Texture Does Not Look Right

[kmanning]

Hi,

After exporting my project from Sketchup, the texture on the 1932 old terminal looks nothing like it was originally. I downloaded this texture from SketchupTextures and it pretty much matches the bricks on the real terminal. Here's the original texture:

I applied this texture to the old 1932 terminal and it looks fine in Sketchup. But just a soon as I export the model from Sketchup and import it into MCX, the texture looks very grainy and looks like a repeated carpet map rather than the brick. In the file name, it says it's seamless and it seems to me that things should look exactly the same as they were originally. Here's the model in Sketchup:

This is way it should look, even after exporting. Now noticed what it looks like after importing into MCX:

As you can see, it is totally different and it has the appearance of for every 3 or 4 rows, the bricks are pushed in and starts another row where they are even. This looks nothing like the original texture that I've downloaded. Here's what it looks like in the sim:

I've always and used textures like this, and in the past, I've never had issues like this until recently. Is there a setting in MCX that will prevent this? I don't think MCX is causing the problem since all the other textures look good. But I don't understand why this texture in MCX looks nothing like the original texture file. I would upload a kmz file but for some reason when I import the kmz or dea into Sketchup, it says Import Failed, and I don't understand why it won't import. I've read where it has something to do with the edges, and I don't see anything wrong with my edges. The edges are turned on or checked.


Ken.

 

[tgibson]

What sim, and what format is the texture in?

 

[kmanning]

What sim, and what format is the texture in?

HI Tom,

The sim is FSX and the texture is in a JPEG or .jpg format.

Ken.

 

[tgibson]

Try converting the texture to a 24 bit BMP format before loading into MCX. Then convert to a DXT texture using MCX or DXTBmp for use in FSX. If the DXT conversion looks bad convert to an 888 32 bit texture instead.

 

[=rk=]

I am going to suggest that what you are dealing with, is the consequences of a tiled texture with a somewhat large pattern, making this suggested solution to use a tiled texture with greater detail, as in less repetition.

To explain, right now you are using a texture consisting of 18 bricks on a wall that requires thousands. It is as if you are using a single brick, but you are not, you are using a clump of 18. Therefore, any imperfections in the group of 18, that are not exactly reflected through the entire group, become a "border," it is like the group of 18 is facet on a diamond, or one cell in a dragonfly's eye. You cannot see the imperfection, but if you move back, you can see the pattern of every transition, the edge of each facet, as the POV changes. This is really just a consequence of math vs. graphics.

I have some pictures to demonstrate. Now you would have to admit, to get a square texture to drop onto a round ball with nearly perfect symmetry, some sort of compromise needs to be made. Here we see it in the weird patterning:

As we move in close, we see the dark lines vanish and it looks almost perfect again! You can even see that pesky darkness fading away at the edge.

Here is texture from textures.com A slightly different color blue, but the bricks are much, much smaller in relation to the texture, which is almost exactly the same size as the Sketchup one. While those tile pattern anomalies are still present, they are much more subdued:

Bear in mind you probably can't just drop this texture to the model and accept Sketchups auto projection, because the bricks would be too small. If you need to change projection, you can, but it won't neatly wrap around curved surfaces the way it does if you accept the default projection. This shouldn't matter because you are using a square building, so any individual face/projection, can be copied from one to another, meaning the texture will still "wrap."

Textures.com has many versions of blue bricks, so you could probably find one closer to what you are using, they even have a few complete materials.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I took a copy of the concrete blocks from above, and made an object in Blender for MSFS. Here's what it looks like in the sim:

Not so bad. About what you would expect. It looked about the same in Blender. I imported the Blender-made GLTF to MCX, and I got this:

Ouch!. MCX is adding some sort of normal to the material, it seems. Out of curiosity, I loaded the compiled MSFS modelLib BGL from the MSFS package to MCX and got this:

Not bad. Totally unexpected. So MCX is doing something weird in the display of the texture, apparently with dae imports or GLTF imports.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I took the weird MCX displayed GLTF, and had MCX make a different model, with a saved texture from MCX of a different name, and got this:

So, it appears the display in MCX is not right, but the material is fine in MSFS... I assume it would be fine in P3D or FSX as well.

 

[Anthony31]

Quite possibly a mipmap issue. As the normal (bump) map has large deviations at the top and bottom to account for the mortar lines this is causing issues when the texture is reduced in size for the mipmaps.

Make a larger source texture by duplicating it (if the the source is 1024x1024 make a 2048x2048 texture and copy the 1024x1024 into it four times, an even better solution would be to reduce the size of the original and copy it into a larger texture. How much detail do you really need in those blocks?)

Or edit the texture so the mortar joins aren't at the edges.

Or the easy option is to ensure that the material option "Force texture address clamp" and/or "Force texture address wrap" are set to true. These can usually avoid weird issues when the sim tries to render the edges of textures.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

There is no normal. Just straight diffuse texture from the image above.

 

[=rk=]

I think what you see in the MCX window is a different projection from the 3d software. It seems like, if every border were doubled in the MCX display, it would look like that. This whole circumstance could be a consequence of the mipmap render adjustment Arno made recently.

 

[kmanning]

Try converting the texture to a 24 bit BMP format before loading into MCX. Then convert to a DXT texture using MCX or DXTBmp for use in FSX. If the DXT conversion looks bad convert to an 888 32 bit texture instead.

I followed your instructions and I'm still having the same problem:

I converted the original texture into bmp and imported it into my model. I've checked the material and it says bmp. So I exported the model as a kmz file. I imported my model into MCX using the Convert and Place Object Wizard. I opened the Material Editor and converted the brick texture as a bmp and also DXTBMP. I've tried them both. I forget which ones but one of them caused the blue brick to disappear. I don't know what you mean by 888 32 bit. I've never heard that before.

Ken.

 

[kmanning]

I took the weird MCX displayed GLTF, and had MCX make a different model, with a saved texture from MCX of a different name, and got this:
View attachment 87685
So, it appears the display in MCX is not right, but the material is fine in MSFS... I assume it would be fine in P3D or FSX as well.

I think the only way to be sure is to use the original software to export the model into MCX and install the files into the original sim, which is FSX. If you have them, would you try testing them using Sketchup and FSX. You may find things work differently in Blender and MSFS 2020. I've tried using the blocks and still had the same problem. Yours look very good using Blender and MSFS 2020 but I want to see the results for the software and sim that I'm using.

Ken.

 

[tgibson]

If texture conversion didn't fix it, then it's likely to be the issue that Rick and Dick are describing, so you will need to deal with the texture contents themselves - yours is not a texture that can be tiled without display issues.

Some other simple things you can try:

1. Try taking the top two rows of bricks and duplicating those, replacing the other brick rows below.
2. Try taking a single row of bricks, create a new offset row by using a copy of that row texture, and use those two row for the rest of the texture as well.
3. Try taking a single brick from the texture, and paste that into every brick in the texture.

Hope this helps,

 

[kmanning]

Hi all,

Here's what I don't understand. I just happened to remember that I created this airport in another project back in 2021, and the name of that project was KBHM Airport 1970. That was based on what the airport looked like in 1970. It had the same old 1932 terminal with the blue bricks that I'm currently using now. The blue bricks are not that small. They are 18" across, and it's the large bricks you'll find in several buildings, and they're usually white. I don't know if 18" is correct but it's very close. The times when I loaded a fight using the KBHM 1970, I did not recall having the problems with those blue bricks having that bad appearance. So, when I import the bgl file from the FSX KBHM Airport 1970 folder into MCX, that old terminal looked great and had a good appearance without all of the distortions, and it's the very same textures.

In FSX, it also had a good appearance:

I'm not saying this is the problem but it seems like over the past 2 years, something as been added to MCX that may be causing the problems I'm facing. Arno, would you explain why my texture does not have the same appearance as the original and why it has that boarder line row of appearance, I guess you can call it?

Ken.