I was working on a building structure and I wanted to get an idea of how it would appear in relation to say a typical combat unit like the IDF sabre tank, but when I imported an COB converted data pack XSI of the tank it was humongous in relation to my building. I know how to use the geometryscale thing in the ODF settings, but considering this size difference am I making my stuff too small?
I guess part of the problem lies with understanding that a meter is roughly equivalent to a yard and using a simple calculator to translate size relations is something many American modelers still have some difficulty comprehending (I hope I'm not the only one grappling with this issue). BNG.
its different with all modelleing programs, the relative size thing, i worked out that 8 small suqares equals 4 metres in game in blender..
geometry scale is a decimal number portraying a percentage. so if i wanted my model to be 100% its original size, i would use:
geometryScale = 1.0
if i wanted it to be 75% of its size, i would use
geometryScale = 0.75
if i wanted it to be 175% its size, i would use,
geometryScale = 1.75
you get the idea...
That is difficult if you have a terrain plate though, for that you need it to be pretty exact.
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To get a good guess on 3ds Max, import ANY .3ds of a stock buildings, perferibly a 1x1 Building (if you need one, contact me, dont post here).
It will scale the object to the scaling you have and anythign you base off the baseplate size will come out EXACT. (pretty sure this works with any other modeling program...)
Normal base plates are 32x32m and factory size ones are 64x64m.
1 terrain measure is 8 meters normally. A 1 tile building is 4 of these tiles. Thus use a 4 by 4 cell plane for the terrain__h and anything for the visible terrain. 8 meters per sub square with 4 sub squares is 32 by 32 meters for a one tile structure as BBB said. Some maps may us a different scale, but this is on purpose and the sort of thing you KNOW when you do it (all of the EPIC mod).
Relying on only Geometry Scale can have some odd side effects, so be careful. (Especially with scales like 0.1 and 0.04 like I often use when my models are still WIP.)
In TS 7.6 the smallest grid equals 1 meter in groups of 4x4. Looks like I am making my buildings way too small. Tanks for the feedback guys...BNG.