My first WIP. Criticism? Yes Please!

Gibbage said:
I...

Also, just another crituqie about the design more then the modeling. The rudder seems VERY small, considering the large frontal area. The aircraft would be extreamly horizontally challanged. I think it would need to be at least 2x the area to keep the nose in the right direction.
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Yeah, perfection isn't really something I'm going for. I'll be happy with a decent level of detail and full functionality.

I agree about the tail, it looks small, but it's actually slightly oversized from a 3 view drawing I got from Zenith's website.

I might make it a bit bigger so it looks right and assume that their 3 view is askew. It does say "not to scale" but I would assume it would be close enough. I've stepped away from their design on how the wing struts attach and on the profile of the nose (although it matches some of the pictures of homebuilts in their gallery) so making the tail more aesthetically pleasing is acceptable too.

profs1.jpg
 
Haha, yeah that's the thing that's bugging me about it at the moment too.

So I figured out the Gmax gamepack thing. For some reason Gmax installed itself in my d: drive whereas the rest of my SDK was in my c: drive, so I had to uninstall, reinstall to get it working.

I've got most of the model to where I want to start playing with it more in Gmax, animating asnd such. I tried to do a practice run on exporting to .MDL, but it gets 90% done converting and it gives me an out of memory error and Gmax closes.

I have 8GB ram, Vista 64, and I even increased my paging file to 32GB and it still crashes at 90%. I've tried closing out all other processed running in the background, it still happens.

Any ideas why that would be happening?
 
About the tail. I thought this was your own design. I didnt know you were working off of 3 views. I guess I was wrong about it needing more tail then!

As for the Max crash, it may be Vista 64x. Try running Gmax in XP mode and as Administrator. Gmax is a VERY old program and its sort of quirky. Also, try resetting the Xforms (under tools) on all the models and try that. This will reset your XYZ so save before doing this. Im sure some of the guys more familure with Gmax will help you out a bit with that error.

Also, if you take a class at a local community colledge, you can buy a copy of 3D Studio's Max REALLY cheep. The tooks work in Max 2009 (32b not 64b version) and youll have a lot more tools then Gmax at your disposal.
 
I really like your last renders, very classy stuff!
Were they done in 3dsmax, and if so, could you tell us how you achieve this result?
 
Re the hidden faces. I actually did a framerate test on a scenery object in FS2004 to see what the effect was. I nade two simple models a pair of sheds side by side. I made the sheds using simple boxes. in the first model I left hidden faces in (ie the base of the box which noone would ever see because it was pointing to the ground etc). The second model I deleted these hidden faces.

I then placed 200 copies of the first model in an out of the way place to see the effect on framerates. With no models I was getting about 60fps. With the 200 copies of the first, unoptimized model, that dropped to 30fps. Replace the model with the optimized one and framerates were 55fps.

Both models look exactly the same when in game but by deleting hidden faces I was able to nearly double my framerates. Now, for all my scenery, I religiously go through each model checking to make sure I've deleted any hidden faces. I guess the same would apply to aircraft models ?
 
Bzhyoyo, all of the renders with the blue backgrounds were done in Solid Edge, the program I am using to do the modeling. They aren't even really renders exactly, they are more like screenshots.

Gibbage, thanks for the heads-up on 3DStudio. My girlfreind is a faculty member at a Community College, as a result I can get free tuition for one class per semester. I've been thinking about taking a another class anyway, if they teach something that covers Photoshop or something like that. I'll have to look into the 3DStudio deal, it seems like it may integrate into my process better.

Also, I enlarged the vertical tail. It's more aesthetically pleasing now I think. It really does look small, even pictures of the real plane it looks small, but it seemed exaggeratedly small in my model.

Joe, the leading edge slats are there, they just needed some smoothing to make them stand out better. I added more detail to the wings last night and they are getting close to where I want them.

ch750TT008.jpg


ch750TT010.jpg


ch750TT011.jpg


Now, as for the Gmax "out of memory" thing. I searched and searched and finally came across and old thread in another forum about a similar problem. The person that was having the problem was given a list of things to try, I started going through the list and when I got to one about materials in Gmax, I tried redefining all of my materials to FlightSimX and gave it a shot and it got all the way to 100%, but I got a pop up warning screen at the end.

The pop-up screen said something like Warning: *deprecated* vertices at and had a list of about a dozen coordinates. I'm not sure it said deprecated, it might have said disfunctional, or something else like that. Anyway, it did make a .mdl file.

Now, if I rename that .mdl to the same as one of my default aircraft, then drop it into that's aircraft's model folder, should my primitive model show up in FSX so I can admire it before I do the textures, animations, etc? I know it won't fly inside FSX at that point, but I'd like to see what it looks like by now and see if it needs more work on the mesh before I start animating and playing with textures.

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I also need to add, that everyone on this forum has been wonderfully helpful so far. I've never seen an online forum that is so knowledgable and willing to help. I haven't seen a single "Read the #$%^%# manual" type post anywhere on this forum but I totally expected it as I started this thread.

Thank you all so much!

The way my mind works, I can handle instructions in small chunks, but if i had to read all the way through all the SDK documentation to find the answers to my questions I would have given up already. :isadizzy:
 
JSpal said:
The pop-up screen said something like Warning: *deprecated* vertices at and had a list of about a dozen coordinates. I'm not sure it said deprecated, it might have said disfunctional, or something else like that. Anyway, it did make a .mdl file.
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i get this on some of my models, some people refuse to carry on till they've fixed them all, i just leave em be, saves a ton of headaces and doesnt seem to cause any problems in fsx :engel016:

Now, if I rename that .mdl to the same as one of my default aircraft, then drop it into that's aircraft's model folder, should my primitive model show up in FSX so I can admire it before I do the textures, animations, etc? I know it won't fly inside FSX at that point, but I'd like to see what it looks like by now and see if it needs more work on the mesh before I start animating and playing with textures.
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Well your model will show up ... but it will show up pure black and you wont be able to see any details, easy enough to just create a dummy texture (if you've applied textures yet).

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I haven't seen a single "Read the #$%^%# manual" type post anywhere on this forum but I totally expected it as I started this thread.
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Might do if the documentation was any good .. before other devs jump on me .. its fine as long you know what your looking for .. but otherwise its murder :isadizzy:
 
Wowsa! That plane is looking better and better. The increased tail size really improves the look and balance of the plane.

As a guy who taught himself to use Photoshop some decade and a half ago, and as a guy who ripped out all the hair on his chest and half the hair on his head trying to learn Gmax....I assure you, Photoshop will be no problem to learn. I seems daunting at first, but it is really an easy program to use. There are a lot of tools in Photoshop, most of which I have never had a use for.

OBIO
 
I just had to see what it would look like at this point in FSX. To me this is HUGE!




2009-5-28_12-16-39-775.jpg


2009-5-28_12-15-24-367.jpg


And I mean HUGE!

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Oh yeah, and backwards...

I think somewhere in my conversion process, it's swapping meters in for inches and rotating around the Z axis - both easy fixes. The invisible tail was an error in my original model that got worse as the plane went through the two steps of the conversion process, I fixed it in the original model and it seems to be converting properly.

It was important to me to see that a model could go from one format in one program, to another format in another, to a third in a third, then into FSX and actually work - without any hyper-expensive software. I was worried that I was spending a lot of time working on details on a plane that would not survive the translation process.
 
For FSX in gmax, unfortunately, you have to use metres for development, not feet and inches. It's not optional and the result otherwise is the rather interesting scale difference you have noticed.

It's alright for us Europeans who deal in thousands and thousandths all the time, but it baffles a lot of ex colonials who still think in base 4, 16, 22, 1760, etc. ;)

(And yes, I am joking... I work in the British rail industry, which works in miles and metres. Er... Yeah. OK. :monkies:)
 
Congratulations, it will be a great model........see guys!!!! here is a real developer in the making!!!!:ernae::ernae::applause::applause::applause:
 
I got a model working in FSX that is the right size and pointing the right way.

I think I have almost all the detail I can put into the mesh without going overboard. There is a wire harness that runs from the firewall (?) in the front, down the left side rocker panel (?) that is clearly visible in most of the interior pics on the MFG's website. I'm going to work through the tutorial I have for modeling wire harnesses and see how it looks. After that, I think it's going to start being overkill.

I also have to finish the right side wing support struts.

The doors open and close, I added exhaust, and I played around a lot today with different modes of exporting to see what works best. The jury is still out on that one. It's time consuming and has mixed results regardless of how I do it.

I downloaded a free 30 day trial of 3DStudio today, I'll see how that integrates into my workflow to see if it's worth buying. It would be REALLY nice if I could export from SolidEdge directly to a format that is compatible with 3DS. I found a plug-in to do it, it's all of a dozen KB in size, and it costs $195! :isadizzy: I'll be passing on that one.

ch750TT022.jpg

Door closed

ch750TT021.jpg

Door open

ch750TT023.jpg

And now that the door opens, the detail in the interior is easier to see.

Before I can go much further, I'm going to have to refresh myself on animation in 3DStudio or learn in Gmax... and then there's the texturing... and then there's the whole flight dynamics, .cfgs, etc...

It's definitely coming along though, and it's tons of fun.
 
ahh, I see. Shame because I'd like to make a render in 3dsmax with the same kind of style and print it so that my nephew colour a plane, as I seem to have given him the bug.
Keep up the good work!
 
I've got all the modeling done to my liking. I'm working now on finding the best way to export it into Gmax. The way I was doing it, some details were getting weird in the translation process.

So I found a better way to export it, but it will involve a $200 plug-in for Solid Edge if I want to use it past this Friday (it's a free trial).

But now I am trying to export my newly converted model from Gmax to a .MDL to see how the details look in FSX, but when I do that, it tells me I am over the 65535 vertices limits. Is there a work around for that?

I downloaded a free 30 day trial of 3DStudio Max 9. I'm having problems trying to get up to speed using it for the exporting. Is there a set of tutorials anywhere for FSX plane creation in 3DStudio - specifically preparing for export and exporting?

Will 3Dstudio allow me to exceed that 65535 vertex limit?
 
JSpal said:
Will 3Dstudio allow me to exceed that 65535 vertex limit?
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Are you using a single material?

If so, make another and give it to some parts.

You'll exceed the limit no matter what if you have a single material covering move than 65535.
 
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