Trees on Aprt flatten, how? FS2004

[Guest Larrycx]

Hi, I have suceeded in placing custom buildings with Gmax and want some area trees, not the autogen ones on the airport/airpark area. I did make a conical spruce with Gmax but it had lotsa faces which may affect frame rate if I place too many. Surely there is a way to get trees another way. The airport was reworked with Afcad to bring it from a 25' gravel strip to a 60' wide rwny with proper taxiways. Excludes were used to remove the FS generic buildings and place most of the houses & hangars here using Gmax. I used photo-realistic texturing by taking digital pix and working with Paint Shop Pro. My texturing of the 1st tree I tried looks a little silly but....How make trees in FS2004? I really would prefer not to go into FS2000 or FS2002 stuff.Thanks for any helpLarry Costa

[toprob 105]

Good question. This is what brought my tutorial on using FS2004-only techniques to a standstill...The trouble with trying to make trees like the autogen ones is that the lighting stuffs it up a bit -- you get a distinct division between light and dark, which doesn't work. I know that MS have said that there's no way to access the autogen trees like normal library objects, but I'd certainly like to see this made to work. With my Timaru scenery (which is placed on a small aerial photo image) I ended up fine-tuning the GMAX model so that it removed the minimum of autogen, then filled in the gaps with Gerrish Gray's trees -- certainly not a 'modern' technique, but all I could think of for the moment. Overdoing the trees has a bit of a hit on performance, but its all about balance!I, too, tried to make 3D trees, but you really need to use transparent textures, like autogen, to get a realistic effect. I did think of leaving just one high polygon tree in the scenery, but I might wait a couple of years before I get into modelling trees again.It would be nice is MS could release some info on how the autogen trees are handled, so that someone can come up with an individual tree placer.

[Guest Larrycx]

Thanks for the reply,You mentioned Gerrish Gray's trees. If they work better then autogen I'd like to try them. How can I get them. I had just returned from your tutorial site when I found your reply. I found lotsa interesting stuff there. I had no idea that Gmax could lay out a whole airport.Anyway the autogen trees are not the right tyoe for this semi arid climate and they are way too big in general. Thats why I want my own trees on my airport. From what you say we both have a problem. I have a row of planted pines that I want to kinda reproduce. I will try a long narrow building and collasp ists top into a ridge. The I will paste photo-real texture onto it with only a few faces to worry about. If it even give the immpression of the tre row I will be happy.One of your tutorials mentioned needing a digital camera. I have an older one that I replaced with a better one. It has no removable memory but will handle a number of pix at the resolution you need OK. It requires a serail port on the computer to bring the pix in. I will be glad to pass it along with its user manual if you wan it. OK to reply with email to: lbcosta@earthlink.net if you want the camera. The price is right!Larry Costa

[Guest Larrycx]

Hi, For building a fence row of trees making a long narrow box in Gmax and collasping the top into a ridge then texturing with photo-real pine trees works! But don't forget the end faces! it builds a fine tree fence. Now that won't help with autogen making trees cause FS thinks its a building. However I can place these where needed on my airpark and they look great. The first try didn't have the base wide enough (not used to meters yet but getting there):) Larry CostaPS if you hit em you will crash.

[toprob 105]

Search Avsim for trees_v3.zip. Part of this download are the APIs which I used in FSSC to place the trees.thanks for the offer, but I've got a good digital camera now!

[toprob 105]

...that reminds me, I did have a play with a tree maxscript by David H. Smith.net. http://www.davidhsmith.net/Maxscripts.htmThis makes ya basic tree, but the leaves don't work in GMAX. Some scaling needs to be done -- this here's a tree in my scenery...http://www.windowlight.co.nz/images/bigtree.jpg

[Guest Larrycx]

Thanks gents, I'm not sure that either of these approaches is right for FS2004. I made a pretty good textured spruce in Gmax by starting with a cone and restricting the number of faces. As i said I made a good fence row of trees like here on my airpark by starting with a Gmax long skinny box and colasping itst top into a ridge. I used multiple sections so my 256x256 texture would be easier to work with.Larry