CREATING SCENERY WITH THE PHOENIX RC CREATOR PROGRAM

Transcription

1 TUTORIAL 1 CREATING SCENERY WITH THE PHOENIX RC CREATOR PROGRAM This document is copyrighted to the author and may only be reproduced or copied with the author s consent. It is free for distribution on any public forum as long as the author is quoted. I would like to credit the following people for their contribution to some of the information contained in this document: Harald Bendschneider, His numerous Youtube video s proved to be indispensable. The tutorial on creating an alpha mask is effectively how Harald taught me to do it. The Master of scenery in Phoenix RC in my mind; whom I had the privilege of being a student off. Danke, Harald! Detlef Jacobi, His tutorials are what got me started in designing scenery for Phoenix. His website has invaluable information on getting started and one of the best descriptions on how to set up the photographic side of a scenery creation. GIMP is available for free download from PTgui is available as a trial or payware here: Pano2VR is available trial and payware from here: Phoenix RC Creator is available here: Phoenix RC Simulator is available as demo here: This tutorial will take you through some basic steps in using the Creator program of Phoenix RC simulator, to create scenery that can be used in the Phoenix RC simulator. Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 1

2 This tutorial is part one of three. You should have worked through at least tutorial one with the option of using two if required. The tutorials cover the following: TUTORIAL 1: Creating scenery with the Phoenix RC Creator program TUTORIAL 2: Creating a cubemap and cube faces for use in Phoenix RC TUTORIAL 3: Creating an alpha mask for use in Phoenix RC scenery design This document should be read in conjunction with the tutorial that comes with Creator. I do not want to repeat everything it contains and this document will hopefully serve to better illustrate what they say and touch on a few points which they missed. So please have that document handy as well. THE BASICS: Select File, New and Flying site Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 2

3 Change Images drop box to +X (from -X ) Click on the Auto box and navigate to the folder where you saved your cube faces: Select the first image and click OK Creator will take a while to load the image into the screen as a back ground image. Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 3

4 Zoom out with the mouse wheel to its maximum to get a good view of your area: Click on Collision on the left hand side menu. You will now see a grid appear on the floor of your scenery: Note the two icons in the screen on your image. The Distance Helper is used to measure distance from the fixed point it is currently located. I have not yet figures this out well or it were not well Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 4

5 designed. You can only move it in two axis and may need to guess a bit when you move it to an off. Axis object since you will change the values on both as you adjust it. The other one is Pano Orientation. Under no circumstance will I advise you use this. The movement of it can seriously affect orientation. Leave it as is. In Creator you will have two main controls to direct scale and orientation. You can use Shift to bring up the controls that direct scale, or ctrl to bring up the orientation tool. The circles will move the object on the axis indicated and the lines with the block will be dragged to increase or decrease scale of an object. Shift will bring up size scaling tool Ctrl will bring up orientation tool Highlight the appropriate axis by placing the mouse over it till it change colour, then left click it and drag the squares or move the circles. When pulling on the squares to change size try to pull equally between red and blue until you can see it. If you place the object off the grid, you may need to also raise it with the green arrow before it will be visible. To begin we need to first define a crash plane. Click on plane button in top menu move you mouse to the grid on your design window. You should see a red cross. Place it where required and press left mouse button to place the first plane. In the top right you will have the object menu where you can define what the material that plane is made off. Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 5

6 You will now also see a third icon that is called New plane. I suggest that you give each item you will place a unique name to ensure that you can always get back to it without a problem. My sample contains a pano that is not perfect. So my horizon and the crash plane do not match up. To correct this I need to get the green plane to meet my horizon line. I do this by pressing ctrl and rotating the plane on the desired axis. You do this by moving the mouse to highlight the blue or red or green line in the icon globe, and then dragging it with the mouse to make it move: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 6

7 Note that due to my less than accurate pano image I do not have a straight horizon. If I want to correct this I will need to add additional planes that each touch the horizon until it is covered all around. Bear in mind that the tilt you give the crash plane on any axis will affect the scale of the plane in Phoenix RC. With the plane tilted way up (i.e. above the horizon) you will have a model that appears to be driving uphill into your scenery. With it tilted down, the model will appear to be going downhill and reduce in size way too soon. Once of the first tests to do is to run a plane on the ground in your scenery and see if it reduce in size realistically as you drive away from yourself. Keep it on the ground since the slope of the crash plane will have no effect on any plane in the sky. In order to export this to Phoenix you will have to do the following as a bare minimum: Create start positions: You do this by clicking on the left strip menu on Positions, then New button on the top menu. Now click in your scenery where you want to have the plane start. A new icon will appear. Now at the top, change the name in the middle window to read default 1, then select Fixed wing from the drop down menu next to it. Check that the new icon that you created in the scenery now also is called default 1 Fixed wing Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 7

8 It is important to name these positions default 1 etc. Note the space after default as the scenery will not compile without it. You can add more positions by calling them default 2 etc. For you other positions you can select Helicopter etc., retaining the naming format described. Add lighting by clicking on Lighting on the left menu. If you look down in your scenery (drag down with mouse), you will see a silver ball. This ball does not affect any of the lighting settings. It is used purely to show the effect of the position of the sun and the hue that you select it to cast. You can drag it to where the plane will be in the start position if you want. Now drag upward in the pano view and you will find the sun icon. You move this by pushing on the blue and red arrows. You will also see that in moving these you can cause the sun to appear to move away or closer. Play around with this for effect. The most important thing is to place the sun position where the sun is in your photograph. This will ensure that the shadows appear realistic. You are ready to start testing your crash plane. Select File and Save and call it a unique name. Now click File and Export. Input the name you want in the blocks with a description if required: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 8

9 Press export. If everything to this point were done correctly, it should export scenery and come back to the top screen of Creator. You can now open Phoenix RC and select your scenery from the Flying Site menu. Your cubemap will still cause the display window of the scenery to be just white or black as we still need to adjust the cubemap once we are all done. Test the distance of the aircraft on the ground driving away in all directions. Once satisfied you can proceed to the adding of scenery, if not, you need to go back to Creator and adjust the plane or add more until the display in Phoenix RC is realistic. ADDING CRASH OBJECTS: In Creator you can add various crash objects: Plane: the defining crash plane. This is in effect the ground under your feet that you define in terms of height, slope and material through the plane object Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 9

10 Sphere: this is a round (sphere) object that you can use to place against objects casting a roundish silhouette, like a tree against the horizon: You will use these in various sizes to cover up the object where you need to define crash objects. Here is a sample of the same scenery when it was done, showing the use of spheres to create a crash surface on the tree above: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 10

11 To place a sphere, click on the sphere button at the top and then click within your grid on the ground. I find it much easier to create my objects in the grid and then move them out as you can easily place an object miles away in Creator if you aim outside the grid. Once the object is placed, rename it. Now hold down shift and move you mouse to highlight the blue or red leg with the block on it: As you start to pull on the red or blue block the object will start to increase in size. Since a sphere will be equal in size on the X and Z axis, you can use either. On something like a cube, you will see that the object can be shaped to show depth or not by alternating between the two axis. Once you have some size on it, release shift and pull it up by the green arrow, making sure that your mouse highlight the green line before clicking it. This is an important habit to get into since you will need it when you work on multiple items all overlapping each other and you need to be sure you change the correct item. IMPORTANT: it is important to note at this time that Creator do not have an undo function. If you mess up you need to fix it and if you cannot fix it you will need to start over. One way of getting around this is to use the Create restore point function under the Tools menu at the top. At least then you can return to the restore point if you cannot fix any errors. Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 11

12 SECOND IMPORTANT ISSUE: Do not start to place any crash objects until you are 100% satisfied that your plane crash field is done. Any item placed at the desired distance will be moved the moment you tilt your plane in any way. So make sure the plane is set and realistic in Phoenix RC before you proceed with adding items. Drag the green arrow up to raise the sphere: You are now ready to place it at the distance it is required. You can use Google Earth to measure the distance from viewer to the objects. In my image it translates to roughly 120m. By moving the distance helper to the position and looking at the axis, I have moved it to a point roughly 120m away. Now we need to exit this view since it is the most misleading view when it comes to distance. You can switch views by pressing space bar. Always switch your view to the overview view when you need to place something at distance. A good habit would be to zoom into the area where the item need to go as you will be able to see the pano view in the small window at the top. Orientate yourself then in the overview view and making adjustments to have the item covering the picture part in the pano as well. Overview looks like this once you have right clicked in it and dragged it around a bit. You can zoom out by mouse roller. You will note that we are some distance away from the distance helper, indicating that we need to move that sphere. Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 12

13 You move the sphere by grabbing the arrows and moving it in that direction, switching between arrows to make it move in the desired direction. Once it is at the distance helper, check its size as the distance would have now reduced it. Increase it with the Shift key if required. Move it UP with the green arrow if required. It needs to be over the distance helper and cover the part of the tree it was intended for: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 13

14 In the sphere menu at the right, you can select if the object need to be Drawn or Visible. Draw will draw it as an object in Phoenix RC that will block out the model and it will cast the objects flying over its shadow onto it. Unchecking it will remove the shadow effect and it will be see through. It will remain crashable if flown into. Visible will remove the red sphere in the design screen if it is maybe in the way of something you design behind or in front of it and the colour is obstructive. You can also change the Material. I still need to explore this but it would appear that all of these crash to pieces. You cannot have a model just sticking into an object without going to shreds. There do appear to be a difference between concrete and foliage though as you crash more sever against concrete than foliage. Once the object is in place, save your work and export again. Test fly it in Phoenix seeking to have the plane crash into the object realistically. You need to check for scale in distance and in where the debris fall. Once you crash into it, check if your debris actually ends UP on the ground directly underneath the object. Remember that the plane object would influence this as well. Once crashing realistically you can proceed to place additional objects on that tree at the same distance to cover all crash areas. Once done it looks like above. It is critical to get the distance on the first object right as this will aid placing all the other objects. You can create a cube or a cylinder in this way as well: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 14

15 Note that on the pole and cube you can also use the green block with shift depressed. This will increase its height. A habit to get into is to always switch to the overview look to check distance. You do this by pressing spacebar. This puts you directly over the area like this: Now right click and drag in the screen to activate the navigation function. At the same time, start to zoom out with the mouse wheel. Rotate the view by pressing the right mouse button until you have a good view of what is it that you need to look at: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 15

16 Also note how you can retain normal view in the small window at the top left. When working on an area it is good practice to first move to the are you are going to work on in the normal pano view, and then to switch to the overview view with spacebar. This way you can also look at the real time placement of the object. Most of the time, because we create the items close by, the item will decrease in size as we move it away. Sometimes even requiring that you increase its elevation again with the green arrow. So always try and work in the two windows to ensure you can save some time by not having to go back and correct after you switch views again. A common problem you will have later on is to work with lots of objects together. This can sometimes be a challenge to try and pick the exact object you need to work on. Here is a sample of what it can look like: If this is your only view option you need to be able to pick the right thing first time. Remember there is no undo function. So if you move the wrong thing you will need to move it back to exactly the right place. So you just doubled your time required to complete your scenery. To make sure you grab the right thing, move your mouse over the area where you need to work. You will note that there are circles that get highlighted as you move across the items: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 16

17 Notice the light circle that I outlined with the green dots above. That tells me that if I now left click, the object selected will be that one. As you click it you can check to the right in the object description box to see if the name matches the object you are looking for. Another reason to start naming the objects uniquely from the start to ensure easy identification later on. If you lost track here for instance you can create a lot of problems for yourself: But always remember to also zoom out and move around as sometimes a view like this can create a lot more perspective of what you need to do: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 17

18 Where an object s colour in the screen is detracting from detail, you can switch off. It displaying its shape in the window by unchecking the visible button on the object description box at the right: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 18

19 Skyline objects as described earlier are used to usually outline far off horizon silhouettes: The limitations of these are that you cannot add points to trace an object like the tree that bulges after starting on a slim trunk: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 19

20 You can only apply a skyline to an object like the one above by cover the main part of it, thus extending past the slim part of it, or covering the slim part and having the main part not covered. Since the planes are fixed to the bottom not even twisting them will work. So the best is to build a tree like this from spheres and cylinders and then put a skyline over it if you want to add alpha mask. Here is what you can do to make it reasonably realistic without alpha mask: To start a skyline, move the view to the area where you want to add the skyline. Make sure you start at the left end of the area as you will not be able to add to or move the starting point without affecting all the other points. If you want to start the skyline to the left of the left most tree, do not start tracing to the right of the tree thinking that you will come back and just move it. Now select skyline at the top and place the first left mouse click in the direction of the start point but in the grid. This is to make sure the image display when in the pano view. Now release the mouse button and move the mouse UP to start drawing a straight line UP: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 20

21 This is the left edge of your skyline. The next move is to click the second position on the ground plane again and at exactly the same distance as the first one. This will draw a red line from top to bottom. Now move the mouse UP again after releasing left button and the first square will appear: This is the basic movement for creating the plane. Now since the horizon is not a straight line, we will move our tops to follow it like this: Remember that this is not placed at the right distance yet. As mentioned, it helps when you already placed a crash object that you have confirmed the distance of. If I knew that this skyline was where the crash object was placed, I just need to ensure that this is placed in line with it. To do this you will need to work out what works for you. For me it works well to do the following: - Start the basic shape with one or two points. - Switch to the overview view - While watching you actions in the small window at the top left, start to drag the first point back to the point where you think it should be. - Come back for the second point and do the same - Now switch back to pano view and select each top point. When highlighted, drag it to the desired height - Once the first two points are where you think they should be, export it to Phoenix and fly towards it to check distance. Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 21

22 - If distance is realistic (you can also measure it with the distance helper), continue from the right to add the other points From the above you can see how I am taking each point that is too close by and dragging it back. Make sure you select the bottom point before dragging. Also note that things will look quite messed UP in the small window. This should give you an idea why we place skyline with the overview view and not the pano view. You lose distance scale completely in the pano view. Once you have all the bottom points back to the distance, the picture will reappear and you can then just reduce o increase the top points to make it follow the contour again: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 22

23 Only try to move a point if it is highlighted by moving the mouse over it. If you click anywhere else you will create the next point at the right where you ended and a red line will jump at you. If this happen just click delete on the keyboard to delete the last point added. If you do move any point in the pano view mode, ALWAYS go back to the overview view and check if it is still correct. A change like this may look placed correctly, but look like this in overview: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 23

24 Corrected is should display not twisted like above but all in one line. This is easily messed UP if you only view in pano view and move skyline objects. Now test it again in Phoenix to check distance. You can use other objects like cylinders to create poles and tree trunks. Cubes can be used for walls or crates or the like. I have not yet used area or material option. skyline, h-map and marker are used for something else and we will get to them later. A height map (h-map button) is used to create uneven ground effect with rolling hills or valleys. This is apparently a rather tricky thing to do and I have to date luckily only worked on flat areas where I could get away with planes only. After defining the height map plane, you use the mouse to raise the floor. Pressing shift will move the floor down if you mouse over it. Harald has an excellent video on Youtube demonstrating the use of height maps very well. Just search Youtube for harald phoenix rc to reach his excellent video tutorials. Skyline is used to define the objects against the horizon. You can use it to create a crash wall when you hit the horizon object and also to occlude the model when you fly behind it. The skyline will also form the canvas that you will paint your alpha map against when you apply such. Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 24

25 ACCURATELY USING THE DISTANCE HELPER: The distance helper work in two axis only in terms of movement and reporting distance. The distance scale of the distance helper is given in centimeters. Here you can see how the Red arrow reports a distance of 23677cm (or m) and the blue arrow 8711cm (or 87.11m). The plus and minus is not too important as we will use the distance irrespective of a negative or positive value. Taking the Red and Blue value to zero we can see that we end up in the middle of the grid which also constitute the eye level point in our scenery. So when you measure any distance in Google Earth (GE), make sure to select the point from where you photo were taken as the start point. Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 25

26 I am now going to explain how you can check the distance of any object that you placed. I will use the sphere we placed already. I mentioned that a GE measurement showed the distance to be roughly 120m. For the ease of showing the effect I am leaving the distance helper slightly to the side to show the explanation: We see here that we have a distance of 8757 and If we were to plot these distances on a graph with an X and Y axis we can say that it should look something like this: So we need to determine if a straight line from the blue point to our position (0,0) covers the distance required (120m). For this you use simple Pythagorean trigonometry which states that the square of the X axis plus the square of the Y axis would be our line distance squared. Mathematically we are saying: Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 26

27 So we can see that the length of C will give us our answer: Substituting this into our formula gives us: 87* *81 = =14130 Square root of gives us 119 So we are in a straight line 119m away from it, which mean that if we corrected for the slight off to the side position we have above, it is pretty much 120m away. All fine on this one! You can use this to test any object on your design. Quick tutorial on the use of Phoenix RC s Creator by Coenie vd Merwe March 2013 Page 27