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[WxTech]

Great progress!

Is it difficult to fix some bad surface normals? I see some surfaces, such as the inner wing underside and the ailerons/flaps, which are illuminated when they should be in shadow. It would be nice to not have to do this with my Poor Man's 3D Software, aka a spreadsheet. 

[Mission_bug]

   You're doing a great job Pete! While you're at it, could you take off those ridiculous transverse ridges on the helmets of the two crew members?   

Come on Stan, give us a break, I am the mechanic not the tailor.

Great progress!

Is it difficult to fix some bad surface normals? I see some surfaces, such as the inner wing underside and the ailerons/flaps, which are illuminated when they should be in shadow. It would be nice to not have to do this with my Poor Man's 3D Software, aka a spreadsheet. 

This is a common issue WxTech, I am not sure how to fix it sorry to say.

I have tried on some occasions to detach certain surfaces, works well on buildings but not always on aircraft parts, also tried is changing particular surfaces in gmax using the smoothing groups utility, again sometimes I have managed others not, it is a subject I really need to grasp.

Many of the models we use have gone through various hands and 3d applications and each adds difficulties so I do what I can and hope others can help out, how you do these things with a spread sheet is beyond me, are there any tutorials around that might give a tinkering amateur help?

As for poor mans 3d application, gmax is as far as I know still free to download, it came about as part of a SDK for Microsoft Flight I think and has been used to make hundreds of models for that and other games, it is a cut down version of 3ds max and is very good for tinkering with meshes for our old IL-2 and even making full models.

Without it I could never have done the things I have so far, I was once saving to buy 3ds but they decided to stop selling the package and instead moved to having you rent it on a weekly basis, now sick and unemployed it will now be forever beyond my grasp so I hope my current gmax installation continues to work or I could be forever grounded.

The damage model is done more or less, however, I am having difficulty with the mid wings remaining in place even though the inner is gone:



I have tried all sorts but am at the point now of just leaving it as is, at least it is working if not entirely as I would like and the majority of the other aircraft parts are now gone so what you see will mainly be my home made stuff and clones of the main model, I have gone as far as I can so it might just require a little tender loving care from you and the spreadsheet I am sorry to report.


Take car and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[WxTech]

I recently grabbed a P-43 available elsewhere, and the several of the more egregious surface normals were given the ol' spreadsheet treatment. Mostly, this involved choosing a nearby but correct normal. But often one must work them out, especially when making new models.

When the axis orientations are known, constructing the 3 values is not so hard. Just realize that they are cosines of the 3 angles the vector makes in respect of the 3 axes. The surface normal's vector length is unity, or 1, and is essentially the diagonal dimension of a box (or the radius of a sphere.) If you square each normal component, then add these 3 squared values, then take the square root of this sum, you should get 1.0, or very close to it.

If the surface section for a vertex under consideration lies in a plane containing 2 of the axes, then the surface normal is coincident with the remaining axis. The numeric construction for that normal is thus a 1 or -1 for the relevant axis, with the other 2 values being zero. If the surface is in plane with one axis, but tilted at 45 degrees to the other two, then two values will be positive or negative 0.7071, and the 3rd value will be zero. In a similar vein, a normal at a 30 degree angle to one axis will have values of 0.866, 0.5 and zero, with the non-zero figures being either + or -, as appropriate.

These are a few simple examples. Things get trickier when the normal is tilted w.r.t. all three axes. But one can make best guesses on the angles for two axes, deriving directly the cosines for them. For the 3rd axis, it can be computed so as to fulfill the aforementioned condition, where the square root of the sum of the squares equals 1. This assures an precise vector length of unity.

When I was first exposed to trigonometry in grade 9, I instantly recognized its utility for the rest of my days. I paid close attention in class as a result. 

[Mission_bug]

Thank you very much for the explanation WxTech, really appreciated, sadly that is way too much for me to get my head around.

When I was first exposed to trigonometry in grade 9, I instantly recognized its utility for the rest of my days. I paid close attention in class as a result. 

I admire how some people can fully understand these things at such a young age, I should have tried harder, much harder, alas I am where I am so I have to tip my hat to you and others in this respect and leave the shine issue to others.


Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[Mission_bug]

Hello guys, there is now a new link in the first page to the model incorporating the damage model alterations noted in the previous posts.

I have added the new FM from Vasya at AviaSkins.





There is still work that could be done to this, the wings have some lighting issues, however, I do not know how best to deal with this problem so my work is now complete and if this version is okay for those that download it I will open a new thread in German Singles for this particular version.

If anyone else wants to add any further updates please post here and I will add to the first page.


Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[Mission_bug]

Hello guys, there is now a link in the first post for the skins I have altered to accept the new damage model

The intention was to upload them with the updated model and template when I posted that the other day but I forgot.


I have adjusted these skins to include the updated damage model I made, without it you will just see the background colour of the template when it activates.



These are skins currently in my collection for the Hs-126 model by Edlor, they are from various skinners names unkown, as well as my own, I have uploaded them for those who do not have the facility to alter them personally.




The updated model contains the template I used for those who prefer to alter their own or who would rather leave the original ones as they were but make new ones, template is to 1024.

Those skins that I did not make have no indication as to who the authors were, however, I have added credits to them of what I altered and the template used, I hope that is okay with you guys.


Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[urmel]

Many thanks for the update and the new skins!!!

[Mission_bug]

Many thanks for the update and the new skins!!!

Glad you like the update so far urmel.


I keep tinkering with things, that is the trouble with getting involved with projects like this that are built over
another model, there is all kinds of things need fixing.

Yesterday evening I turned to the ailerons, they always looked odd for some reason but I could not figure
out why, they always looked Grey on top whatever skin was on so I put them into gmax to try and find out
what was wrong and found the upper and lower faces were both mapped to the same part of the texture
which is why upper and under always looked the same.

Anyway, I made that right and also added co-commons to each so apart from the lighting issues at least
that was dealt with:




I have already mentioned that parts of the damage model did not seem to be dropping off as would be
expected even though they are set right as far as I can see.  Without a cure I have employed a bit
of 3d mesh to attach to the fuselage that has lengths of tube spread across where the struts and
wings meet and up through the struts themselves so that anything that does not detach as it should will
hopefully look at least like it is attached to something rather than seemingly flying besides the aircraft:




Still needs testing to see how things look and the newly mapped edges for the ailerons need some paint
applying.  I am not going to update all the skins for that but I will upload a new default texture so those
making skins can see where the extra altered parts are now mapped.

All I need now is a way to fix the lighting issue on various things, unfortunately what WxTech described
is beyond my capabilities, what I need is something in gmax that can do the job, any thoughts guys?


Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[Birdman]

Those lighting issues are due to incorrect normals that are likely caused by incorrect smoothing groups. That should be easily fixable in Gmax when you have those parts there already, but I've only used text editor to fix those and it may not work in this case if different surfaces share the same vertices in corners. All should be OK when you make sure upper, lower and inner surfaces don't share the same vertices before smoothing the part to get sharp edges where needed.

[Mission_bug]

Those lighting issues are due to incorrect normals that are likely caused by incorrect smoothing groups. That should be easily fixable in Gmax when you have those parts there already, but I've only used text editor to fix those and it may not work in this case if different surfaces share the same vertices in corners. All should be OK when you make sure upper, lower and inner surfaces don't share the same vertices before smoothing the part to get sharp edges where needed.

Hello Birdman, thank you very much for that, really appreciated.

I began tinkering last night with the smoothing groups tool with mixed results, I tried just using the command auto
smooth and in some instances that seemed quite successful on certain wing parts, here the inner left, before:





Later on after messing with each of the wings I was not having much luck so retired to listen to the football:




You can see here with the wire frame what I have to deal with on the outer, besides selecting each polygon section
and trying auto smooth I also tinkered with the groups box shown in this image putting different ones to each of
the various panels that the wing is made up of:




The wing mid seemed okay once in game, however if you changed the view slightly again there was a shine. 

The outer, well, whatever was tried did not do any good, I think all in all I made it worse.


The outer seems to have more issues due to how it is constructed, the faces were up and down and seemingly
all over the place.  I tinkered moving the vertices so I had a a more level surface but again thet images
above show what I am up against.

Best move for the main wing parts might be just to clone the right side to replace the left, I will need to remap
but that might be a quick and dirty fix that will cause far less agitation than continuing with what I did last night
to those parts.


Anyway, I will tinker some more when I feel up to it, right now not.


Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[Mission_bug]

Hello guys, after a week or so of tinkering and reading about smoothing groups I am getting nowhere really.

I detached the wing tips and found all kinds of defects there and try as much as I might nothing worked successfully, deleting
extra faces that really should not have been there, trying all manner of smoothing groups, detaching things, adding things, until
I found something that did actually cure the shine but added six times the amount of polygons.




Not really much good that but it did give hope that at least something might work.

Eventually I opted to just clone the right wings, do the x-form thing on them on them, flip the faces and reapply the skin



And still the mid wings have shiny trailing edges even if the rest is okay.

While looking at the shot above something occurred to me, no flaps, in all the time I have had this aircraft and tinkered it to death,
I never noticed that there were no working flaps, or any for that matter, not even separated ones even if they did not work.

I give up, I need to get a life.

Take care and be safe.

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

[Gaston]

Very nice !

Also, there is a B in the works : https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,54029.msg587761.html#msg587761...

Would be nice to have them all together in one pack !