by openflight » Sat Jun 08, 2019 9:24 am
One way of creating an aircraft is to make a copy of an existing one and make changes to the copy. I call it "morphing".
I am also using the Wings3D model editor which is free and easier to use than blender. The advantage of morphing is that many of the references can be left unchanged as they refer to the original aircraft folder, and will still work. You can work on selected items of your new aircraft at a time, for example the 3D model, and leave the rest for later, and have an aircraft that loads and flies in FG, though not everything may work, animations for example.
For example, I have started a project to improve the standard Cessna 182, which has not changed much in later versions as far as the exterior is concerned.
Steps:
1. Copy the c182 folder and rename it, I decided to rename it using the tail number, so it is named c182n301dp.
2. The aircraft is started in FG using the name of the set file, so I rename the file c182n301dp-set.xml
3. The description inside the file was also edited to show in the Flight Gear launcher.
Now the aircraft you are working on can be loaded into Flight Gear
4. The 3D model was imported into Blender version 2.64 that allow import and export of .ac files and exported into .3ds format.
5. The model imported into Wings 3D, and changes were made. The model was then saved into the c182n301dp folder
6. The aircraft model reference was changed to c182.3ds in the /models/c182n301dp folder settings file which is named c182-dpm.xml