Spokane International Airport (KGEG)

[DXtrans]

I thought I would show everyone my first successful beginnings of flight simulator scenery design. This model of Spokane International Airport's terminal has been in progress for about a month. At the moment I've only been using sketch-up for modeling. Hopefully in the near future I'll will be able to transition to GMAX. Future plans for this airport involve creating custom taxiways and runways, and perhaps some buildings modeled in GMAX. Time will tell but this has proved to be a challenging yet exciting project for a first timer. I'll end by saying that I have just joined FSdeveloper and this happens to be my first post so hope it works! I plan to enhance my skills and become an active member in this community.

Austin

 

[JRobinson]

Hi Austin, good to see another "local" on the forums. Your terminal looks great and Spokane has been my home base for tubeliner flights since back in the FS2002 days. Which sim are you designing for BTW? Also what part of Idaho do you live in? I'm up in the panhandle, Bonners Ferry. Keep up the good work and if you need help give a shout out in one of the forums here. This is a great group of folks with an amazing amount of collective knowledge, helpful too .

Jim

 

[DXtrans]

I live in the Palouse region of Idaho. At the moment I'm focused on getting this finished for FSX. If time permits however I wouldn't mind making it compatible with FS9 as well. One of my goals is become experienced enough to produce payware and freeware airports. Of course other things could interfere with this goal but it provides motivation.

There are few Some stumbles I'm having right now. Things such as reducing the poly count, creating textures that are not flat, and mapping the spiral texture to the parking garage ramp.

I haven't noticed any performance decrease when exporting my model to FSX. However, MCX does not always allow me to convert because of too many polygons.

Hopefully I'll be able to create some textures with more depth.
I'm guessing this is just a task of learning how to use GIMP.

In the begging I was planning to model the parking garage ramps in a more 3D fashion. Since then I've decided just to texture them but having a little trouble creating a uniform texture and mapping it to the ramp.

As I mentioned in my previous post I hope to create custom ground polygons for my airport. I haven't tried creating any yet but I plan to follow Bill Womack's tutorial. It doesn't look to hard to create the shape of the polygons in GMAX. At the moment I have it in my mind that it will be harder to create good looking textures to map to the polygons.

Perhaps I should have posted most of this in the Sketchup forum but here it is anyways. I've attached a picture of a basic static jetway I created yesterday.

 

[DXtrans]

I'm coming back to this thread I created to show everyone some of the "What happenings" that are going on in this project. Since the beginnings I have learned so much more in GSU and FS scenery design in general. Because of this I've completely thrown out my old terminal and started remodeling from scratch. Wasn't too enthused about doing that, but I'm glad I did because of the much nicer results I've been getting. Aside from GSU I'm making slow, but steady progress on the how too's of GMAX. Making custom ground polygons in GMAX is going quite well for me and hopefully that will progress to modeling 3d objects. Who knows, I may even end up redoing my terminal again in GMAX!

 

[cscboulder11]

Looking very nice.

 

[wideloadwhitford]

Agreed, keep up the good work.

 

[SoloWing]

Loving that parking garage. Wish I had it easy modeling ramps like that in 3DS!

 

[DXtrans]

Thanks Everyone! If anything your nice comments keeps motivated !

Here are a couple pics of some of my ground poly work. It's still kind of a learning curve for me, but I'm getting there. New things continue to be learned causing me to redo my work. The main challenge for me is making textures that will repeat well while still maintaining some degree of realism. The ware is what's really holding me back, but I'm sure I'll have that all straightened out in due time. Basically I have yet to be impressed by them and perhaps they're not even worth posting......

 

[rDesigns]

Hi!
Of course they are worth posting
They look very good to me (at least better then mine )

 

[EdGeneer]

Looking nice....

 

[cscboulder11]

Nice to see you're still making progress.

 

[DXtrans]

Thought I would post a couple picks of what is version 4, or should I say, trial 4 of Spokane International Airport Terminal. It's pretty exciting because I think I'm getting a handle on textures which for me has been the hardest part. In this rendition I only have the two parking garages and baggage claim area modeled.

This is never going to end.. but at least it's fun... or maybe it's just obsessive...

 

[DXtrans]

Well it has been a while, but here is what I've been up to. Trying to work out the ruff edges and hopefully move on to concourse C soon. Version four of the terminal is working our pretty well so far. It gets easier every time!

 

[masondom]

I really wish you good luck !

Dom

 

[ollyau]

Wow, that's pretty impressive.

 

[alexczarn]

That's looking pretty good so far!

 

[DXtrans]

Thanks!

I've refined the jetways a bit and added concourse C to the deal. Obviously I'm still working on it in areas, but it is more or less "blocked in" now.

 

[Jon_aus]

Hey nice!

Love to see it available for fs9.

 

[DXtrans]

Well, it's getting there! I can still think of plenty of things that need to be done, but at least the whole "idea" is becoming reality.

Lately, I've been messing around with night textures which have proven to be a challenge. The roadblock I've encountered is how best to go about 'lighting' the light poles. Since I was using sketchup, I was considering using the light method as shown by jtanabodee. As of right now, I've had unsatisfactory results, but haven't dropped the idea. The other option I'm considering is placing effects with GMax. Either way, I'm not too sure what to do at the moment? Maybe someone would have some insight?

I've attached some pictures of where I'm at with the terminal. Even with all the hurdles I've had to overcome, I'm still amazed by how things improve with practice. Many times I question GSU's ability to even create a decent looking model. As with anything, it takes a vision and then the work to achieve it. Of course it's not really work, I thoroughly enjoy myself doing this!

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[jencas]

Wow, stunning images!!!