Blender Underground

hi
i don't know if it's doable here but i have a tutorial request

what i want is a tutorial covering an airport creation including runway/taxiways/...etc based on real satellite imagery as bluprint

i made a quick model but the result is not so good as i want

my goal is to make a realistic runway/roads/taxiways as possible of course
including asphalt/grass/dirt transition

the model will be used in realtime flight-sim simulation using www.openscenegraph.org


thanks and good day

ps : my main issue is how to achive realistic texturing on complex objects , i mean texture transition like grass/dirt/asphalt ... etc

Could you share any image of the current state of your texturing attempts ?

This would greatly help telling you what you did wrong if any.

here a screenshot of what i am doing (i can send the blend file if you are interested)



my main issues are :

- how to make a dirt+grass zone ?

- how to make a realistic taxiway edge textured from asphalt to the grass+dirt zone transition?

- for texturing the taxiways (not the ranway) i have selected all the faces and applied a smart UVMAP
and then i have scaled the texture a bit
i don't know if there is a better solution to achive more realistic results

- how to texture all the round edges ?

- how to make a long yellow line ove the taxiway path ?
like in this picture
http://www.flightsim.com/review/cieloap ... y01_AE.jpg

my final goal is to get a result like this or even better
http://fs2004faq.uw.hu/gmaxforumpic/custom_runway.jpg


any help on any topic will be very welcome

Thanks for your clarifications.

You'll need to learn about how to use both of these applications :

http://www.gimp.org/
http://inkscape.org/


Once you got that, you can use this website (among others) to get the base of your textures.
http://www.texturemate.com/

nice texture site !

but my main problem is not how to create or get good textures ,

it how to apply them corectely in blender to get realistic result

Ok, did I get that right: You want to know how to correctly place textures in blender and make them look real, like giving them the right parameters and such?

You can "easily" place your textures if you use UV-mapping. This is a procedure that maps your 3D model onto a 2D image. If you do this right, you can line up the parts of your texture exactly where you want them to be.

Now, for the transitions, you should use "stencils", grayscale images that help you blend over one texture into another. You can also use stencils to blend materials.

"Making them look good" is a bit more difficult: It depends on the texture. Sure, you can map the texture and then make it appear in render as a color texture. But you will a) need additional maps like normal/bump/spec/alpha/...-maps (you maybe won't need them all, but at least one or two) and b) a material, to get the overall look like reflectivity or mirroring right. "Making a texture look good" isn't done by following a guideline, it's more "trial and error" and practise, until you get a feeling for what to do.

Sorry, I can't go very much into detail but I can link you to tutorials on UV-mapping and stencils if you want. For the general usage of textures and materials, take a look at the 6-part-introduction series here at BU, or I could take a look at what you got and then point you in the right directions.

uv-mapping, stencil for 2.5, stencil for 2.49, stencils in general. You might also look into this thread for further explanation, it dealt with stencils and how to use them properly.

Feel free to ask, I hope I can be online enough to help you.

thanks Prometheus for your valuable help :

i will study your suggestions about stencils and i will come back

in the meantime i have two quick questions :

- is the decal texture avaible only for the blender game engine ?

- what is the best way to make yellow lines for taxiwxays like in this image ?
http://www.flightsim.com/review/cieloap ... y01_AE.jpg


btw your thread link is inactive

Once you'll understand how difficult and painful it is to paint/decal your textures & vectors "USING BLENDER" directly, remember about that guy who suggested you to take a look at Gimp and Inkscape.

Gimp will make it a lot easier to place your textures/decal properly on your UV than blender does, and inkscape will significantly ease your task relating to the vector parts of your image (IE : yellow lines).

But regardless of the path you choose to study, I wish you good luck, and of course, a lot of fun.

yeah yeah i remember that guy , he was cool but to be honest i did'nt know what he was talking about because my newbiness (shame on me)

do you think that he know some good tutorials about using gimp/inkscape with blender to achive what i am trying to do

in the meantime i want to clarify an important thing :
I do not want to use the bge at all i am trying to use blender as a simple modeller then export the generated model in .ac or .3ds or any other format that the 3d engine i am using can load , in this case http://www.openscenegraph.org

lol, unfortunately I does not

But Il explain you a little more...

1) Unwrap

Whatever mesh you use for your airport, you need to unwrap it to be able to texture it properly. If it is plane enough, I suggest that you get yourself in top view (in orthographic mode (numpad 5 key)) and project the UV from view. From there, create an image under your UV and export it's UV layout.


2) Paint

Open the UV layout in gimp and "Paint it" using Gimp (or photoshop) and, trough the use of layers and stuff, place your textures properly on your image. apply your texture, and save it again. That would be where you actually create a sweat "asphalt to the grass+dirt zone transition?".


3) Vectorise

Open that last image in inkscape and draw your lines/square/whatever mathematical shape and export the result as a png image. From there you should have a pretty damn good result which you just need to set as your UV image inside blender.


Now that you know what you need to know how to do, you shall be able to seek your informations pretty easily.

This UV unwrapping technique shall export well to any rendering engine.

thanks Goliath

i will do my best with your indications

again in the mean time can some one put some lights on these terms :

1 - texture paint
2 - weight paint
3 - vertex paint
4 - sculpt mode

is these stuff usefull only for the bge or they are general modeling and texturing tools ?


and back to my airport image
http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?i ... irport.jpg

for adding all the dirt/grass/rock... texture to the airport mesh ,
my idea is to add a big plane just under the airport mesh very few unit and then texturing/uvmapping this big plane

- is that a good/bad idea ?
- is there a better approch to do that ?

becuase i tried it with one big plane with red colored material, exported to my 3d engine and the result was relatively fine ... no poping or z fighting at all !!!!... hmmm maybe just a little but nothing dramatic

always if you have a better idea don't hesitate please

and how about the stencil nodes too !


ps : there is no edit post option in this forum

Ho, it's hard to keep up on this thread

We got a lot of spammers on the boards, so as a counter measure, new users aren't able to edit their posts. You will be ranked "trusted" soon, wait for a specialist to do that.

I think two of the above tutorials involve stencil nodes. I could explain here how to do it, but that would take a lot of time and wouldn't be as easily understandable and complete as the tutorials. But I can still explain or answer your questions, if you are running into problems with this.

1. Texture painting means you paint your own texture in blender's 3D-view. Basically, you got a UV-map and paint on your model in 3D-view and your strokes appear on a UV-map. This is handy in some places, but I doubt you can use it on your project.

2. Weight paint is used for rigging, read animating organic models in most cases. I wouldn't count an airport or a plane as organic things that need complex movements, so I guess you don't need that, either

3. Vertex paint is a bit of a mix of the above, you paint on the model, too, but directly to vertex data. I have used this in one or two tutorials but never in my projects, I can't remember what it does exactly or why anyone would need it, sorry...

4. Sculpt mode allows you to add layers of subdivision on an object and carve details onto the models surface. This is also used heavily on organic models or uneven surfaces, but I don't think you need it on your airport. This technique is mainly used on fairly high-poly meshes or as a bake-from model for normal maps.

I'm not sure why you asked about the above techniques, they don't really fit your project. I can still provide you information about them if you want to, just let me say that I don't see how you could use them.

Now to your suggestion: I don't know how complex your airport is, but I guess it's mostly runways and stuff like that? You won't need a separate plane for that, you can unwrap your models as is. I don't think you got complex surfaces there so you should be fine with going to top view (NUM7), select all (A-Key), unwrap (U-Key) and choose "Projection from view".

AFAIK, all game engines support uv-maps and texture maps. You shouldn't have problems exporting them. Goliath is right about inkscape for the lines and gimp for the textures. But applying textures in blender is different from lining them up in Gimp or creating them.

Oh my, I'm sure I forgot about something, sorry. I'll go back to my studies now... Looking forward to your next post