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SketchUp to?

Shafat Hasan

Shafat Hasan

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142
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bangladesh
Hi there, am currently using SketchUp to develop 3D sceneries.

I want to move on to a higher level of designing, probably with 3DSMax, or GMax, or Blender or anything better.

I would like to ask, which would be the best for P3D and the future of flight simulation?

I might buy 3DSMax for my team once we get established, so I am not bothering about the price, though it's too costly for us.

So without taking the price into notice, which is the best 3D software program to learn for the future?

Thanks.
 
Hey Shafat,

Whats wrong with Sketchup? I use Sketchup for all of my models and find that I could easily produce pretty detailed scenery with it. Check out my MWCR project here, all models you see were made in Sketchup. Its just all in the texturing. Once you could make good textures youre good to go! ;)
 
In my experience, Sketchup is too limiting compared to full-featured 3D packages (ie: you don't have fine control over polygon subdivision, texturing is pretty basic, animation is a nightmare and I'm not even sure it can transfer to MCX). As for Gmax, that program is long dead, and in my experience, it tends to be pretty unstable and also lacks some functionality, and the newer SDK doesn't support it, so if you plan on developing addons that are completely P3D-native, it might be difficult. Not saying it's impossible, but I don't know how much of that MCX can take care of.

Personally, I use 3DS Max. It's really easy to use once you're familiar with the tools, and you can churn stuff out quickly with it, plus it has a very large user base and community, so any issues you have with it are typically easy to find fixes for, and there's an enormous library of tutorials for it should you decide to use it for something other than FS development. Of course, the drawbacks are 1.) it costs $3500 for a perpetual license (which, incidentally, is being phased out this year. Autodesk is switching to subscription-only. Last I heard, for 3DS Max, it'll run $2000 per year per node, and if you don't renew each year you lose all functionality...so think carefully about that). 2.) It's owned and maintained (or rather, neglected) by Autodesk...which is big and evil. Basically they're the EA of 3D software. There's also Maya LT, which if I remember correctly is intended to be used for game development, but there are no flight simulator SDK tools for this, and my experiences with Maya haven't ever been good (using it is an exercise in not throwing your monitor through the nearest window), so it might not be up to scratch.

Alternatively, Blender is free, and is actually more feature-rich and extensible than any of the previously mentioned packages. Granted, the interface is a mess, but it can do everything Max or Gmax can, and you don't have to worry about licensing issues if you decide to sell what you produce with it. Again, it doesn't have any FS SDK tools (at least, not official ones), but if you're just looking at making scenery, it can do everything you need to, though it may be a bit more of a hassle to convert to BGL's or MDL's through MCX due to the lack of an SDK. However, I can't be certain of that as I haven't yet made the switch to Blender, so I might well be wrong.

Personally, I'd recommend getting Blender, even just to avoid dealing with Autodesk.
 
geromebodden said:
Hey Shafat,

Whats wrong with Sketchup? I use Sketchup for all of my models and find that I could easily produce pretty detailed scenery with it. Check out my MWCR project here, all models you see were made in Sketchup. Its just all in the texturing. Once you could make good textures youre good to go! ;)
Click to expand...

My goodness, that's so FlyTampa quality *_*. I never knew that SKP can do such amazing stuff :D. Well then the fault isn't in my modelling but rather in the texturing :). Is there any tutorial which shows how to make / edit such amazing textures? I do know the basics but it doesn't look that great :(.
 
Shafat Hasan said:
My goodness, that's so FlyTampa quality *_*. I never knew that SKP can do such amazing stuff :D. Well then the fault isn't in my modelling but rather in the texturing :). Is there any tutorial which shows how to make / edit such amazing textures? I do know the basics but it doesn't look that great :(.
Click to expand...

As Lane Street said, Photoshop will allow you to 'bake' your AO and shadows. I just work the texture until it's close to what it is in real life. With practice no tutorial is needed. ;)
 
geromebodden said:
As Lane Street said, Photoshop will allow you to 'bake' your AO and shadows. I just work the texture until it's close to what it is in real life. With practice no tutorial is needed. ;)
Click to expand...
Sounds interesting :D. However I just went this close, not much realistic, but should be "okay" :D.

ppppp.jpg

bbeed.jpg
 
I see that you have a situation that I can relate to. I am still trying to figure out my plans for future fs development.

My name is Chris. I'm not even close to being a professional developer, but I have learned a few things. I'm currently working on (KDSM) Des Moines International Airport which is my home airport, and the (KIKV) Ankeny Regional Airport. I have been working alone on these projects for a few months, and I'm pretty happy with the results. I have always wanted to make high quality scenery like FlyTampa, FlightBeam, and FsDreamTeam.

I love blender!. I like blender because it's free, and is a great tool to apply textures to my models. I never was willing to pay the money for 3DSMax. I also like Sketchup. The reason I like Sketchup so much, is because of how easy and simple it is to use. Not only that but you can make a 3D models very fast because it's so simple. I feel that it doesn't have the high quality texturing capabilities that i'm looking for. I use Gimp for texturing which is free alternative to Photoshop.

Recently I made a hangar in Sketchup, and exported it as a .dae collada file, then opened the file in blender. One of the problems I had with importing into blender was that it created a bunch if unnecessary lines that I had to delete before I started to texture it. Then I made the textures for it in gimp. I usually export my project as a Collada file, then open it in Model Converter X. I never had problems with MCX import files from blender, but this time I did, because it came from Sketchup, and then Blender. I don't know why, but my textures would not load, but after a few days of tweaking, I fixed the problem. After that I used the Convert and place object wizard in MCX. It turned out okay, but in the future I might just stick to build buildings in blender and gimp alone. I would not recommend this method to just yet, because it has not worked for me perfectly yet. I have some other ideas that i'm testing.
Untitled.jpg

I've been building my ground polygons with Sketchup, because it takes a lot of work for me in Blender. I might import it into Blender and texture it there.
Untitled.jpg

Blender has an amazing feature the I use a lot, called ambient occlusion, it generates shadows and detail for your textures. I highly recommend using this feature as much as possible. If you want to know more about it, I recommend watching this YouTube video Austin has posted
he is a very talented guy, I love his channel. You might want to take a look at all his other videos as well.

Here's my first KDSM hangar completely made on blender.
Untitled.jpg


As you can probably tell, I believe in free stuff, and sometimes you can find high quality free tools. I highly recommend Blender 3d for any future projects. As with all new modeling software it takes a bit to learn how to use. I suggest learning the basics of Blender on YouTube, or search the web, and at first you don't have to work on airport scenery, you can build your skills working on other projects as well. Before I started developing airports, I had already worked with blender for many years. After flying on flight simulators for awhile I decided to put both skills together.

I plan to make some tutorials in the future on my new YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTze_BTsk61uvKnbEjHxR8Q. I have also opened a space in my blog http://pathtotheclouds.blogspot.com/ for tutorials. I congratulate you if you have read this far, and want to wish you luck with your developing situation. I've never heard of anything wrong with 3Ds max and if it were free, I'd grab it as soon as possible, but for now Blender has served me very well. The designers of blender are geniuses, and have really worked hard to give this freeware software, payware performance.

Happy Developing=)
 
I always thought in the same way, Skecthup to model and any other modeling tool for texturize. though easy to texture too you don't have the control that other tool have. don't like the way autodesk is doing, really.
Blender is great but it is a steep learning curve.
 
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Hi there, thanks for the help guys :).

Hi Chris, that's a very detailed explanation, thank you for that. I also use GIMP and I have seen it's relatively easy for me than Photoshop. I will try to use your way of exporting from SketchUp to .DAE and importing in another 3D software. I have also seen Austin's videos and have actually learnt SketchUp from him.

I will surely look at your channel too. Thank you once again :).
 
I found a solution to the multiple lines that Sketchup creates when exporting
Untitled.jpg


Step 1 - Click File, export, then 3D Model.
Untitled.jpg

Step 2 - Then click options
Untitled.jpg

Step 3 - After that, uncheck the box that says Triangulate All Faces
Untitled.jpg

Step 4 - Then click OK, and export
Step 5 - Then your done
Untitled.jpg
 
Modeling a ground poly an aligning textures to it was a nightmare to me when using sketchup. Especially all the edges and taxi lines where I had to realign the texture position on every single quad. :banghead:
Mapping a texture along a curved shape ( for example a spheroid) is completely out of the question.
That's why I would recommend Blender for this.
 
This was actually not what I meant. Because of a resolution falloff at the edges I don't like textures being flat projected.
I think a polar projection would be very much better for spheres and I don't know about this being possible in SketchUp.
 
and this taxi line took me hours to individually align the texture to every single segment.

grnd_APT.jpg


And yet there is a discontinuity at each edge.
 
@Chris04: you can also hit Alt J in Blender to join the triangles to faces. Triangles are no problem in fact, but it looks a bit chaotic sometimes, so I also prefer faces instead of triangles.
 
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