MSFS Blender2MSFS support thread

[TheOli4D]

Hello everybody
Can anyone explain how to create glass?
If I want to be parts of my object to have glass (Building like an airport tower for example), how do I do that?
Does the windows have to be a seperate object, with the "MSFS Glass" material instead of the "MSFS Standard"?

And does the window need to have a modeled thickness? (closed "cube"), or is a place (1 polygon) enough?

And most important: What are the material parameters for a normal window glass?

Please let me know. Thanks a lot,
Oliver

 

[Lagaffe]

Hi Oliver,

Do you know that FSD has a search engine ? This question has been asked a lot of time, so with some works ...

If you use "MSFS glass material" as parameters, you could obtain the answer to your question: https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/msfs-glass-material-blender.449586/#post-859860

If people continue to ask any things on this thread and don't make some efforts this topic will become unconsultable as the information will be diluted.

 

[fsdev3d]

Hi guys.
Did anyone manage to use draw order in MSFS? I have 3 objects with opacity, one after another, and can't figure out how to force them to appear in the correct order.

Edit: Forgot to mention that those materials are double-sided.

In my case what I did and seemed to worked is:
1. instead of double sided material, use actual geometry
2. apply different materials in each side (even if they use the same texture). For example for 2 objects (planes), the 2 front facing faces will have material1 and material 2, and the 2 back facing faces will have material 3 and material 4.

Don't know why, but this fixed my issues with wrong draw order.

 

[wildwally]

I've seen the same problem today as well. I managed to compile and use another building yesterday but the one I completed today (which is built just like 8 previous ones) won't work.
This SDK is so unstable and unpredictable...

Update: I think I managed to fix it now. If you have copied your scenery to the Community folder then delete it (with the sim closed). When you open the sim again and build your package the models should compile as expected and be listed in the Objects list.

no luck on my side trying what you did. still got the same results.

 

[TheOli4D]

Hi Oliver,

Do you know that FSD has a search engine ? This question has been asked a lot of time, so with some works ...

If you use "MSFS glass material" as parameters, you could obtain the answer to your question: https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/msfs-glass-material-blender.449586/#post-859860

If people continue to ask any things on this thread and don't make some efforts this topic will become unconsultable as the information will be diluted.

Thank you. I actually did search, but it did not come up. Maybe I had a typo.
Regarding the forum: I agree, but such basic material setups would be great to be in this Wiki here: https://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Blender2MSFS
Then people could just check the basic setups for Standard material or Glass material there.
I would even write it but me knowledge is way to low at this point :/

 

[wildwally]

Hi Oliver,

Do you know that FSD has a search engine ? This question has been asked a lot of time, so with some works ...

If you use "MSFS glass material" as parameters, you could obtain the answer to your question: https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/msfs-glass-material-blender.449586/#post-859860

If people continue to ask any things on this thread and don't make some efforts this topic will become unconsultable as the information will be diluted.

I would typically agree with you; however, the thread title is "Blender2MSFS support thread". Maybe if the channel was this and it had multiple topic specific threads under it, it would be better served and more in alignment with your vision.

 

[fsdev3d]

@Vitus batch LOD export seems to have an issue. I think this has been mentioned before but I might be able to provide some more details here.

I exported a single cube with 6 faces, without batch lod.
Then I exported 2 cubes (both cubes with same 6 face geometry) with batch LOD selected.

The gltf file for the LOD01 didn't compile with the following error from the console:
tinygltf: accessor[3] invalid bufferView

I then compared the 3 gltf files (the one with no lod, the lod00 and the lod01).

The no-lod and the lod00 were identical with this section:

"bufferViews" : [
        {
            "buffer" : 0,
            "byteLength" : 288,
            "byteOffset" : 0
        },
        {
            "buffer" : 0,
            "byteLength" : 288,
            "byteOffset" : 288
        },
        {
            "buffer" : 0,
            "byteLength" : 192,
            "byteOffset" : 576
        },
        {
            "buffer" : 0,
            "byteLength" : 72,
            "byteOffset" : 768
        }
    ],
    "buffers" : [
        {
            "byteLength" : 840,
            "uri" : "placementCubeWithLod_LOD00.bin"
        }
    ]

The lod01 was exported with this instead:

"bufferViews" : [
        {
            "buffer" : 0,
            "byteLength" : 288,
            "byteOffset" : 0
        },
        {
            "buffer" : 0,
            "byteLength" : 288,
            "byteOffset" : 288
        },
        {
            "buffer" : 0,
            "byteLength" : 192,
            "byteOffset" : 576
        }
    ],
    "buffers" : [
        {
            "byteLength" : 768,
            "uri" : "placementCubeWithLod_LOD01.bin"
        }
    ]

So the 4th element of the array is missing and the bytLength is smaller.

After replacing the 01 bin and gltf with the 00 contents, the object compiled and was displayed in the editor.

Hope that helps.
thanks

 

[BMW969]

Do you have collision with objects that are created in blender ?

 

[lennart84]

I'm using data from google from the google decoder. It downloads it in tiles and when I open and edit in blender:

and then export with the MSFS export plugin this gets even more exaggerated...

I am trying things out for weeks now but to no avail... Can someone put me in the right direction?

 

[VFXSimmer]

Unfortunately, that is how the data exists in google maps. There photogrammetry is broken into tiles whose area changes depending upon its distance to camera at the time you do a capture (when using Renderdoc), or based on the zoom scale you set in the google decoder. Since google dynamically chooses the size of these tiles when you use their app (you can see this as you zoom in and out and see the resolution change), they dont really bother to fuse the geomertry together in a nice way. Instead they just kind of 'interpenetrate the egdes' with some extra polygons to make sure the seams are as hidden as possible. If you don't modify anything its hard to notice, but as soon as you make edits in Blender (smoothing out etc) or in particular anything that modifies normals, you will get the artifacts you see above.

You have 2 options really - 1) be very careful not to effect the normals, or the 'smoothing' setting in the mesh, 2) manually weld the mesh together which can take a really long time,

 

[lennart84]

EDIT: Althoug baking is advertised as a good thing, I found out that the squares are created by one tickbox ... If you untick "Apply Modifiers" in the MSFS export tool you dont get the ugly lines. There still are lines but not the very ugly ones.... If you want to bake see my remarks below but not really necessary for removing the squares on the object!!

Thanks for your message. I believe I have solved the issue just now.

The following was a big help but maybe not the complete solution.

Also please do not use the "Smart UV project" as this might work on small objects but on larger google data (500m2 +) it was busy for 20 hours before I killed the process.
EDIT: Do use the smart uv project as this gives best results. Using Meshlab creates Meshes that are not exactly the same and that gives baking problems!

Use the meshlab as seen in this tutorial. I learned that creating new UV maps with new Baked material it make game engine happy.

This is the best result so far getting rid of those squares in my MSFS objects...

The only thing now is that the brightness is to high..... This is looking way better in render itself. Anyone an idea on how to get the colors right?

 

[VFXSimmer]

Just FYI.. the Smart UV project WILL eventually finish. One of mine ran for about 24 hours, but it did actually finish. The frustrating part is that there is no way to tell if it is actually working - looks the same as a hung process.

 

[lennart84]

All nice but is it worth the wait? In meshlab a seeming similar process takes (milli)seconds....

Forgive my noobiness

 

[VFXSimmer]

It does give better results (much less of the 'broken glass effect') but doesnt eliminate it entirely

 

[lennart84]

Anyone an idea in getting better colors (see picture above) for my blender export, these do not look as they look in blender....Way to bright!

Can someone explain why using the "apply modifiers" check box in the export tool produces this ugly effect of having squares all over my object?

 

[RomanDesign]

I'm exhausted and don't knwo what to do... My morels were relatively OK and then suddenly 3 new models fail to work. The look just fine in Blender:

But in MSFS everything goes to hell:

I tried "Smart UV Projection" from scratch, recalculated normals, baked textures (came out a horrible mess, though baked image looks great it's mapped incorrectly), installing Blender 1.91, recreating materials from scratch, deleting all MSFS files and recreating the project. I'm at my wit's end. I don't know what else to try.
My material looks like this:

I've done many objects before, and didn't have this problem. Suddenly it's all unusable, and I don't know how to fix that. The only think in common with 3 new objects is that I started building them with "Building Tools" Blender plugin. Why is UV mapping all wrong? It looks perfectly fine in Blender, both texture mapping and the result. But not in MSFS. Console says "0 failed", so it should be working. I'm exporting in exactly the same way as before, with same texture images. This example is not baked, because baked image failed to map, so I decided to try like this, which is always worked before. This shows that there is a problem with the object, but I don't know how to fix it. Please advise.

 

[AlpineScenery]

I don't do baking, just use UV maps, but...

You installed different version of Blender, I probably wouldn't have done that.
Probably won't fix it, but try Rotation and Scale and Recalc Normals from outside.

Remember, Blender isn't without bugs, there aren't as many as there used to be, but sometimes Blender does bug out still. Try reverting the file to an older save or repair the UV mapping manually by unwrapping each side manually (just U - unwrap). I don't like the baking feature, have always despised it, so the ability to abandon Blender's bake and use PBR texturing with UV mapping only is a god send IMHO. I never use Smart UV projection, just unwrap each face and position manually. Any side-by-side faces can be multi-selected and unwrapped simultaneously and then positioned correctly over texture, it's actually very simple once you have done it once.

Have gotten through 75 models now with only a few issues, sometimes (rarely though) the Blender file will absolutely refuse to export, need older save (just a warning)...

 

[RomanDesign]

Here is the second model - again, it looks completely fins in Blender, this one has a baked texture that also maps fine in Blender, but in MSFS it seems to load the correct baked texture, but UV mapping is completelyh odd, nothing like Blender has. It's supposed to all be a corrugated blue and white metal, and red corrugated roof. Bakede with normal and diffuse. 0 errors on build package. What the hell is going on???

 

[AlpineScenery]

UV mapping isn't really an exporter issue, this is about the exporter. I'd probably create a separate thread for your issue.
There are so many different reasons for that to occur.

 

[RomanDesign]

I don't do baking, just use UV maps, but...

You installed different version of Blender, I probably wouldn't have done that.
Probably won't fix it, but try Rotation and Scale and Recalc Normals from outside.

Remember, Blender isn't without bugs, there aren't as many as there used to be, but sometimes Blender does bug out still. Try reverting the file to an older save or repair the UV mapping manually by unwrapping each side manually (just U - unwrap). I don't like the baking feature, have always despised it, so the ability to abandon Blender's bake and use PBR texturing with UV mapping only is a god send IMHO. I never use Smart UV projection, just unwrap each face and position manually. Any side-by-side faces can be multi-selected and unwrapped simultaneously and then positioned correctly over texture, it's actually very simple once you have done it once.

Have gotten through 75 models now with only a few issues, sometimes (rarely though) the Blender file will absolutely refuse to export, need older save (just a warning)...

I've been strongly advised to use baking, although I didn't want to do that. But that's the thing: when it all went to hell, I abandoned baking and what you see in my post (the one you replied to) is without baking, and with new manual UV (although originally done with smart UV project, then manually adjusted). And I only installed latest Blender after I tried everything else to fix this, so that's not the reason for this problem...