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Here is a quick status update for some of the projects I am working on. I know I have not blogged much recently. That is mainly because it is quite busy at my work recently, so that affects the amount of free time a bit. Unfortunately I don’t expect this will change very soon. In order of priority the projects have for me at the moment, these are some of the things I am working on: SketchUp tutorial At the FSWeekend in November there will be a FSDeveloper stand again (like last year). This year I plan to let visitors … Continue reading Quick status update on the different projects

Over the last days I worked on the ModelConverterX LOD Creator tool. My first aim was to add another algorithm to calculate the LODs. And besides that I also improved the user interface a bit. On the right you see a screenshot of the new user interface and since the manual is not yet updated, I will give a brief overview of the changes here. The selection box at the top right allows you to choose between the different algorithms that are available. At the moment you can choose either vertex clustering or quadratic based error. The last one is … Continue reading Improved LOD Creator functionality

A new stable version of ModelConverterX has been released. Especially for users converting COLLADA and SketchUp objects this should mean that they can use the stable version again. Since version 1.1 I changed so much, that we always had to tell those users that they needed the development release. Have a look at this post in the forum if you want to see the most important changes in this new version. At the moment I am focusing a bit more on the gPoly tool, but I still have enough interesting ideas for ModelConverterX as well. So for the short term … Continue reading ModelConverterX 1.2 released

And here is a screenshot of the church made with SketchUp in FSX. It has been converted with ModelConverterX and is showing on the NL2000 v4 scenery. I am not completely satisfied with the textures yet, they seem a bit too light when viewed in FSX, so I think I will change them a bit. Oh, and don’t expect to find this object in the coming NL2000 v4 release, since I am too late now to still add it. We are already further in the testing and release process.

Let’s start with the good news, I finished my model of the church in Abcoude. All the textures have been applied as you can see in the screenshot below. But I learned some interesting things while trying to get that far. Let me start with explaining my approach to texturing the building. I had decided to make separate texture files for each of the different walls. Mainly because I have not yet found a way in SketchUp to define the UV coordinates very accurately. So trying to map a sheet with many different texture elements would become hard that way. … Continue reading SketchUp texturing and FSX conversion

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 to align your model to a photo and will then project this photo as a texture onto your model. I guess this might work well if you have an object that is not so complex in shape, but for my church it did not work … Continue reading SketchUp texturing

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. With those as my reference and some maps I found on the internet, I started modelling the church today. In this blog posts and those that follow until I have finished the object, I will try to give an overview of my adventures while learning … Continue reading Today’s SketchUp adventures

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 objects for FSX. I should directly note that if you plan to make an aircraft than Sketchup will not be of much use to you, since you will still need GMax to do all the animations and other advanced features that an aircraft needs. But … Continue reading Modelling for FSX using Sketchup

Last I week I gave Google Sketchup another try and it seems a program you can learn to use quite quickly. If you compare it with GMax I think it has a learning curve that is much less steep. And I think if you model carefully in Sketchup you can make models with it that are suitable for real time rendering. So I think that for some people who just want to make some simple objects Sketchup might be a nice alternative. But how to get those objects into FS? The free version of Sketchup only exports KMZ and DAE … Continue reading COLLADA reader