WANTED Resized Trees

[Wotaplonker 1]

Does anyone have the know-how to create different sized trees?MS seems to have believed that the world is populated with giant sequoias that dwarf buildings and even oil tankers.Actually the whole autogen scales seems out with overly large scenery perhaps as an attempt to emphasize speed at low alt.Anyway, long story short I would like to resize the trees by 50%.Note I don't refer to the bitmap resolution and file size but the physical dimension within the sim.Can anyone help in this matter?Any help greatly appreciated.

[guenseli 1,614]

+1

[Guest anthony31fs]

There would be three ways to go about, neither of them are easy though. In fact it would take quite a while to do. The first would be to create a new vegetation.bgl. It looks to me like this contains the models for the autogen trees. You would have to create new models of each tree model, 50% the size of the originals, apply textures to them and then export each model with the exact same GUID number as used in the original vegetation.bgl. The models aren't that hard to do as they are very simple but there are a heck of a lot of them.Method two would be to resize the textures. No not change them down from 1024x1024 but leave them as 1024x1024 and reduce the size of the graphics on them. Again it would be very fiddly and take forever to do.Third method would be to edit your autogendescriptions.xml. Quite possible the easiest method once you know what you're doing. You see, autogen vegetation is placed by groups. eg, elm trees large, gum trees small etc etc etc. autogendescriptions tells fsx what models to use in each group. If you work out what GUID is used by the larger modeled trees you can replace this with the GUID's of smaller models in the autogendescriptions file. Like I said, easy when you know what you're doing.Bottom line, yes, I know how to create different sized trees but I don't have the time to do it :) .

[John F 2,473]

There were alternative smaller trees available for FS2004 that looked more to scale, but I haven't seen anything like that for FSX.John

[Guest anthony31fs]

Further to my editing the autogendescription file:Here is an excerpt showing the entry for the 38m tall Elm try:

		<ModelEntry id="{D7506336-7550-4267-9D25-39632C69E9B4}">			<FriendlyName>veg_tb_Elm1_38m</FriendlyName>			<IntersectionThreshold>0.000</IntersectionThreshold>			<MinScale>0.900</MinScale>			<MaxScale>1.100</MaxScale>			<SeasonEntry>				<ModelGuid>{92FAFF34-4A59-46CC-A25C-FEECA48B3C68}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>			<SeasonEntry>				<Season>FALL</Season>				<ModelGuid>{CC5977E2-0F57-416B-852F-14DAA9EBD8C6}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>			<SeasonEntry>				<Season>MILD_WINTER</Season>				<ModelGuid>{A08C1DF6-E8D4-4A3F-8076-94549989D532}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>			<SeasonEntry>				<Season>HARD_WINTER</Season>				<ModelGuid>{2F597EBB-0D0A-4290-A588-4F1944C4E15D}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>			<SeasonEntry>				<Season>SPRING</Season>				<ModelGuid>{5B359516-1AD3-4D9D-8EA7-96961CCAC741}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>

Here is the entry for the 24m tall Elm

		<ModelEntry id="{7CECFB94-A1B3-4EDB-A2F2-2F51446927C8}">			<FriendlyName>veg_tb_Elm1_24m</FriendlyName>			<IntersectionThreshold>0.000</IntersectionThreshold>			<MinScale>0.900</MinScale>			<MaxScale>1.100</MaxScale>			<SeasonEntry>				<ModelGuid>{91155EFE-065A-461C-B648-DC5F3BD4837B}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>			<SeasonEntry>				<Season>FALL</Season>				<ModelGuid>{6760E74B-C8CC-4782-B70B-0D827BBC6E65}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>			<SeasonEntry>				<Season>MILD_WINTER</Season>				<ModelGuid>{5C75A953-21EC-4B9C-9F64-7D86613AF15E}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>			<SeasonEntry>				<Season>HARD_WINTER</Season>				<ModelGuid>{A601AD5A-31E9-4B39-AB02-B751F8AD813E}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>			<SeasonEntry>				<Season>SPRING</Season>				<ModelGuid>{10C6912F-0234-4576-8375-AB34278CC797}</ModelGuid>			</SeasonEntry>

You could get the 38m elm to use the 24m elm models by copying across all the <ModelGuid> lines from the 24m elm tree entry into the 38m elm tree entry (make sure you don't mix up the season entries ). Now, just do that for all the trees you want to change and 8 hours later you have your smaller trees. Make sure you back up your autogen file too. OR maybe you could just edit those minscale and maxscale lines. That might be even easier as it would just involve a search and replace. Although I don't know if that will actually work but I'm sure someone will have the guts to test it instead of always expecting someone else to do all the hard work.

[Guest NoNewMessages]

At Flightsim.com is a package of resized trees, done by Adnan Arif. Dr. Arif was the autogen artist for the Bird's Eye View line on texture replacements for FS2004 and has released other packages for FS2004 and FSX. I do not believe any were uploaded to Avsim. Search using advanced and his name or look for the file fsxtrees.zip.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Sorry, crazy double post, must be the last dying gasps of the old Forum system!Best regards.Luis

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

It seems to many people that the trees and buildings are too big. In fact, the houses are slightly oversized, there is no doubt (since I have measured them!) Each floor of a building in FS is 5 meters high, certainly excessive since I would imagine (although I am not an expert) that houses should be around 3 meters per floor and office buildings around 4 meters per floor. However, this is not absurdly high for the default buildings.The trees are another matter altogether. Again, I am not an expert, but for many years (since Gerrish Gray put out his tree library), I have been studying world vegetation and created numerous collections of realistic and common trees in different parts of the world. In truth, the tree heights in FS are varied and range from very small young saplings to mature tall trees. The tree heights are completely realistic as is easy to check from any vegetation data base on the Internet. Why do so many simmers believe that the trees are too high? I have no answer, and can only speculate that most have never flown and so do not often see trees from the air (but, I could be and probably am wrong.) They are normally very high, much higher than houses and buildings.Perhaps the real problem is not tree height, but land class assignment. Certain land class contains high trees and others contain medium or low trees, and simmers are seeing the result of inappropriate land class assignments, in which case the best solution is to change the land class.Anthony has proposed a certain number of solutions and I hope he will not mind if I discuss them briefly:1. Create a new vegetation bgl - in fact, there are 2 files, the RTM (and SP2 replacement) file containing about 1350 trees and bushes, and the X-Pack file containing about 450 more. Have fun changing all of those! See you in a few years' time. In truth, it is much less work than that as you would only have to change the small number of trees that you find too tall in your region, and that is probably only about a dozen or so, mostly oaks and such. And really you only have to de-compile the bgl, convert those dozen MDL (model) files to gMax format and reduce the model dimensions by whatever percent you want (75%? 50%?), re-export the models and re-compile the library bgl. If you know what you are doing, you could do it in a night. But, again, it is a lot easier to just change the land class.2. Re-size the textures - textures are mapped to the model, so re-sizing the image on the texture sheet (for example by half) would result in only half the model displaying textures and the other half a fall-back color, probably gray. So, this is not a viable solution.3. Editing the autogendescritions.xml file - nobody should do this manually, first because the sim would no longer be usable (believe me, I tried manually changing the xml files during the beta phase and learned the hard way!) To change any of the autogen xml files, you must use the Autogen Configuration Editor. This tool maintains the integrity of the xml files without which FS will simply not work. If you don't believe me, try for yourself.Secondly, this will be even more tedious than re-sizing the models in the vegetation bgls; you will quickly become tired of going through the list looking for tall trees, and, using the Autogen Configuration Editor, copying smaller tree sections as replacements.Really, if all you want is smaller trees, please do look through the Autogen Configuration Editor (load the autogendescritions.xml file) and you will see all the land class types and the varieties and sizes of trees displayed on them. All you need do is find land class types with smaller trees, note them on a piece of paper, and then create a new land class file assigning your preferences.Best regards.Luis

[Guest anthony31fs]

2. Re-size the textures - textures are mapped to the model, so re-sizing the image on the texture sheet (for example by half) would result in only half the model displaying textures and the other half a fall-back color, probably gray. So, this is not a viable solution.

That bits not quite true Luis. FSX doesn't use hard coordinates when mapping textures to models but uses a value from 0 to 1 with 0 being the left edge or bottom and 1 being the far right or top of the texture depending on whether it is the x or y coordinate. You could think of the texture coordinates in the model as a percentage of the total width and height of the texture sheet. If you replace a 1024x1024 texture with a 512x512 texture the mapping will be maintained because the actual size of the texture is irrelevant. If it was relevant then mipmaps wouldn't work.BTW texture sizes must be a power of 2 (ie 2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024) but the do not have to be square. ie you can have 128x1024 textures if you want. The fresnel ramps are actually 256x4 (or is it 128x4 I can't remember).What I had suggested was resizing the actual tree texture on the texture sheet and not the texture size. So, you would reduce the size of the tree on the sheet. The model would still use the whole texture but now most of it would be blank. Of course you would have to do this with the alpha channel as well. Not something I'd recommend doing as it would take forever. Much easier to just get the package by Adnan Arif as suggest by NoNewMessages.

[Pegasus1 1]

Dear friends,look HERE or HERE Regards,Pegasus.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Excuse me, Anthony, this is what you wrote:Method two would be to resize the textures. No not change them down from 1024x1024 but leave them as 1024x1024 and reduce the size of the graphics on them. Again it would be very fiddly and take forever to do.You may very well be right. Please excuse me as I had not taken the transparency into account. Because most of the texture is transparent, you may be able to reduce the size of the image on the sheet and only that reduced tree would be displayed on the model, whereas the rest of the model would be transparent. Of course the canopy texture would be floating somewhere above the tree but that would hardly be noticeable from the air. Again, excuse me and thank you for the correction.Best regards,Luis

[Wotaplonker 1]

Thanks for all the input guys, much appreciated.I think I'll just run with no autogen as I find it preferable.Hope to get as much feedback in future posts.Regards.