Importing Airfield from Blender to RF8

[fr344]

Hi,

I have recently decided to import a custom airfield to use in RF8 from a pre-made model that I found (credits: Elin @ https://skfb.ly/6THzW). After a few edits, I cleaned up the model to fit within RF8 standards, such as converting all the textures to .tga and simplifying the shaders to avoid errors. The model included 18 individual parts, 10 materials and 10 .tga textures. With the help of @robertlong13's Blender FBX Export plugin, I successfully exported the scene as one .fbx file and imported into RF8, however, the model seems to have only kept one texture. Below is the scene in Blender (left) and the RF8 import (right).



The obvious solution is to export each part individually as an Object into RF8, and then combine them. This seems to have worked, as shown below:



However, this was extremely time-consuming, and as I plan on expanding this scene considerably, it would be beneficial to import everything (or larger files) all at once. Would anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks,
Fred

 

[legoman]

realflight supports only one tga texture per airport object/aircraft. if you want multiple texture for different objects they either need to be different objects or share their space on a single TGA texture.

export based on textures would be how I would export so in your case 10 (see option one). but if you feel more comfortable editing uvmaps and texture then option two and combining the texture to image and editing the uvmap to keep the textures correct.

option one seperate objects
it is possible for airport objects to be split up in to multiple objects. see the aircraft carrier the decks are one object the sides, hull and sides are a second object and radars,railings etc are a third object. if they share a common origin they are very easy to add to an airport and the triangle limit is much less of an issue.

option two combine the textures
In RF all parts of the planes (and airport objects) share a texture where as in MSFS 2020 this might be multiple textures [main wing left] [main wing right] [fuse top] [fuse left side] [fuse bottom] [fuse right side] [tanks and pylons] [cockpit] [H-stabilizer left] [H-stabilizer right] [vtail]

 

[fr344]

Thank you for the advice @legoman. I am comfortable with UV editing, however, I was trying to escape it as to adapt some of my models I would have to either re-texture or tackle texture baking - both of which I wanted to avoid. I have successfully exported them as separate objects and positioned them accordingly.

However, I have now reached another issue. After importing some airport objects (large island, <30k tris, 4k texture size), I have been getting very large fps drops once the aircraft touches its surface (from around 300fps down to 0.5fps), making it nearly impossible to take off from the custom object. I have attempted different size textures, lower resolution meshes and even different aircraft, with no success. Is this an RF8 limitation or could there be something with the export?

It is valid to note that these airport objects are quite large (4km wide island), as I have not figured out yet how to get elevation baked on the grunge (like Shipwreck or Flight School). Maybe that's the issue?

 

[legoman]

Thank you for the advice @legoman. I am comfortable with UV editing, however, I was trying to escape it as to adapt some of my models I would have to either re-texture or tackle texture baking - both of which I wanted to avoid. I have successfully exported them as separate objects and positioned them accordingly.

However, I have now reached another issue. After importing some airport objects (large island, <30k tris, 4k texture size), I have been getting very large fps drops once the aircraft touches its surface (from around 300fps down to 0.5fps), making it nearly impossible to take off from the custom object. I have attempted different size textures, lower resolution meshes and even different aircraft, with no success. Is this an RF8 limitation or could there be something with the export?

It is valid to note that these airport objects are quite large (4km wide island), as I have not figured out yet how to get elevation baked on the grunge (like Shipwreck or Flight School). Maybe that's the issue?

RF uses some objects names ~CS_COLL which acts as a collision mesh the parent object. They can be as simple or detailed as you like but the more detailed the worse the preformance. if you do not provide a collison mesh RF will auto generate them during the import by making a 1-to-1 copy of the object which will run poorly as you have observed.

for trees you can likely get a way with a segmented cube or cylinder, flat surfaces that could be landed on like roofs can be a flat plane/box (two triangles), other non rolling surfaces simplify them as much as possible. where as a curved surface that will likely be landed on will definely need a higher resolution collision mesh. Look at the depth buffers in the object pallete to see what I mean.



my B-52H
graphical triangles 128,311


collison triangles 2,454

 

[fr344]

Thank you @legoman, absolute lifesaver! Definitely getting some better results now with playable FPS. Still getting minor lag spikes when I get close to the ground and into the collision mesh, but I'm sure that they're due to the lack of a ~CS_COLL for my custom aircraft. Baby steps I guess! Will keep pushing to see what maximum resolution I can get for my ground textures.



However, I'm still curious as to how maps like Shipwreck HD were made, as I cannot figure out how the elevation bits were baked into the grunge, and also where is the HD sand texture selected. Any chance you'd know?



Thanks again for the help!

 

[legoman]

Thank you @legoman, absolute lifesaver! Definitely getting some better results now with playable FPS. Still getting minor lag spikes when I get close to the ground and into the collision mesh, but I'm sure that they're due to the lack of a ~CS_COLL for my custom aircraft. Baby steps I guess! Will keep pushing to see what maximum resolution I can get for my ground textures.

View attachment 136749

However, I'm still curious as to how maps like Shipwreck HD were made, as I cannot figure out how the elevation bits were baked into the grunge, and also where is the HD sand texture selected. Any chance you'd know?

View attachment 136750

Thanks again for the help!

if you are refering to the detail that you can have for the terrain that is built in to rf see picture below. that can only be applied to the default terrain (Sierra nevada, archipelago, flatlands) not Airport objects. the end users (us) don't have the ability to make custom terrain but we can make object sufficiently large to work like terrain. but we must make our own textures or "borrow" them from the internet for our airport objects.