Need some advice / opinions

[hefy_jefy]

Hi,

I have been struggling with gmax for about a week now and am finding it hard going. I am not trying to make anything very complex, I just wanted to improve on the buildings at my local airport. I made reasonable progress to start with and quickly placed a reasonable looking model in the right place in FS2002. Then the problems started, I CAN NOT get the textures to cover all 4 sides of an object.

Is this any easier in Airport 2.6??

Does anybody have any thoughts on this?

Thanks,
Geoff

[moriarity]

Sorry, no answers here. Just adding my own plea for the same help. Is there any kind, knowledgeable person out there that is willing to produce some kind of tutorial? The gmax tutorial on the main page doesn't display correctly and none of the links work.

Aside from that, my gmax will only export to .bgl files - and only since I added D:\FS2002\gmax\Flightsim\plugins to the gmax plugins path. Perhaps I'm missing something. Does this work for items other than scenery? I was sort of expecting something to generate a macro file for buildings, aircraft, etc..???

[wsieffert]

LAST EDITED ON Jan-06-02 AT 12:13PM (EDT)[p]Reread the readme.rtf file in fs2002 folder on how you are to install Gmax and the MakeMDL file. You seem to be saying you pointed Gmax to the directory in fs2002 instead of installing the proper files in (x):\Gmax\ folders. When you select export in gmax, it should bring up the MakeMDL screen where you can select to make an MDL (aircraft visual file) or BGL (scenery file). Visit some of these sites:

http://www.freeflightdesign.com/
http://takeoff.to/landing
http://gmax.digitalarenas.com/

[hefy_jefy]

Thanks,

OK, I got it working, you have to follow the instructions - Duh!

(Map UVWs before Unwrap as it happens)

Its not the most obvious method, and I still don't quite understand how it works, (especially the materials navigator)but I can see that once you do get it right its a powerful piece of S/W.

A little more hard earned info:

The Bitmaps you use have to be a multiple of 256 x 256 in size, and (I think)- 256 colors.

Now I wonder what a Mipmap is, or a DXT1, or any of those funny formats that look real odd when you open them in Paintshop Pro?

I found imagetool.exe, but the help provided is not much - any pointers?

Its a mind expanding experence working it out, I flew past my house yesterday, my Son was waving at me.

Cool...

Geoff

[Barney]

Martin Wright makes a couple of utilities for working with different texture formats.....a search in the library using his name should lead you in the right direction.

Airport 2.6 is not a macro design program; therefore can not replace Gmax. Instead, it allows the placement of macro's, both customized and/or ready-mades,(objects, polygons,etc.), during the designing of an airport, etc.

Barney

[hefy_jefy]

Thanks Barney, I'll take a look...
G