• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
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    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
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    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Blender to FSX - Skinned meshes mini-tutorial

Hi @Chrismot !

As I have found out myself lately, there are still some issues with the correct angles for the animations of bones. This whole vector math/matrix transformation issue is a little tricky, as I have still to find out which data source best to use... :stirthepo I'm currently working on the issue and will post an update ASAP.

Cheers :)
 
Vielen Dank Felix!

just used your skinned meshes mini tutorial to animate a scarf for the Klemm-Pilot.
Have the bones assigned to prop0_blurred, so the scarf is only blowing when the prop rotate.
Thx again for your great Blendertool!

Grüße
Stefan

Scarf.jpg
 
Ok, I'm back on problems-reporting-stage! Eheh...

I started a very careful skinned mesh on my T.5 tailwheel assembly. When I tagged all bones, the complete assembly was displaced (so every part was translated in a different direction and location in FSX). So I reduced the complete rig to one tagged bone, the wheel slow rolling one. But: the wheel is offset from the fork. How to eliminate this offset? The animation in this case works fine, so no problems with that.


displacement_skinmesh_t5_01.PNG


In the figure below, my mesh and rig are shown. It's all about the TW_wheel bone...

displacement_skinmesh_t5_02.PNG


It appears to me that the offset that the TW_wheel has from the TW_fork (in Blender) is multiplied for some reason. There's no one constraint in the relevant bones (hierarchy: strut > pivot > extra > fork > wheel). As one might observe, the location of the wheel in FSX is in the same direction as the location of the wheel in Blender...

Any ideas anyone?
 
@kowal5376

I have released a new version of the tool set today, following what I discovered in the .blend file you sent me. I hope this solves many of the placement issues with skinned mesh in FSX. Thanks a lot for that. One thing though: All vertices need to have a bone/vertex group. For vertices that don't move, you need to assign them to a static bone, or they will be collapsed to one point. This is what we saw in the pic.

@Dutcheeseblend

Daan, you might want to try the latest release. It uses a different data source for the placement of the bones. Watch out if you're using contraints in your assembly! These no longer work with bones. You need to bake the animations and remove constraints before export.

Cheers :)
 
Ok, I did but now I'm getting an error immediately on export:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\A.H.T. Kaasjager\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.72\scripts\addons\io_scene_fsx\__init__.py", line 138, in execute
Exporter = export_fsx.FSXExporter(self, context)
File "C:\Users\A.H.T. Kaasjager\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.72\scripts\addons\io_scene_fsx\export_fsx.py", line 74, in __init__
ob.Children.append(ExportMap[child])
KeyError: bpy.data.objects['Armature_TW']
location: <unknown location>:-1

I'm shutting down no, so relax :)
 
hi, when i try eport following the steps in here i get this

****************
Read new prefs: C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.73\conf
ig\userpref.blend
found bundled python: C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.73\python
Info: New GUID generated...

Info: Total files 0 | Changed 0 | Failed 0
read blend: C:\Users\me\Documents\bear1.blend
Info: New GUID generated...

Blender2FSX v.0.8.1 Copyright (C) 2014-15 Felix Owono-Ateba
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see source files for details.
Gathering scene objects information...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.73\scripts\addo
ns\io_scene_fsx\__init__.py", line 138, in execute
Exporter = export_fsx.FSXExporter(self, context)
File "C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.73\scripts\addo
ns\io_scene_fsx\export_fsx.py", line 76, in __init__
ob.Parent = ExportMap[ob.BlenderObject.parent]
KeyError: bpy.data.objects['Armature']

location: <unknown location>:-1

location: <unknown location>:-1

**********

from blender. any ideas please?

i'm not using the object created in this demo, i have a mesh and textures i downloaded, i guess i need to try create an object from scratch like in this demo

UPDATE, i just created the cylinder like in the demo and followed all the steps and same message. it looks like i installed something wrong?
 
Last edited:
ok, will load that, thanks

So, i loaded it and now it exports the .mdl without error. i make a .bgl out of it, load it in FSX and i can see the model ok, but no animation.

i want it to simply animate in a loop all the time, is that possible? you say something about hitting the shift+e key at the end, which i don't want to do, but i did try it and that didn't work either.

thx
 
Last edited:
also, i'm pretty sure the animation didn't get into the .mdl because i open it in modelcoverterx and it doesn't see any anim

FYI, i made a video for how i made the animated model here


i've tried an experiment, i removed all the assignments for the bones, and i exported a .x, then i load it in ModelCoverterX

it loads ok but not surprisingly i get some warnings like
7:23 PM XReader Warning Could not find linked animation for Armature_Bone
7:23 PM XReader Warning Unsupported X command BoneInfo
7:23 PM XReader Warning Could not find linked animation for Cylinder

so i go back into blender in pose mode, select a bone, select Ambient and hit assign

i save as .x and reload in MCX and i get this error

**********
An error occurred during importing the selected file

Message:
An item with the same key has already been added.

StackTrace:
at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentException(ExceptionResource resource)
at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert(TKey key, TValue value, Boolean add)
at ASToFra.ObjectReader.XAnimParser.Parse(String filename)
at ASToFra.ObjectReader.XReader.ParseXAnim(String filename)
at ASToFra.ObjectReader.XReader.Read(String filename)
at ASToFra.ObjectReader.AllObjectReader.Read(String fileName)
at ASToFra.ModelConverterX.MainWindow.bwImporter_DoWork(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)

*************
i'm not sure what to make of that
 
Last edited:
@Felix: Yup, Armature_TW is for the tailwheel.

@steveh2112: I believe MCX doesn't display skinned animations correctly, since mine didn't show up in MCX either while working (incorrectly, but..) in FSX.
 
thx, but i can't get it to work in FSX which is the main point of course. i started a new thread since i don't want to load this one up with my personal problems. thanks
 
Yeah, I understand, I'm having the same problem. I just wait patiently for Felix :D he's doing a great job with the toolset but has, like us, a real life ;)

For the time being, I just focus on other things, animations that can be done without bones, texturing, modelling and so on. We'll get the issue fixed mate!
 
ok, i didn't know it was a known problem, actually i am working on my race circuit so animation isn't a deal breaker anyhow.
 
Hi there!

Ok, I'll send it! I think the problem is, that the main LOD object doesn't like armature-object children. Even with the Armature_TW hidden (so unselected), I got the same error message, which was only eliminated when I unparented the LOD from the armature (so that the armature is no longer a child of the LOD400 empty).
 
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