Marginal X-Plane Scenery Tutorials Hangar Making a scenery object

Make a sketch

Before constructing the scenery in Blender, we need to have a clear idea of what we're trying to construct. Here's a sketch of the hangar, with dimensions marked in metres. (X-Plane expects scenery to be described in metres; there are about 3¼ feet to a metre):

Blender and X-Plane can only deal with basic shapes - rectangles and triangles (or "Quads" and "Tris" in X-Plane's terminology). These shapes are grouped together into one or more "Meshes". For convenience, Blender can add more complex shapes like cubes, cones, cylinders and spheres to a Mesh, but these are still actually constructed out of rectangles and/or triangles. (Blender can also construct completely different types of shapes - "Metas", "Surfaces" and "Curves" - but X-Plane doesn't understand these so we'll ignore them).

So we need to split the hangar into rectangles and/or triangles. We also need to decide on the axes and the location of the origin. In Blender, the z axis is always up. The choice of x and y and where to place the origin is arbitrary, but we need to make a choice. (At this point, we'd usually also think about how to paint the hangar, but for the purposes of this tutorial we'll postpone the issue to the next chapter).

Here's the same sketch with the hangar split up into rectangles, with axes marked, with the origin at the centre of the floor, and with the co-ordinates of each point marked:

Constructing the hangar

OK, we're finally ready to start building. New meshes are always added in Blender at the cursor. So check that the cursor is at the origin (where the red x and green y axes cross) in the centre of the 3D View window like this:

If the cursor isn't at the origin:

• Move the mouse pointer over the 3D View window.
• Press to centre the cursor at the origin.

The front cube

We could construct the hangar by adding each rectangle in the sketch, one at a time. But it's quicker and easier to construct it out of a couple of cubes. We'll start with the cube at the front. To construct the front cube:

• Move the mouse pointer over the 3D View window.
• Press on the numeric keypad to get an overhead view.
• Press to bring up a context menu.
• Choose Add → Mesh → Cube to add a new Mesh consisting of a cube:

The new cube looks like a square because we're looking directly down on it:

As well as adding a new Mesh containing a cube, Blender automatically goes into Edit Mode. The menu bar of the 3D View window shows the current mode:

Edit mode is used for editing the vertices and faces within a mesh. You can use to switch mode, but leave Blender in Edit Mode for now. If you take a break in the middle of this section of the tutorial, you'll need to put Blender back in to Edit Mode before continuing.

Blender gives the new Mesh the name "Cube". Lets call it something descriptive, like "Hangar":

• Press or click on the Editing button to make the Buttons Window display the editing buttons:

• In the Link and Materials panel click on the Object Name field, delete the name Cube and type in the name Hangar.

How big is the new cube?

• Click on any one of the vertices (corners) of the cube to select it. (Note that the selected vertex is yellow, while the other unselected vertices turn pink).
• Press to bring up a Properties window:

The Properties window shows that the selected vertex is at (1,-1,-1), which makes the cube's size 2x2x2.

• Close the Properties window.
• Press . Blender un-selects all vertices.
• Press again to re-select allvertices. (Note that all the vertices turn yellow to show they're selected).

According to the sketch, the front cube needs to be 30x80x33. That means we first need to zoom out a lot to give us enough room:

• Press on the numeric keypad ten times (count 'em).

We'll start by resizing the cube to 80x80x80 so that the vertices are in the correct positions on the y axis, and then fix up the positions on the other axes. This means that the cube needs to be 40 times larger than it is at the moment:

• Move the mouse pointer over the origin.
• Press to re-scale.
• Hold down and drag the mouse out until the cube is 40 times larger. Make sure you make it exactly 40.000 times larger - it would be a pain to fix it later. (You can press to cancel the scaling operation, or to undo it if you make a mistake). (Holding down makes it easier to scale the cube precisely, by constraining the size to a multiple of 0.1).
• Click when the cube is 40 times larger:

Next we'll fix up the vertices' positions on the x axis. Looking back at the sketch, the vertices need to be at -18 and -48 on the x axis:

• Click on the bottom right vertex to select it. (Note that the selected vertex is yellow, while the other unselected vertices turn pink).
• Press to bring up the Properties window again. (You may need to drag it from out the way of the vertex you just selected).

We're looking directly down on a cube, so there are actually two vertices here - one on each side of the cube.

• Hold down and click on the bottom right vertex again to also select the second vertex. (Note that the Properties changes from reporting the position of one Vertex, to reporting the average position of the two selected vertices):

• Hold down and click twice on the top right vertex to also select these two vertices.
• Press to grab the selected vertices.
• Hold down and move the vertices with the mouse to -18.000 on the x axis. (You can press to cancel the move, or to undo it if you make a mistake). (Holding down makes it easier to position the vertices precisely by constraining the distance moved to an integer).
• Click when the vertices are in the right place:

Looking back at the sketch, the front of the hangar needs to be at -48 on the x axis. We'll use the same technique again:

• Click on the bottom left vertex to select it. (Note that the selected vertex is yellow, while the other unselected vertices turn pink).
• Hold down and click on the bottom left vertex again to also select the other vertex here.
• Hold down and click twice on the top left vertex to also select these two vertices.
• Press to grab the selected vertices.
• Hold down and move the vertices with the mouse to -48.000 on the x axis. (You can press to cancel the move, or to undo it if you make a mistake).
• Click when the vertices are in the right place:

Up 'til now, we've been looking straight down at the cube - the axes at the bottom left corner of the 3D View window is showing the x and y axes, but not the z axis which is pointing up at us:

Now we need to change to a side view in order to fix up the vertices' positions on the z axis.

• Press on the numeric keypad to get a side view.

The axes at the bottom left corner now shows the x and z axes, but not the y axis which is pointing towards us:

Now we'll fix up the vertices' positions on the z axis. Looking back at the sketch, the vertices need to be at 0 or 33 on the z axis. For variety, we'll use a different technique to move these vertices. We'll start with the top of the hangar, which should be at 33 on the z axis:

• Press to un-select all vertices.
• Press to make a "border" selection.
• Click and hold and drag a box around the top vertices:

• Release .
• Press to grab the selected vertices.
• Hold down and move the vertices with the mouse to 33 on the z axis. (You can press to cancel the move, or to undo it if you make a mistake).
• Click when the vertices are in the right place.
• Use the same technique to move the bottom vertices of the cube to 0 on the z axis.

You now should have a finished front part of the hangar that looks like this:

Now might be a good time to save your work:

• Choose File → Save.
• A confirmation dialog pops up:

• Press or to confirm.

Remember that Blender does not automatically save your work when you quit. Always choose File → Save before you quit Blender!

Adding the back cube

We'll create the back cube in a similar way to the front one:

• Move the mouse pointer over the 3D View window.
• Press to bring up a context menu.
• Choose Add → Cube to add another cube to this mesh:

The new cube's size is 2x2x2 again. According to the sketch, the back cube needs to be 66x80x25. We'll start by resizing it to 66x66x66 so that the vertices are in the correct positions on the x axis, and then fix up the positions on the other axes. This means that the cube needs to be 33 times larger than it is at the moment:

• Move the mouse pointer over the origin.
• Press to re-scale.
• Hold down and drag the mouse out until the cube is 33 times larger. Make sure you make it exactly 33.000 times larger - it would be a pain to fix it later. (Again, you can press to cancel the scaling operation, or to undo it if you make a mistake).
• Click when the cube is 33 times larger.

Now the back cube is the right size, but in the wrong place. We need to move it so that it is sitting to the right of the front cube:

• Press to grab the new cube.
• Hold down and move the new cube with the mouse until it is sitting exactly next to and to the right of the front cube.
• Click when the new cube is in the right place:

The new cube is the right width, but it's too tall. We need to fix up the height. Looking back at the sketch, the top needs to be at 25 on the z axis:

• Press to un-select all vertices.
• Press to make a "border" selection.
• Click and hold and drag a box around the top vertices.
• Press to grab the selected vertices.
• Hold down and move the vertices with the mouse to 25 on the z axis (according to the Properties window).
• Click when the vertices are in the right place:

Finally, we'll fix up the vertices' positions on the y axis:

• Press on the numeric keypad to get a rear view:

For each side of the back cube (the smaller one):

• Press to un-select all vertices.
• Press to make a "border" selection.
• Click and hold and drag a box around the side vertices.
• Press to grab the selected vertices.
• Hold down and move the vertices with the mouse to line up with the front cube.
• Click when the vertices are in the right place:

Removing duplicate vertices

• Press on the numeric keypad to go back to the side view.

The two cubes cubes have two vertices at the same co-ordinates where they meet in the middle of the hangar:

It's easier to edit meshes in Blender if vertices are shared rather than duplicated. So we'll tell Blender to make the two cubes share those vertices:

• Press twice to select all vertices.
• Press to make the Buttons Window display the editing buttons.
• In the Mesh Tools panel click on Rem Doubles:

Blender pops up a message showing how many vertices it removed:

(If Blender doesn't remove 2 vertices this probably means that your two cubes weren't properly lined up. Click on each vertex, check it's co-ordinates in the Properties window, and grab and move it to the right co-ordinates if necessary).

• Finally, press to unselect all vertices.

Viewing

Now let's take a look at what we've constructed. Up 'til now, we've been using wireframe shading. An icon in the menu bar of the 3D View window shows the current shading option:

Let's look at the hangar with solid shading:

• Click on the Shading icon, and choose Solid from the menu:

• Click and hold or the scroll wheel.
• Move the mouse around to rotate and view the hangar.

Removing hidden faces

If we look at the underside of the hangar, we see that it's solid like the rest of the hangar.

• Hold down or and move the mouse to rotate the hangar to show the bottom faces like this:

The hangar will (obviously) be sitting on the ground in X-Plane, so the solid faces on the bottom of the hangar will be hidden. However it would cause X-Plane and the OpenGL renderer unnecessary work to figure out that they're hidden, which might affect the frame rate. So we should remove the bottom faces to save X-Plane and the OpenGL renderer from doing any unnecessary work.

We've been selecting vertices one at a time. A group of icons in the menu bar of the 3D View window show the current selection mode, which is Vertex select mode:

Selecting individual vertices can be tiresome. So lets select whole faces instead:

• Click on the Face select mode icon:

• Click on one of the bottom faces to select it.
• Click on the other bottom face to also select it:

Lets tell Blender to highlight selected faces:

• Press to make the Buttons Window display the editing buttons.
• In the Mesh Tools 1 panel select Draw Normals, Draw Faces and Draw Edges, and click on NSize (Normal Size) and set it to 2:

This causes "Normals" to be drawn in light blue (we'll cover Normals later), the edges joining selected vertices to be also highlighted in yellow, and the face(s) that share those edges to be highlighted in purple:

Now lets delete the unwanted bottom faces:

• Move the mouse pointer over the 3D View window.
• Press .
• A confirmation dialog pops up. Choose Faces:

OK, we've got rid of the hidden faces on the underside of the hangar. But there's another hidden face between the two cubes (shown in blue above). We should remove this face too:

• Click on this face to select it.
• Press .
• A confirmation dialog pops up. Choose Faces.

We still haven't quite finished. The face at the rear of the front cube is partially hidden by the back cube:

Let's delete this face and replace it with a new face that is just the right size:

• Click on this face to select it.
• Press .
• A confirmation dialog pops up. Choose Faces.

Now we need to add a new face to cover the hole we've created at the back of the front cube. We could do that using → Add → Plane to add a new face, and then position the new face over the hole. But there's an easier way.

• Press so we're looking at the rear of the hangar like this:

We'll use a third selection mode for this task:

• Click on the Edge select mode icon:

• Click on the rear edge of the front cube's roof to select it:

Now we'll "extrude" this edge to create a new face.

• Press to extrude the selected edge.
• A dialog pops up. Choose Region:

• Hold down and drag the mouse down until the new edge meets the rear cube's roof (that's -8 on the z axis).
• Click when the edge of the new face is in the right place.

The new face has some vertices at the same co-ordinates as vertices on the rear cube. Again, for tidiness, we'll make these vertices shared instead of duplicated:

• Press twice to select all vertices.
• In the Mesh Tools panel click on Rem Doubles:

Blender pops up a message showing how many vertices it removed:

That's it! We've finished constructed the hangar.

• Press to put Blender in Object Mode. (This hides all the vertex and face highlighting).
• Hold down and move the mouse to rotate and view the finished hangar:

Now might be a good time to save your work:

• Choose File → Save.
• A confirmation dialog pops up:

• Press or to confirm.

Remember that Blender does not automatically save your work when you quit. Always choose File → Save before you quit Blender!

The hangar is bare grey at the moment. In the next chapter we'll learn how to apply textures to it.

(Or if you're impatient to see what the hangar looks like in X-Plane you skip ahead to Placing scenery).

Marginal X-Plane Scenery Tutorials Hangar Making a scenery object