Hello all, I've been taking a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of proper scenery creation and I've purchased ArmorPaint to help with texturing. I'm slowly getting my head around the program, but my question is (and I probably should have figured this out before my purchase): is ArmorPaint useful for scenery in general? And also: all tutorials and instructions I can find on Google use Blender as the modelling programming; I use 3ds Max, is that compatible and/or usable with ArmorPaint?
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MSFS20 ArmorPaint and MSFS Scenery
- Thread starter frankg8
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Lagaffe
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Hi,
I use ArmorPaint since a year with goods succes. In the last revision, ArmorPaint can import .obj, .fbx and .blend.
If you use 3DS, export your stuff in .fbx splitting objects by Materials in order to view at screen one object at a time. As this you could paint very easily your stuff.
ColorID can also be a good method but I think it need more works.
In the Resources section you can find export preset for P3D and MSFS.
I use ArmorPaint since a year with goods succes. In the last revision, ArmorPaint can import .obj, .fbx and .blend.
If you use 3DS, export your stuff in .fbx splitting objects by Materials in order to view at screen one object at a time. As this you could paint very easily your stuff.
ColorID can also be a good method but I think it need more works.
In the Resources section you can find export preset for P3D and MSFS.
My "materials" are pretty much uvw-templates with Base/Albedo, Normal, and Occlusion/Roughness/Metallic maps in the corresponding slots using the flightsim material. I'm trying to use one .png map per building (see example below - links to keep size down) so the corrugated metal bits don't have a different material per se from the brick bits. Would it be advisable to give each part of the building a separate material in this case?
Albedo/Base
Occlusion-Roughness-Metal
Normal
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That's the way I do it. I assign materials to the different parts of my object, like "roof", "wall", "door frame", etc. Then UV-Unwrap it and export as obj.
Import to Armorpaint, during the import set "Split by material". Then you are able to create your nodes with the textures you have and work with layers just affecting the defined material (instead of the "shared" layer).
When finished export the textures. Using the MSFS exporter presets you will get the Albedo, PBR and Normal Texture in one file for each.
Then assign this texture to the MSFS Material slots.
Import to Armorpaint, during the import set "Split by material". Then you are able to create your nodes with the textures you have and work with layers just affecting the defined material (instead of the "shared" layer).
When finished export the textures. Using the MSFS exporter presets you will get the Albedo, PBR and Normal Texture in one file for each.
Then assign this texture to the MSFS Material slots.
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I tried to import a building obj with one texture file (x-plane style) into blender - unwrapped it and exported it as a wavfront obj.
after that I imported both files in armorpaint - I could export the texture files, but I get a strange result, when I reimport the texture files in blender. probably because I have only one texture file for all faces ?
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Yes I am using an already unwrapped obj but in x-plane there is only one texture for the whole object used. so
this part is working, but my problem is the import in armorpaint, so I cannot split by material, because ther is only one available.
Do I have to use a different procedure in armorpaint?
this part is working, but my problem is the import in armorpaint, so I cannot split by material, because ther is only one available.
Do I have to use a different procedure in armorpaint?
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So, after importing the XPlane OBJ in Blender you should not need to re-unwrap it, otherwise the UV information linked to your existing texture is lost. After importing, can't you just assign new materials to the different faces?
That will (at first) remove the original texturing information in blender, but that should not be a problem.
After you assigned the different materials to the faces, export the mesh as Wavefront OBJ.
Then in ArmorPaint import the Mesh, and drop your original texture into the lower right image slot in ArmorPaint. Make a "shared" layer (or the one existing), create a new material and set the original texture image as the BaseColor for this material. Then fill the whole object with this material. The texturing should then be correct, like before in X-Plane.
After that you can work your way by stacking the new layers (just affecting the materials you like) with new textures on top of this original image.
I have not tested it, but it should work in my opinion.
Then export your textures in Armorpaint and assign the same new texture image to every material in Blender (in the MSFS slots).
That will (at first) remove the original texturing information in blender, but that should not be a problem.
After you assigned the different materials to the faces, export the mesh as Wavefront OBJ.
Then in ArmorPaint import the Mesh, and drop your original texture into the lower right image slot in ArmorPaint. Make a "shared" layer (or the one existing), create a new material and set the original texture image as the BaseColor for this material. Then fill the whole object with this material. The texturing should then be correct, like before in X-Plane.
After that you can work your way by stacking the new layers (just affecting the materials you like) with new textures on top of this original image.
I have not tested it, but it should work in my opinion.
Then export your textures in Armorpaint and assign the same new texture image to every material in Blender (in the MSFS slots).
Pyscen
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XPlane uses one texture sheet if not mistaken. I believe your confusing the 1 texture to mean only 1 material,. You can have a number of materials on a single texture sheet though.
After you have UV unwrapped with x amount of materials, you should be able to export the obj file to armorpaint with no problem.
After you have UV unwrapped with x amount of materials, you should be able to export the obj file to armorpaint with no problem.