Blender FSX export

[mickthebike]

Hi
I want to export my X-Plane to FSX.
Problems:
- Nothing shows up in FSX...how do I have to deal with the textures within Blender?
- animations. How? landing gear in Gmax and than? Can I have for example in the model more than one mdl? A gear.mdl & fuselage.mdl?
The panel animations...Gmax same as landing gear?
Thanks
Michael

[FelixFFDS]

As I am not familiar with how are you exporting from Blender into FS-X, I cannot answer.

If you are using the exporter I think you are, it does NOT handle FS-X animations, materials, etc.

Your best bet, to date, would be to export your Blender model mesh into gmax, and set your animations, materials, there, and export using the gmax gamepack.

[mickthebike]

Blender2FSX. It looks useless for now. What shall i do with that mdl? I can export / import in gmax in other formats but textures etc. are lost?
I want to keep as much as possible....:D and I'm not eager to learn gmax. Anyone interested in taking my PC-12 to FSX, we can talk about that via PM.
Cheers

[Chuck Jodry VJPL]

The textures are lost but your mapping is not, its easy to reasign them , the animations unfortunately do not survive and a smoothing group and uvw unwrap need to be assigned to your mesh to access the material editor.
Not a major drama , if you can model in blender you can figure out anything given time.

[n4gix]

To answer your other question...

...in FSX you have two and only two .mdl files:

MyAirplane.mdl
MyAirplane_interior.mdl

[mickthebike]

The textures are lost but your mapping is not...a smoothing group and uvw unwrap need to be assigned to your mesh

Hi Chuck
thanks. As I'm new to gmax you could be more specific with smoothing group and uvw unwrap?
Anyway most important which format can I use for the Blender export and Gmax import?
dxf, which I wanted to use, doesn't seem to handle textures?
Many thanks and regards
Michael

[Chuck Jodry VJPL]

Hi , I normally export as a 3DS file, this fomat keeps the mapping and texture assignments intact depending on the source, my use of blender
is mostly as a research tool and one of my favorite ways of bouncing mesh between 3ds and Gmax , there are other ways but i find the mesh is less mangled.

How to use Gmax--
Very little about fsx modelling remains unexplaned at this site,
http://www.aerodynamika.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=tutorials
there are a large number of tutorials about basic production methods ,animation and export,
you'r going to need more info than just smoothing groups and FFDS is the Motherload , combined with the FSDevelopers Wiki
and questions about specific problems posted here or there ( forum members are mostly the same )you will muddle through
Its familiarity with the SDK thats the challenge , Gmax is simple compared to that little ordeal .





first download the Gmax helpfiles from turbo squid so that you can quickly see the location of the "rollouts", i found that invaluable .

PS Like Blender there is a wealth of script available for adding tools to G&Max once your "settled"
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max-main
has a tonne , most script made for max4 will run in Gmax.


Welcome to Hell , Recess is over ....

[mickthebike]

Thanks. I tried 3DS and nothing showed up in Gmax. But if you say that you use that format I must have done something wrong.
Do I need to convert quads to triangle in the mesh or something else to take care of? Well I try again...
Regards Michael

[José Bourgoignie]

Hi,

I can be wrong but I saw something as MD5.GMAX "MD5 Exporter" for gmax. See www.doom3world.org . There are a lot of scripts to find.

Greetz. José.