• 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

Hallo Mats,

Thank you for the kind words. Good choice with the Piper, nice model. Although it seems to me that there is a scale issue with the landing gear (in the x-direction). The tires in the render look thinner than in the FSX screenshot. Keep it up, and if there is something we can help with, don't hesitate to ask...

Regards,
Felix
 
It's a clear toolset capt_x!

I'll be testing a lot of features in the upcoming period;)

BTW, do both the external AND internal models have to come from the same Blender file? Or better said, have the same GUID and Friendly?
 
Dutcheeseblend said:
It's a clear toolset capt_x!
Click to expand...

Thank you.

Dutcheeseblend said:
BTW, do both the external AND internal models have to come from the same Blender file? Or better said, have the same GUID and Friendly?
Click to expand...

Simple answer: No. And every .MDL file needs to have its own GUID. For FSX, you would typically have two .blend files, one for the exterior and one for the interior model, each with an own unique GUID and friendly name.
 
Hey guys!
Thanks for your replies! I don't really know how to render only the edges. But there has been the option "Wire" in the material editor. The other picture is the original aircraft after the repair caused by a tail strike (not responsible for that :D).

Maybe another feature for the next version: Setting the current frame of the animation to 0 when starting the export. I forgot that several times and for example had the elevator at the upper position instead of the middle one. Or I didn't get the advantage :rolleyes:

Greets and have a nice weekend
Mats

cadet_overview.jpg
 
Well, I'm arrived at VC modelling, texturing and animating. Animations work properly (ie the common ones: throttle etc) but MouseRects don't work in FSX. No hand cursor shows up by placing the cursor over the throttle control. Nor it can be moved.

I guess the exporter doesn't take it along during export, because I wasn't able to find the term 'lever_throttle0' in the .X and .XANIM files.

Hope I'd informed you clearly;)

Further, the toolset is performing great as far as I've noticed!

Cheers:)
 
Dutcheeseblend said:
Well, I'm arrived at VC modelling, texturing and animating. Animations work properly (ie the common ones: throttle etc) but MouseRects don't work in FSX. No hand cursor shows up by placing the cursor over the throttle control. Nor it can be moved.
Click to expand...
Is that happening with all mouserects? have you tried any other?
Dutcheeseblend said:
I guess the exporter doesn't take it along during export, because I wasn't able to find the term 'lever_throttle0' in the .X and .XANIM files.
Click to expand...
You won't find that expression because it is not written to the .X file as plain text. Instead, a "Partdata" section is generated for the corresponding part which contains a sequence of numbers. Check if the throttle has that. Also, in Blender's interactive console, check the attachpoint tag associated with your part:
  • select your part (the throttle lever)
  • in the interactive console, enter the following
    Code: 
    C.active_object.fsx_xml
  • hit enter
It should return a string like this one:
Code: 
'<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> <FSMakeMdlData version="9.0"> <MouseRect name="knob_vertical_speed"> </MouseRect> </FSMakeMdlData>'
If it doesn't, then something has gone wrong in the attachpoint tool. Let me know the status...
 
Thanks for your reply!

PartData in the .X file contains a sequence of numbers, so that might be OK. The console returned the right string, so probably nothing's wrong with the exporter.

MouseRects don't depend on things like hierarchy? I don't think so... The animation is displayed correctly in FSX.

There's no setting in FSX which cancels out the Rects?
 
Good evening guys!
I managed it to get to the VC now as well.

Unfortunately the dummy textures ($texture) don't work inside my PA28. I did some changes in the panel.cfg, exported the VC, but only get a black plane. After some tests I tried the same with GMAX, what actually worked. So there might be something wrong with my workflow?
What I did:
  • used photoshop to create a 1024^2px .bmp texture with 24bit color depth
  • created a plane in Blender and gave it a material
  • activated the tick at the FSXMaterial and checked the option "is virtual cockpit panel texture"
  • applied the texture and UV mapped the face of the plane onto the whole "$PA28_RADIO.bmp"
  • exported
  • [edited panel.cfg, but there can't be the problem as it worked with GMAX]
problem.jpg


So what's wrong guys? Really hope you can help!

Greets from Hamburg
Mats
 
Mats,
make sure to have the latest version (update[2014/01/04]) of Blender2FSX (in previous versions, "Is virtual cockpit texture" did not work, resulting in black parts like the one you are showing).
 
Dutcheeseblend said:
There's no setting in FSX which cancels out the Rects?
Click to expand...

None that I know of. Only times you would have this happen is when a transparent part covers the mouserect part. Try another mouserect somewhere to see if it is a general issue or if it is specifically related to "lever_throttle_0".
 
Right, just found a bit of time to experiment with the Mouse Rectangles. First, I uses an old scene which I used to test the automatic VT and MR parsing of MCX, with just a handle and two other objects. The MR appeared correct. After that I dit a test with just the Fokker panel with the throttle quadrant. Also the MR did appear, but...

When there's no object behind the object to which an MR is attached to, the MR will appear.

(my apologies, cursors won't appear in a screenshot)

But if my mouse moves down (and thus another object is behind the mix control) the MR disappears.


Now this is quite strange:confused:. The next step to find out if the Blender hierarchy has some influence on this. I'll post that later.

I hope this was helpful to you! I don't know if such things occur with 3DS!?

Exporting btw goes fluently! One year ago there was no possibility to quit Blender and start FSX and fly the model you created only a few seconds earlier!
 
Right, I just found it, after looking in the default FSX mdl files. Static objects in the interior model are all child of the main scene node. Animated objects are a children of another node in the main node. This subnode is divided into animated objects inside the cockpit, and another of the outside animations. See the screenie below.

So I applied this to my own cockpit and MR's are working fine now! Learned something again:cool: and sorry for the questions:tapedshut
 
Can you explain that in detail, Dutcheeseblend? Does one have to setup all animated parts with Mouserects as children of a separate node?
 
In the two SceneGraphNodes highlighted in red below, are the animated objects present. The static objects are children of the main node.
In the lower SceneGraphNode, the one which isn't selected, are most external animations present, but more important, no Mouserects.
In the selected node, most objects have MRs. Also present are the propellers (I use the default Goose for reverse engineeering:D). The yokes and rudders are also in this node, while they obviously have no MRs. So I think it has to do with attached objects, though I'm not sure about that, because in the other node, attached lights were present.



I hope this was clear enough, if not, let it know;) Please notice, this hasn't yet been through extensive testing, so conclusions might me different. I observed the right outcome anyway, so I guess this is a required setup.

Edit: I just found out that the animated objects are automatically being grouped, so in fact a user should only make distinction between animated objects with attachments and animated objects without attachments.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top