, 10000, 1146, 131072, 0005A12D5h, 0E82Dh, 0045BEF70h, 0AD0Ah, 0, 0
    include    ehdr_aprons_0.asm
    
OBJECT_0_RETURN label word
    BGL_RETURN
 
Thanks Arno

Rasha, Arno used level 8 as an example, not a mandatory level assignment.

Arno, would you please recap the level options we have for ground polys?...seems we stay with multiples of 4 or is it 8....not sure why...seems like 24 was the limit, but I don't remember if that is true now or just long ago.

Bob
 
Hi Bob,

I guess we use the multiplications of 4 because Fs2002 (or was it Fs2000) has problems if you used other numbers. So that is the reason most of use still use those numbers, I can't remember if it is really needed in Fs2004 as well. But usually I don't have more than 3 layers or so, so then 8, 12 and 16 is fine.

Layer 24 is the default layer when using pre-Fs2004 runways, so that is the reason we used to place ground polygons below this layer. But when we are no longer using these old runway commands, nothing helds us back of using layer numbers above 24 of course.

Although I think there is still an upper limit (somewhere between layer 40 and 60 if I remember correct). So we might want to stay clear of that. Although I doubt anyone will need that many layers in one scenery :).
 
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