MSFS20 Blender2MSFS support thread

[VFXSimmer]

I have the Problem that when i‘m exporting the model out of blender, i only get the gltf (3d obj) and the xml data. The .bin, .blend and the png is missing in my export folder.?! And when i try to display my 3d obj via double click its empty.??

This can happen when you dont have the object selected in Blender when you do the export.

 

[CBris]

I must be extremely blind and obtuse today - I can't find a hint anywhere when I search "how do i install blender2msfs" - it's almost like freemasonry, if I don't know the secret handshake, I don't get in the door...

Don't tell me it's just an unzip into the Blender folder?


[edit] Oh dear.... That easy? Silly 'arris that I am. Now... I must try it out. After I've walked the dogs - if I can use this to get rid of some of those awful Asobo decals I might be happier.

 

[KandesBunzler]

This can happen when you dont have the object selected in Blender when you do the export.

i tried it so many times and it doesnt work.. i need to select it in the top right corner or simply by clicking on the objekt, right? i dont know whats wrong?! now the exported file is only the xml... not even the 3d obj data anymore i did all steps exactly like the youtube videos said..

 

[RomanDesign]

I have a random shimmering material problem when exporting objects from Blender. Initially it works fine, but as the model gets more complicated, the next export appears in MSFS as weird shimmering mess: some faces have crazy metallic shimmer or drastic brightness difference, with asjucent faces of the same material look normal. Look at the image. All of those hangars are using the same duplicated model with the same 2 materials: red roof and blue walls. Some roofs are now bright, some dark, same with corrugated metal wall panels: one door is bright and reflective, another two are dark, but they are exactly the same in Blender, and were the same on previous exports. The bright ones have crazy metallic reflection, which material does not have. Once it happens, nothing I do helps. If I strip all materials and re-export, the model looks fine (white, no metallic shimmering), but the moment I add any material, even a new one created from scratch - I got the samy metallic craziness. Any ideas what is happening and how to fix that? I tried "recalculating normals", reassigning all materials, merging vertices by distance etc. to see if it's the mesh problem - maybe there's anything else I should try? Removing material and creating a new one, or assigning a different material to crazy faces doesn't help.

 

[=Hollywood=]

I have a random shimmering material problem when exporting objects from Blender. Initially it works fine, but as the model gets more complicated, the next export appears in MSFS as weird shimmering mess: some faces have crazy metallic shimmer or drastic brightness difference, with asjucent faces of the same material look normal. Look at the image. All of those hangars are using the same duplicated model with the same 2 materials: red roof and blue walls. Some roofs are now bright, some dark, same with corrugated metal wall panels: one door is bright and reflective, another two are dark, but they are exactly the same in Blender, and were the same on previous exports. The bright ones have crazy metallic reflection, which material does not have. Once it happens, nothing I do helps. If I strip all materials and re-export, the model looks fine (white, no metallic shimmering), but the moment I add any material, even a new one created from scratch - I got the samy metallic craziness. Any ideas what is happening and how to fix that? I tried "recalculating normals", reassigning all materials, merging vertices by distance etc. to see if it's the mesh problem - maybe there's anything else I should try? Removing material and creating a new one, or assigning a different material to crazy faces doesn't help.

View attachment 63399

Have you tried applying an anisotropic material to it?

 

[Devinci]

I have a random shimmering material problem when exporting objects from Blender. Initially it works fine, but as the model gets more complicated, the next export appears in MSFS as weird shimmering mess: some faces have crazy metallic shimmer or drastic brightness difference, with asjucent faces of the same material look normal. Look at the image. All of those hangars are using the same duplicated model with the same 2 materials: red roof and blue walls. Some roofs are now bright, some dark, same with corrugated metal wall panels: one door is bright and reflective, another two are dark, but they are exactly the same in Blender, and were the same on previous exports. The bright ones have crazy metallic reflection, which material does not have. Once it happens, nothing I do helps. If I strip all materials and re-export, the model looks fine (white, no metallic shimmering), but the moment I add any material, even a new one created from scratch - I got the samy metallic craziness. Any ideas what is happening and how to fix that? I tried "recalculating normals", reassigning all materials, merging vertices by distance etc. to see if it's the mesh problem - maybe there's anything else I should try? Removing material and creating a new one, or assigning a different material to crazy faces doesn't help.

View attachment 63399

Try only using Albedo texture, this may be caused by COMP texture. Also check your face normals.

 

[RomanDesign]

Have you tried applying an anisotropic material to it?

I don't know what it is But the same materials that worked perfectly just a moment ago don't work anymore. It seems that the roofs for example are dark only on the models rotated 180 degrees, so it seems connected to light reflection in some way, or metallic property that goes berserk... Removing composite texture doesn't help. Even if I just leave albedo I have the same problem. Same materials in another objects work fine. I also tried playing with metallic and sheen values - no change.

Try only using Albedo texture, this may be caused by COMP texture. Also check your face normals.

I'm not sure how to check normals, but when I "recalculated inside" some panels, they became transparent. Recalculate outside give this same result agian.

 

[=Hollywood=]

i tried it so many times and it doesnt work.. i need to select it in the top right corner or simply by clicking on the objekt, right? i dont know whats wrong?! now the exported file is only the xml... not even the 3d obj data anymore i did all steps exactly like the youtube videos said..

Make sure you click off any objects and don't choose export selected objects

 

[Devinci]

I don't know what it is But the same materials that worked perfectly just a moment ago don't work anymore. It seems that the roofs for example are dark only on the models rotated 180 degrees, so it seems connected to light reflection in some way, or metallic property that goes berserk... Removing composite texture doesn't help. Even if I just leave albedo I have the same problem. Same materials in another objects work fine. I also tried playing with metallic and sheen values - no change.


I'm not sure how to check normals, but when I "recalculated inside" some panels, they became transparent. Recalculate outside give this same result agian.

When you check it, outside normals will be blue and inner normals will be red. Normally you don't want any reds to be visible.

 

[RomanDesign]

When you check it, outside normals will be blue and inner normals will be red. Normally you don't want any reds to be visible.View attachment 63413

Thanks. No, all blue here.

I also tried baking the textures, but failed miserably over and over again. Is there a simple way to bake several PBR materials I assigned to MSFS Standard material properties for several faces of one object into one baked texture for the entire object? I could not do that whatever I tried.

Is it true that baked tesxture is better than separate textrues for creating MSFS scenery? What do I do then? I have an object with several PBR materials used, and no way to make it in... I have a gut feeling that If I could, that may solve the problem...

 

[Devinci]

Thanks. No, all blue here.

I also tried baking the textures, but failed miserably over and over again. Is there a simple way to bake several PBR materials I assigned to MSFS Standard material properties for several faces of one object into one baked texture for the entire object? I could not do that whatever I tried.

Is it true that baked tesxture is better than separate textrues for creating MSFS scenery? What do I do then? I have an object with several PBR materials used, and no way to make it in... I have a gut feeling that If I could, that may solve the problem...
View attachment 63416View attachment 63417

Are you trying to use several different textures of the same type for this one object? If you want to use two different Albedo textures for instance I would suggest separating the faces with the different texture into their own mesh.

 

[WildLynxPilot]

Just guessing.... Could it be a z-fighting problem? Something like that happens if you have a face too close behind another one. Have you unintentionally duplicated your model in Blender so that there actually is two of them in the same spot? Or does it have solid walls where the inner wall has got it normals turned outwards?

 

[RomanDesign]

Are you trying to use several different textures of the same type for this one object? If you want to use two different Albedo textures for instance I would suggest separating the faces with the different texture into their own mesh.

The hangar is one object. 2 faces that are the roof are using "MSFS Standard" material with 3 PNGs for albedo, comp, and normal, which I named "MetalRed". Those faces are smart-uv-projected and scaled up and rotated for textures to align properly. In similar way, blue walls and doors are using another material with another 3 textures, and so on. They are not separated into separate objects and faces with different materials are part of the same mesh. I saw this way in a YouTube tutorial. Is that not correct way to do things?

If I separate the roof tiles, there would be a hole in the remaining mesh. Same if I separate other parts. Please advise on what is the correct way to do this.

I would think that there would be a simple way to create and export models to MSFS properly. But it's very confusing. Shoud I use baking? If yes, how to do it with multiple PBR materials? Or should I leave several textures for each object - but then how can I avoid the crazy shimmering problem... I can't find a single clear tutorial to follow about creating those object. The only one I found is this

- and that's the way I did mine. But I now hit the shimmering problem twice, so something is wrong with this approach...

 

[RomanDesign]

Just guessing.... Could it be a z-fighting problem? Something like that happens if you have a face too close behind another one. Have you unintentionally duplicated your model in Blender so that there actually is two of them in the same spot? Or does it have solid walls where the inner wall has got it normals turned outwards?

Interesting... I'm sure there are no duplicated objects, but there may be accidental duplicated faces, edges or vertices. That is possible. How would I check for those? It seems though that even if there is one or two, there should not be that many to cause most of the model to shimmer like that...

 

[Devinci]

The only reason you would need multiple textures is either you want more detail in specific areas or the one texture for roof for instance is used by many other objects. Otherwise it's better to use the least amount of textures for a single object.
I think you are only exporting selected objects. Try to uncheck that. Also make sure your object is not using multiple materials.

 

[Mikea.at]

@RomanDesign you can bake multiple materials into one texture/material like you want to do in blender.

It is a little bit work to do i recommend you a video tutorial because of the many steps to do.

I think this will help you for this process

 

[KandesBunzler]

Make sure you click off any objects and don't choose export selected objects

Yes i did. It doesn´t matter if i choose the object or not.. blender dont generate a .bin file or the texture folder??

I'm slowly losing the fun of creating.

 

[Mikea.at]

@KandesBunzler you can .zip your blend file and upload, then we can take a look whats wrong

 

[KandesBunzler]

@KandesBunzler you can .zip your blend file and upload, then we can take a look whats wrong

meanwhile i tried it once more and blender was creating the .bin file, too. I am still missing the texture folder but for testing in MSFS it should work without texture, right? I created a modelLib folder in my PackageSources folder from the Airport scene i am currently working on and put in the folder with my test object. Ingame i created an asset (artproj) with the path to the modelLib. Unfortunetally i can´t find my test object in the scenery section by the objects.. maybe you have an advice?

 

[Mikea.at]

After adding the object you have to "build project" in the inspector and after that save and reopen the project in the dev tools to see your new objects.