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Blender2FSX - help exporting textures

J

JKAGary

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13
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unitedkingdom
Hi All,

After spending most of my time creating models in Sketchup I have decided to take the plunge and start using Blender and Blender2FSX.

Since I am a complete newbie to Blender I started with a simple radar model and animation to learn the ropes. I created and added the appropriate DDS textures and a rotation animation.

When I export the model and import into MCX to test everything my MDL and animation works but the MCX ObjectRender reports that it failed to load the textures.

I've tried to copy the textures into various folders to see where i'm going wrong, and searched on the forum as well as watched krispy1001's youtube videos but i'm clearly missing or failing to understand a step with the texture paths

Any help, pointers to another thread where this has been discussed, or info on where i'm going wrong greatly appreciated.

blender%20radar_zpseyfce3fm.jpg


Blender%20MCX_zpsrhznnzv9.jpg


Thanks
 
Just in case you're not aware of these basic steps:

You said that you have tried putting the textures in various folders. If they weren't originally in the same folder with the .x and .xanim files, MCX won't see them. The textures almost always have to be in the same folder as the file imported into MCX.

If you had to move them into the same folder with your files, you should be able to get them to load by opening the material editor in MCX, clicking on the texture name in the properties tab, then scrolling down to the "Textures" section in the list view. Click on the texture name there and a button will appear to the right of the name. Clicking that button opens a dialog that lets you select the path to the texture. Do that for both textures.

Note that even locating the textures this way, they will not load if they are not in the same folder as your .x and .xanim files.

If this doesn't work, then you need to look into what Dutcheeseblend mentioned.
 
If you have a destination folder structure set up in FSX for your final project, you can also put the textures you want to use there (where they'll need to be finally in order to work in FS) and add that folder to your texture path in the MCX settings.
 
Thanks for all the responses and helpful hints.

You said that you have tried putting the textures in various folders. If they weren't originally in the same folder with the .x and .xanim files, MCX won't see them

Textures were originally (and still are) in the same folder as the .x and .xanim folder. However as no textures were displayed I assumed that this was the incorrect place and so I've copied the textures into multiple folders within my project hierarchy to see if I can trace the root of the problem.

You should be able to get them to load by opening the material editor in MCX.......

Tried loading them through material editor as suggested by the material does not seem to appear

How are the textures assigned in Blender? And what are the dimensions of the textures?

1 texture 512x512. The model itself is a previous sketchup model which I have converted to a obj file and then imported into blender so the textures are not assigned within blender itself by me.

Thanks for all your pointers i'll keep plugging away and review some of the tutorials again - and will probably create a basic model from scratch to learn the basics, rather than attempt an import

Cheers
 
I have since tried one of Krispy's Animated And Rigged Pilot models from the resources section and hit the same problem as my model when importing into MCX so it's clearly something I have fundamentally failed to grasp when exporting from blender
 
"Since I am a complete newbie to Blender I started with a simple radar model and animation to learn the ropes"
Click to expand...

I have a few Blender tips I want to share:
1 - Blender is a powerful and complex beast of a program (i'm loving it by the way) , but I can advise you to please go through the Blender Basics first?
Here you will find a few good and free Youtube tutorials channels, playlist about the very ABSOLUTE BASICS of the Blender program, trust me it is worth your time!.
- https://www.youtube.com/user/blendercookie/playlists
- https://www.youtube.com/user/BlenderForNoobs/playlists
- https://www.youtube.com/user/cgboorman/playlists
- https://www.youtube.com/user/blendertutordotcom/playlists
>>
-
-
Learn to understand how Blender works "under-the-hood" first, before continuing to more complex tasks like UV-Unwrapping and Texturing.

2 - Then dive deep into all kinds of UV-mapping, Unwrapping and Texturing possibilities that Blender has to offer (2d, 3d, handpainted, image files)
-
(1 of 4)
-
-
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjGCtnEDDeU

3- Put all relevant texture in the same folder as your Blender (model) file:
- That way you can never forgot to copy the relevant textures with your project, and you can find 'm back quickly.
- It helps other import/export utilities not to get lost in your files-system, path-to-texture-files, since everything related can be found in one place/folder.

if you need more Blender tips, just ask. i've collected a load of bookmark on the search to Blender starter tutorials.
 
JKAGary said:
The model itself is a previous sketchup model which I have converted to a obj file and then imported into blender so the textures are not assigned within blender itself by me.
Click to expand...
Since this was something that you originally made in Sketchup, here is something that works for me:

Import a textured Sketchup model into Blender as a Collada (.dae) file.

Add an empty and parent the model to it.

Animate it.

Export it as an .x file.

When the .x file is imported into MCX, it will probably have two warnings:

"XReader Warning Could not find linked animation for SketchUp"

If the Play Animation toolbar is showing, the animation will work. You can also look at the animation editor.

The other warning "ObjectRenderer Warning Failed to load texture: xxx.dds" will show, as you are aware, if the textures aren't in the same location.

I think you have .dds textures already, so just put them wherever you're going to put the .x file and you should not have a problem.

I export textures from Sketchup as .png. They will be in a folder with the same name as the .dae file. When I get the failed to load texture warning, I take the texture from that folder and put it with the .x file. Then I convert it to .dds in the MCX material editor.

I haven't a clue, but maybe importing your model as an .obj file had something to do with the textures not loading.

In Blender, did you look at the material or texture areas at the top of the properties editor when you had your object selected? If the texture area didn't show a texture, that might be why it isn't working for you.

When I look at my imported .dae, it shows a named material and in the texture part the texture, even though I did nothing to assign them in Blender and I don't do anything with them in Blender.

The MCX exported .bgl works "fine" in FSX.

I hope something in all this works for you.
 
Thanks for the tips Dave. I may try your approach.

Whilst i'm creating a number of models from scratch in blender, I have a significant number of models I originally created in Sketchup. My aim was to port some of those legacy models to start working on them and save me from creating everything from scratch again. I thought i'd start with one of my radar sketchup models to test the water and my process seemed to work. But now it doesn't

MCX.
-Import .dae file
-Convert texture to .dds
-Export model as .obj (Don't ask me why I chose .obj it seemed logical at the time and just a straight .dae import into blender may be the better option)

Blender
-Import .obj file
-Check Texture assigned correctly and check material in viewport (all correct)
-Add animation keyframes and create radar animation
-Export to folder ensuring .dds textures are in the same folder as the .x and .xanim

All seemed to work with the exception of only one face being textured. Realised I hadn't selected 'double sided' from FSX Material Params. However since then I seem to have screwed either the folder structure or something else hence my initially baffling question on this forum.

Since I had it all working before I may just scrub the project and attempt the process again with a different approach.

Cheers
Gary
 
All seemed to work with the exception of only one face being textured.
Click to expand...
Is it possible for you to pinpoint which face is it, and then delete it and re-create it?

Since I had it all working before I may just scrub the project and attempt the process again with a different approach.
Click to expand...
- Do you work with various version_numbers of the Blander project file that you are working with?
- Is is possible to go back to a version of the Blender project in which everything was working?


TIP: At every save of my blender-project-files I increase a digit in the filename example: [Projectname]_(version_number)_description.blend
That way I can always go back (in time) to re-create when i've screwed up something (that i did not know existed yet)
 
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