MSFS20 Blender2MSFS support thread

[marcoh]

One problem solved.

Transparency

I have finaly found yhe problem of transparency who was showed in Blender and not in the sim.
I use PhotoShop (PSD) texture in Blender with Alpha Channel.

But when exporting, the Alpha channel from PSD is loose. So the PNG texture was not whit a alpha.
After saving my PSD texture in PNG manualy in PaintShopPro, the Alpha is saved in PNG and transparency is correct in MSFS.

 

[Milan05]

I have a fairly complex structure in Blender.

I tried simply exporting it to GLTF without assigning any of the materials to MSFS Material Parameters but my object did not show up in the SDK list for import - figured it was to do with the textures and the fact I didnt assign each of them to MSFS parameters

I opened up my Blender file again - all textures still applied to my model. I went through each material one by one and selected the appropriate setting, either MSFS Standard or MSFS Glass, I made adjustments to colours where necessary etc however nothing major.

A few hours later I was finally ready to export, every material in my model was now assigned to an MSFS Parameter.

As a test I removed ALL materials from the object and then applied one albedo texture for the entire object, had no issues seeing it in the sim....Given that I've applied every single material on my current object in blender as either msfs standard or msfs glass, i'm really not sure why its not showing up in the game. Any ideas?

 

[MOCKBA]

Stupid question but how do I install the add-on?

I click Install button from Add-Ons in preferences, but no matter what .py I select Blender doesn't add the exporter. What am I missing?

 

[YohanNaz]

Stupid question but how do I install the add-on?

I click Install button from Add-Ons in preferences, but no matter what .py I select Blender doesn't add the exporter. What am I missing?

Leave the zip file intact, the install is looking for the .zip.

 

[WildLynxPilot]

@Milan05 after exporting from Blender, did you re-build your package in the sim in dev mode, copy the new package to your community folder and re-open your project in dev mode? A new model does not appear automatically afaik...

 

[Milan05]

@Milan05 after exporting from Blender, did you re-build your package in the sim in dev mode, copy the new package to your community folder and re-open your project in dev mode? A new model does not appear automatically afaik...

I went into the sim, built the package, didn't get any further because after loading in editor the object wasnt in there.

I've had some more success today but its not ideal. I've got my object with all materials, I stripped all the materials off and then applied one basic texture to the whole model, I was then able to actually see the model and load it into the sim.

So something in my current model with all my current textures is screwing with the export because exporting my current model with all materials applied (MSFS Params applied) isn't even allowing me to find my object in the editor. Very frustrating.

 

[WildLynxPilot]

Did you remember to select everything (press A) in Blender before exporting? I have sometimes forgotten that and then the model is empty...

 

[andres291]

I'm using blender v.2.83.5. Three weeks ago I was able to import a blender building with its textures into MSFS thanks to this tool. During 2 weeks I did nothing else. Now, after last game update, when I try to import new objects with new textures, an error shows when compiling: “Failed to convert texture: C:***\MyFSProjects\Castillo_sample2.0\PackageSources\modelLib\TEXTURE\PUERTA.PNG” (I've replaced main route with asterisk, but that's the fail). No matter if I try to import .JPG pictures or .PNG. It looks like the game is denying me to do such thing since last update, I say this because I did exactly the same that I did 3 weeks ago, but then it worked. I've tried with the prior version of this tool (the one that used to work for me) and the last update, I had the same fail.

I don't know if I'm the only one reporting this issue. I've read a few posts but it looks like nobody else have this problem.

 

[Milan05]

Did you remember to select everything (press A) in Blender before exporting? I have sometimes forgotten that and then the model is empty...

Yeah I did. Is there a python script or something that I can use that will take my current object selection, convert it to MSFS Paramater 'MSFS Standard', and then apply the same colours and settings (or at least the same colours) that the original material had?

I don't mind having to manually do things like glass etc but I have hundreds of objects, I cannot physically change each one to MSFS Standard. I'm not only having to go through each object and select MSFS Standard, I'm having to then manually match the colour of the MSFS Standard albedo/emissive to the original colour of the object. This addon is honestly awesome so I'm really hoping there is a way to automate this.

 

[WildLynxPilot]

Glass material in Blender

I finally managed to get a decent transparent and reflective windowpane glass material working from Blender to MSFS. The key was to 1) change the Alpha in the Base Color settings under Use Nodes to a low value (I was using 0.08) and 2) assign MSFS Glass in Material mode, 3) use no Texture maps and 4) change Alpha multiplier to a low value (0.12) and then play with Reflection mask factor (0.67) and Roughness scale (0.0) for a desired result. Leave the Metallic scale on 1.0.

The Alpha can not be changed in the MSFS material parameters Albedo color setting, so you have to do it under the Base Color settings - this is the detail that I missed earlier on. @Vitus - could this alpha setting probably be included in a future version so that you can set all necessary parameters under the MSFS parameters?

If you want a tinted glass, then you can change the color in the Albedo color setting in the MSFS Params.

 

[Vitus]

The alpha multiplier in the MSFS material parameters should have the same effect. If not, I made a boo-boo.

I use a full texture set for both glass and windshield and it works fine. I've got a .TGA albedo with an alpha channel, a metallic map and a normal (which is probably superfluous). You need REALLY low alpha values though for this to look ok and also make sure that the color value of your glass is not too dark - to avoid that, use an image format in Blender that actually has a proper Alpha channel, like tga. BUT: as pointed out before, don't use PSD files! The exporter will remove the alpha channel of the PSD! It works fine for any map that doesn't contain an alpha channel though.

 

[Milan05]

Yeah I did. Is there a python script or something that I can use that will take my current object selection, convert it to MSFS Paramater 'MSFS Standard', and then apply the same colours and settings (or at least the same colours) that the original material had?

I don't mind having to manually do things like glass etc but I have hundreds of objects, I cannot physically change each one to MSFS Standard. I'm not only having to go through each object and select MSFS Standard, I'm having to then manually match the colour of the MSFS Standard albedo/emissive to the original colour of the object. This addon is honestly awesome so I'm really hoping there is a way to automate this.

As a follow up to this, I've gone through literally every texture of my model and applied either MSFS Standard or MSFS Glass. My understanding is that this is what is required for literally every texture as there are only 15 different settings that MSFS uses. so if there are any textures that haven't been converted to MSFS Standard it won't work. The object however still cannot be found in the scenery list, fair to say im gutted

 

[Vitus]

The object however still cannot be found in the scenery list, fair to say im gutted

Did the scene get converted properly into the glTF format? Do you get the gltf + bin files and does the glTF look complete, at a glance?

 

[Milan05]

Did the scene get converted properly into the glTF format? Do you get the gltf + bin files and does the glTF look complete, at a glance?

Yes absolutely. I get the bin, the xml, and the 3d object. I know it's an issue with the textures as earlier I tried loading the object into the sim with no textures and had no issues seeing the object in the sim.

I just can't work out why there is an issue as literally every texture has been assigned an MSFS parameter

Taking a look at the error log in the SDK. The three fails I get are all related to three JPG images which I have in my model, these are all failing to convert. Even if a jpg image was impacting my model, I would have thought they just wouldnt load in on the model, as opposed to the entire model not loading into the sim. I'll try it out and report back.

-----------------------

Can report back the JPGs were the problem.....

 

[WildLynxPilot]

I have also previously had problems with jpg - converting them to png did solve those problems.

 

[fsdev3d]

I've noticed that the exported models, in-sim, all have their origins at the blender world origin. So in order to have the model origin in-sim to match the blender model origin, i have to manually move the model in blender in world 0,0,0. Can this be done automatically by the exporter? Maybe I overlooked something?

One more thing i can't figure out. If i want to export multiple distinct objects from a single blend file, how do i do that? I tried exporting each time a different selection, but the xml is generated with the same guid, as a result the build package fails. So any ideas?

thank you!

 

[WildLynxPilot]

@Vitus, no boo-boo I now realised that the Base Color alpha and the MSFS Alpha multiplier really are connected. If I change the multiplier value it also changes in the Base Color. But if I change it in the Base color, then the multiplier value does not change. It seems to be working anyhow - setting the multiplier value works fine now (I am not sure it did in the earlier versions as I banged my head with that for quite some time before giving up?). Now I am happy, and my buildings will get proper glass!

 

[fsdev3d]

ok, for my last question about multiple objects, i just figured that i can manually change the guid in each xml. I thought this was also matching a guid in the bin maybe but this doesn't seem to be the case.
It would be nice for the exporter to have an option to automatically export every object in blender separately with a single action.

 

[BMW969]

After the update, there were problems with buttons in the editor.
You have to press twice. But the most unpleasant thing is that the capture of the edited object is reset. I want to rotate or move a building,
I press the corresponding button, but there is nothing to edit. You have to search again from the list.

 

[ChrisBrusch]

So after spending a week oe two trying to create an airport on blender 2.90.. trimmed it to how I would like it.. I get the error (posted below).. I've read from page 1 to page 18 and am guessing I have to switch to blender 2.83 to export the XML and Textures? This is my first try at making something from anything so any help or pointer would be greatly appreciated

What I get when trying to export...


Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\Chris\Desktop\Blender\MSFSToolkit\exporter\__init__.py", line 434, in execute
ImportError: cannot import name 'gltf2_blender_export' from 'MSFSToolkit.exporter.exp' (C:\Users\Chris\Desktop\Blender\MSFSToolkit\exporter\exp\__init__.py)

location: <unknown location>:-1



Also after checking three more times the textures didnt save to a texture file i created