Marginal X-Plane Scenery Tutorials Hangar Applying textures

Textures

So far, the hangar is a dull bare grey. Textures are what give scenery colour. A texture is an image or part of an image. Each face of an X-Plane scenery object can have it's own individual texture or can share a texture with other faces.

All the textures used in a scenery object must be stored in a single texture file. A texture file is just an ordinary image bitmap, but with some restrictions:

• The height and width of the bitmap must be powers of two (eg 64, 128, 256, 512, etc).
• The bitmap must be in one of these formats:
  • Windows Bitmap (.BMP) - 16.7M colours (24 bit depth) or 256 colours (palette-based).
  • Portable Network Graphics (.PNG) - 16.7M colours (24 bit depth) with or without an Alpha channel. (X-Plane doesn't support palette-based PNGs).
• You can have two versions of the texture file, one for daylight and one for night time. The night time version must have the same file name as the daylight version but with _LIT added on the end, and must be the same size. At dawn and dusk X-Plane averages between the daylight and night time versions. Blender doesn't look at the night time version (unless you load it yourself) - it's up to you to make sure that the daylight and night time versions match up.

We'll use PNG bitmaps because they're considerably smaller than BMPs and because they support Alpha channels. (Don't worry if you don't know what an Alpha channel is; you'll find out in the next chapter).

• Download the texture files for the Virgin hangar:

Download:

VAhangar_textures.zip

• Extract the contents of the zip file to the textures folder that you made earlier, ie in:

...\X-Plane\Custom Scenery\EGLL\textures

The UV/Image Editor window

To manage textures in Blender we need to open a new window:

• Click on the border at the top of the 3D View window:

• A dialog pops up. Choose Split Area:

• Move the window border with the mouse about a third of the way across the screen.
• Press to fix the position of the window border.

Up 'til now we've been using the 3D View and Buttons Window windows to make the hangar. To manage textures we also need to use a new type of window:

• Change the type of the new window to UV/Image Editor:

• Click on the padlock button in the menu bar. This tells Blender that the 3D View window should be updated immediately when we make changes in this UV/Image Editor window:

We've been using Edit Mode to construct the hangar. To manage textures, we will use a new mode:

• Choose UV Face Select from the Mode menu in the 3D View window's menu bar:

Note that the panels in the Buttons Window change to show buttons appropriate for managing textures.

We've been using Wireframe and Solid shading modes. To see textures we need to use Textured shading mode:

• Choose Textured from the Shading menu in the 3D View window's menu bar:

Assigning a texture

Here's the daylight texture file that you downloaded, marked up to show where each part is supposed to go on the hangar:

We'll start by assigning the texture file to every face of the hangar, and then fix up each face one by one:

• Press twice to select all faces:

• In the UV/Image Editor window, choose Image → Open:

• Navigate to the ...\X-Plane\Custom Scenery\EGLL\textures folder. (You can use the P button to go up a folder).
• Choose VAhangar.png
• Press the Relative Paths button (this ensures that Blender will still find the texture even if you later move or rename the EGLL folder).
• Press the Open Image button:

Blender assigns the whole texture to every face, with random orientations. What a mess.

We'll fix up the front face first.

• Press on the numeric keypad to get a front view.
• Use on the numeric keypad to zoom in so that the hangar fills a reasonable part of the screen.
• Click on the front face to select it. (Note that the selected face turns pink):

• Press to bring up a UV Calculation context menu.
• Choose From Window:

Blender re-orientates the texture so that it's the right way up:

The part of the texture file that Blender has assigned to the face is shown in the UV/Image Editor window:

Looking at the plan, we can see that we need to move the texture co-ordinates like this:

• In the UV/Image Editor window, use to pan and on the numeric keypad to zoom, so that we're looking at the top left of the texture:

Moving texture co-ordinates works just like moving vertices:

• Click on the top left vertex in the UV/Image Editor window to select it. (Note that the selected vertex turns yellow).
• Press to grab the selected vertex.
• Move the vertex with the mouse to the top left of the texture. (You can press to cancel the move, or to undo it if you make a mistake).
• Click when the vertex is in the right place:

If you want to check that your texture is perfectly positioned, you can press to display a properties dialog for the selected vertex:

The front face of the hangar in the 3D View window looks distorted and weird because we've (temporarily) assigned a non-rectangular texture to it. In general, rectangles with non-rectangular textures assigned to them always look bad.

• Repeat the procedure for the three remaining vertices, panning and zooming in the UV/Image Editor window as necessary to position the vertices exactly:

The front of the hangar should now look like this in the 3D View window:

Now we'll work our way round the hangar fixing up the rest of the textures using the same technique:

• Press on the numeric keypad to get a side view.
• Click on the left face to select it:

• Press to bring up a UV Calculation context menu.
• Choose From Window to make Blender re-orientate the texture so that it's the right way up.
• In the UV/Image Editor window move the vertices like this, panning and zooming as necessary to position the vertices exactly:

• Repeat the procedure for the right face using this part of the texture file:

If we zoom in on the join between the two faces in the 3D View window we can see that the textures don't quite match up:

• In the UV/Image Editor window, adjust the position of texture vertices until the textures line up exactly:

Now for the rear of the hangar:

• Press on the numeric keypad to get a rear view.
• Click on the rear face to select it:

• Press to bring up a UV Calculation context menu.
• Choose From Window to make Blender re-orientate the texture so that it's the right way up.

This part of the hangar just needs to be painted in grey stripes - no logos or other features. Looking at the plan, we've already used all of the parts of texture file for the front and right hand side of the hangar. That's OK, we'll re-use the texture from the front of the hangar. Blender and X-Plane stretch an assigned texture as necessary to fill the whole face.

• Assign a one pixel high strip to this face, from the same texture and with the same width that we used for the front face:

Blender stretches the one-pixel strip to cover the whole face:

The rest of the hangar - the other side and roof - also just need to be painted in grey stripes:

• Use in the 3D View window to rotate the hangar so that you can see the unpainted faces - ie the wall on the opposite side and the roof.
• Click on one of the unpainted faces to select it.
• Click on the remaining unpainted faces to also select them.
• Press on the numeric keypad to get the rear view again.
• Click on the rear face to also select it.

• Press to make the Buttons Window display the editing buttons.
• In the Texture face panel, choose Copy UV+tex:

Blender assigns the texture from the last face that you selected to all the selected faces. But if you look closely, you'll see the textures on the faces on the side of the hangar are not correctly orientated - the stripes are horizontal instead of vertical:

• Select the two side faces with horizontal stripes.
• Press to rotate the textures.
• A dialog pops up. Choose UV Co-ordinates:

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

• Press  to exit UV Face Select mode and and put Blender back in Object Mode.
• Use 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!

Marginal X-Plane Scenery Tutorials Hangar Applying textures