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MSFS Decal materials in Blender

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@TangoGolf , nice work on your studies. I work in Blender also and presently trying to figure out why they do not use the color of the fusealage under them as they do in Asobo planes. Mine show up either gray, or bright white like chauk, like yours. A very difficult issue. Worked two days fairly hard to figure this out, going into the nodes, using an export of the Asobo Caravan decal strips to study and see the Material. I noted some things. First, they arent like decals. Asobo names their materials DECALS and RIBBONS. I think Ribbons were accidentally left out of the SDK. One Asobo person says they are Decals, but Decals do not act like rivets. Rivets act like the painted material they are hovering over. You can see rivets changing colors half over them on the Caravan in MSFS, so they are definitey using the undersurface as their base color. Some how......

I was able to duplicate their Node structure perfectly, but still it wouldnt work.

Would be nice to crack this..... I want colored rivets!
WorkingAsoboRivetsMaterial.jpg
Screenshot 2021-10-08 110923.jpg


This last image, these settings are only on the Asobo material, but when you import them to your model (the material) these settings disappear.


Bill
 
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Sample of rivets over colored areas going from white to purple.

Screenshot 2021-10-07 192232.jpg


Above screenshot is from the Asobo Caravan.
 
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One post above says they might need to be mounted to the plane, multi material. I might try that.
 

rhumbaflappy

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Some screenshots from MCX of the 208b:

ribbons.png


hull.png


livery.png


ribbon_material.png


One problem with our Blender... the Blender exporter for MSFS doesn't export a draworder. so we can't duplicate what Asobo has done, unless we edit the gltf.
 
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unitedkingdom
I'm not sure if RIBBONS are when you join a series of DECALS together to make one strip or ribbon.

I have been working on flat rivets and for seeing the colour under the decal, I have only been successful by erasing part of the albedo. If you have domed rivets, it looks like you can use the normal map to make a 'bubble' and a clear albedo for the colour underneath to show.
 

rhumbaflappy

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The name is RIBBONS, but the MSFS material type is Decal.
 
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Yes, join part in Blender for each individual decal/rivet to make a strip or ribbon of the decals/rivets so you don't have to keep repeating the same part/decal. Material type for both remains MSFS Decal material.

118 09Oct21.JPG
 
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Thanks @rhumbaflappy for the detailed screenshots. By the way, we do have Draw Order in Blender. From your screenshots above, you can see the entry.

Screenshot 2021-10-09 102350.jpg



I was told by someone who got these going in the Max version of the SDK, that all materials visibility must be 'zero' settings on visibility except Normal maps. I am going to check this out. I learned quite a bit about Nodes. I might be able to do that in there. I noticed that the Asobo material had a couple of special nodes to turn off materials.

This is from the screenshot by the person at another forum of the Max console setup for Ribbons (Decal but in Rivets setup).
 

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rhumbaflappy

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The exported MSFS glTF doesn't have Draw Order... it's just not written as far as I know.
 
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I have Ribbons working, just like Asobo have.

I used the Otmar Blender tools. I am in Blender 3.0, todays build, Oct 9th.
I used a copied out regular Decal material from the Cessna Caravan which I have been using in my other work (the Material). I could never get Decals to work right, except when I import a Decal part and use its material in Blender. So I tried it with this, imported my fonts Decal part, linked the Decal material to my Rivets Ribbons, then changed out Albedo first, then Normals second, then I did the COMP. It might be messing me up when in install COMP 2nd, so I did this last. Next, I turned off all 'Blends' (reset them to 0.0 ) except for Normal. Only Normal has Alpha Blend 1.0. In Blender, they are still gray, but in the sim, they are awesome looking... Doing exactly like what Asobo planes have... :)

I need to figure out why I cant get Decals working from a pure beginning Template. But at least they work now.


Screenshot 2021-10-09 122936.jpg


Screenshot 2021-10-09 123158.jpg
 
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I want to say... I prayed over this, for 2 days... and I prayed hard just now... and I tell you, like a miracle, a calm voice told me how to do it, and I did it, and it worked. Miracle. Thank You Lord. woo hoooooo!
 

rhumbaflappy

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I have Ribbons working, just like Asobo have.

I used the Otmar Blender tools. I am in Blender 3.0, todays build, Oct 9th.
I used a copied out regular Decal material from the Cessna Caravan which I have been using in my other work (the Material). I could never get Decals to work right, except when I import a Decal part and use its material in Blender. So I tried it with this, imported my fonts Decal part, linked the Decal material to my Rivets Ribbons, then changed out Albedo first, then Normals second, then I did the COMP. It might be messing me up when in install COMP 2nd, so I did this last. Next, I turned off all 'Blends' (reset them to 0.0 ) except for Normal. Only Normal has Alpha Blend 1.0. In Blender, they are still gray, but in the sim, they are awesome looking... Doing exactly like what Asobo planes have... :)

I need to figure out why I cant get Decals working from a pure beginning Template. But at least they work now.
I was using the wrong exporter! Glad you have it working. With the Otmar tools it does export with the DrawOrder.
 
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Hi,

I follow with great interest this topic and I have installed some plugins (bestdani, noolearo, fbw and vitus)

A default in my opinion that is always present in each plugin ... is "the name" used for each plugin in the interface (File -> Import/Export menu):

they are not significant and not being explicit enough, so it is very easy to make mistakes when trying to use "one plugin" instead of another one.

I am trying to modify each _init_.py file in order to distinguish each plugin from another.

Considering the many ("abandon-ware" :oops: ) exporter plugins available to Blender, I wonder if work on this 'helper' is still ongoing ? :scratchch

GaryGB
 
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Lagaffe

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Hi,
Currently I have worked around this problem by using several versions of Blender, each with 1 plugin and only one. As for the plugins I use, I have only two: Vitus with 2.83.18 and FlyByWire with 2.93.5
 
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Thanks, Didier, for sharing your insights with the above MSFS exporter plugins for cited numeric versions of Blender. :)

For those of us wishing to implement descriptive labels for exporter plugins, will you provide details on how to edit _init_.py files ? :scratchch


BTW: I saw a post somewhere recently, that the FlyByWire ('FBW') MSFS exporter plugin author has resumed work on that plugin. :idea:


IIUC, based on posts above on Page (2) of this thread, it appears Otmar's MSFSToolKit may also be 'compatible' with Blender 3.0. :pushpin:


Having multiple exporter plugin options may just prove to be a good thing for MSFS developers. :cool:

GaryGB
 
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My research shows the following

Vitus exporter version 0.40.0 or 0.40.2 seem to be ok for blender 2.93.x (latest is 2.93.5 ) and I have used in v3.0 alpha. It cannot really be updated as it uses Khronos gltf v2 blender exporter from 2019 gltf v2 exporter v1.0

There is also a git version 0.41.3 from tml I think. it fixes a few things. I use it because it fixes the collision mesh for aircraft in VR.


The FBW one uses Khronos gltf 2 exporter version 1.7.5, Khronos Blender exporter is at v 1.7.30, so it is about two months old, no update since June 2021

The MSFSToolkit, all of them are NOT compatible with FBW as it uses different naming for some of the MSFS parameters. Ie. In MSFSToolkit you have albedo, while FBW it's called base color, 80 percent of these Params are the same. But if you want to use FBW after you started a MSFSToolkit, you will need to manually change some materials to the what you had in MSFSToolkit. Compare the panels of each.

@Lagaffe is correct, use a separate blender version for each exporter, since there is overlap that will cause problems, that you may tear your hair out trying to find. Main blender version, not 2.93.1 and 2.93.4, .1 and .4 store plugins in the same place. You can use 2.83, 2.93, 2.94, 2.95, 3.0 alpha
 
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My research shows the following:

vitus version 0.40.0 or 0.40.2 seem to be ok for blender 2.93.x (latest is 2.93.5 ) and I have used in v3.0 alpha.

It cannot really be updated as it uses Khronos gltf from 2019 v1.0

There is also a git version 0.41.3 from tml I think. it fixes a few things. I use it because it fixes the collision mesh for aircraft in VR.


The FBW one uses Khronos gltf version 1.7.5, Khronos are at v 1.7.30, so it is about two months old, no update since June 2021

the MSFSToolkit, all of them are NOT compatible with FBW as it uses different naming for some of the MSFS parameters. Ie. In MSFSToolkit you have albedo, while FBW it's called base color, 80 percent of these Paramus are the same. But if you want to use FBW after you started a MSFSToolkit, you will need to manually change some materials to the what you had in MSFSToolkit. Compare the panels of each.



@Lagaffe is correct, use a separate blender version for each exporter, since there is overlap that will cause problems, that you may tear your hair out trying to find. Main blender version, not 2.93.1 and 2.93.4, .1 and .4 store plugins in the same place. You can use 2.83, 2.93, 2.94, 2.95, 3.0 alpha

Thanks for that updated synopsis of your experience with these MSFS exporter plugins, Ron.


I am concerned that MSFS-2020 extensions to glTF are all based on Khronos glTF v2.0 and later ...rather than glTF v 1.0 et seq. . :scratchch

https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/blob/main/extensions/README.md


On that basis, 'should' we refer to exporter plugins discussed above on Page (2) of this thread ...as MSFS "compatible" ? o_O


BTW: "Joisey Boys" would likely 'beg to differ' as to their uniqueness ...with regard to this part of your statement above: :laughing:

80 percent of these Paramus are the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramus,_New_Jersey

IIUC, "Params" = "Parameters" in 'programmer-speak'.

Isn't speech recognition software 'fun' ? :cool:

GaryGB
 
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:p
Sorry I should have said that it's based on the Khronos Blender gltf v2 export ver 1.7.30, MSFS is gltf version 2

I also forgot to mention that the FBW exporter tries to make your pngs all dds files so you can skip the build process, but I don't think it works unless you have textconv.exe file and all the path set correctly and you need to uncheck keep textures (or something). I only use FBW to import and "see things in the default aircraft.
 
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Thank you Lionheart!

I used the same settings that you showed in Blender 2.83.9 and my fasteners and rivets panel is now 3D and metallic (although some fasteners are inverted).

T188 10Oct21 2050.JPG


T188 Blender Decal Settings 10Oct21 2056.JPG
 
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