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Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:
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Is 3DSMax perfect for texturing?
- Thread starter Shafat Hasan
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We've already gone round and round about what the availability of a download link and a serial code on an Adobe sponsored page actually means and I have no intention of arguing with you about it now. We've been through the EULA and didn't find anything prohibitive. It's been there for several years now and the warnings about installing old software on new OS have been there since day one so my guess is if Adobe didn't want it there they would have taken it down by now. If those links were truly put up there because of some now defunct activation server the page would require you to enter your existing keycode (which I've had since 2005 BTW) to access the downloads and they wouldn't give you a link and keycode to Premiere Pro when you enter a keycode that was issued for PhotoShop. It's up to the individual to decide if they can live with the nightmares or not. If you can't then install Gimp instead but Adobe would most likely prefer prospective CG artists learn their way of doing things and that's why the link's there.
Dutcheeseblend
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I always use the built-in Texture Converter from ModelConverterX to convert my textures from the standard I use in Blender to the .dds. Same story with normal/bump maps. Drawing them in B/W in Gimp, open in the aforementioned TC, hit the blueish button, save it to the FSX folder and voila.
Something else: does it matter to what extension is exported from the 2D software (such as .bmp, .jpg or .png)? Is there any quality difference between them?
Something else: does it matter to what extension is exported from the 2D software (such as .bmp, .jpg or .png)? Is there any quality difference between them?
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Of course. Never use .jpg, it's an overly compressed image format.
.png is a bit better, though I recommend bmp or tga.
The latter two can have alpha channels, so they're better in that way as well.
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Thanks again, I understood things much better now, but still a little confusion.
So the bump map, and ambient occlusion and stuff won't depend on whether I made and textured (mapping) in 3DSMax or SketchUp, but will depend on the "texture image" itself and "ModelConverterX", am I correct? Please can someone clarify this part?
If this is the case, then I should focus more on Photoshop works, and ModelConverterX, rather than 3D softwares, yes?
So the bump map, and ambient occlusion and stuff won't depend on whether I made and textured (mapping) in 3DSMax or SketchUp, but will depend on the "texture image" itself and "ModelConverterX", am I correct? Please can someone clarify this part?
If this is the case, then I should focus more on Photoshop works, and ModelConverterX, rather than 3D softwares, yes?
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All rely on image editors like phtoshop, or gimp, and others. 3ds max just can render ambient occlusions though you have to deal with them in photoshop anyway (blending layers). bump map. specular, transparencies, etc must be created with the image editor and his plugins. and layers management.
Modelconverterx is basically a visor of the models. what you see in MCX will be what you see in Fsx.
Modelconverterx is basically a visor of the models. what you see in MCX will be what you see in Fsx.
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hairyspin
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Bernardo et al, this is one of my favourite aircraft in FSX, the Classics Hangar Fw190D9:–
The exterior paint job is pretty good, but the real star is the cockpit:–
Have a good look. Notice the realistic textures, the specular, polished metal highlights, the scuffs and scratches, the ambient occlusion shadowing around instrument bezels, the dirt on the pedals. Lovely paint job, eh? The painter must be a wizard with Photoshop or similar?
No. All these cockpit textures were rendered in 3ds Max with mentalRay, every last bit of them, after the cockpit model had been mapped. The modeller did all that from scratch. I don't know all the details, but I do know diffuse, AO, specular etc textures were all rendered, brought into Photoshop for blending to the gorgeous result above and converted to FSX textures. Learning that process took the modeller some years.
So it can be done. It just isn't a process a couple of forum posts is going to teach you.
The exterior paint job is pretty good, but the real star is the cockpit:–
Have a good look. Notice the realistic textures, the specular, polished metal highlights, the scuffs and scratches, the ambient occlusion shadowing around instrument bezels, the dirt on the pedals. Lovely paint job, eh? The painter must be a wizard with Photoshop or similar?
No. All these cockpit textures were rendered in 3ds Max with mentalRay, every last bit of them, after the cockpit model had been mapped. The modeller did all that from scratch. I don't know all the details, but I do know diffuse, AO, specular etc textures were all rendered, brought into Photoshop for blending to the gorgeous result above and converted to FSX textures. Learning that process took the modeller some years.
So it can be done. It just isn't a process a couple of forum posts is going to teach you.
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jtanabodee
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I love this comment.
I think you need photo editing software as well as 3dsmax to create a perfect result.
Both of them are essential. The most important than the software is the skill which is not available for purchase. You need to make it by yourself.
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Interesting really. yes, when Reading something about rendering I always thought about the way one can créate materials for textures from renderings. I guess we should talk about "texture baking",or render to texture. thanks for the comment.
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I need to learn about this. I have seen Craig do this with some of his planes. It might speed up the process.
Bill
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Perhaps it will help the OP to clarify the term rendering. 3dsmax produces lovely images, we think of this as the standard for rendering. It renders because there is a module in 3dsmax called a "rendering machine". Actually, 3dsmax has 3 rendering machines provided in the default installation. The user has to choose which upon making a render. One of the many differences between 3dsmax and Gmax was that rendering engines were removed from Gmax. Practically, that meant that to see your creation in a rendered form you had to export it to FSX, and then take a screenshot of your object in FSX. Now you can easily see that FSX IS a rendering machine of its own.
The key is that the render machine in FSX is primitive compared to any modern rendering machine. Therefore, you have to learn how to create effects for rendering in FSX by more primitive means in most cases. One example is normal mapping. For reasons I've never quite understood, FSX expects the channels of a normal map to be arranged differently from what you get if you use a nvidia normal map plugin, or the adobe version. This is well documented in the wiki of this site, so go read it.
When you make a render in any rendering engine you select, and position the camera, and the lighting, as well as tons of other things. In the primative FSX renderer, the camera and lights are set for you. Without light reflection, you would never see the effects of any normal map. The reason that you might prefer the appearance of a normally mapped model in a render from the 3dsmax engines, like mental ray or iray, if because those engines handle light in a far more realistic mode (assuming you activate those settings). Light management in FSX is one of the many areas in which FSX takes "shortcuts" compared to Iray or Mental RAy. By the way, these short cuts are needed, because the makers of FSX intended it to be a simulator capable of rending new images in 1/30th of a second. The fabulous renders you see in 3dsmax can take anywhere from a few minutes to many many hours using distributive computing to generate. Totally impossible for a simulator.
So what we do when designing for FSX is attempt to provide FSX with the right "overhead" to get the best rendering to occur, and we accept the constraints of the FSX renderer.
A common way to acheive this is to provide both 3dsmax and FSX with an image that serves as the material in 3dsmax, and is converted into what FSX calls a texture. The idea of baking ambient occlusion that folks have discussed above is a process of taking an effect that you can easily ask IRAY to render, and "baking" or adding it to the image that we'll use as a texture in FSX just because FSX CAN'T natively render ambient occlusion.
I hope these comments make the many answers you've read in this thread perhaps a little clearer. Most of us find that photoshop is helpful for creating that image that we'll use two different ways.
One note I'll add in conclusion is that 3dsmax actually includes photo-editing capability internal to the program. You can create distorts, paint, make layers, and you have most of the filters for displaying the results of layers (like multiply, burn, etc.) as in photoshop. Its not something I've used in 3dsmax, because I have photoshop and I'm very used to it, but I found that part of 3dsmax recently, and was a bit surprised by seeing it.
The key is that the render machine in FSX is primitive compared to any modern rendering machine. Therefore, you have to learn how to create effects for rendering in FSX by more primitive means in most cases. One example is normal mapping. For reasons I've never quite understood, FSX expects the channels of a normal map to be arranged differently from what you get if you use a nvidia normal map plugin, or the adobe version. This is well documented in the wiki of this site, so go read it.
When you make a render in any rendering engine you select, and position the camera, and the lighting, as well as tons of other things. In the primative FSX renderer, the camera and lights are set for you. Without light reflection, you would never see the effects of any normal map. The reason that you might prefer the appearance of a normally mapped model in a render from the 3dsmax engines, like mental ray or iray, if because those engines handle light in a far more realistic mode (assuming you activate those settings). Light management in FSX is one of the many areas in which FSX takes "shortcuts" compared to Iray or Mental RAy. By the way, these short cuts are needed, because the makers of FSX intended it to be a simulator capable of rending new images in 1/30th of a second. The fabulous renders you see in 3dsmax can take anywhere from a few minutes to many many hours using distributive computing to generate. Totally impossible for a simulator.
So what we do when designing for FSX is attempt to provide FSX with the right "overhead" to get the best rendering to occur, and we accept the constraints of the FSX renderer.
A common way to acheive this is to provide both 3dsmax and FSX with an image that serves as the material in 3dsmax, and is converted into what FSX calls a texture. The idea of baking ambient occlusion that folks have discussed above is a process of taking an effect that you can easily ask IRAY to render, and "baking" or adding it to the image that we'll use as a texture in FSX just because FSX CAN'T natively render ambient occlusion.
I hope these comments make the many answers you've read in this thread perhaps a little clearer. Most of us find that photoshop is helpful for creating that image that we'll use two different ways.
One note I'll add in conclusion is that 3dsmax actually includes photo-editing capability internal to the program. You can create distorts, paint, make layers, and you have most of the filters for displaying the results of layers (like multiply, burn, etc.) as in photoshop. Its not something I've used in 3dsmax, because I have photoshop and I'm very used to it, but I found that part of 3dsmax recently, and was a bit surprised by seeing it.
Paul Domingue
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Excellent and well thought write up Bob. This is one of the primary reasons why I have transitioned totally to P3D. P3D has incorporated rendering beyond the capabilities of FSX while maintaining a relatively high frame rate standard.
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Yep. I do all primary testing now in P3D. The shading, cockpit shadows, etc, are just so much more better, and the sim runs at 35FPS, smooth. No pink runways. And I have awesome cloud shadows. The interiors of the planes in P3D are so much better.
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Thanks all for your replies, especially Bob 
.
I have started learning Photoshop and I tried making some random textures, look what I have made
. No idea what texture is this... a lot more to learn, I hope it will be easy .
PS - I made this completely from scratch, aka, blank document.
.I have started learning Photoshop and I tried making some random textures, look what I have made
. No idea what texture is this... a lot more to learn, I hope it will be easy .PS - I made this completely from scratch, aka, blank document.
Good start Shafat. Most of the time these type of texture sheets will end up "tiled", repeated either horizontally, vertically, or both. There is an art to making tile-able textures, I'm not the worlds expert, but it is an art. Most tuts tell you to use both a vertical and horizontal offset filter, with wraparound selected. This will move the middle of the image to the edges. Since the edges are now what used to be the middle, tiled images match up seemlessly. However, the seam is now in the middle of the image. Here is the art part...using techniques such as copy/past with selection feathered, or using gradient filters, or adjusting with levels, you make a final image that doesn't have a value to it that is visible as a repeating matrix when tiled.
its challenging, and fun! Good luck!
its challenging, and fun! Good luck!
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Yes it's a good excercise, because you wil have to use seamlees textures many times like when used in walls or runway asphalt or any texture that have a Kind of pattern.
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Thanks all, I will surely do . .
. .