• 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.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • 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.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    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 Toolset

Please take care everybody! The 'Scale' of an object has influence too on MouseRects! Always, always, never forget, Ctrl + A, Scale!

Otherwise it won't work either...
 
It's not a complex aircraft model, just a lowly scenery object. However, it shows off good Blender results, I think... honestly, I can't imagine using a tool like Gmax now that I'm Blender-aware. I do love the ease of baking the AO into textures!

kack_usps_01.jpg
 
Felix, what's the progress on skinned animations?

Somewhere in this thread you mentioned you'll need to rewrite the animations exporter to support skinned animations. Maybe this will make life easier: make two animation sections, one which handles the normal animations and the other which will handle skinned animations. This might have it's advantages I guess.

I wish I could help you more, but I don't know even the smallest thing of py and scripting.:oops:
 
Is it possible to use teh P3D v1 SDK for the Toolset instead of FSX SDK? Beacause, i can't find my FSX CDs since my last move to a new flat.
 
Looks sweet, Bill!

Just had a play around with Blender, checked out some tutorials etc and I'm liking it! Much easier and quicker to model a house than Gmax (IMO).
 
There are numerous getting started tutorials that work for beginners. I have gone through several of them and they are all about the same, albeit some have a few different details than each other. Once you are comfortable with the basics, I suggest a few tutorial over at CGCookie or BlenderGuru to familiarize yourself with the actions of the aspects of Blender. Even though rendering and most of the other functions of Blender do not apply to FS creations, knowing them can aide in demonstrating something you wish to do. I presented something to the AOPA back in November at a seminar and was praised for the work, knowledge and interest to further safety in aviation. I created the entirety in Blender and PDN/GIMP. Unfortunately the idea I presented was already suggested to the FAA and had funding approved for further testing. I was only months too late to receive a 1 year $30,000,000 proof of concept start-up grant. I am still working on a package that I want Boeing and other manufacturers to see. Its a big project but its all Blender and Paint.net/Gimp. I also started back to school this semester so time is booked up solid lately.

I also have about 15 other projects I am working on. One of which I am 90% finished with a prototype model, explored in Blender to aid with the visual design. Its not a million dollar idea but I wont complain for $50,000 first year with recurring orders spanning probably a decade or so; projected to earn 50-100,000 a year after. Fabrication would take about 3 hours per unit until an efficient method is placed, then it would be 20-30 min per unit if that.

Bottom line is Blender can be used for many things, not just FS development or for 3d design only. Its use extends to the real world as I have just explained.
 
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Hello Blender gurus !
From time to time I'm back to ask ... sorry for making questions only, and never posting any answer !
I set aside for a while the questions on animations (but for sure I will have some questions also for that).
Now it's time for "platforms", the landable platforms ! For sure you will bet I'm dealing with a sloping runway ! Well, you bet, you win !

I tried to make one; here the object I would like to be a landable platform:
Note: the object is made up of a number of planes (in total 8 planes: the aproon, the connection apron/runway, the runway top, three planes with different slope connecting the runway top to the sloping runway).

But it doesn't work ! My usual question is : what did I wrong ???

1913501_10202290713243144_645527058_o.jpg
 
Hardened platforms can be created in ModelConverterX. Ido not think that feature is yet available in Blender2FSX toolkit. Ther are other ways to make a hardened platform as well.
 
I just discovered something interesting while working on a Blender-based FSX project. In using Model Converter X to compare the material properties of my exported MDLs to the material settings in Blender, it appears the settings aren't working. For instance, though the "no base material specular" option is checked in the material properties by default, my models don't seem to be exporting with that option selected. Likewise, though the framebuffer blend settings are set to the opaque settings by default (zero/one), the exported model has them set to the default transparent settings (SrcAlpha/InvSrcAlpha). Changing the settings in the FSX material properties panel in Blender does not seem to affect the model it exports. Can anyone chime in here with a different experience? Perhaps I have something set up wrong.
 
I believe it should work. This will need to be commented on the by toolkit creator. My understanding is it just replicates settings from the SDK.

As far as functionality goes, everything should work unless its outlined in the wiki. A snippet is below.
Currently unsupported features are detail texture and fresnel ramp. These will be added in a future release. It is also worth mentioning that you have to use "normal" materials, as Blender2FSX doesn't support node materials.
Click to expand...
Also, try to upload the .blend file so it can be checked and referenced.
If its something you plan to release commercially, you should send it via email rather than post it in an open forum such as this.


One more thing, what is your blender install path, the path you installed the toolkit, and did you install the scripts or manually place them (where did you place them), did you enable the toolkit in the user preference?

If you havent done so, read the wiki.
 
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Thanks, Kevin. The baffling thing is that the toolkit is working beautifully - I've exported a dozen or more files for FSX now with it, so I'm fairly sure I set it up right. It's just the extended material params that aren't working. I'll check the wiki and my installation again.
 
I've gone over the wiki and even re-installed the tools, but get the same result. Here is some further info on my setup:

OS: Win-7 64 Ultimate
Blender: 2.69 64-bit version, installed to i:\Program Files\Blender\blender.exe
FSX Toolset: installed to I:\Users\[my username]\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.69\scripts\addons

Could this be an issue with the 64-bit version of Blender? As I said, I can export models fine, but none of the material parameters come out the way I set them in the interface.
 
Hello Bill,

I'm quite busy with other things at the moment, but I will check the issue as soon as possible. Thanks for reporting.

Regards,
 
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