wings 3d

[flexible]

You can save a lot of polies by useing the N-Gon, look under More at the bottom of the open box.
Make you're ~CS_COLL_ for you're parts before you export.
http://www.knifeedge.com/forums/atta...chmentid=26942

[edmoor]

i used a torus. i could change that i guess. i have 3296 verts, 6329 edges, 3079 faces. including the torus.....so i left it be. you lost me on the ~cs_coll_ process. do i box in around the wing....fuse....with a cube.....and save them as seperate names names for each? or copy the fuse.....then the wing....and wheels....etc.....this makes no sense to me. i can see why its done....just dont understand it. does wings for dummies explain the process in detail for me? and i assume this is all done in wings program. only other program i have is blender....which i do not know how to use......yet. looks like its beer o'clock already......ed.

[edmoor]

wasnt sure about naming flaps....as the tut i read didnt show flaps...also my wing is one.....not left and right....same as the h stab. check out what i named them all...am i correct? and the nose gear wasnt shown on the example as well....so i done ~cs_ng. and ~cs_nw

[willsonman]

Originally Posted by edmoor

i also forgot to make my torus for my prop.

I have left the world of using a toriod for my prop placeholer for a mroe economical use. I simply create a cube and loop cut one side. Delete the majority of the part and use the single 2D square as the place holder... uses but 2 precious polygons... this allows me to make realistic bolts in my gear like Junkboy J/K Seriously... it save a TON of polys to do it that way.

[edmoor]

like so?........im not changing it again.

[DirtyHarry3033]

What willsonman said! I used to use a torus for the prop, then changed to a very thin square box, then finally a 2D plane. I learned the torus from KE's tutorial, that's what they showed for the ~CS_Engine component so that's what I used my 1st few models. But no reason at all to waste all those polys

DH

[willsonman]

Sure thats fine It never really matters what size it is as long as you can see it to link it to the fuselage when you get to that point. Toroids are for sissies LOL Seriously looking good there.

[DirtyHarry3033]

Originally Posted by edmoor

you lost me on the ~cs_coll_ process. do i box in around the wing....fuse....with a cube.....and save them as seperate names names for each? or copy the fuse.....then the wing....and wheels....etc.....this makes no sense to me. i can see why its done....just dont understand it. does wings for dummies explain the process in detail for me? and i assume this is all done in wings program. only other program i have is blender....which i do not know how to use......yet. looks like its beer o'clock already......ed.

Collision meshes confuse me also My understanding is you MUST have collision meshes if the model is over 8k polys, or it won't export a .kex file. And yet my current Devastator model is at just under 20k polys with NO mesh and it exports fine. Maybe twice since I started modeling 2 years ago, has the exporter told me "you're over 8k polys, add collision meshes!"

At any rate, if I have polys left over I'll put a mesh on. I've got several on swaps with meshes, and several without. All of 'em pushing the total 20k limit.

The "rule" according to the KE tutorial is that any part with a ~CS_ name needs a mesh. Personally I have never done this, when I put a mesh on I "simplify" it wherever possible. For instance I don't do a mesh for "~CS_LMW" and another for "~CS_LMA" and still another for "~CS_LMF". I just make one mesh that encloses the entire left wing and leave it at that. Maybe that works, maybe it defeats the entire purpose - I don't know. But like I said, only a few times has the exporter forced me to add meshes at all.

As far as how the mesh is made, you DON'T want to "copy" each component. Do that and you'll double your poly count instantly

You want the SIMPLEST shape possible that will completely enclose the component and "roughly" conform to its shape. For your model a simple box primitive will work nicely for the wing, just drag the verts at the tip to closely match the sweep, chord and thickness of the wing.

Do the same for the fuse, you can use a box if you like, or a 6-sided cylinder (eats more polys though.) Add enough segments so that you can get it to roughly correspond to the profile of the fuse, and drag verts around to match the shape.

The collison mesh does NOT have to be detailed, in fact I think the limit is 1.5k polys total for all mesh parts. (Someone correct if I'm wrong!) What you want to remember is that the meshes describe the areas that can collide with objects. To understand this, add a "~CS_COLL" object to your wings and fuse, but NOT to the wheels. Import the model, load it in RF and watch what happens. The model will sink into the ground since there are no meshes on the wheels. In this case RF doesn't know that the wheels can "collide" with the ground since they have no mesh. As a result, the model sinks until something WITH a mesh attached hits the ground.

So, if you make your wing mesh extend 3 feet past the wingtip, you can have a collision with say a windsock, if the wingtip gets inside of 3 feet from it. Though to the pilot flying the plane, it would look like he totally missed the windsock.

Moral is, the mesh should closely approximate the shape and dimensions of the plane. But it does NOT need to fit "like a glove," all that does is waste polys.

DH

[flexible]

http://www.knifeedge.com/forums/atta...chmentid=25672

[edmoor]

thx dirtyharry......you answered alot of my questions....and thx flexible also....although i didnt understand any of your attatchments.....too much like the wings tuts.....no explanations....just pics. so i assume im oing to build a framework around my model parts....that the model will 'fit" in...and name them coll. and save them in the same directory as my plane. this is getting over my head here......and the worse is yet to come im affraid.

[flexible]

I was just showing you that the ~CS_COLL_ does not have to be complicated.

[edmoor]

and i thank you for that.....i just didnt understand it is all....guess i just dive in and sink or swim huh??

[DirtyHarry3033]

edmoor, maybe this pic will help. It's a wireframe pic of my Baron 58, showing the entire visual model plus the collision meshes.

Collision meshes are all selected and shown in white.

The visual model parts are shown in various shades of gray, blue, purple, etc.

Study it and you can see that all the major parts have a mesh around them that approximates the shape of the part. But the mesh is very "blocky" and not detailed. Simple boxes for the tail feathers and wings, six-sided cylinders for the tires and fuse.

Note that I have NO separate meshes for the ailerons, elevators, rudder or flaps. Also no meshes for the ~CS_SPINNER or ~CS_ENGINE parts. I don't know if that matters or not as far as performance goes. I'll leave it for someone smarter than me to say

At any rate, I hope that will help you understand the basic idea of what you want to accomplish with collision meshes. And don't worry about it "getting way over your head", that's to be expected. Just be persistent, don't give up, and you'll do fine We all have to start with that 1st step and it's the hardest. It will get easier with every model, trust me. I had to struggle like a son-of-a-***** for the 1st few, but it's a lot easier now!

DH

[edmoor]

yes this helps me alot. so say i do "one" for the fuse....."one" for the main wing....(my wing is one object) as told to save it as such. and "one for each wheel".....and "one" for the tail feathers. i save them as seperate coll files...correct? i wont make any moves in the direction of doing this step until im certain i understand what i am doing......i have alot of hours on this so far just learning. i scrapped out a 152 because i didnt understand it....and got pissed off. im trying to have more patients this time around.

[DirtyHarry3033]

Yep, that's the basic idea. Though as I have already mentioned I'll leave it to someone more knowledgeable than me as to whether it's OK to have one mesh around the entire wing, or whether you need separate ones around the wing and each control surface. Like I mentioned earlier, the KE tutorial says you need a ~CS_COLL part for every ~CS_ part. I tend to combine them wherever possible to save polys, I don't know if doing this gives a performance hit with respect to fps.

Don't know how good an idea it is to have your wing and hstab in a single piece. I've never built a model that way, I've always had a separate left and right wing, separate left and right hstab, etc. It may work fine, but the physics editor will prompt for separate left and right components.

If you name your 1-piece wing "~CS_Wing", I'm sure you could assign it to both the left and right wings in the physics editor. However, if either wingtip hit the ground, I'm thinking BOTH "visual" wings would break off, but only 1 "physical" wing would be gone in the model. I may be wrong about this but I'm thinking the system is designed to have separate 3D objects for the left and right side.

I'm not sure how they would be saved in Wings, I don't use it. Do all my work with Max 2009. But in Max, the coll meshes are not saved as separate files, they are saved in the same file as the visual model.

Again, I don't know if this is "OK" or not, but I name my collision meshes according to the part they will be attached to. For instance the mesh for ~CS_LMW will be named ~CS_COLL_LMW. For ~CS_Fuselage it will be ~CS_COLL_Fuselage. This helps me get the right mesh linked to the right part in the hierarchy. As far as I know, ALL the mesh parts can be named ~CS_COLL, but that would make it kind of confusing when it came time to do the hierarchy.

Don't worry about messing up, just be sure to save off your work before starting something you're unsure of, then save to a new name when you start the new stuff. That way you can always go back if things don't work as you expected.

DH