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GMax ground polygon "flatten"

darren s

darren s

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First of all I want to say sorry for the numerous threads asking for help.

Well, I have modelled all the buildings and have all my textures ready. Before I start texturing I just want to flatten all my ground polygons. I have got a polygon for the taxiway, and a polygon for each runway and ofcourse a polygon for the photo background.

What I want to do is flatten them to the main photoreal ground polygon so the aircraft wheels don't sink in to the ground, I have tried many ways but without any luck. For example, I start at 0.0 then 0.01 and so on, no luck. I know this can be done, aerosoft and flytampa for example, the wheels dont sink anywhere, if I put the runway and taxiway polygons lower, I experiance extreme flickering or just not visible at all, where I can have them visible without flickering my wheels sink. When on the main background polygon, it's fine, it's just when I go on to the runway or taxiway my wheels sink.

So how can I get all my ground polygons and "melt" them all to just 1 plane?

I have seen this topic somewhere else but they just mention ".ASM" file tweaking, when I render the GMax model to test in FS I just get a .mdl and .xml, then when compiled I get the .bgl...no .asm?

Also, I am using the FS2004 gamepack for gmax and when I compile, the MakeMDL comes up, but gives me no chance to modify it, the green bar loads then goes off in seconds or even less!

I hope you understand, and thank you for help!
 
darren s said:
First of all I want to say sorry for the numerous threads asking for help.
Click to expand...

Posting questions is fine. Posting questions in the correct forums is even better. This particular forum isn't a general help forum, it's for people looking for other people to assist in a project.

Gmax has it's own forum.
 
LCSims said:
Posting questions is fine. Posting questions in the correct forums is even better. This particular forum isn't a general help forum, it's for people looking for other people to assist in a project.

Gmax has it's own forum.
Click to expand...

... Thanks for the help, much appreciated!!!
 
Hi,

You can't make ground polygons with the FS2004 gamepack. This will give flickering. You need to use the FS2002 techniques of the FS2002 gamepack (or use modelconverterx for post processing your FS2004 mdl).
 
arno said:
Hi,

You can't make ground polygons with the FS2004 gamepack. This will give flickering. You need to use the FS2002 techniques of the FS2002 gamepack (or use modelconverterx for post processing your FS2004 mdl).
Click to expand...

I made a .cfg to get the .asm but no clear way how to flatten. I then used the long method, got the .x file but didn't know what to do with it from that point...
 
Hi,

The flatten for the area is something you make in another tool, like ADE or SBuilder.

The tweaking of ground polygon ASM files only work with output of the FS2002 gamepack.
 
arno said:
Hi,

The flatten for the area is something you make in another tool, like ADE or SBuilder.

The tweaking of ground polygon ASM files only work with output of the FS2002 gamepack.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure you understand what I'm asking. I have severel "planes" for runways, taxiways but they are on top of one another, how can I make all the "planes" to combine to 1 flat plane?
 
Hi,

You can have multiple planes on top of each other. For example taxi lines on top of the apron. In GMax they are all just on top of each other (and they will flicker a bit in the preview).

Then you have two approaches. If you want to manually tweak the ASM files you need to export each layer as a different BGL file (you can later merge all the ASM files into one BGL, but you need to separate them for tweaking). For each layer (which contains a certain type of polygons) you can then define the priority so that they are drawn on top of others without flickering.

The second approach is to use ModelConverterX. In that case you just export all your planes at once to a MDL object. With the ground polygon wizard you import this object and define for each texture used at which layer it should be. The tool then makes the new BGL for you with proper ground polygons.
 
arno said:
Hi,

You can have multiple planes on top of each other. For example taxi lines on top of the apron. In GMax they are all just on top of each other (and they will flicker a bit in the preview).

Then you have two approaches. If you want to manually tweak the ASM files you need to export each layer as a different BGL file (you can later merge all the ASM files into one BGL, but you need to separate them for tweaking). For each layer (which contains a certain type of polygons) you can then define the priority so that they are drawn on top of others without flickering.

The second approach is to use ModelConverterX. In that case you just export all your planes at once to a MDL object. With the ground polygon wizard you import this object and define for each texture used at which layer it should be. The tool then makes the new BGL for you with proper ground polygons.
Click to expand...

I have ModelConverterX, is there a tutorial specifically for ground polygons? I have severel ground polygons that I don't want my wheel to sink in or seing flashes!

Where is the special "Ground polygon wizard"?
 
This toold doesn't do what I thought it would do.

right...let me get myself clear.

In GMax I am creating the ground
Here is what I have several planes for in order (top to bottom = bottom to top in sim):
Aerial Image
Runway
Taxiway
Runway markings
Taxiway Markings

So... that is 5 textures planes in GMax used for my ground.
I don't want my wheels to sink in to these on the sim...so...again il ask the question which none of you seem to be helping/understnding with:
How do I get all these and combine it to 1 single plane but keeping my textures and settings in tact?

Please!
 
You can't, you'll have to export 5 seperate layers and set each one's layer priority with the .asm tweak.

None of this has anything to do with wheels sinking into the tarmac, for that you need to make a flatten polygon in SBuilder and set it to the elevation specified in the afcad.

Jim
 
JRobinson said:
You can't, you'll have to export 5 seperate layers and set each one's layer priority with the .asm tweak.

None of this has anything to do with wheels sinking into the tarmac, for that you need to make a flatten polygon in SBuilder and set it to the elevation specified in the afcad.

Jim
Click to expand...

ok and after making the asm tweaks...then what??? what do i do with the asm file?
 
Hi,

Just export your 5 planes to a MDL file. Then go to ModelConverterX (latest development release). At the top is a button wizards, which contains the ground polygon wizard. There you load your MDL file. Then for each texture you specify a layer (to determine the order of drawing). Then export to BGL and you are done. No sinking wheels, since all your polygons are at Z=0 (so on the ground).
 
Please listen to Arno this time - he *is* answering your question! You have all those polygons - you export them all as a scenery MDL, load into MCX, assign layer numbers to each polygon, and go!
 
I used to be in your situation, I made my photoreal background then I thought I could just apply it and walla, but that didn't happen. I had to get the x file and edit the asm files but that got old. I use MDX now and wow what a treat I would pay for this software. Just make your photoreal background in gmax, add your runways and taxiways, select everything in gmax and export selected as scenery .mdl then use MDX to make it a ground polygon. Make each slot that you see a layer in increments of 4.(each layer is usually a runway texture or taxiway texture,if you have multiple tiles for your photo ground then use all the same layer numbers for them.) Then visibility of 30000. Then convert. Your done.
 
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