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blender

S

stevo

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unitedkingdom
Hi

I've just found this link on the Avsim forum

http://www.blender.org/

"An open source full featured 3D modeler, animator, etc"

Has anyone tried it fully and is it as good as Gmax, I cant imagine that it is.

I've downloaded it and noticed it exports .x files directly, I quickly tried a box and compiled it with makemdl, it worked except for the normals being flipped.

maybe another modelling program we could use.

Stevo ;)
 
Last edited:
Just checked it out...looks pretty interesting...gonna play with it later to see how it works. Thanks for the info.

Dave
 
Blender is so far out of gmax's league it's not fair to compare the two.


Anyway, I hope to start experimenting with exporting to FSX from Blender soon.

Anyone know of a good Blender import/export plugin for FSX .x files????
 
Patrick Duncan said:
Blender is so far out of gmax's league it's not fair to compare the two.


Anyway, I hope to start experimenting with exporting to FSX from Blender soon.

Anyone know of a good Blender import/export plugin for FSX .x files????
Click to expand...

There's not even a BAD one. FSX uses a LOT of "Metadata" in the .X file(s) that no one has any details for, since MS/ACES will not publish such details - ever.
 
Blender is quite powerful compared to 3DSMax 4 (the base product for Gmax).
2.42a has a very good .x exporter, including armatures and animations, but the problem is as Bill says the undocumented metadata syntax and format with only one example in the FSX DSK (the platform).

Without more examples of how the meta data is added to the standard .X file, it will take some work to make XToMdl work properly.

There is good news though:
1) Blender uses Python to export data, so if one knows what data goes where, it's theoretically possible to write the same gmax gamepack that MS puts out for 3DS (soon Gmax).
2) The .XAnim file seems very straightforward, and the base .X format has published specs in the DirectX SDK. The meta data is mostly for materials, keyframes and animations.


It looks like it will take a lot of work by trial and error, but it is theoretically possible to get an export package to work from Blender.

The simple thing of course would be a published set of specs, and I'm hopeful someone at ACES is reading this... :)
 
Due to a lack of unwrapping features in my Cinema 4D release, I tried blender. Its a quite powerfull tool. But you really need to get into it. Well, after some experimenting I got back to gMax for texturing....
 
I worked a little with Blender a few months ago and gmax around FS2000 time. Blender is not as powerful as gmax but if there would be an export script for Blender for FS then it would be my first choice since i don't really believe that gmax will exist for much longer (besides i dislike non working registration processes etc.)

I didn't look into modelling for FSX yet, only read about XToMDL, but for gmax i guess they might still use that questionable approach of passing the .x-file directly via shared memory into XToMDL instead of allowing the user to just save it. If thats the case i might make an update to mdlcommander for FSX sooner or later, so that .x-files can be saved again. And then there would be the possibility to write or modify an exporter for Blender so that Blender can be used instead of gmax.

If interested in mdlcommander (FS2000 and FS2004 and prolly even FSX, never tried so far) you'll find it here:

http://www.docmoriarty.com/msfs
 
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