FT Viggen in RealFlight

[Earthchill]

I got inspired by @tanmaychhatbar and started creating FT Viggen in Fusion 360. My plan was to export it to 3ds and then get it into RealFlight (since 3ds is the supported import format). The nose isn't right. I have to make a physical one and then take measures. Too many angles

Will continue with nose and export tomorrow. Unfortunately Fusion 360 can't export directly to 3ds so I have to find some free program in between for conversions. I also have to convert my solids to surfaces, but I'm not too worried about that.

 

[tanmaychhatbar]

I started some work on it too! The models nearly done, was planning to start texturing. I'm using blender. Let me know if you'd like to take the Viggen upon yourself instead!

 

[Earthchill]

Probably much faster if you continue. I wouldn't be able to do any good textures. Would probably have been happy with all brown 😊. I'll do the Tiny Trainer instead. Much easier geometry, and it's a plane I can compare to real life.

 

[tanmaychhatbar]

Cool! I'd expect around 2 days for this to be ready. Excited to see the Tiny Trainer

 

[Earthchill]

The Tiny Trainer was so much easier to create Still solids though. Guess I have to learn a bit of Blender. Bit that's a project for tomorrow.

 

[tanmaychhatbar]

Looks real nice! If you're modeling for RF7/7.5, you'll have to jump through a few software hoops to make blender work. Let me know if you do choose that path and have issues.

 

[Earthchill]

Thanks. It should be fine with version 8.

I'll probably post some questions tonight 😊

 

[LitterBug]

This is REALLY cool to see other FT models developed for RealFlight! One of these days I will make it up to Edgewater and get some panoramics so I can try my hand at creating a PhotoField.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[tanmaychhatbar]

@LitterBug That would be absolutely awesome!

 

[Earthchill]

@tanmaychhatbar which version of Blender are you using? It seems like 3ds export was officially dropped with version 2.83. I've tried using the export_3ds2kex.py script but I can't get it running. All threads on the Knife Edge forums on how to do things seem to be a decade old

 

[tanmaychhatbar]

Using 2.49b for export. You can copy your files into Blender 2.79 from 2.8+ with ctrl+c, ctrl+v. Then save as legacy format from 2.79. This'll allow 2.49 to open the file fine. Make sure to triangulate all polys though, ctrl+t.

 

[Earthchill]

I just realized that RF8 imports FBX files, which Fusion 360 exports. Now I just need to figure out textures. I can't believe I didn't realized that earlier, despite your mention of RF7/7.5

 

[tanmaychhatbar]

Better late than never

 

[Earthchill]

I've created an FBX in Fusion 360 and edited the tree/hierarchy in Blender.
After that I re-saved it as a new FBX and tried to import in RealFlight 8 but get error message "Error: Cannot locate path to texture file within KEX file. Corrupted KEX file?" when pressing next in "Please select an aircraft to initialize your model from".

I tried to use ProcessMonitor to check where RealFlight looks for the texture but it doesn't seem to look for any textures at all (or does it by listing files in the directory instead of trying to open a file with a specific name). I also tried to put some dummy textures with the same file name (tga-files) in the same directory.

@tanmaychhatbar do you know how to move forward?

I still haven't figured out pivot points or actually created any textures, but it would be nice to get something to show up in RealFlight before spending too much time on something that turns out to be a dead end

 

[tanmaychhatbar]

Once you're done modelling, you need to UV map your object, which basically tells the sim how to map a texture to your model. Then you paint a texture image that follows this map and export the image. Put a copy of the image in the same folder as the fbx and try the import again. I feel like words won't be nearly as good to describe the entire process as much as a tutorial video
If you are interested in importing the model as fast as possible, unwrap all the objects however, and just use a plain texture image. This would be useful to know that your model otherwise has no errors. But try to not think of the untextured model as 'good enough'. Few of my projects been down that rabbit hole, and they never get done

 

[Earthchill]

Once you're done modelling, you need to UV map your object, which basically tells the sim how to map a texture to your model. Then you paint a texture image that follows this map and export the image. Put a copy of the image in the same folder as the fbx and try the import again. I feel like words won't be nearly as good to describe the entire process as much as a tutorial video
If you are interested in importing the model as fast as possible, unwrap all the objects however, and just use a plain texture image. This would be useful to know that your model otherwise has no errors. But try to not think of the untextured model as 'good enough'. Few of my projects been down that rabbit hole, and they never get done

Thanks, that was just what I needed. Got a better error message now and can continue to move forward.

 

[Earthchill]

Got it imported. I have many more things to fix, but now I know I can get the geometry imported. Next step is coordinate systems and rotation points. Then materials (less glossiness) textures and electronics/radio.

 

[tanmaychhatbar]

Looks good! Except, I'd say you have more texture space allotted to the stabilizer, I'd rather have such density for the wing.

 

[Earthchill]

Looks good! Except, I'd say you have more texture space allotted to the stabilizer, I'd rather have such density for the wing.

Still struggling with the UI in Blender. Will certainly rescale the different parts