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MSFS20 MSFS Brisbane City - Work in Progress Thread

Really looking forward to this dropping. Will be even better when we get Heli's in the sim so we can really appreciate it. Please say you'll try get the river cats (ferry) in there.

I'm trying, there's a guy who modeled them for another sim so I'm looking to see if I can license his models, but he doesn't seem to have been active online since about 2014.

Alternately I may contact Brisbane City Council to see if they'll be nice and have any 3D assets I can use or license.
 
I'm trying, there's a guy who modeled them for another sim so I'm looking to see if I can license his models, but he doesn't seem to have been active online since about 2014.

Alternately I may contact Brisbane City Council to see if they'll be nice and have any 3D assets I can use or license.
Why not model it yourself?
 
I'm not a modeler, and it'd take months to get up to speed with something that complicated, that time is needed to make money and pay bills in the midst of a pandemic
Oh I thought this was all your own work? Are you importing from 3DWarehouse or something?
 
Oh I thought this was all your own work? Are you importing from 3DWarehouse or something?

I licensed models years ago from a modeler for this project. Now that I no longer need to develop USA wide photoscenery anymore I can start to focus on modeling, but it's the old adage I learned from the ACES team, no sense to spend 99% of your energy on what is only going to bring a 1% return on your time and investment. As for the City Cats and Ferries etc, if I can license already built models I will, but if not they'll have to wait.
 
Why not model it yourself?

I have to admit I have started to get back up to speed with modeling...

See long ago in FS98 land there was Flight Sim Design Studio from Abacus, it was simple and intuitive to use and soon I had moved over to Lightwave 3D, the layout and functions were basically the same, but then along came the SDK's that relied on GMAX and then 3DSM, both of which had a crazy learning curve and there were so often changes that meant tutorials couldn't be followed leaving me lost. Eventually along came sketchup which for a while was a decent tool for modeling buildings albeit not so advanced in some areas which made it not as much fun to use, but then Google also dumped Sketchup, selling it off to Trimble and things with Sketchup went downhill and then went behind a paywall *not cool*. Fast forward to 2020 and MSFS seems to have a lot of work been done in blender and blender gives the tools and ease of use I've been longing for since Lightwave 3D. So now that I don't have to worry about photoscenery (other than local area upgrades), I'm finally able to focus on building things and getting up to speed with modeling. My first project will be the newer buildings that have gone up in Brisbane. Not looking forward to some of the upcoming buildings, they're super complicated in their designs.

1 William.jpg
 
Well we have @Vitus to thank for the Blender tools :D

There's a few different tools for Blender that are super helpful, the nice thing is most software can read other formats and change between them, I remember when converting from a 3DSM file to an OBJ was horrible and everything got translated wrong, there was a tool that cost like a billion dollars that could do the conversions. Those were crazy times, now going from building footprints and extruding is super fast, I'm hoping I can do up 1 William Street pretty quick. Should just need a quick plane to chop off the top, add an antenna and unwrap the textures into a meaningful map to add embellishments.

In so far as the CityCat, if I do try to eventually model it (actually I may be able to ask a friend to help me, he specializes in ships), I'd have to place it after modeling my Dad's ground effect vehicle design. Something I started in FS98 but had lowly polygon count limits back in the day and the wing structure was very complicated.
 
I'd have to place it after modeling my Dad's ground effect vehicle design. Something I started in FS98 but had lowly polygon count limits back in the day and the wing structure was very complicated.
Wait WHAAAAAT? Kinda like the ekranoplan?
 
Challenging few days but what is Brisbane without all the vessels on the river???

3DS to 3DS smoothing to glTF to drawcall optimization and debugging the shadowy models, finally get them almost code complete and then realize I need to turn on crash detection and have to hand code pretty much everything all over again.

I have some things planned for these vessels, something I've wanted to do in FSX/P3D but it would have crippled the sim... Really thankful to have dry dock models as well as I needed some for the maritime museum.

Lined up in sim for Quality Control checks. The medium and large yachts had some sort of shader bug when going glTF to glTF export, finally figured out what has happening.
20201001162338_1.jpg


Sorted out the small yachts manually...
20201001184510_1.jpg


Finally sorted out the medium and large yachts as well.
20201001220737_1.jpg
.
 
yes, make me all the pretties!

Good news is that my roommate is willing to model the CityCat's, and smaller ferries, so if we can make that happen it'll be awesome! No promises though, but I'm helping him with a historical project, he's shown me a few basics in 3DS which I needed to convert these models. Today I'll place the rest of the yachts and see if blender can play nice with importing these models again.
 
Good news is that my roommate is willing to model the CityCat's, and smaller ferries, so if we can make that happen it'll be awesome! No promises though, but I'm helping him with a historical project, he's shown me a few basics in 3DS which I needed to convert these models. Today I'll place the rest of the yachts and see if blender can play nice with importing these models again.
I is happy Wookiee
 
Well I ventured into Blender today and these are the results:

Sunset
20201002194610_1.jpg


Moonless Night
20201002194642_1.jpg


Moon has risen
20201002194725_1.jpg


Early Dawn
20201002194751_1.jpg


Sunrise
20201002194804_1.jpg


My first official dabble with modeling, added faux mooring lights to the yachts. Just very basic, 2w watts per globe (for 5 surrounding the masthead light), it was a trade off between too much illumination of the mast and what you see in real life. Unfortunately I'm far away from any sort of marina with yachts at anchor, so these lights are only visible as you approach, it's subtle but a nice detail. Oh that reminds me I need to turn on crash modeling now.

Special thanks to Arno for Model Converter X for the intermediate model change to gltf, and the author of blender2msfs. I'm absolutely loving development now. I wish I was in Brisbane again to be able to go street by street and add real lights to the scene, but that's a lot of work. Maybe one day.
 
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Calling it a night, all Yacht lighting complete. Most models placed on this section of river, tomorrow, dockside and finalizing the Story Bridge :D

20201002233338_1.jpg
 
Fantastic work Dean. Good to be bringing to life all those historic models you had. Cities are dynamic like everything else and don't think the Building models need to be bolted down to a particular time zone as you mentioned with the QUT building that is no longer present. The Roma Street Transit Centre is now demolished for the new Cross River Rail project - although looks fine in your scenery and many people who know the city will be familiar with it.
Certainly looks and feels like Brisbane.
Rob
 
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