• 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.

FSW MDL support & Material editor filtering

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
33,929
Country
netherlands
Last week Dovetail (finally) released a SDK for Flight Sim World (FSW). I have now updated ModelConverterX to support the FSW MDL format as well. This means you can read and write the FSW MDL files. To write them (or the FSW BGL files) you need to have the SDK installed.

I can’t garantuee that all new PBR material attributes are read correctly from the MDL file. I tried to locate most of them, but some I can’t find yet (when I change them in the X file, nothing changes in the MDL file). So let me know if there are specific issues.

With the new FSW material attributes the amount of attributes in the material editor has grown even more. So I have also added a filter to the material editor now, so that you can show the variables that are relevant for the FS version you are working with. For example if you select FS2004, you will only see those that are exported to FS2004.

material_editor_filter.png


Continue reading...
 
I converted a ground polygon (FSX) over to an FSW BGL and it's all messed up. Everything else appears to be okay.
 
Thanks Arno.
What are the main differences in the MDL format/internals?
Until now I only found new material settings for the PBR materials.
 
I converted a ground polygon (FSX) over to an FSW BGL and it's all messed up. Everything else appears to be okay.
You mean it renders wrong? Is it the layering or something else?
 
Hi Arno,
Is there any part in the SDK written about how to create the combined texture (texture name_C) for PBR effect on our model?

I tried but couldn’t find related info.
 
Converted the P3D poly over and it worked a little better, but the ground is eating it. It appears that the runway, taxiways, and ramp in the AF file is a few feet higher elevation than the surroundings and the models. Very strange, as that doesn't happen in FSX or P3D.
 
Thanks very much for this fast work! Initially the paths to xtomdl/bglcomp were messed up for some reason but I corrected them and exported an FSW model. I'll see how it goes with placing in the sim.
 
Is the FSW in a different location on your system? I try to set them automatically based on the FSW registry location.
 
Yes I had installed the SDK tools to a different steam library location from FSW itself (I installed FSW to my SSD to the SDK on my HDD). I'll see if I can find a registry path that is specific to where the SDK is installed.
 
Ah, ok, I didn't consider that setup indeed. If you can find some registry setting for the SDK that would be helpful.
 
Back
Top