I do it like this:

 

1. Go to OSM and find a house in a village somewhere, and measure it using JOSM, e.g. 10m by 11m. Alternative, just make up a shape,  but keep the values sensible.
2. Go into sketchup and add a box at that size 10m by 11m, and drag up to form a cube.
3. Protrude a roof from the top.
4. Now the hard bit, find photos of a house (or take them like I did). Take a photo of two sides of the house, front and left. Put both onto a single texture sheet, along with some roof textures, and then texture the building. The first few are frustrating, but it gets easier

 

 

 

 

 

Great stuff Tony. 

 

  I will try this out , hopefully this weekend. 

 

BTW Tony I had done the same texturing stuff on the google warehouse, I had put all the textures in a single file but it did not map it correctly. will give it a shot again.

tony you should setup a shared google drive. it gives you 15 Gigs free and everyone can upload their sketchup 

 

 

Go to OSM and find a house in a village somewhere, and measure it using JOSM, e.g. 10m by 11m. Alternative, just make up a shape,  but keep the values sensible.

Tony,

Do you create a texture sheet for each house or are you creating a texture sheet that can be used for many houses?  The reason for my question is, will the sim perform better with less texture sheets?  Great job on the houses by the way.

I create one big image,, 2048x2048 (Remember X-Plane only supports images which have a power of two size, e.g. 64x64, 256z256) etc, I then paste all the bits of the photo of the houses I have onto one sheet. I then use the sheet on several houses, mixing and matching styles together to create more variety and more models.

 

For performance, it means it will load faster and very likely perform faster, as the video card doesn't have to load more and more textures for different houses. I'm not doing an amazing job of using everything from one texture sheet, e.g. The R2 library has managed to get about 30 houses onto one sheet. 

 

Also another important thing I learnt from reading up, is to delete faces that can't be seen in X-Plane, e.g. Delete the floor of the house, the interior ceiling, etc.

 

 

 

tony you should setup a shared google drive. it gives you 15 Gigs free and everyone can upload their sketchup 

 

Thank you, that's a great idea. I'll go ahead and do that. 

 

Edit: I have setup a folder on Google Drive for uploading/downloading models. If anyone wants to participate, send me a PM with your google mail address and I'll add you to the shared folder list.

 

Here's a new model I've added. Anyone who lives in Europe will be familiar with this :-)

 

Excellent work Tony.

 

It looks just like the one down the road from me

Fantastic work provided here Tony!

Jaw-dropping brilliant!

Hehe, that looks just like the lidl i saw in poland up here in the north the buildings vary in their looks but thats a great model. Like I said when i was in poland and went to lidl that was exactly what it looked like  :lol:

Ha ha it should do, it's a photo of a Lidl in Poland :-). The ones in Germany and Spain I've been too all look the same

 

BTW, Andras AlpilotX has pointed out that I ignored the guidelines and didn't add a -Z foundation, so I've updated the model, so all models should have a deep several meter underground area, e.g.

 

 

Please make sure (unlike me  :unsure: ) that all buildings have this, so it doesn't appear to float on sloped terrain

Ha ha it should do, it's a photo of a Lidl in Poland :-). The ones in Germany and Spain I've been too all look the same

 

BTW, Andras AlpilotX has pointed out that I ignored the guidelines and didn't add a -Z foundation, so I've updated the model, so all models should have a deep several meter underground area, e.g.

 

Screen Shot 2014-02-07 at 11.24.27.png

 

Please make sure (unlike me  :unsure: ) that all buildings have this, so it doesn't appear to float on sloped terrain

That's true, its generally the same look here, but there is quite a bit of variation. When i saw it and knew what country you live in i just immediately thought "yep, that's a polish lidl alright!"

This is such a great project and the crowd-sourcing of regional buildings is a cool way to flesh out the scenery. Maybe I'll take a stab at some houses and box-stores indigenous to the southern US. :smile:

 

 

Maybe I'll take a stab at some houses and box-stores indigenous to the southern US.

 

Please do, the more the merrier, and it's rewarding seeing your models in X-Plane :-)

 

Also, luckily the US has a head start in regards to buildings, as their are already lots of models which have dimensions and are axis aligned we can use. Also, please excuse my ignorance on this part, but how different are buildings between the different states in the US?

 

I guess they'll stick a Lidl anywhere these days, and the airport was short of cash :-)

 

This was a scenery test, where I placed some random supermarkets next to a runway, and gave it a try.

 

It's a little more complicated with larger buildings, as supermarkets aren't generally mapped as rectangles, but have many small protruding parts. This presents a problem in that I have to simplify the shape into a shortest fitting rectangle, and then get its area, dimensions. There are a few problems with this:

 

1. It could put a supermarket where it shouldn't, because it simplified an object to a shortest fitting rectangle. e.g. An object which has many sides may end up having a Lidl plonked on it because it fits the dimensions, when it fact it has lots of protruding parts that don't fit.
2. The Lidl may not be facing the road, as the mapper intended, because the generator doesn't know which wall is the front, etc..

I propose that we allow more than 2 walls to be used to specify an object's footprint, and I'm interested in what people think of this. I see the following issues with this:

1. The chance of the object being used is greatly reduced, it would need a very precise fit for it to work. At this stage with so few models, this could be bad?
2. It's only a flight simulator and not a driving simulator, so does it really matter if the building's entrance isn't facing the street?

Anyway, interested in people's thoughts on this (or solutions).

 

 

 

....
Anyway, interested in people's thoughts on this (or solutions).

 

I would say : don't go to this deepness at this time.
Except some special buildings ,  you cannot have objects in the library for every shape for  every building  in the 'near' future.
Not for the whole world or even a country or city.   
Milliards of objects only  useable  on some kind of supercomputer ?

IMO , it ends always in a compromise .
Maybe , determine some standard shapes ( e.g. clearly L/U/T - shapes) could be useful.
But don't clue how could this be implemented.

Related to  the ' front-to-the' street  issue.
In the case of a rectangular non quadratic shape there is theoretical a fifty/fifty chance to have it right. Not that bad i would say .
Also artwork can improve the impression with some illusion-tricks . (e.g. entrances on all possible walls )

 

 

Maybe , determine some standard shapes ( e.g. clearly L/U/T - shapes) could be useful.

 

This could work as well, and maybe needed in some cases. Although I think the limit on the number of sides to check should be 3, anymore and we would need millions of objects :-)

Tony, 

I am wondering if you know how we can use some of your ideas to regionalize autogen houses.  Any thoughts?

I think all the models that are created can be used in autogen as well. e.g. The european library uses the R2 (From xplane.cz) collection of models, and replaces the autogen in europe with them.