posted 01-13- 11:36 AM               

Post here any and everything you know about OPS, AC3d or Max. That includes tips, tricks, workarounds or info. that not too many people know about.

Do searches to get info. that you have posted in the past if you cant think of anything right off the top of your head.

Once enough information is gathered, I (Or whoever wants to help me) will organize and put together a large document. Think of this as the next Open Plane Document for plane builders.

posted 01-13- 02:50 PM               

You build your aircraft in Max, and sepperate it into wings and fuse, then you map the fuse with your fuse Tif, and export it using Materials, and do the same for your wings. Now, when you import these parts into OPS the new texture reference is added that you need. This one bugged me for so long it's unreal and I stumbled across it while working on terrains of all things.. LOL

Basicaly:
Map your wings with your wings.tif and export as an obj using create materials
Do the same with the fuse
open your aircraft in OPS and import the parts.
OPS adds the new texture refs itself and you now have 2 tif's instead of 1 for the aircraft.

OK, maybe most know about this, but I didn't, and I'm sure there wil be others that don't know.

~Nat~

posted 01-13- 03:51 PM               

If the DOF is acting up on you when you rotate it (Moving positions) and/or when you reload the SM file... delete the DOF. Exit OPS and start it back up again. Load up your plane and add back in the DOF to the object. If possible, translate the DOF to its position first and then rotate it. If the DOF is still rotating back on you, click on the 'Reset XForm' button in OPS for the object and then add in the DOF. (Make sure the object has no DOF when you do this) If all else fails, reset the object to its orgin in a 3d program (Like AC3d)

File Refrences:

To add in a file refrence, copy and existing one (A pilots one for instance) and change where it points to. Then reload the SM file.

Groups:

To delete Groups in OPS without OPS CTDing on you or Illegal Operationing on you, delete all the children of the Group and then all the properties of the Group itself. (Yes Groups CAN have properties) Then reload the SM file and the Group will go away.\

Cuting/Pasting of parts in OPS:

posted 01-14- 02:15 AM               

If you give the 1st LOD a switch in of 1, then it will be invisible in OPS (Once you reload the SM file) and in SDOE.

Weapon load tip:

For a new weapon to be added in SDOE and work, the refrence of the weapons SM file MUST be put in the startup.ppf file. Also, the name of the base object in the weapons SM file MUST match the name of the weapon refrence in the aircrafts loadout.ppf file. You must then select the loadout with the new weapon in the mission editor for that plane you loaded it onto.

Pilot/parachute bug:

If you edit a pilots SM file and reload, the parachute will no longer work correctly.

To fix this:
1. In OPS... load up the pilots SM file you wish to edit, then uncheck Parse Proplist under View -> Prefrences.

2. Then, click on the parachute part and then click on Object -> Edit Properties as text and copy all the text you see and paste it into a word document for future refrence.

3. Check back Parse Proplist and begin editing the pilot SM file.

4. Once done, save the SM file and quit OPS.

5. Then go back into OPS, load up the the pilot SM file you were working on and uncheck Parse Proplist.

6. Next, click on the parachute part, then edit its properties as text.

7. copy/paste the properties from that word file back into the parachutes properties. (Make sure you delete all the old parachutes properties first)

8. Then click Ok and reload the SM file. (Do NOT recheck Parse Proplist in this last stage)

This will fix back your pilots parachute.

"Closet" Objects:

In a SM file, there are parts such as shadows, propfast/bent that are not a child of anything. These are called "closet objects" These are global objects and therefore MUST be named differently in EACH SM file. Otherwise any aircraft with the same name for these closet objects that are both in the same mission, will have conflicting closet objects and therefor may show them incorrect. To make sure this does NOT happen, name them differently.

If you wish to delete these closet objects in OPS, make sure they have NO properties and then click on them and hit the delete key. If they are in a Group, either use OPS 1.03 or OPS 1.21 to delete them. If you must use OPS 1.30 to delete closet objects that are in a Group, delete the properties of the Group and then reload the SM file. The Group will dissppear after you reload the SM file and then you can delete the closet objects without screwing up the rest of the SM file. If you try to delete closet objects in a group with OPS 1.30, your aircraft and all its children will get deleted instead. Remember, all closet objects MUST have the property obDynamic if they are not in a Group with it already specified if you wish them to work properly.

posted 01-14- 12:21 PM               

This is great stuff guys, This is the kinda stuff that always gets me down wheni try to build stuff for SDOE.

All the little work arounds that you never know about it till you run into it and ask here what to do.

I hope more people start talking argon, there certainly is enough people making planes that there must be TONS of work arounds and stuff.

Personally I'm looking for any info about getting my plane from MAX into OPS with the smoothing intact and the correct size.

posted 01-14- 04:02 PM               

I don't know how many times I've seen guys having problems with canopies, windows, etc. Don't "make" em, "steal" em!

Find a plane that has a similar canopy to the one you're building. Use OPS to copy that part, and then paste it into your new plane. Now that canopy is a part of your model. Open the canopy in your 3D program. Now you have an object that is ALREADY "glass." You can stretch, chop up, duplicate, whatever, and it will still be glass. Once you've got it shaped to the correct shape for your plane, save it as the existing canopy part for the new plane. Voila. Glass.

The Zero has an almost perfect canopy for "borrowing" because the frame and glass panels are easy to separate. For a bubble canopy, the P-47 is a good one to start with.

The same principle applies to almost any part. Find one that's similar to what you want, and steal it. It will already have the correct properties for what you want to model, and all you need to do is reshape it and re-texture map it.

posted 01-14- 07:56 PM               

On the yak I made a glass "shell" that goes outside of the canopy frame. it only has a few polys and you can't tell its anything but normal canopy glass.

TS

posted 01-15- 06:56 AM               

I've had pretty good success using the VRML export using Max 3.1.

Export as a VRML97. In the option window: Under Generate I turn on Normals and Indentation and leave everything else off. I select NGONS under Polygons Type and leave the rest of the fields blank. The last thing I do is to uncheck the Use Prefix.

This works well for me. I was having alot of problems with the textures of exported .obj parts being all screwed up in OPS. This disappeared using VRML.

The only problem I've noticed is that on the import into OPS with VRML, sometimes the position of the object goes to the parent origin. This got frustrating but is really only a minor hassle. I think it might have something to do with my OPS setup since it didn't start until late in my project and after I started playing with the coordinate options.

Also, occasionally, the VRML export won't export a part. You'll go into OPS, open the VRML file and.... nothing. This has something to do with the current condition of the stack in max. If you have hidden the object before returning to the top level of the stack it won't export until you open up the object again and return to the top level.

-----

This is what I did (keep in mind that what I did was basically a modification job for an existing model and not the creation of a brand new plane):
1) I exported the original version from OPS as .obj.
2) Imported them into Max3.1 using obj2max, all the texturing was completely lost, but this was not a big problem since some of the changes I wanted to make had to do with the textures.
3) When I wanted to export any mesh changes into OPS. I would export from Max to OPS as VRML. My max file then became my main visual reference file. i.e. I didn't export from OPS ever again (not quite true, but you get the point). Any time I wanted to make a visual change I would change my max reference file and export to OPS as VRML.
4) Just as a note, I usually kept two versions of my max file, one for export and one for modification. The one for modification had all the parts visually in the right place (i.e. it looked like a plane). When I wanted to export I would save it under a new name. I then used a slightly modified version of BR (or TS?) max script (you can find it on this forum somewhere or at the OPS site) that centers each object meshes on the origin so that they are in the proper location when imported into OPS (see BRs tutorial on the OPS website). The modification I made to the script was to eliminate the export and relocate commands. This just helped for when I wanted to make sure that a mesh's orientation and origin was where I thought it should be.

One nice feature of the VRML export from Max is that you can select it to only export what is on the screen(unhidden). This is great when you only want to change one part(ie. wingtip). Then all you have to do is select the part in OPS(wingtip) you want to change, open up the import mesh dialogue, select VRML, pick the mesh to import, sit patiently through the long list of messages, and voila... a fancy new part (wingtip) appears in OPS, exactly as ordered.

posted 01-18- 11:48 AM               

Don't use the cylinder primitive to make cylindrical objects. Use a disc, extrude it into however many segements you want, then delete the central vertices. Optimise surfaces, and you are done.

Why?

Simple,

The primitive cone uses triangles for each face, while if you do it as above, the faces are all quads. In effect, you have half as many polys! You can use the same trick for all cylindrical objects.

Quads are way better than triangles, but only if all 4 verts are co-planar. Get a vert out of shape, and SDOE will fail to draw thay polygon. If that should happen, select the dodgy polygon, and hit the surface tab, and select triangulate!

Oh yeah.......one other thing!

Made your model, smoothed it, but you get dodgy shading on wing trailing edges?

Split your wing into top and bottom halves ( you have to anyway to texture them ) and re-smooth while they are apart. The shading can then be fixed. You may need to snap verts together and optimise, but the smooth finish is now possible. When you have textured, merge the parts back together, and optimise verts. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO SMOOTH THESE PARTS AGAIN. Very important that! If you do, you will be right back where you started!

posted 01-20- 08:22 PM               

Bryan explained shading to me a while ago, and I am exanding (probably incorrectly) to AC3D:

Each vertex has a normal. This normal is used with the face normal to determine shading. The shading is interpolated between the normals. For smooth shading, the verts need to be shared- this way the verex has one normal! For hard edge shading you need multiple verts because there needs to be multiple vertex normals for that edge, one for each face.

If you have a sharp edge, like the trailing edge of a wing - that forms a triangle, then this vertex normal causes problems. In smooth shading mode, the vertex will be avereged between the opposite faces- so it will point towards the rear. Now the upper surface normal points stright up. So when the shading is done, it will get very dark near the back because this vertex normal has such a differnce from the face normal.

Now if instead you create a very small flat edge at the back (like the SE5a, DR1a, etc) it makes life easier. The upper rear vertex normal will point upwards at about 45 degrees (when you smooth shade it just averages lots of normals), so the shading will be less harsh as it curves around the back of the wing.

The other thing to do to preserver the sharp edge AND keep the shading correct is this: Do NOT share those trailing edge verts! Smooth shade the top and bottom of the wing when they are seperate objects. When you merge them, do NOT optimise verts! This way, the top and bottom trailing edge verts are NOT shared, there are two on top of each other. This allows the top vertex normal to point almost stright up, and the bottom to point almost stright down. This is the hard edge- there will be no smooth transition from top to bottom- but this is good! Now we have smooth shading across the top, and across the bottom. But where you see the top and th bottom at the same time, there will be very differnt shading between the two surfaces at the trailing edge. This is correct - I think.

Some images, thanks to Bryan. The top image shows an object that is smooth shaded, not the face normals and the vertex normals. The bottom image shows the hard edge look, note the multiple vertex normals per corner. Note that you can NOT have multiple vertex normals per corner in AC3D if you optimize verts, because you will no longer have multiple verts per corner

Maybe I will experiment with this to prove it out in AC3D, I need to for fixing my EIII wings...

Also please fill me in where I am wrong- I know I have at least some things mixed up

------------------
-Sv =FC=

WWI in SDOE!

posted 01-20- 10:11 PM               

Pachy's idea i just took it once step more..

Well it's pretty simple. The plane is mapped on the tif, make a copy of that tif and change the name. add the tif to the SM file and get the new texture index of the tif. Now, just change the texture index on say the bottoms of the wings, tail other side of the fuse and anything else you want. Boom, get the plane in game with both tifs and now the top and bottom of the wings and tail and fuse can be painted differnt the the other one.

if you don't already know this is what i did for the P-38's

this could also fix the Spitfires and any other plane on one tif.

This will also work with new planes, build half the plane. Wing tail vertical stab and half the fuse, then once it's mapped you can copy and mirror the parts and merge them together. Now the whole plane is mapped and on two tifs.

speeds things up a lot..

------------------
Tony "Razer" Martin

"Making SDOE a dangerous Place, One plane at a time!"
FS Hangar

posted 01-20- 10:34 PM               

Or is this a 3dsmax trick that us poor AC3D guys can't use? But you are an AC3D guy, right Razer? Finish the trick then, how/where do I change the texture ID's? This could indeed save much time!

posted 01-23- 01:25 PM               

Yes, you have to import the part and and change the index number. It took all of 20 mins to do it for the P-38.

In Ac3d this is very easy! right click on the colors in the lower left of the screen in AC3D. The shininess is the texture index for the LOD. just slide the bar up and down to the tex index you need and your done.

The Tex index is already set on the plane you just need to give the area you want to change the new index number. After you set the shininess on a color, just high light the area, (lets say the bottom of the wing) then click the color and you'll set the tex index to what ever you put.

Now smooth and export, now you plane is using the new texture from the bottom of the wing. now you should have already put the new texture in the plane so now all you have to do is make a copy of the old texture and rename it to what ever you put in the plane.

P38fa.tif and P38fb.tif is the names i used. Do that for the whole plane and you have an old plane on two tifs and schemes are a lot more accurate.

------------------
Tony "Razer" Martin

"Making SDOE a dangerous Place, One plane at a time!"
FS Hangar

posted 01-23- 07:14 PM               

Then, the other half is obtained by symetry in AC3D. It is assigned another color in AC3D (say red with tex index 2).

Then we merge, optimize, fix the shading where it's necessary, then cut the whole thing in parts and export the LODs.

Here's the main fuse LOD:

We assign the "Left" TIF to tex index 2 and "Right" to tex index 1 in OPS, import the LODs and it's done.

posted 01-23- 07:46 PM               

Sometimes if you smooth a part before you export, you will destroy the correct shading. If it is a sub part of a larger whole, than the shading must be left alone. Although the shading looks flat shaded when you import LODS using hippie's tools, the vertex normals are correct.

Hippie's LOD file does not share vertecies, ALL vertecies will be there. So if AC3D says a cube has 8 verts, the LOD file will show 24.

The key is in the vertex normals. If multiple verts has identical vertex normals int he LOD file, then shading is smooth. When multiple verts that have the same coord have different vertex normals then you will see flat shading.

I have not tested this out yet, but it seems that AC3D shows flat shading when it imports objects with non-shared verts, even if the normals are smooth shaded.

I am working on this to understand...

posted 01-24- 11:37 AM               

I optmize everything and smooth before i export it and i don't have any shading problems. I due have a problem on the fuse that doubles the polys in the LOD when exported but it's a LOD export bug. Pachy had the same problem on one of this planes.

for gear i just set one color to the whole thing, so i have 10x10 tifs of one color then just set the tex index to that color. no mapping needed and the whole part is painted.

posted 01-24- 12:12 PM               

I think you might be mistaken, but I am not sure- maybe Hippie can help if he read this.

How are you determining the double poly count in the LOD file? I have never seen this... but I do see that verts are NEVER shared explicitly in the LOD file. I think somewhere down the line the dupe verts are shared- either in Hippie's OLC tool or in the OpenPlane engine itself.

If you smooth a part that is part of a larger continuous object, there is a very good chance of getting a shading error. I have proven this with much testing- the reason is this:

When you smooth shade an object it recalculates all the vertex normals (shading is based on these values). The object will be shaded as a stand alone object- for example in the game when you view it at a certain angle a flat side may be shaded light to dark. Now if this is a wing root, the adjoining wing tip will also be shaded light to dark, you will see the seam!

If instead you shade the wings as whole, this will set the vertex normals correctly. Now you break apart and export the 2 LODS. In the game, the shading will be the same at the seam because these vertex normals are set identical. If either of these 2 parts are smooth shaded alone, the seam will re-appear.

There is another issue when you try and smooth shade meshes that have large angles, like the TE of a wing. Smooth shading sets the vertex normal to an average of all the face normals around it (I think) - so vertex normals near sharp edges stick out too far and cause extreme shading. I think the proper solution is to flat shade the opposing sides... now we get to an area that explains the need for the "smoothing groups" that 3Dsmax uses. We do not have this in AC3D.

I am doing extensive testing to prove and explain all these things, I have a 10 page web area of my site started, but it got to complicated and so I am starting over- also I learned as I went so I had bad mistakes on the first few pages!

The trick to flat shading is that some vertices must NOT be shared! Gone are the days that we could just optimize verts on each and every object- this is wrong if you want the proper results. For perfect results you will have objects that have a combination of shared/unshared verts, and smooth/flat shaded polygons.

Of course it is not the end of the world if things are not perfect. There are reasons things look OK. First off, some textures hide the shading bug better than others. Have you ever looked at the aircraft under dynamic lighting? The OpenPlane engine does not support this now, but I have seen my planes under a dynamically lit renderer (like CFSII) and you see all the little bugs you never noticed!

posted 01-24- 01:14 PM               

it has to be doubleing the stuff, it's not growing unwanted polys on it's own.

Look at the Ki-61 and B-26, i don't get shading errors. I've learned to fix the shading before i smooth.

I built, mapped and starting exporting the B-26 model after only 3 hours.

The only shading problem on the b-26 is the tail cause i didn't fix that before exporting.

I'm still learning when it comes to modeling, most of it i learned myself and i don't use all the technical words for it i just do it. I'm not total sure how themodel comes together, i'm not total sure that my models will come out 100% ok. I do know how to fix lighting problems and i do know that smoothing the whole plane at once does help.

------------------
Tony "Razer" Martin

"Making SDOE a dangerous Place, One plane at a time!"
FS Hangar

posted 01-24- 01:57 PM               

I have never seen the double-facing issue. Are you using the "view info" window in AC3D to see this information?

Is that face count for the entire aircraft? Are you using Hippie's OL tool to import the entire aircraft?

We may be modeling things in a very differnt way, and that might be causing your models to be better than what I am making (with the shading bugs)- that is why I am so interested...

Maybe I can send you an AC3D file of one of my fuselages, and you send me one of yours... we can compare... and if you are intersted I can explain what I did no make mine.

This is an art, so there is no right way and wrong way IMO- even Anday says this. But some models are better than others, and right now I am not happy with my models.

posted 01-24- 03:44 PM               

quote:

---

I have never seen the double-facing issue. Are you using the "view info" window in AC3D to see this information?

---

Yes..

quote:

---

Is that face count for the entire aircraft? Are you using Hippie's OL tool to import the entire aircraft?

---

no, just the part i'm working with, and no, just the parts, i want to use OPS later so i wont import the whole plane.

quote:

---

We may be modeling things in a very differnt way, and that might be causing your models to be better than what I am making (with the shading bugs)- that is why I am so interested...

---

I build models with squares, I can do triangles but i get way more polys then I want, I can manage squares better. If I have a problem with polys vanishing it certain angles i just make them 2 sided. (yes i know that's cheating but it works)

I can set a poly count to shoot for and most of the time come in around 30 of what i wanted, so that's pretty close.

My next model i'm going to do will be in triangles to get used to doing it. I'll know more when i've started on it.

quote:

---

Maybe I can send you an AC3D file of one of my fuselages, and you send me one of yours... we can compare... and if you are intersted I can explain what I did no make mine.

---

Up to you, i'll send you the nose of the B-26 if you want. that's the one thats doubling faces.

quote:

---

This is an art, so there is no right way and wrong way IMO- even Anday says this. But some models are better than others, and right now I am not happy with my models.

---

I've learned that doing the models, but i also like to hear how others are doing so i can improve on the work i'm doing.

------------------
Tony "Razer" Martin

"Making SDOE a dangerous Place, One plane at a time!"
FS Hangar

posted 01-24- 03:57 PM               

What do I have to do to get you to fix the shading bug in the Morane's wings?

(Or at least explain how to do it... I thought I did it once, but either it is back or I did not fix it as well as I thought)

posted 01-24- 06:12 PM               

the wings i saw was different colors, or different shades. this can be fixed by getting the whole wing in AC3D and snaping the vertices together then opt , flip the normals in and flip them back out (fliping the normals seems to be AC3D's way ofdoing a good smooth)

this should fix the wings and make them all the same color, now all you need to do it cut-away the top and bottom of the wings merge and export. cutting away the top and bottom give you a completely smooth surface top and bottom. this doesn't work for fuse since you get a line in it. wings aren't a problem with the line since it's around the edge of the wing.

All i can say about smoothing is "Snap vertices"..

Most of the factory planes that have problems can be fixed with this (note: the right side of the spit fuse, the sharpe angle in the middleof the smoothed body, i fixed this on one of the spits i messed with, took 2 secs and smoothed the whole fuse)

------------------
Tony "Razer" Martin

"Making SDOE a dangerous Place, One plane at a time!"
FS Hangar

posted 01-24- 07:29 PM               

1. It avoids seams, obviously

2. Only verts that have identical coords (ie, snapped together) are shared when you "optimize verts"

However, a key new important concept that I am looking into is that in order to flat shade selected polys, you must NOT optimize the snapped verts! This is because you never want the verts of flat shaded polys to be shared because one vertex can only have one vertex normal- and you need multiple vertex normals in order to flat shade!

However, the LOD import/export may over-ride this, since the LOD file duplicates even shared verts in AC3D. But it is important to note that shared verts in AC3D will output identical vertex normals to the LOD file for each vertex that is shared, thus promoting smooth shading even if the object was never smoothed in AC3D. So one vert in AC3D that is shared will create N verts in the LOD file, one for each polygon that shares that vertex. But the LOD file gets its vertex normal data from the single shared vertex of AC3D - AS FAR AS I SEE IN MY TESTING SO FAR. This is where I am looking close...

Flat shading SHOULD be used (as far as I guess) when:

1. The model has flat surfaces! Sometimes you have an object that has flat facets to it, like imagine you were modeling a bolt, and the bolt has flat sides for the wrench to grip- these MUST be flat shaded or the bolt will look like a smooth doughnut!

2. When you have sharp corners, like the Fuselage of the EIII. When smoothed, this looks OK, BUT it looks better if there is a sharp shading seam at the corner! This is life... and will make the flat surfaces look more realistic, especially when dynamically lit.

This is what I am investigating right now...

posted 10-20- 07:20 AM            

2. I know this probably has been said before but justin' case, in AC, before exporting wing or other airfoil parts or parts that will animate with DOFs, it's a good idea to go "Edit" | "Move to..." and make the values all 0 (centring the object) and then export. This saves a lot of headache associated with "happy" parts in SDOE that fling around all funny when they detach and as ArgonV said above makes the DOF centre properly in OPS also. When doing the fuse though it must be centred in a different way that I'm trying to figure out how to explain right now...

3. I forget.

Trying to think of more...