Help! RealFlight Evolution Aircraft Design for newbs.

[Kaizarmerchantt]

This is a glider that comes with RF

View attachment 139094

Not sure if this is the optimal way to do it
View attachment 139095

Have to rush to work so I can't test the tail movements, maybe the model mixes the elevator and rudders find from what I see here, I don't know and doubt it.

Checked the same glider and the functioning. It works fine with Transmitter, haven't checked whether it will work with Mission planner. Anyways thanks. this helps me.

 

[spykez]

I found this as well, a beechcraft bonanza. It's fairly old - I am not sure how deprecated the design of this model is, but may be worth looking at.

Beechcraft Bonanza V35_EA

a replacement for DHK79's POS Bonanza (what a joke)

forums.realflight.com

There was a predator model going around before but I have a funny feeling it's not available in Evo.

 

[spykez]

No.

no edge split
View attachment 139082

with edge split
View attachment 139083

[edit] added clarifying captions to the pictures

@legoman , may I ask how you got such an even white texture here? Any guidance on this? Mine as shown is horrid. THanks

 

[spykez]

Checked the same glider and the functioning. It works fine with Transmitter, haven't checked whether it will work with Mission planner. Anyways thanks. this helps me.

Had a look at this closer and it does look like the mixing really is done radio-side and not on any added components i.e. a flight controller that the servos plug into it.

I suppose the excuse I have is I'm not a plane nut, but I should have thought of this first!

 

[legoman]

@legoman , may I ask how you got such an even white texture here? Any guidance on this? Mine as shown is horrid. THanks

Edge split will likely fix your texturing issue. the shaders try and smooth out the shadows of neighboring faces. at extreme angles the one will be in direct light and the other in shadow and it tries to smooth the shadow out over the edge.

edge splits takes very sharp edges and makes it so the faces are no longer neighboring so they cannot try and smooth the shadows.

same texture only difference is edge split also note the area below the windshield

edge split


no edge split

 

[spykez]

Thanks @legoman

Will try it. Do you recommend smoothing out all objects (select all, right click) after splitting edges?

Lack of Blender skills really showing.

I'm going to try and model something a little more interesting. Hopefully not too ambitious!



WW2 Polish High Wing Monoplane. PZL p11 I think. Chose it mainly because it's a tail dragger without retractable landing gear, so may be simple enough since it's basically a rehash of the basic model but I'm not sure if I'm biting off more than I can handle!

Cheers!

 

[spykez]

Still learning how to use blender. I think I'm not going to be able to go super detailed just quite yet lol.

 

[spykez]

Oh boy.... The left and right gear are saggy and I scaled it for about a UMX timber X on blender (wingspan ~0,6m, scale 1:1) but it came up over 2m in span when imported.

Gonna pop it here, who knows, I may return in ten years and laugh at it (again!)

Edit: questions

1. blender model actually has a span of ~1,2m, ctrl-A’ed the scale to 1:1. Not sure about the scaling issue
2. I think how floppy my gear is depends on the pivot of the gear. I had it high up in the fuse. I’ll try and drop it lower.
3. If I model prop blades, should they go on the ~CS_SPINNER object or be subparented to it
4. Is the bad clipping of the fuse due to 2 superimposed polyhedra/meshes that form FUSELAGE? (I squashed 2 cylinders, one on top of another basically, and they intersect, I didn’t do anything with the faces or vertices in the volume where they intersect.

 

[legoman]

Oh boy.... The left and right gear are saggy and I scaled it for about a UMX timber X on blender (wingspan ~0,6m, scale 1:1) but it came up over 2m in span when imported.

Gonna pop it here, who knows, I may return in ten years and laugh at it (again!)

Edit: questions

1. blender model actually has a span of ~1,2m, ctrl-A’ed the scale to 1:1. Not sure about the scaling issue
2. I think how floppy my gear is depends on the pivot of the gear. I had it high up in the fuse. I’ll try and drop it lower.
3. If I model prop blades, should they go on the ~CS_SPINNER object or be subparented to it
4. Is the bad clipping of the fuse due to 2 superimposed polyhedra/meshes that form FUSELAGE? (I squashed 2 cylinders, one on top of another basically, and they intersect, I didn’t do anything with the faces or vertices in the volume where they intersect.

yes longer gear spring more. also the lower half of your fuselage is inside out. the scale can be adjusted on export. there is no needs to model the blades. adding an engine will add a prop.

 

[spykez]

Thanks, I think I'm beginning to grok the terminology.

Normals are called normals because they're... Um... perpendicular to the tangent (no , Sherlock) and basically have something to do with light reflected of the object and hence how it appears rendered....

There's like a whole load of terminology I see that I barely grasp lol

I found i still had to import a .TGA texture to export the fbx in a form that RFE would import, without one it'd say, no TGA, no Bueno.

I'll try and fix this and catch up with you later!

 

[spykez]

I don't get it yet, lol. Looks ok-ish in blender. I chose non-xray view and picked off the vertices I could, around FUSELAGE externally, caught all of them, and ran that normals option.



But it still looks horribly clipped on RFE. Only the fuselage.




OTOH, Managed to lower the pivots for the gear and that made them less bouncy but my model's still weird. I wonder if it's because the gear are actually flimsily or sloppily done in Blender.

Also, this scale thing seems to persist. My model in RF is supposed to be 1.05 m in wingspan, with scale at 1:1. If I export 1:1 scale into an FBX, it seems RF will apply a scale up of about 2,7 to it. I'll try more importing and see if this value fluctuates in any sort of pattern.

 

[spykez]

I figured it out, thanks all of you. The entire fuse you all have suggested was turned inside out. How that happened... not sure.

Found out in "overlays" there was an option that makes inside out faces more obvious, turns them bright red.

I had to use the Normals "Flip" option to turn it.

Now I'm going to redo this project with some of the tips @legoman has suggested and see if I can get the textures and painting right!

 

[Kaizarmerchantt]

@legoman @spykez I have imported the model successfully in RealFlight and all the physics is set according to my custom model. I have a couple of issues regarding the flight though:
1. I am unable to see the props in my model (I can see the torus for one of the VTOL Motors and Pusher Motor).
2. Unable to stablize the aircraft even with mission planner.
3. Aircraft doesnt go in transition even if it takes off. (wobbling)
4. Manual control are irresponsive(the control surfaces) even in FBWA mode.

any input regarding is appreciated.

 

[spykez]

I'm assuming you've the control surfaces cut out, pivotted, named and put into the hierarchy already.

If you've all that done, I really don't know!

My simple understanding is that the simulator must know what your model is trying to do, is it trying to model ailerons or flaps etc. Once it knows, I imagine, it'll look at your model and pivot those named objects as appropriate.

I'm not sure how you get the simulator to understand your aircraft needs them if it's custom especially a hybrid like yours, i.e. it's a plane but also a multi. Frankly I'm not sure how the harrier model works.

How did you import your FBX? as an airplane or other?

If you do find out, I'll be interested to know

 

[legoman]

@legoman @spykez I have imported the model successfully in RealFlight and all the physics is set according to my custom model. I have a couple of issues regarding the flight though:
1. I am unable to see the props in my model (I can see the torus for one of the VTOL Motors and Pusher Motor).
2. Unable to stablize the aircraft even with mission planner.
3. Aircraft doesnt go in transition even if it takes off. (wobbling)
4. Manual control are irresponsive(the control surfaces) even in FBWA mode.

any input regarding is appreciated.

if you can still see the tori then you need to tell rf what the motors should be attached to.


and hybrid vtol takes a lot of knowledge on how to make the editor work to get the wiring and programming to function.

I have never messed with mission planner so I cannot help there.

If you want I can take a look at it and get it flying in "manual" mode (no mission planner) like a vtol/plane

 

[spykez]

The fun never ends.

How did my default prop get embedded in the fuselage?



I have ~CS_ENGINE lined up exactly over the spinner, it's a circle with the point of origin right smack there with axes on pivots oriented as per document. Hmm...

Thanks guys

 

[legoman]

The fun never ends.

How did my default prop get embedded in the fuselage?

View attachment 139288

I have ~CS_ENGINE lined up exactly over the spinner, it's a circle with the point of origin right smack there with axes on pivots oriented as per document. Hmm...

Thanks guys

the zero triangles is strange.


when you say a circle, a circle in blender which is a chain of verties, no surface area no volume. which I think is confusing rf since rf uses the center of surface area for prop placement not the actual pivot.

 

[spykez]

It was indeed a circle. IIRC the docs said any object, it would not be rendered but I think you’re probably on the money there, I literally drew a circle, thinking why bother with anything else?

Will fix it tomorrow and confirm.

 

[legoman]

It was indeed a circle. IIRC the docs said any object, it would not be rendered but I think you’re probably on the money there, I literally drew a circle, thinking why bother with anything else?

Will fix it tomorrow and confirm.

I think circles are a blender exclusive thing. I dont think 3dsmax has faceless 3d object and wings does not so it might be an edge case. my choice of objects would be a plane or 4 sided n-gon depending on your software.