I did find it really easy to follow your tutorials and now I try to build a plane which my son made. Maybe you could make a bonus tutorial on how to make a Lego "airfoil" and scale the weight of the plane up or how to make it smaller in the size, to be the same size as if it would be real. And your tutorials are really great to start with modeling some aircraft! :)
Scaling size up or down is best done when importing the virtual LEGO plane to Blender. (when using the LDraw importer... there’s an option to scale.) You have to decide on a size at that point. Once the plane’s aerodynamic geometry is made inPlaneMaker, you cannot easily scale up or down. You don’t want to go TOO small, because X_plane’s flight dynamics are of a certain “resolution” such, that small planes tend to be less precise in their flight dynamics. Sorta analogous to having a low-res image of a plane... if the plane has a 1m wingspan, it’s as though it’s flying through a physics grid 1/10th as precise as a plane with a 10m wingspan would. This can also result in jitters. And if the plane is as small as a real Lego plane would be, you might have a hard time entering a reasonable weight as well. Just not very precise at those tiny scales. As for airfoils, that’d be more advanced... it’d probably be a flat plate airfoil, very draggy (because of the knobs and thickness) with very horrendous performance. But there’s a guy on RUclips who made just such a plane fly as an RC model... let’s just say, there’s a reason airfoils have the shape they have. Tinker around with AirfoilMaker. Do lots of Google research. Share your findings. That’s part of what I’m trying to get people involved in... I don’t want to just spoon-feed ready-made solutions or answers... i want this to be a community discovery journey.
@@danklaue Thanks for your response! After reading your comment, I've googled a bit about the physics in X-Plane and it would indeed be quite hard to get such a small plane flying. I will try to make such airfoil sooner or later, when I've figured out on how to use the airfoilmaker. My idea was to try to get a Lego plane flying in its actual sense and to experiment with the parameters of the plane, in terms of power, mass and speed to get it flying. (like a little child trying to through his plane.) But I can understand that this is not the idea behind your tutorials and I have to say that I`ve only modified planes in x-plane so far, besides one try in making a completely new plane, which failed. Your videos gave me the opportunity to make a Plane even though I am really bad at 3d modelling! Another benefit is the fast (at least in my sense) prototyping of some planes. I will try to share the result at the end... Regards and all the best P.S.: The video of the real R/C Lego plane from @PeterSripol is great, but in my opinion it is quite difficult to make a Lego plane, that won't need to go very fast and is still able to fly so he's done a great job. Even though he used large plates as wings ;-)
Thanks for recreating plane maker tutorials.. the 2009 videos were great, but this is a great overhaul. Would you consider making a short video on "modifying panels of existing airplanes"? A lot of us are just interested in tweaking panels such as changing panel color or moving instruments around and adding plugins like avitab.. Thanks in advance.
Modifying panels of existing planes is tricky. It used to be easy, when panels were all created in 2D. But since we went full 3D with cockpits, it is no longer viable. You'd need access to the source files, and a whole lot of knowledge. But as Thranda team, we are working on something to facilitate panel modifications. If we succeed, we can publish how-tos for that.
Wow, thank you very much for your effort! Very good and calmly explained, I think anyone could follow the tutorials. Actually, are some more tutorials planned? This one is already half a year old, nothing else came since, unfortunately :-/
Well, a lot of people _fly_ planes, but not many _make_ planes. It took me about a year to build the initial version of my open-source BD-5J (available free on x-plane.org, including the blend and GIMP files). If it were not for Dan's earlier videos, I doubt I would have been as successful. It takes patience to make a plane, but it's worth the effort. I'll add I was a busy professional software developer at the time, so if you have lots of free time (like many these days with all the lockdowns) it should go faster.
Hi, I followed your tutorial (which is great) but when I built my propeller and electric engine, it didn't spin as yours. I upload my model in XP and gave it some thrust but it didn't move. Did you use a dataref to make it work or how did you make it move? Thank you :-)
Honestly! our videos are a treasure for the x-plane community, I have a little question, is it really possible to develop an aircraft without spending time on modeling inside plane maker and instead of that use only blender?
No, that is not possible. At least, not if you want your plane to do any flying (or even loading) in the sim. What you model when you spend time modeling inside planemaker is actually the flight physics of the plane. Can´t skip this step. Don´t worry... it is such a minor deal, it usually doesn´t take long to get it modelled. I do this in a few hours, including all the flight controls, landing gear, engine properties, etc.
Does anyone know why planemaker won't display the rudder, flaps, elevators moving in real time as you adjust the variables on them? In this video, they start moving in real time the second you start entering values, presumably to show you visually how your values effect the control surfaces. But for me, nothing happens. I can start changing values and the control surfaces never move =/
Hello Dan, is it possible to continue at least with some textures, for example the best practices for unwrapping, until the plugin become stable?, Try not to leave us waiting for too long please, any video you think it is helpful and tips that can help us along the way, don't hesitate to publish it. (If possible of course) Regards
For texture unwrapping, I'd recommend looking up dedicated tutorials for that. In this series, I only try to cover what is strictly related to X-plane best-practices. The tutorials will come out when they come out. These aren't the only thing on my to-do list.
Hey please make a tutorial how to make a propeller spin or I mean make animation for it my 787 freeware project need animation please help By the way your tutorial is great
I will, but I'm really busy with a plane right now. Besides, both Blender and XP2B have received significant updates that warrant some more careful roadmapping for these tutorials.
danklaue Hello i made this gear tweak for the ff773 they where very big but i fixed it using skp i dont have any idea how to animate obj i tried but the sim crashed due to the wrong obj datarefs so if any one knows how to animate plz let me knows to send the file Problems ( gears doesn't retract + they are not titled and some small parts wrong animation
Dynamic yeah, I looked into the latest XP2B script... it’s still in Beta and was buggy in ways that messed up the series... I’ll see if this gets fixed, or at least such that I get the feeling that I won’t be painting myself into a corner.
![Quando Rondo - Life Goes On [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eIf3fhMXAow/mqdefault.jpg)
I did find it really easy to follow your tutorials and now I try to build a plane which my son made. Maybe you could make a bonus tutorial on how to make a Lego "airfoil" and scale the weight of the plane up or how to make it smaller in the size, to be the same size as if it would be real.
And your tutorials are really great to start with modeling some aircraft! :)
Scaling size up or down is best done when importing the virtual LEGO plane to Blender. (when using the LDraw importer... there’s an option to scale.) You have to decide on a size at that point. Once the plane’s aerodynamic geometry is made inPlaneMaker, you cannot easily scale up or down. You don’t want to go TOO small, because X_plane’s flight dynamics are of a certain “resolution” such, that small planes tend to be less precise in their flight dynamics. Sorta analogous to having a low-res image of a plane... if the plane has a 1m wingspan, it’s as though it’s flying through a physics grid 1/10th as precise as a plane with a 10m wingspan would. This can also result in jitters. And if the plane is as small as a real Lego plane would be, you might have a hard time entering a reasonable weight as well. Just not very precise at those tiny scales.
As for airfoils, that’d be more advanced... it’d probably be a flat plate airfoil, very draggy (because of the knobs and thickness) with very horrendous performance. But there’s a guy on RUclips who made just such a plane fly as an RC model... let’s just say, there’s a reason airfoils have the shape they have. Tinker around with AirfoilMaker. Do lots of Google research. Share your findings. That’s part of what I’m trying to get people involved in... I don’t want to just spoon-feed ready-made solutions or answers... i want this to be a community discovery journey.
@@danklaue Thanks for your response!
After reading your comment, I've googled a bit about the physics in X-Plane and it would indeed be quite hard to get such a small plane flying.
I will try to make such airfoil sooner or later, when I've figured out on how to use the airfoilmaker. My idea was to try to get a Lego plane flying in its actual sense and to experiment with the parameters of the plane, in terms of power, mass and speed to get it flying. (like a little child trying to through his plane.)
But I can understand that this is not the idea behind your tutorials and I have to say that I`ve only modified planes in x-plane so far, besides one try in making a completely new plane, which failed. Your videos gave me the opportunity to make a Plane even though I am really bad at 3d modelling! Another benefit is the fast (at least in my sense) prototyping of some planes.
I will try to share the result at the end...
Regards and all the best
P.S.: The video of the real R/C Lego plane from @PeterSripol is great, but in my opinion it is quite difficult to make a Lego plane, that won't need to go very fast and is still able to fly so he's done a great job. Even though he used large plates as wings ;-)
Thanks for recreating plane maker tutorials.. the 2009 videos were great, but this is a great overhaul. Would you consider making a short video on "modifying panels of existing airplanes"? A lot of us are just interested in tweaking panels such as changing panel color or moving instruments around and adding plugins like avitab.. Thanks in advance.
Modifying panels of existing planes is tricky. It used to be easy, when panels were all created in 2D. But since we went full 3D with cockpits, it is no longer viable. You'd need access to the source files, and a whole lot of knowledge. But as Thranda team, we are working on something to facilitate panel modifications. If we succeed, we can publish how-tos for that.
@@danklaue Thank you!
Wow, thank you very much for your effort! Very good and calmly explained, I think anyone could follow the tutorials. Actually, are some more tutorials planned? This one is already half a year old, nothing else came since, unfortunately :-/
Love the vid, your way of presenting is crazy good, dont know why this didn't have more likes?? Wheres all the Blender/Xplane fans at😂🔥
Well, a lot of people _fly_ planes, but not many _make_ planes. It took me about a year to build the initial version of my open-source BD-5J (available free on x-plane.org, including the blend and GIMP files). If it were not for Dan's earlier videos, I doubt I would have been as successful. It takes patience to make a plane, but it's worth the effort. I'll add I was a busy professional software developer at the time, so if you have lots of free time (like many these days with all the lockdowns) it should go faster.
Hi, I followed your tutorial (which is great) but when I built my propeller and electric engine, it didn't spin as yours. I upload my model in XP and gave it some thrust but it didn't move. Did you use a dataref to make it work or how did you make it move? Thank you :-)
Honestly! our videos are a treasure for the x-plane community, I have a little question, is it really possible to develop an aircraft without spending time on modeling inside plane maker and instead of that use only blender?
No, that is not possible. At least, not if you want your plane to do any flying (or even loading) in the sim. What you model when you spend time modeling inside planemaker is actually the flight physics of the plane. Can´t skip this step. Don´t worry... it is such a minor deal, it usually doesn´t take long to get it modelled. I do this in a few hours, including all the flight controls, landing gear, engine properties, etc.
Dan, do you have a tut on .wpn geometry, total lost with austin's interface control. let me know please. thanks.
I cannot download the .acf file from this tutorial by given link above, please help !
Does anyone know why planemaker won't display the rudder, flaps, elevators moving in real time as you adjust the variables on them? In this video, they start moving in real time the second you start entering values, presumably to show you visually how your values effect the control surfaces. But for me, nothing happens. I can start changing values and the control surfaces never move =/
Hello Dan, is it possible to continue at least with some textures, for example the best practices for unwrapping, until the plugin become stable?, Try not to leave us waiting for too long please, any video you think it is helpful and tips that can help us along the way, don't hesitate to publish it. (If possible of course)
Regards
For texture unwrapping, I'd recommend looking up dedicated tutorials for that. In this series, I only try to cover what is strictly related to X-plane best-practices. The tutorials will come out when they come out. These aren't the only thing on my to-do list.
@@danklaue Ok, Thank you for your reply, Good luck with your To-Do List.
Regards
I have one question about engines. Why when I am choosing jet engine it dont have model. I need import my own from blender?
sir，can you help me make my vtol uav model run in xplane 11 how much you can say
Great video, but sadly your recording kept freezing
Hey please make a tutorial how to make a propeller spin or I mean make animation for it my 787 freeware project need animation please help
By the way your tutorial is great
Awesome
hey thx. I ll do your tutorial :)
I will, but I'm really busy with a plane right now. Besides, both Blender and XP2B have received significant updates that warrant some more careful roadmapping for these tutorials.
danklaue Hello i made this gear tweak for the ff773 they where very big but i fixed it using skp i dont have any idea how to animate obj i tried but the sim crashed due to the wrong obj datarefs so if any one knows how to animate plz let me knows to send the file Problems ( gears doesn't retract + they are not titled and some small parts wrong animation
When is the next video?
Yeah, I'm quite tangled up with the Pilatus PC6 right now... but hopefully that'll be done soon, so I can get back to these tutorials.
@@danklaue are you done with it yet? its been nearly 6 months...
Dynamic yeah, I looked into the latest XP2B script... it’s still in Beta and was buggy in ways that messed up the series... I’ll see if this gets fixed, or at least such that I get the feeling that I won’t be painting myself into a corner.