SceneryDesign.org After finishing the geometry of the church I am modelling in SketchUp, it was time to move on to the texturing of the object. So also for this part I tried the different options that SketchUp offers. First I tried to use the project texture function when using the match photo feature. This allows you […]
Today’s SketchUp adventures
After all the work I did on the COLLADA and KMZ importers for ModelConverterX, I thought it would be a good moment to try to model a bit more in SketchUp myself. So about a week ago I cycled to the nearby town of Abcoude and made a bunch of pictures of their local church. […]
Minimize drawcall functionality
One of the challenges when converting old API macros or COLLADA objects is often how to make them framerate friendly. It is not uncommon for such objects to use many small texture files. If you for example load an object from the Google 3D warehouse, don’t be surprised to find it uses 40 different texture […]
Mass Texture Editor
To assist with the conversion of textures while converting objects for us in FS, I have added a new tool to ModelconverterX. It is called the Mass Texture Editor tool and it will help you to rename, resize and convert to another format all the textures of an object at once. So this will be […]
Modelling for FSX using Sketchup
One of the topics that is discussed often lately on the FSDeveloper forums is using Sketchup to model for FSX. The good news for those of you who think that the learning curve of GMax is a bit too steep, is that you can use Sketchup as well if you want to model some scenery […]
Texture conversions
In the last days there has been a lot of discussion on the FSDeveloper forum about converting COLLADA objects for use in FSX. One of the issues the users are facing is that many COLLADA models use textures in formats that FSX can not read, for example JPG files. So there is clearly a need […]
Performance video tutorial available on Wiki
The video tutorial I did yesterday on the FSDeveloper LiveStream channel about performance related issues for 3D models, is now available on the FSDeveloper Wiki as well. I hope you enjoy the tutorial and that the explanations make things a bit clearer to you.
Video tutorial about performance
Tomorrow there will be another online video tutorial on the FSDeveloper LiveStream channel. The subject of this tutorial is performance for 3D objects and the tutorial will start at 22:00 CET (21:00 UTC). The following topics will be covered: Definition of concepts important for the performance: levels of detail, drawcall and texture vertex Performance tips […]
LODs versus drawcall batching
Since MS introduced the concept of drawcall batching in SP2 of FSX there has been a lot of discussion going on about levels of details still working or not. In the end it comes down to a choice between either having LODs working for your object or having drawcall batching. The MDL files that the […]
A sunday morning experiment
By default landclass is defined as grid data within FSX, so that means that for each area of roughly 1.2 x 1.2 kilometre you can define what kind of land usage it has. For some time already I wanted to test what effect landclass polygons would have on the looks of the terrain, so this […]