Fisrt time scenery design - HELP!!

davem · Post by **davem** » 28 Nov 2006, 13:20

Hi all,

A week or so ago I started to design a scenery for Fairford (EGVA) as the default one is simply a landing strip.

I started with a basic AFCAD (not sure who's but will obviously get permission to use it before I upload anything if it ever gets that far), tweaked it quite a bit and it's now time to add buildings etc. I've done a few but have to go and photograph the place at the weekend to get different angles on stuff (Google earth is good but not that good!)

In the meantime I decided to fence it all in. Big mistake. Using Rwy12 object placer there is no way of telling if one section of fence is in the correct place without restarting FS every time.

Is there a better method or program for placing scenery - ideally a drag and drop program or am I in for a long haul with this?

Thanks in advance,

Dave.

Cianofranc · Post by **Cianofranc** » 28 Nov 2006, 20:58

I use SBuilder 2.05.
It's good for placing object, because you can use mouse to find the right position.
Cheers
Luciano

BadPvtDan · Post by **BadPvtDan** » 28 Nov 2006, 22:17

EZ Scenery is great for placing stuff.

jetmax · Post by **jetmax** » 29 Nov 2006, 00:27

I like EZ Scenery as well. Unfortunatly I have not found a lot of military objects that work with EZ Scenery.

BadPvtDan · Post by **BadPvtDan** » 29 Nov 2006, 01:28

There is truth in that. One of the things we lack here is a scenery designer. I am not complaining about the numbers working on aircraft models, though!

jetmax · Post by **jetmax** » 29 Nov 2006, 02:31

I agree Danny, I wish I had the time and more importantly the talent some of these guys have.

Scott

davem · Post by **davem** » 29 Nov 2006, 13:24

Thanks for the pointers guys, I've tried the free EZ Scenery trial and will experiment with SB tonight but at the moment I can see the unlock key to EZ being bought sooner rather than later!

ATB,

Dave.

davem · Post by **davem** » 02 Feb 2007, 15:13

Hi all,

having nearly completely redone the Fairford AFCAD with the help of some kindly supplied Aerial photos and Google Earth images, the time has come to start adding objects to the base.

I've got EZ scenery and RYW12 so should be pretty much covered for adding objects from the available libraries, but the one sticking point is that there doesn't seem to be anything even closely resembling the B2 hangars which are one of the features I'd like to get right.

Can anyone recommend an easy-to-use (ideally freeware!) build-it-from-scratch program that I can make B2 hangars with?

many thanks in advance,

Dave.

PS I've tried Sbuild and failed to get it to run at all.

BadPvtDan · Post by **BadPvtDan** » 02 Feb 2007, 15:32

There is no easy to use scenery builder. The easiest may be FSDS (payware) but there is still a big learning curve. GMAX is, of course, freeware but has a VERY steep learning curve.

Good luck!

davem · Post by **davem** » 02 Feb 2007, 16:21

Thanks Danny,

just been and got GMAX and the FS2004 SDK from the MS website so now have the tools - just need to find time to learn.

We may have a working Fairford before RIAT (2008!!)

MIKE JG · Post by **MIKE JG** » 02 Feb 2007, 16:25

SBuilder by far, hands down is, IMO, the best all around scenery design program. It is also freeware like RWY 12 but does so much more than RWY 12 and EZ Scenery combined. But like Danny says, it takes a bit of tweaking to get it set up so that it works correctly and the learning curve is a bit more involved than some of the other object placer programs. But I'm here to tell you that if I can figure it out, anyone can. Besides I don't even use half of the features that it's capable of anyways.

It's advantage lies in it's ability to place any scenery object from a library and allows you to scale the size of the object up and down as needed as well as adjust it's heading. In addition SBuilder allows you to make custom textured polygons which can then be used to adjust landclass, make flatten files or even photoreal scenery if you wish. It can also make exclude files as well as place some of the FS9 default objects like taxiway signs and control towers.

So if you have SBuiler up and running along with a nice library of scenery objects and can use AFCAD, you can completely overhaul an airport and its surrounding areas in a short amount of time.

Fortunately for all of us, we (mostly me I guess), have been steadily building a military scenery object library over the last couple of months to eventually be distributed as freeware for all to use. The objects will be available to SBuilder, RWY 12, and EZ Scenery users. Danny has already confirmed that it works with EZ Scenery. RWY 12 will take a little more work to be usable and the current libraries (there are several as the object limit is 45 objects per library) are created initially for SBuilder as that's the program I use.

So we are working on that "lack of suitable military object libraries" part. Slowly but surely. I believe I have made over 60 different objects so far to date.

I haven't had much time to update the thread in this forum with pictures and descriptions of all the objects I've created but I will try to get to that this weekend so we can all see what is now available.

MIKE JG · Post by **MIKE JG** » 02 Feb 2007, 16:28

BadPvtDan wrote:One of the things we lack here is a scenery designer.

I'd like to volunteer myself..........

Of course what we could also use is another designer that uses GMax since it can do some things that FSDS can't.