Realistic ground texture for fsx scenery.

[Raheem Adeleke Quadri 2]

Hello, I am trying to improve my skills in scenery building, I am good with the AFCAD and I can make photoreal scenery.

 

I want to make realistic ground texture ( taxiway lines, Tyre marks, dirts ) like payware sceneries, I found out many people use GMAX to do the job.

I don't know how to use GMAX, It is kinda complicated 😞

 

Is there any other 3D software I can use to do the job in a easier way or can I use Sketchup3D.

Any help pls 🙂

[fs4fun 366]

You are quite right that Gmax is complicated. 😵 It is a very good and powerful program but it takes quite a bit of time and dedication to become proficient with it and I recommend beginners avoid it since it has become very dated compared to modern 3D tools.

Your best bet for help and advice is to visit fsdeveloper.com. There are forums for scenery designs and the different modeling tools.

For custom ground textures, the simplest option is to use Airport Design Editor (ADE). It has a built-in ground polygon tool. That might be a good way to get started.

Though I have not used Sketchup, you can use it to make ground textures. You need to also get ModelConverterX (MCX) from scenerydesign.org to export your creations to FSX (make sure to download MCX from the Development Releases page so you have the latest version).

Another option is Blender as there is a Blender-to-FSX toolkit available.

One benefit to learning Blender (or Gmax) is that they can be used to create animations. You can then use SODE (SimObject Display Engine) to trigger animations in your scenery. This is much more advanced stuff but something to keep in mind. It could be that there are some extensions to Sketchup for animations that I'm not aware of.

There are quite a few tutorials on YouTube for making ground polygons and other scenery design methods. Have a look at Austin Sass and SoarFly channels for starters (and also the fsdeveloper and fsdevconf channels).

I'll also just mention this dated tutorial that is helpful mainly for background understanding (click Download link for the pdf file): https://iblueyonder.com/ground-poly-tutorial/

Edited July 5, 2018 by fs4fun