Gmax plane/face division

[pfabian]

Good day,

The situation is as follows:

I have a scenery, with a gmax photo polygon as base.
Up till now, I was using a photoscenery with ca. 1m/px resolution, arranged in 2x5 texture sheet distribution (fig.1)

However, I managed to obtain new data, that are approx. 4 times more precise. I have prepared 10 texture sheets with same location as the previous ten sheets, only they are now 4096 instead of 1024 resolution. Now since I am (fairly) certain that FS9 will not be happy about that size of texture sheets, I have taken to disect one of the original squares, first into 4*4 pattern, and then one of the children squares further into 4*4, for demonstration in FS, and gmax itself. (fig.2)

Although to do this again for the whole plane would be very cumbersome. So I was thinking, was there a smarter way? A function of sorts, that will allow me to divide my planes into quarters?

 

[JRobinson]

I think by far the easiest thing to do would be to make a new plane the size of one of your 1/16th divisions. Assign a .bmp (material) to it, add a UVW map, and if necessary, also a UVW unwrap. Now clone it, turn on snaps and using "vertex snap", snap the first clone to the original plane at a corner. Next select the two planes at once and clone them both, snap the two resulting planes to the original two - now you have four, clone again and you will have eight, snap them into position, etc, etc...

In the end you'll wind up with the entire groundpoly made up of identically mapped and textured planes. Go through now and assign the corresponding .bmp to each plane, you shouldn't need to do any mapping because that was cloned into each plane from the start.

Jim

 

[pfabian]

Originally, the problem was that I did not know the actual size of the original rectangle, that would be a problem would I need to re-create a square 1/16th of original. But thanks for reminder about the "vertex snap", that will prove useful sooner or later.

Anyway for now, two revelations saved the day (night) for now...
a) While there is no measurement tool in Gmax, there is one in 3dsMax... and since I was able to get the model, if broken up, into 3dsMax by way of Model Converter, I was able to get the original dimensions (and thus create a 8*20 segment plane of same dimension as original).

b)Apparently, gmax will process, and show (even if in slightly degraded quality... could I resample them to 8192?) textures in 4096*4096. Of course export to FS would be problematic, at least for FS9... I guess... (?)

 

[JRobinson]

You need to know how many feet (meters) of ground 1024 pixels of your imagery covers, then you need to make a plane that size in gmax, max or whatever, texture it, and clone it as many times as you need to cover the area you want. Then you need to slice up your imagery into 1024x1024px chunks and apply each one to it's respective plane in gmax. That's about all there is to it, but if you wish to make it difficult I'm sure you can figure out a way to do that as well... and yes, 1024px is the max size allowed in FS9. Have fun.

Jim

 

[arno]

a) While there is no measurement tool in Gmax, there is one in 3dsMax...

GMax has one as well, it's in the helpers category.

b)Apparently, gmax will process, and show (even if in slightly degraded quality... could I resample them to 8192?) textures in 4096*4096. Of course export to FS would be problematic, at least for FS9... I guess... (?)

The texture size that GMax shows depend on your driver settings in GMax. For most drivers 1024 is the max though. FS2004 does not show 4096 I think, maybe 2048 will work. But I am not even sure that will do on all systems.

 

[pfabian]

GMax has one as well, it's in the helpers category.

Learn something new every day... I never used Tab Panel, see... I thought it was just a toolbar with quick access to shapes.... Now I know!

I guess its these little details that seem to be missing from various tutorials... I guess when someone makes a tutorial some things just come so naturally, that they never realize a total newbie has no idea.

The texture size that GMax shows depend on your driver settings in GMax. For most drivers 1024 is the max though. FS2004 does not show 4096 I think, maybe 2048 will work. But I am not even sure that will do on all systems.

I will go for 1024, quite sure of that. Maybe I would stay with 4096 if it were for FSX, but since I need the scenery be FS9 compatibile anyway...

 

[jtanabodee]

Hi pfabian,
I'm not sure that I got your question right. May I repeat it here:
The question is "Are there any methods to subdivide the polygon?". If that is the correct question, here is the answer. If not please accept my apology that I get you wrong because of my English understanding.

You can divide you poly or mesh to more little pieces by using Edit Geometry-> Tessellate. There are two options for this by edge and by center. Choose the polygon you want and choose "by edge" option then press on Tessellate button. You will get what you show in the picture. Then you come back to set up the material ID correspond to the satellite image that you use for that poly.
In this way, your old single poly will be divided to 4 polys. That will match your 4-time-more detail photo. You don't need to redo it all over but do the new material and apply to these new polys.

Please give me a feed back if that helps you or not.
Regards,
Tic

 

[tgibson]

If you use a texture larger than 1024 in FS9, it will only display the 1024 mip map (if included) or nothing (if not included).

 

[jtanabodee]

If you use a texture larger than 1024 in FS9, it will only display the 1024 mip map (if included) or nothing (if not included).

That's why he needs to subdivide the plan from one to four. Since 2048 is 4 times bigger than 1024. Making new 4 materials out of single 2048 sheet, subdivide texture to 4 x 1024, and apply to the new subdivide planes will solve the problem.