I tried to remap the right wingset a few times but could only get one side of the template to show on my UVW unwrap. Another attempt had both sides unwrapped but the vertice points stayed merged, so I couldn't rotate the 'underwing' template on the bitmap without distorting all the mapping/unwrapping. Finally got both the right topwing and bottomwing mapped and unwrapped properly and although I haven't applied the good wing textures to the bitmap itself yet, it is such a relief to have this task completed. Got all the little wing parts and hubs textured without too much grief. WOOHOO!! A matching set of wings that look right and act right in the sim....and are synchronized by hand well enough to line up within an inch of each other after complex animation sequencing.
Pretty happy with a bunch of texture changes on the generic aircraft parts....pilot, helmet, wing parts, weapons assemblies and the weapons themselves (missiles, rockets). Re-mapped the pilot's torso and added a jacket zipper so the flightsuit looks a little less 'buggy'.
Got into animating & texturing the weapons systems for the last several long evenings. With all the weapon's pieces in gmax, including the platforms, the rockets, the missiles and the missile fins and missile stands, there are probably well over 100 parts. In order to animate these parts, even if the animation is fairly simple, you need to name each part properly, manually in gmax according to 'keyframe' naming conventions set out in the FS9 MakeMDL SDK's. Stock animation names are no good for custom weapons movement as 'stock' names tell FS how to move control surface parts in a specific, single, axis-driven manner. With keyframe animation you can make your stuff move in FS exactly how you want it to.
Tried using the name 'Rudder_water_Deploy_xx' (yes, manually typed in over 100 times ), hoping for a response with 'shift+W', bit it didn't work, and was a mistake by me and a foolish waste of time. 'Tried Landing_Light_xx'....hoping to get a response with 'ctrl+L'. Lunchbag letdown. Went onto the Freeflight forums and asked for advice and got a response regarding, .XML, but I eventually remembered that 'tailhook' a gmax/FS-recognized name that wasn't listed in the FS9 SDK's might give me a fighting chance. If you have a '[tailhook]' line in the aircraft .CFG file, and have 'tailhook' assigned to a key in FS9's 'Assignments' page, then I hoped the weapons arrays would deploy with the touch of the one button I have appropriately assigned on my joystick.
Bingo! It finally worked like a charm...all weapons pop out of the top and bottom of this buggy beast with the touch of one joystick button.
Of course, there's a bug....O.K., not a bug, a simple modeling oversight by me (read: I ****ed up!), I forgot that the missiles are quite deeply recessed from the rear, and you can see the missile stands through the back of the missiles. D'OH!!
Double D'OH!
Did I mention that each of these 130+ pieces needs to be carefully 'linked' to each other, chain-style, in gmax...another crucial step in having all the parts move with the parent part during animation movements. Long story even longer - my best bet at this point is to just plug the 12 holes with a small 6-sided disk...every other fix-it option involves more headaches than is worthwhile! I'll put up with the extra 200 poly's for the model.
Isn't this fascinating? Are you ready for a nap yet?
The missile stands that are evident in the screen shot will also be re-textured to something a lot lighter than the dark colour they are now.
Left to do:
Landing gear 'Suspension' animation. She needs some bounce.
Re-build, texture front guns.....consider animation.
Re-build and build some cockpit interior stuff - interior gun-housing, interior neck-joint housing, ...also have to decide on small panel areas where I can put some gauges, also considering modeling in a H.U.D., attached to the windshield.
Consider re-mapping and unwrapping the right wing sub-assemblies...I got a little sloppy there. Fairly easy re-work.
Map and unwrap the rest of the exterior and interior model for texturing and create the textures from scratch.
Decide on all and any further animations and implement.
See just how hard it is to animate cockpit controls...this cockpit is very visible, it would be sweet if the yoke and pedals were responsive to actual input...can't be that hard to do. (Famous last words!)
Set all remaining contact points.
Place all light points, and deal with whatever effects files end up being custom (Permissions, file naming, install readme's, etc).
Decide what [Smokesystem] file to go with, obtain permission if possible.
Try for a decent repaint kit, including layer-separatable .PSD files for wings, body, etc. (Gotta figure out layering properly for myself first...pretty new here.)
Look into panel design...it would be so nice to be able to have a matching panel and....
V.C.!! I've never done a virtual cockpit, but it doesn't sound too hard.
Might look into blending some custom sounds into a default jet sound file, we'll see how that goes.
I like to create a little story - a brief history of the aircraft and some specs, for the text stuff when you're selecting the aircraft in FS9.
Packaging - it's all got to be a nice, accurate, clearly-instructed file for installation by the end-user. Details, details.
There's a bunch of niggling problems and details as well to work out, stuff that shows up funny in the sim. Optical illusions or perspective issues with the model in FS, modeling and texturing mistakes to fix up or hide. She'll be a many-flawed release in regards to realism, flight dynamics, real-world engineering and design...but the fun-factor is off the chart, and that's what I seem to be aiming for with these wacky, but 'sci-fi-cool' aircraft.
EDIT: Fixed the holes in the missiles by plugging them with 12 low-poly disks. I tried to just select the inner poly's of the missile and extrude them back past where you can see the missile stands inside, but it was too goofy. Changed the missile stand texture to a nice light pattern and the weapons animation and texturing will be all done once I reposition a few rockets that stick out too far and hit the body panel when the weapons platform deploys.
Might try to get the suspension animation out of the way next, and if I tackle that - maybe a bunch of mapping and unwrapping of the rest of the aircraft...it sure would be nice to see some textures on the body and wings themselves. Lots of work to do. Holy Crap.
I got the interior of the cockpit textured finally...what a fight to get it to look decent, then to get rid of the excessive specular shine. You can't seem to get rid of it 'till you set the material settings to almost their lowest...stumped me for at least 8 export tests. Had a hard time getting the interiors of the weapons bays textured decently as well...they're not as nice as I'd like but after going through all that I'm settling - they're good enough! Played with umpteen different 'slap-on' texture applications by fiddling and changing up the materials in gmax...trying to get all the smaller parts looking proper and contrasting to each other somewhat where they join so there's some definition to the detail of this buggy mess. I'm actually pretty pleased so far, by just sort of chipping away evening after evening at these little part by part texture applications all that still needs texturing is the outer body. That's still 10 pieces to map and unwrap and create really good textures for from scratch. Will be a triumphant stage of the game to actually get all the textures on this thing..it's really turning into a monster. Umpteen bitmaps and a whack of materials in gmax - what a mess. It looks pretty darn cool with the cockpit interior done though and some weapon's bay detail and I'm looking forward to getting the outer body and those four wings DONE!!!
...Took an altitude test flight from Barbados on a perfect sunny day. Travelled North of the island and slowly step-climbed up to 55,000' - where she seemed pretty comfortable trimmed up a fair bit. She's pretty stable at altitude and I was able to swing her around 180* for a leisurely trip back and a nice soft VTOL.
EDIT: I may have gotten ahead of myself by just texture mapping the interior of the cockpit. The wasp-head cockpit, minus the canopy and glass - is just one piece, one mesh. In order for a decent map and unwrap of the exterior and interior it has to be done all at once, and here I got all excited and textured just the interior. D'oh!! Well, I may not even be able to unwrap the darn wasphead decently in gmax to texture the way I want to. Might have to go with a tiled up slap-on textured material application...a shame because it makes repainting that piece impossible. This is a super-goofy mesh to map and UVW unwrap though, it seldom goes well for me when the meshes are shelled like this one is. There are a few tricks I've learned when it comes to cockpits though...sometimes cloning the cockpit mesh and texturing it as an interior, then shrinking it slightly and sitting it inside what is now a free to be textured differently exterior. (A waste of poly's though!) I'll take a screenie of just the cockpit mesh and you'll see what I mean by super-goofy to map and unwrap inner and outer mesh. If you're still awake and your eyes aren't crossed by now. Back soon.
Well. I've been playing with textures for the W.A.S.P.V. now for about 3 weeks. They all suck. First I created a bunch of 512X512 bitmaps from scratch, manipulated, cut and pasted and reworked the hell out of them and started applying them to 'materials' in gmax and began the experimental process of slapping them on my wasp body parts and cockpit, using various lazy, hack methods. Yuk. Started doing a few maps and unwraps where the 'lazy' way wasn't cutting it. Still yuk. I always bog down a bit when it comes to texturing. My aircraft are obviously one-offs of a fantasy/sci-fi nature, and I can't rely on anything but what I can see in my head for textures, so they need to be worked up from nothing. Wait, that doesn't sound right....I don't have a head full of 'nothing'...it can get a bit weird to turn on the creative juices and come up with textures to live up to the vision I have for my paintjobs is all. I can see grand textures on this cool model in my future-vision of this project's conclusion - now I'm creating them and coming up short! Light at the end of the tunnel is visible now though, I've resigned myself to working up 1024X1024 maps for this thing and am using and manipulating the hell out of some of the 512's in order to see what kind of textures I can achieve. Discovered the 'emboss' filter in Photoshop and have figured out how to overlay solid colours as layers for most of these collage style, messy attempts at the 'skin' this wasp needs. Such a different model just falls on it's face with crappy, shortsighted, half-ass textures.
As it stands, I'm having trouble getting decent unwraps in gmax when using the 'box' mapping method, and the'planar' mapping method I've resorted to will not allow anything but a mirror image on both sides of any given mesh....this puts the kiebosh on any lettering or numbering, or anything mirror-sensitive for that matter, going on the body sides. A logo that looks just as good backwards will work, but the whole thing seems limiting. Ah well, thank goodness I managed to separately map each of the four wings, or RD wouldn't have anywhere to write 'MARINES' with pride. Sooooo...to make a long story just an excruciating bit longer, all is normal in harkland. There is progress, and hopefully my textures will do justice to the most different flying/fighting machine you're likely to see for a while. Bend your ear a bit over the weekend if things go well and I have anything worth another teaser shot or two. Thanks for listening.
Location: COMFORTABLY NUMB, in U.S.A. *** KOFF ***
Age: 51
Gender: Male
Ditto on the deaf ears. I didn't hear a word you said Hark...
I'll either have something for you tonight (in the next hour or so), or something tomorrow for you. It may help you out on the textures, and can possibly used as a layer or two. (thinking along the lines of a Carbon Fiber type stitch, overlay, or layer. I need to find where I found them.) There was more to it also, that could be up your alley.
Oh yeah! I have some work to do! Skycar is not dead. Skycar is sort of on the back burner as I'm an undisciplined creative trainwreck, but it is very much on my mind, as is the work you and RD have already put in. I will manage to get you guys some aircar seat maps soon, thanks for the nudge.
RD, serious texture site, thank you. Didn't know about that one.
I do hope to avoid using anyone's pre-made textures though, especially on this one, so much time has gone into the model. (I'm a very picky hack.) I'm getting better at creating my own stuff bit by bit...it just takes so bloody long.
Just got a preliminary 1024 onto 3 of the butt segments and it looks promising. They're mapped on pretty nice, just have to work on the actual texture now....it needs some panel lines and more detail.
Managed to create what might be a wicked cockpit texture, and have now amassed enough of a texture library of techy-looking images to alter into jet and mid-body textures. Then some weathering and dirtying, and I might just be getting somewhere. I'll post some reduced samples soon so you can see what I'm blathering about.
Here's an example of the sort of 'skin' I've managed to come up with for one part or another. This is reduced to half size from a 1024 to save some space here. Probably slap this one on the cockpit interior and see if it looks like anything but total crap once it's applied. This texture from scratch creation and application could go on forever if you weren't careful about getting carried away! If I had to rely on television for a pastime I'd be bored to tears though, so this works as a 'learn as you go' kind of hobby.
Quick update on the texturing trials and errors. I'm just still chipping away at getting this thing looking decent - spend a few hours each evening on each piece of the W.A.S.P.V's three main body parts; head, midbody and thorax.
Once I have home-made textures that look like they might tile up in a reasonable way on any given piece, I start making 'materials' in gmax and setting their base ambient/diffuse colour along with the colour and intensity of the specular shine. Then I attach a bitmap (my new texture) to that material and apply it to the piece. Some of these parts are done in the more conventional 'UVW Unwrapping' method, where tiling the bitmap is not done, or kept to a minimum and other pieces are done just like I described above - come up with a fitting texture pattern, play with the actual 'material' properties, and start slapping them onto meshes and tiling away in different ways until the whole piece starts to look right. It's a hack/newbie method for sure but some of the meshes I come up with don't lend themselves to a good, clean, paintable unwrap so I hack away. Makes for a bit more work actually as when tiling your textures in max, the way the texture positions on the mesh is often a little different when seen on the model in FS. Back into max I go to play with the mirroring and tiling increment by increment, another export test and look-see. So far I think the thorax is pretty cool, the head (cockpit) looks pretty good, and I am having some issues with the way things are slapping on to the midbody. With the pieces I am most happy with, there may only be a little bitmap editing to do and some weathering, sooting and paintchipping before I can call them done and be happy with them. With the parts that still look questionable, it's chip, chip, chip away with gmax and map editing too. All the underbody section and landing assembly is done and looking good. The jet engines are pretty well done and look quite reasonable, although I would have liked a 1024 over the 512 that I used.
Cockpit needs: gauges, fire extinguishers, and I might give the pilot a side-arm or two!
Wings are nicely mapped and unwrapped and await my wing textures (See other page), and will be the only part of this beast that can actually be repainted decently, due to my hack ways.
Getting the slight suspension animation done for the gear is haunting me, as are another few animations I need to address...but I have to wrap up these texturing issues first, this will really signal that the completion of this project is near, as the animation and .cfg stuff, along with minor modelling additions, is easier for me, much more straightforward. I bet if you asked 10 developers where they would like to improve, 8 would say 'texturing creation and application.' (After they finished cursing all the changes in the way they have to make stuff for FSX...gawd, I'll never keep up! )
Anyway, I need to go spend some more time making this thing look better....I know this stuff can be boring, but as long as I called the thread a W.I.P. thang, I suppose I should keep up. Heh heh, I think in the back of my head that when this thing hits the download pages, even if you hate it you'll know some TLC went into it! Gotta go, the wasp calls....
EDIT: Getting closer...I actually have textures on most of this beast that I can stand to look at, it's coming together.
EDIT: Monday, Dec. 10 (Yay...Monday! ) Took most of my free time this weekend but I got textures on the whole wasp that look good to me.....finally flying this thing around without the overwhelming urge to go immediately back into gmax or Photoshop to change something! A bit of weathering and dirtying up to do where I can, but she's looking pretty decent. A few milestones with this build so far; this is the first model I've built that doesn't give me error messages on export...I usually have to tick 'Ignore warnings' and 'Ignore bad normals', etc., in makeMDL before kicking out a model. This is also the first model that's taken me past 200 builds...meaning every time I make a significant change that I want to save and export for testing is another build. I'm at 225 or something.
I'll chip away during the weeknights on remaining animations, and by next weekend hope to get to the wing textures and maybe have a chance at finishing contact points and lights...getting closer.
...Picked this up today. We'll have to be more careful about security...I doubt it's cool that we keep blowing up reporters. Maybe flight testing in the tropics wasn't such a good plan...but who wants to hang around Canada in the winter?
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), hoping for a response with 'shift+W', bit it didn't work, and was a mistake by me and a foolish waste of time. 'Tried Landing_Light_xx'....hoping to get a response with 'ctrl+L'. Lunchbag letdown. Went onto the Freeflight forums and asked for advice and got a response regarding, .XML, but I eventually remembered that 'tailhook' a gmax/FS-recognized name that wasn't listed in the FS9 SDK's might give me a fighting chance. If you have a '[tailhook]' line in the aircraft .CFG file, and have 'tailhook' assigned to a key in FS9's 'Assignments' page, then I hoped the weapons arrays would deploy with the touch of the one button I have appropriately assigned on my joystick.
) Took most of my free time this weekend but I got textures on the whole wasp that look good to me.....finally flying this thing around without the overwhelming urge to go immediately back into gmax or Photoshop to change something! A bit of weathering and dirtying up to do where I can, but she's looking pretty decent. A few milestones with this build so far; this is the first model I've built that doesn't give me error messages on export...I usually have to tick 'Ignore warnings' and 'Ignore bad normals', etc., in makeMDL before kicking out a model. This is also the first model that's taken me past 200 builds...meaning every time I make a significant change that I want to save and export for testing is another build. I'm at 225 or something. 
