SBuilder & ImageTool, and some other stuff...

General discussion about Scenery Design. Questions about SBuilder for Flight Simulator FS2004.
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bpahe
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SBuilder & ImageTool, and some other stuff...

Post by bpahe » Fri May 28, 2004 7:30 pm

Hi there!

I´m getting to know, and really like, SceneryBuilder by now! The "How to make an island" tutorial was very informative, and as always - once you´ve succeded once, it´s easy to do it again.

However, of course I´ve managed to mess things up. I looked at the version of ImageTool that ships along with SBuilder, and noticed that it was dated 2002. So I replaced it with the latest version, from the FS2004 SDKs. Perhaps I shouldn´t have, because the phototiles do not get "fliped" when compiled. In the enclosed picture, it is the two on the right of the gray area - which is really a landclass with custom textures.

Ok, so now I need to put the right ImageTool back. Which one is it, or rather, from which FS2002 SDK is it?

Then there are other problems, as you can see, but I recon´ I can solve most of them, for example the LOD13 filled with forrest above the island on the bottom left of the picture.

Last serious problem is that when I place waterclasses to the right/east of my own scenery, to remove MS default scenery, Sbuilder crashes when I´m about to export, saying something like "Could not find <i>something</i>.BMP". I think I have read about this somewhere, but do not remember where! I´m at work now, when I get home I´ll check the exact message. Any help is really appreciated!

Thanks for an otherwise outstanding tool!

/hans

Image

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Luis Sa
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Post by Luis Sa » Sat May 29, 2004 1:01 am

Hello,

Thank you for the feedback! Please get version 107 at:

..as before..\sb107.zip

I have not the time to update as soon as I discovered an error. But there was a major error on the BGL generation of both LWM and VTP.

Now for your questions. I have 2 Image Tools on my system or 3 since last SDK. I really do not know which one I am using. There was one coming with gmax on FS2002 pro. One in the FS2000 SDK (am I correct here?). I think that the one which come out with one of the FS2002 SDKs is not different from the 2 others. I even do not know if the previous to the one I packed with SB works fine. Now, your info is very important. Take the following into attention. The bitmaps are generated by SB itself. I am using Image Tool just to convert to DXT and to add mips. It is known that VTP custom needed to be vertically flipped to show correctly in the sim. So SB generates the textures up side down. It seems that the new Image Tool does that flipping! I suggest that you keep the one packed with SB.

The second problem is probably related to the bug that I referred to initially. Please let me know if the new version solves it.

The third problem is the absence a texture in the BMP folder. May be I made a mistake. Please select and delete all the parts of your project and save a new one just with the part that gives the error and send to luis@ptsim.com

Regards, Luis

bpahe
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Post by bpahe » Sat May 29, 2004 2:11 am

Hello Luis, and everybody else!

A letter is on its way! And, for simplicity, the link referred to above is, in full, http://www.ptsim.com/downloads/sb107.zip

Regards

/hans [:)]

Jeff
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Post by Jeff » Sun May 30, 2004 9:24 pm

Gday All

Luis, regarding the crash of SBuilder when using water class, even with SBuilder V1.07 the error message is

Runtime error '53'
File Not Found: 'D:\sbuilder\SB107\Tools\bmps\SELB2WA1.BMP'

This is regardless of what water class/texture you choose.

rgds Jeff

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Luis Sa
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Post by Luis Sa » Sun May 30, 2004 10:27 pm

Hi Jeff,

I will correct this in next version. Meanwhile you can add the missing file to the BMP folder. The file is a copy of the one named SELB2SU1.BMP which is already there.

.. Or you can zoom out before compiling!

Regards, Luis

ps: in some days I will send you a version which places library objects, taxiways signs, beacons, ... and has an exclusion tool for objects.

bpahe
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Post by bpahe » Mon May 31, 2004 9:41 pm

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Luis Sá</i>
The second problem is probably related to the bug that I referred to initially. Please let me know if the new version solves it.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Hi everybody!

First, to answer the quoted question, yes, the new version solves this problem, there are no longer a forrested tile in the water! [:)]

It appears indeed that the version of ImageTool does not matter (?), however I now use an older version. The phototiles that are not displayed correctly seems to depend on how they are exported. If I only export phototiles, then everything looks like it should. But the area on the left/west side of the peninsula are water, and it seems that some kind of fill is needed before the scenery displays correctly. So I´ve put a landclass there, using the "Custom textures - all seasons", to utilize the phototextures. Doing this makes the flipped textures appeared as flipped, so it seems that when exporting in this situation, the bitmapps should not be flipped. Now, that´s easy to solve, I´ll just find the four textures and turn them back again.

Otherwise my work gets more fun everyday. I think I started of perhaps a little to hard, it´s easier to just change some aiport surroundings. Still, I´ve learnt a lot, so thanks, again! [:)]

/hans

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Luis Sa
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Post by Luis Sa » Mon May 31, 2004 10:22 pm

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by bpahe</i>
so it seems that when exporting in this situation, the bitmapps should not be flipped. Now, that´s easy to solve, I´ll just find the four textures and turn them back again.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Hi Hans,

May be you could send me the project icluding the mapbackground from which the tiles are generated. I would like to research that further! I am happy that you like Sbuilder!

Regards, Luis

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