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P3D v3 Working on a HondaJet HA420 , Have some questions

M

Marwan Gharib

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87
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egypt
Hello every one.
been working on a Hondajet for the past couple of weeks. my main intention is self development in 3Dsmax by modeling exterior and interior of the aircraft , and eventually release as freeware.

This is how far I've gone , Still a work in progress and lots of details to be added. Then I will dig a bit in the FSX/Prepar3d SDK to export to Prepar3d with appropriate materials.

I have some questions if I May:
1-Right now I am at 83K polys , I expect the exterior to hit 100K by the time i'm done with it. and perhaps another 100K for the interior . is this too much for the platform to handle?
2-do I need to have each movable part as a separate object? eg. Flaps , gears , buttons etc.? or one single object with many elements.
3-Is normal maps baking supported by the ESP engine? can I bake high poly normals to lower poly models?
4-I am modeling to scale with 3Dsmaxs' world units to meter, is this the correct way to go about for exporting?
5-I am modeling with the mindset of high poly modeling techniques as i'm new to game asset modeling, I use turbosmooth and insist on modeling all quads , A lot of time is spent on edge flow, Is this necessary for the platform , or are triangles and N-gons and yield same results?

Thank you for your time reading this . let me know what you think.


Marwan,
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1) No. Mind the vertex limit of 65536 per material though.
2) Separate parts (objects).
3) Normal maps are supported. These should be the same resolution as the diffuse texture.
4) Yes.
5) Find a balance between detail and performance. I regard around 150000 vertices as the absolute maximum for any model for performance reasons, but the engine allows much more detail as long as you adhere to the material limit.
 
Thanks for your valuable input.

Heretic said:
1) No. Mind the vertex limit of 65536 per material though.
2) Separate parts (objects).
3) Normal maps are supported. These should be the same resolution as the diffuse texture.
4) Yes.
5) Find a balance between detail and performance. I regard around 150000 vertices as the absolute maximum for any model for performance reasons, but the engine allows much more detail as long as you adhere to the material limit.
Click to expand...
 
Hello Marwan,

Very nice work.

My Learjet had probably 1/2 Million Polys. I made the interior the same as the exterior but without the pilot on the Interior so you arent 'in' him when in the sim.

If you use the Lockheed Marting P3D SDK, you can export greater amounts. The only limitation is 65K polys per material, so you may need to clone/change materials to span out the parts; have a diff Material per sets of 65K parts/polys. Otherwise its probably good up to over 1 million poly exports.

We use the P3D V1 export from Max, then the latest P3D V3 export from X/Xanim to MDL formats. That way the models work in FSX 'and' in Prepar3D simulators.

To get the SDK, you probably need to buy a month of Developers Edition Prepar3D. Get your SDK's setup, align with Max, and do some test exports and you should be good to go.

I have no issues with mass quantities of Polygons. Just try to not go overboard on them as it can be too many in a sim, if you know what I mean. I use Poser people for passengers and pilot, and try not to use the high version poly people to keep polygons down. They can use up a ton of polys. I also delete skin under the clothes on Poser people to help manage lower polys.

Have fun!

Bill
 
Note that you will need to learn how to build the folder parts also. Sound folder, Panel folder, round up some gauges and link those in to some polygons on the panel, etc.

I burn Ambient Occlusions and install those as layers in my textures.

I create Normals via the nVidia freeware addon for Photoshop. Then I burn them from layers -> Bitmaps -> DDS 'Normal' map. Drop that in the primary Texture folder in the plane folder. I make the rivets a light gray (not to bright) in the layers PSD file of the bump map.

You can easily use your texture maps to build the Normal map template from (if you go that route). I convert my rivets textures to bumps on the normal map. I basically recycle a version of the texture to a Normal, make a layer at the top, and raise up graphics above the boundry top layer, turn those to light / dark layers (like rivets are bright, seams are black or dark, etc), then use the above work flow to burn a DDS Normal.

I use Photoshop for all base textures and export as DDS.

Graphics must be base-16 in sizes; 256,512,1024,2048,4096. 4096 is rare and should only be used when necessary. Hard to run this on some computers that are older. Usually 2048 is the 'big' size. 1024 is normal. For colorization things that have no detail, you can use 128x128 textures.

Bill
 
Oh, and handling is done with the 'aircraft.cfg' and the AIR file, such as MyHondaJet.air. For the AIR file, use Aircraft Airfile Manager V2.2. For the aircraft config file, open it with Windows Notepad.

If you want a really nice airfile created, you might ask Roy Holmes what his work schedule is like. He is a pro FDE file creator. He is payware but worth the funds if you can afford it. Sometimes the files can take several months for him to make, so have the time frame set aside. Thats if you want someone to do them for you. You can usually use a template from an exising 'stock' FS plane such as the Lear to create your FDE files from (config and AIR files), then dial in the performance figures, etc, from there and get it handling proper.

Bill
 
lionheart said:
To get the SDK, you probably need to buy a month of Developers Edition Prepar3D. Get your SDK's setup, align with Max, and do some test exports and you should be good to go.
Click to expand...
The P3D SDK's are freely available for anyone to download and unpack. Note I did not say "install" because for that you would need to have P3D already installed.

However, the files can be "unpacked" with a minimum of effort.
 
lionheart said:
To get the SDK, you probably need to buy a month of Developers Edition Prepar3D. Get your SDK's setup, align with Max, and do some test exports and you should be good to go.
Click to expand...
The P3D SDK's are freely available for anyone to download and unpack. Note I did not say "install" because for that you would need to have P3D already installed.

However, the files can be "unpacked" with a minimum of effort.
 
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