Post by Tom/CalClassic on Feb 5, 2017 19:26:09 GMT -5
Hi,
We'll assume you are creating these for an airport you are working on, in its own separate folder with scenery and texture subfolders. Note that the area where the ground polygon is placed MUST BE PERFECTLY FLAT. You may need a flatten polygon placed there as well, if off the airport property.
1. There are two textures in the CalClassic Core/texture folder, GP_PARKING_DARK.bmp and GP_PARKING.bmp. The first one matches the ADE asphalt aprons, etc., the second one is lighter (faded asphalt or old concrete). In the EGLL London Airport/texture folders is also a texture called GP_PARKING_CARS_ONLY.bmp, which will only display cars on top of whatever surface they are placed.
2. In your ADE folder, you will find two folders, Textures and Textures_Dpy. Note there are other folders with similar names!
3. Copy the two textures from step 1 and paste them into the two folders in step 2. You are making two copies each.
4. For the copies in the Textures_Dpy folder you need to convert these to 24 bit. The easiest way to do this is to load them into DXTBmp and use File/Save As/24 Bit BMP Image. Click the Save button and then Yes.
5. Now start ADE, and go to Tools/GP Texture Editor
6. Use the drop down box at the top to select one of these textures.
7. Choose Ft from the radio buttons. Type in 378 into the Width and Height boxes (this value will make the cars the correct size). Uniform should be NO.
8. Click Update Definition Files.
9. Repeat steps 6 through 8 for the other texture. You only have to do the steps above once - from now on you can start at the step below.
10. Load your airport if it is not already, and move your plane in FS to the location you want to start drawing your parking lot (if needed). I had a background image and just drew them right onto that.
11. In ADE click the button that has a purple area with a G in the middle (Add Custom Ground Poly).
12. Now click where you want the vertices of your ground polygon to be. Click, move the mouse, click, etc. until you are at the last point. At that location, double click.
13. The ADE Ground Poly Editor will open, and your shape will be there as you drew it.
14. From the Main Texture drop down box at the top, select one of the two textures we initialized above.
15. Click on the Ft. radio button at the lower right.
16. CHECK THAT THE X AND Y BOXES (Main Texture Size (Ft)) ARE SET AT 378 EACH. THESE MAY CHANGE UNEXPECTEDLY AS YOU MAKE YOUR EDITS - ALWAYS CHANGE THESE BACK TO 378!
A little discussion of this editor. People sometimes get confused if they haven't texture mapped an object in programs like FSDS, GMAX, or 3DS Max. The wireframe shape you see on the screen at this point is your ground poly, and the image of the parking lot is what the texture will look like on the poly. It will be oriented that way, and the cars will be that size. On the parts of the poly where the image doesn't cover (i.e. the white areas) the image will be tiled (like a tile roof) horizontally and vertically from the current location of the visible texture bitmap. Imagine parking lot textures being duplicated along the top, bottom, right, and left sides of the visible texture.
The other odd thing is that the location and size of the "first" texture bitmap is fixed; you must change the location, orientation, and size of your ground polygon wireframe to display what you want to achieve. NOTE: this is NOT changing the size, etc. of the ground polygon back on the ADE screen, only how the texture will be applied to that poly. No matter what you do in this screen, your actual ground polygon will not change shape, etc. This can be hard to understand sometimes.
The last thing I want to discuss is that if you just grab one vertex and drag it around, what you will end up with are weirdly deformed cars on your original ground poly shape. If you want the cars to maintain their proportions, do NOT make any manipulations below without ALL vertices selected.
17. If you didn't get the shape of your ground polygon perfect the first time (back in the ADE screen)- I almost never do - click the OK button and a green shape will appear on the ADE display. This shape is edited just like aprons, so adjust the shape until it is perfect. You can add vertices by Ctrl-clicking the edge of the poly, and delete vertices by selecting them (they turn orange) and pressing the Delete key. If it's perfect the first time you drew it, you can instead skip to step 20.
18. With the ground polygon selected, right click and choose Edit Object or double click it. The Editor will return.
19. Press the Reset button. This will display the new shape of your ground poly as the wireframe. CHECK THAT THE X AND Y BOXES ARE AT 378 - IF NOT, CHANGE THEM.
20. Now we'll start by asking how the cars should be parking in this lot. If the rows of cars are pointing in the correct direction that's great. If not:
a. Drag a box around the entire ground poly; all vertices should turn red. That means they have all been selected.
b. Under the word Rotate at the top are four buttons, Free Rotate, Rotate 90 deg. Right, Rotate 90 deg. Left, and Rotate 180 deg. If your wireframe is perfectly aligned up/down/left/right then you can use one of the 90 degree buttons to make the cars park the other way. If not, choose the Free Rotate button.
c. If using Free rotate, hold down the mouse over one of the vertices and drag that vertex so the entire shape is perfectly square to the texture (assuming you want the cars to park parallel to the sides of the poly).
21. Now we need to position the texture so the most visible edges have a little free asphalt along those edges (does not apply to the cars only texture). If not red already, drag a box around the entire wireframe; all vertices should turn red (selected). To move the wireframe we will use the 4 headed button under the word Drag at the top of the screen; click it. Figure out which two edges are the most visible and hold down the mouse over one of the vertices and drag the wireframe so the 2 most visible edges are near the edges of the texture. As you can see, this will allow those edges to have a "driveway" along them. Note that you don't have to align these two edges exactly with the texture (you can allow a little white space between the wireframe and the texture), since the opposite side of the texture also has a driveway and the way the texture is tiled you will just make the driveway a little wider by doing that. The other two edges may have cars that are cut in half, but since they are less visible that will not be as important.
22. Double check the X and Y are still at 378 ft and click OK.
23. Now save and compile your airport to the proper scenery subfolder. A new box will appear, I normally leave it with the default choice (Single Ref Point, ARP elevation), but if you see broken up polygons in FS try the second choice. The DXT textures in the ADE/Textures folder should automatically be copied to the texture subfolder. If you compile to a temp folder (etc.) you can set ADE to not copy the textures automatically and you will need to copy and paste them manually. Go to FS to see your results.
24. You should see that the two edges we aligned in step 21 look fine, but the other two edges may not - cars cut in half, etc. You have two choices - leave it, or fix it. To fix it, in FS slew your plane to a logical point along one of the two remaining edges (a driveway, at the edge of a row of cars, etc.). We will cut off the ground polygon at this point. You can also make it a little wider if that will help.
25. In ADE, the plane symbol will be located in/near your polygon. Shorten (or lengthen) that side of the poly to match the location of your plane.
26. Repeat that for the one remaining side (assuming a 4 sided parking lot). You may need to do this several more times for more complex shapes.
27. Now perform steps 17 through 22 again to get the ground poly mapped correctly. Sorry, but this is basically a "start over" process each time you want to change things.
You now should have a new parking lot, right in your own airport.
Hope this helps,
We'll assume you are creating these for an airport you are working on, in its own separate folder with scenery and texture subfolders. Note that the area where the ground polygon is placed MUST BE PERFECTLY FLAT. You may need a flatten polygon placed there as well, if off the airport property.
1. There are two textures in the CalClassic Core/texture folder, GP_PARKING_DARK.bmp and GP_PARKING.bmp. The first one matches the ADE asphalt aprons, etc., the second one is lighter (faded asphalt or old concrete). In the EGLL London Airport/texture folders is also a texture called GP_PARKING_CARS_ONLY.bmp, which will only display cars on top of whatever surface they are placed.
2. In your ADE folder, you will find two folders, Textures and Textures_Dpy. Note there are other folders with similar names!
3. Copy the two textures from step 1 and paste them into the two folders in step 2. You are making two copies each.
4. For the copies in the Textures_Dpy folder you need to convert these to 24 bit. The easiest way to do this is to load them into DXTBmp and use File/Save As/24 Bit BMP Image. Click the Save button and then Yes.
5. Now start ADE, and go to Tools/GP Texture Editor
6. Use the drop down box at the top to select one of these textures.
7. Choose Ft from the radio buttons. Type in 378 into the Width and Height boxes (this value will make the cars the correct size). Uniform should be NO.
8. Click Update Definition Files.
9. Repeat steps 6 through 8 for the other texture. You only have to do the steps above once - from now on you can start at the step below.
10. Load your airport if it is not already, and move your plane in FS to the location you want to start drawing your parking lot (if needed). I had a background image and just drew them right onto that.
11. In ADE click the button that has a purple area with a G in the middle (Add Custom Ground Poly).
12. Now click where you want the vertices of your ground polygon to be. Click, move the mouse, click, etc. until you are at the last point. At that location, double click.
13. The ADE Ground Poly Editor will open, and your shape will be there as you drew it.
14. From the Main Texture drop down box at the top, select one of the two textures we initialized above.
15. Click on the Ft. radio button at the lower right.
16. CHECK THAT THE X AND Y BOXES (Main Texture Size (Ft)) ARE SET AT 378 EACH. THESE MAY CHANGE UNEXPECTEDLY AS YOU MAKE YOUR EDITS - ALWAYS CHANGE THESE BACK TO 378!
A little discussion of this editor. People sometimes get confused if they haven't texture mapped an object in programs like FSDS, GMAX, or 3DS Max. The wireframe shape you see on the screen at this point is your ground poly, and the image of the parking lot is what the texture will look like on the poly. It will be oriented that way, and the cars will be that size. On the parts of the poly where the image doesn't cover (i.e. the white areas) the image will be tiled (like a tile roof) horizontally and vertically from the current location of the visible texture bitmap. Imagine parking lot textures being duplicated along the top, bottom, right, and left sides of the visible texture.
The other odd thing is that the location and size of the "first" texture bitmap is fixed; you must change the location, orientation, and size of your ground polygon wireframe to display what you want to achieve. NOTE: this is NOT changing the size, etc. of the ground polygon back on the ADE screen, only how the texture will be applied to that poly. No matter what you do in this screen, your actual ground polygon will not change shape, etc. This can be hard to understand sometimes.
The last thing I want to discuss is that if you just grab one vertex and drag it around, what you will end up with are weirdly deformed cars on your original ground poly shape. If you want the cars to maintain their proportions, do NOT make any manipulations below without ALL vertices selected.
17. If you didn't get the shape of your ground polygon perfect the first time (back in the ADE screen)- I almost never do - click the OK button and a green shape will appear on the ADE display. This shape is edited just like aprons, so adjust the shape until it is perfect. You can add vertices by Ctrl-clicking the edge of the poly, and delete vertices by selecting them (they turn orange) and pressing the Delete key. If it's perfect the first time you drew it, you can instead skip to step 20.
18. With the ground polygon selected, right click and choose Edit Object or double click it. The Editor will return.
19. Press the Reset button. This will display the new shape of your ground poly as the wireframe. CHECK THAT THE X AND Y BOXES ARE AT 378 - IF NOT, CHANGE THEM.
20. Now we'll start by asking how the cars should be parking in this lot. If the rows of cars are pointing in the correct direction that's great. If not:
a. Drag a box around the entire ground poly; all vertices should turn red. That means they have all been selected.
b. Under the word Rotate at the top are four buttons, Free Rotate, Rotate 90 deg. Right, Rotate 90 deg. Left, and Rotate 180 deg. If your wireframe is perfectly aligned up/down/left/right then you can use one of the 90 degree buttons to make the cars park the other way. If not, choose the Free Rotate button.
c. If using Free rotate, hold down the mouse over one of the vertices and drag that vertex so the entire shape is perfectly square to the texture (assuming you want the cars to park parallel to the sides of the poly).
21. Now we need to position the texture so the most visible edges have a little free asphalt along those edges (does not apply to the cars only texture). If not red already, drag a box around the entire wireframe; all vertices should turn red (selected). To move the wireframe we will use the 4 headed button under the word Drag at the top of the screen; click it. Figure out which two edges are the most visible and hold down the mouse over one of the vertices and drag the wireframe so the 2 most visible edges are near the edges of the texture. As you can see, this will allow those edges to have a "driveway" along them. Note that you don't have to align these two edges exactly with the texture (you can allow a little white space between the wireframe and the texture), since the opposite side of the texture also has a driveway and the way the texture is tiled you will just make the driveway a little wider by doing that. The other two edges may have cars that are cut in half, but since they are less visible that will not be as important.
22. Double check the X and Y are still at 378 ft and click OK.
23. Now save and compile your airport to the proper scenery subfolder. A new box will appear, I normally leave it with the default choice (Single Ref Point, ARP elevation), but if you see broken up polygons in FS try the second choice. The DXT textures in the ADE/Textures folder should automatically be copied to the texture subfolder. If you compile to a temp folder (etc.) you can set ADE to not copy the textures automatically and you will need to copy and paste them manually. Go to FS to see your results.
24. You should see that the two edges we aligned in step 21 look fine, but the other two edges may not - cars cut in half, etc. You have two choices - leave it, or fix it. To fix it, in FS slew your plane to a logical point along one of the two remaining edges (a driveway, at the edge of a row of cars, etc.). We will cut off the ground polygon at this point. You can also make it a little wider if that will help.
25. In ADE, the plane symbol will be located in/near your polygon. Shorten (or lengthen) that side of the poly to match the location of your plane.
26. Repeat that for the one remaining side (assuming a 4 sided parking lot). You may need to do this several more times for more complex shapes.
27. Now perform steps 17 through 22 again to get the ground poly mapped correctly. Sorry, but this is basically a "start over" process each time you want to change things.
You now should have a new parking lot, right in your own airport.
Hope this helps,