Pittsburg Development

[Rick Ace]

statto: Thank you. Tell me when I can try to run it through Terragear.

Update: If anyone watching this thread is wondering what happened to the U.S Steel Tower, I'm trying to do night lighting. But it isn't quite working out. I'm continuing to try.

I'm following this "tutorial": http://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:Texture_a_building (not a very helpful tutorial).

I'll eventually figure it out.

[Rick Ace]

I'm trying to add textures through blender. Once that's done I could work with adding night textures. But I simply cannot find a way to add textures in blender. I've read through pages in the wiki for days now, and haven't progressed much. I've tried online tutorials but they seem to be geared towards other projects and don't work when exporting to .ac. Surely, there must be a clean (non-dirty) way to add textures in blender?

[penta]

I'm trying to add textures through blender. Once that's done I could work with adding night textures. But I simply cannot find a way to add textures in blender. I've read through pages in the wiki for days now, and haven't progressed much. I've tried online tutorials but they seem to be geared towards other projects and don't work when exporting to .ac. Surely, there must be a clean (non-dirty) way to add textures in blender?

What blender version are you using?
In which way you can't add textures to blender: do you know how uvmap works in blender?
You are importing your models in blender from another 3d program?

Sorry for so many questions but I need to aim at a precise target

[Rick Ace]

What blender version are you using?

Blender 2.67

In which way you can't add textures to blender: do you know how uvmap works in blender?

I've followed a tutorial to creating UV Maps, but I'm not sure if I did it correctly. I've heard everything from "UV Maps are only for aircrafts", to "UV Maps are only for scenery", to "UV Maps are auto-baked". So I'm rather confused on the subject. But as for the concept of UV Maps, I think I understand.

You are importing your models in blender from another 3d program?

Correct. The model started in sketchup, which is easier for measurements/scale. I've exported it to blender via ".dae" which both blender and sketchup supports.

Sorry for so many questions but I need to aim at a precise target

I appreciate you asking all these questions. Thank you for asking them.

[penta]

The image above shows how I use blender for texturing: on the left you can see the 3d view while on the right the uvmap. As you can see on the right there is a texture for day and night. Are you able to arrange something like you see in my image in your blender? If not, I can try to explain more in detail how to use the blender interface.
Have you selected the texturing mode in the 3d view (by clicking the little ball in red and white next to "Object Mode")?

[Rick Ace]

The image above shows how I use blender for texturing: on the left you can see the 3d view while on the right the uvmap. As you can see on the right there is a texture for day and night. Are you able to arrange something like you see in my image in your blender? If not, I can try to explain more in detail how to use the blender interface.
Have you selected the texturing mode in the 3d view (by clicking the little ball in red and white next to "Object Mode")?

I've tried to match the photo as much as I can. I haven't done UVunwrap or anything. I just setup the interface as that.

And I've selected texturing mode now. But the model turns black. Is this normal?

P.S: Your building looks quite familiar... Is it somewhere near Brooklyn?

[penta]

I've tried to match the photo as much as I can. I haven't done UVunwrap or anything. I just setup the interface as that.
And I've selected texturing mode now. But the model turns black. Is this normal?

Ok, into next step. What happens if you press the "tab" key when the model in the left is selected with the right mouse button? You should enter the "edit mode" and see the uvmap and texture on the right (just press the "a" key while in the 3d viewer to select/deselect all faces/points/edges)
Here is what I see with my model:

P.S: Your building looks quite familiar... Is it somewhere near Brooklyn?

Yes, New York social housing on Manhattan near Brooklyn Bridge. They will go in the scenery database as I have time to place them...

[Rick Ace]

Here is what I see after pressing "tab" and "a". I also entered edit mode. I haven't done UVunwrap yet.


The building looks a lot like the social housing buildings on the Brooklyn-side of the Brooklyn bridge. Maybe you can place it there too.

[penta]

Ok, now we are ready to do some uv work! First step is to identify some edges to cut the building model: think of your 3d model as a box that you need to make plane. If you take a look at my previous image in "edit mode" you will see edges highlighted in yellow and orange:
- yellow means that edges are attached
- orange means that edges are to be cut by the uv unwrapper
Looking at the edit mode view, the roof faces are connected in yellow so in the uv viewer the roof is a X shape. Instead, all the building's facades are disconnected with orange edges and in the uv viewer you see a rectangle for every facade.

Now, how do you mark a disconnected edge? just select the edge, press CTRL-E and select "Mark Seam": it will become orange. Now it's up to you to figure out where to put these seams to get the result you want.
To see the association faces-texture, select all faces in 3dview and press "U"->Unwrap. In the UV view you will see the faces that you can move around and scale.

Finally you may want to add a texture to see a preview. To do so, select "Image"->"Open Image" in the menu of the uv viewer and browse to your texture. (just a hint: if you are going to use a night/day texture, the image you load should have a dimension of 2a x a f.e. 1024x512 where the day part is 512x512 and the night part is 512x512; see my previous images)

Just experiment by marking seams, selecting all the faces in the "3d view", pressing U-Unwrap, moving around and scaling the UVmap in the UV viewer. You should see the changes realtime in the 3dviewer.

For any further help just ask!

[Rick Ace]

Thank you pent. Your explanation is very helpful.

While I was trying a few questions arose.

Can I open multiple images? My window texture is 15m by 11m. How would I accurately represent this in my UV Map? Scaling/Resizing can't be done very "cleanly". I wanted it to be exactly 15m by 11m.
(In other words, instead of positioning it and sizing it by mouse cursor, can it be done through text? Say define the scale, and the position by numbers?)

Smart UV Project or just UV Unwrap?

After being satisfied with the look, how do I get my UV Map textures to my model? If I export it, the textures don't come along.

Sorry for so many questions. Thanks again

[Rick Ace]

Sorry if I asked too many questions.

To simplify things, I was wondering if there was a way to accurately scale the UV Maps to 15meters by 11meters?

And I can't get the textures to export. The texture is in FG's folder too. (I would get an error on the console if it wasn't.) But by opening .ac in notepad, I realize the texture isn't even mentioned. How do I export it?

Thank you.

[gooneybird]

There's a nice video here on UV Mapping

[Rick Ace]

Thank you Gooney. This video is paced quite nicely.

Right now, I'm just trying to figure out a way to get the textures into the .ac format, since it's not exporting.

[penta]

Can I open multiple images?

The blender to ac exporter support a texture for each object in blender. So in a model you can have more than one image but you need to split the model in objects

My window texture is 15m by 11m. How would I accurately represent this in my UV Map? Scaling/Resizing can't be done very "cleanly". I wanted it to be exactly 15m by 11m.
(In other words, instead of positioning it and sizing it by mouse cursor, can it be done through text? Say define the scale, and the position by numbers?)

Blender is not a CAD like software so this precision is not so easy to obtain. You can see the measurements in the "Edit Mode" by selecting the option "Edge Lenght" highlighted in the following image:


If you set the object scale to 1 in "Object mode" in all directions as shown in the following figure, you can read in "Edit mode" the measurements in the default unit (for example in the previous image the building is 55 meters high plus 6 meters for the turret = 61 meters as you read under Z in the following image at the bottom of the red box)


As far as I know you can only guess the texture scale by scaling the UVmap to fit best (use the "s" key to scale, the "g" key to move and the "r" key to rotate in the UVmap viewer).
The video posted by gooneybird is really useful to learn the basic of howUVmap works

Smart UV Project or just UV Unwrap?

It's up to you. They are different tools to do the same thing. What works better for you or for your special case?

After being satisfied with the look, how do I get my UV Map textures to my model? If I export it, the textures don't come along.

To export the model in ac format you need the blender script available here: https://github.com/majic79/Blender-AC3D
Are you using it but you don't get the exported model textured?

[Rick Ace]

That clears up a lot of confusion penta. I like how you explain everything in a simple way.

I'm using the exporter but the textures don't come along. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here. I see the textures in edit mode with texture selected.