For Milton, Piglet, Felix and other designers: putting meat on the bones!

[Sid2008]

Hi folks, This is a topic that I have been pondering over for a while and I am finally to the point where i would like to receive some inspiration from you.

As an FSDS modeler, when I build the skin of an aircraft and flip all polygons for the interior skin of the virtual cockpit (GMAX cannot be too different). By doing so, I am faced with a thin wall of polygons (i.e., the inside of the fuselage) with holes it them where the windows are supposed to be.

Typically i build windows by using boxes and changing their shape until they seem to sit well in the window holes of the fuselage and use the Boolean operation to cut a window in the box so that there is a "depth perpective" in the window. Get it?

More and more as I see other models, even the default Cessna in FS9, I see that the modeler had seemed to put some meat on the bare bones of the interior fuselage and have molded the window frames and even the walls smoothly.

I have even tried to take part of the inetrior fuleslage and scale it a tad smaller and try to fill in the gaps to give the depth perspective...but playing with all the points to make new polygons just confuses me too much.

So I am wondering if there is a trick that I can use to give a sense of thickness to the interior fuselage, around windows and doors?

Thank you so very much,
Sid

[FelixFFDS]

<Where have I seen this before?>

<Groan> gist of my answer at FFDS Forum ... I told him I 'cheated' many times and ported parts 'n' bits to gmax, abused them, and sent them back to FSDS.....

now he's going to try making headway with gmax, using Uncle Milton's guidance!!

[Milton Shupe]

<Where have I seen this before?>

<Groan> gist of my answer at FFDS Forum ... I told him I 'cheated' many times and ported parts 'n' bits to gmax, abused them, and sent them back to FSDS.....

now he's going to try making headway with gmax, using Uncle Milton's guidance!!

LOL Felix :)

In gmax, the process is simple and hopefully there is a way in FSDS.

After completing the basic exterior model with windows and doors cut in, you can copy/clone it.

The process for me in gmax goes like this.

1. Copy/clone the exterior fuselage, then hide it.
2. Name the copy fuse-inner
3. Convert the fuse-inner to editable mesh
4. Select all polys
5. Flip the polys (to face inward)
6. Unhide the exterior fuselage so now both are visible
7. Select all the fuse-inner polys and extrude inward (Note-different results will occur depending if you leave in editable mesh or convert back to editable poly before extruding. You will also get different results by selecting Local based extrusions).

The distance to extrude should represent what the typical thickness is for windows and doors, and may vary. This is easily adjustable after the fact.

Also, once done, link the fuse-inner to the exterior facing fuselage. This is important in the event you choose to move (or accidently move) the exterior fuse minutely or more.

You may also consider attaching the fuse-inner to the exterior fuse but I recommend against it as any modifications and mapping becomes more problematic. Keep the parts separate.

For more on this process, see my C-162 tutorials, number 11, exercise seven.

http://www.flightsimonline.com/C162/

Hope this helps

[Mathias]

Few little additional pointers to what the collegues allready explained:
When gathering a window's shape you don't really need a box and tweak vertices manually.
More often than not you need rounded corners in an airplane so best is to start out with a spline rather than a box. A rectangle spline does well in most cases. It has the benefit that you can set most parameters in the rollout without even touching a vertex, a much more accurate way. Once happy with the shape you can either use "shape-merge" or extrude the rectangle and use a boolean to cut out the window. You need to do some manually stray-vertices-cleanup afterwards.
If your window cutout profile is something else than just a right angle you can use lofting.
You would select the edges that make up your window cutout, create a shape of these that will act as the path. Next create a shape that you'll use as the shape.
Hit a button or two and you get your window profile.

http://www.classics-hangar.de/privat/loft.jpg

[Sid2008]

Thanks guys.
I see that GAMX is something I have just got to learn.
I am priting out GAMX for idiots ( I hope I can be elevated to the brain power of an idiot) and learn it.

However, i am priniting out your answers which i will use once I get the hang of GMAX.
Sid

[Stratobat]

Hey Milton,

Was your C-162 tutorial ever compiled into a PDF document?

Regards,
Stratobat

[Milton Shupe]

Hey Milton,

Was your C-162 tutorial ever compiled into a PDF document?

Regards,
Stratobat

No, it is all web-based xml.

[FelixFFDS]

Hmmmm - that is an idea, to be able to read them offline/printed...

[hairyspin]

If you're using IE, File - Save As - Web Archive, single file *.mht

Job done.

[Sid2008]

Thank you all for a awesome response to my query.

Milton, if I have GMAX istalled on my PC and the FS9 SDKs, that else do i need to make a cylinder in GMAX and compile is as an airplane in FS9?

[Stratobat]

No, it is all web-based xml.

Thanks, Milton :salute:

Regards,
Stratobat