MSFS Blender2MSFS support thread

[Verticalsim]

I have successfully made a couple of models work all the way from Blender into the sim. But I can't figure out how to make reflective and transparent glass for the windows of my buildings. The MSFS Glass material does not seem to make the trick. Anyone that have succeeded in this and could give me a hint?

That's what I've been trying to figure out, any thoughts? @Vitus

 

[L3M0N]

Ok, maybe this is a dumb question and the wrong place, but I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere. Is there a download for the example max file converted to something blender can open available? All the max converters for blender are broken in the newer version and I really don't want to reinstall max just for a single export.

I have successfully made a couple of models work all the way from Blender into the sim. But I can't figure out how to make reflective and transparent glass for the windows of my buildings. The MSFS Glass material does not seem to make the trick. Anyone that have succeeded in this and could give me a hint?

Have you made sure that all the right textures are in place? You can open up the shader node to see what is going on in each material type. Off the top of my head glass requires, or maybe a better way to put it is expecting, a detail texture. There are also some materials that don't seem to be fully in-place yet. The porthole type is mentioned in the SDK as not being implemented yet, but the parallax also looks like a WIP going by the node in blender.

 

[WildLynxPilot]

Ok, thanks. Will look at the textures...

 

[Lagaffe]

Max to Blender:
- with MCX convert the MDL in FBX
- with MCX convert MDL in OBJ (Wavefront / option separate Objets) => this is the solution that I prefer.

 

[Vitus]

When it comes to reflection, you really have to work with those PBR material options. So for a good reflection, get the roughness value down and the metallic value up in your metallic texture. I can strongly recommend Substance Painter for jaw-dropping results.

 

[Vitus]

But it should be this...

Roger, roger. I though I changed that already. Weird that it's still using the wrong number.

On the Bin file... it does generate the BIN file if I untick selected objects with only albedo textures. If I leave selected objects ticked with only albedo textures, it doesn't generate the BIN file. Its an odd one.

The bin file will always be generated if your selection contains any geometry - that should be independent of the albedo.

If I select the whole model (orange outline) It does export when I use the "Selected Objects" check box.

If the model isn't selected and I uncheck the "Selected Objects" check box, it will also export.

Yeah, that's kind of the point of the "Selected Objects" option in the exporter. If selected, it will only export the selected objects.

The trouble is nether of these will compile unless I add metallic and normal textures before exporting.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "compile"? Are you talking about the package builder? Because that should work fine with or without a normal or metallic map. Even without an albedo texture it should work...

 

[xr219]

Roger, roger. I though I changed that already. Weird that it's still using the wrong number.


The bin file will always be generated if your selection contains any geometry - that should be independent of the albedo.


Yeah, that's kind of the point of the "Selected Objects" option in the exporter. If selected, it will only export the selected objects.


I'm not quite sure what you mean by "compile"? Are you talking about the package builder? Because that should work fine with or without a normal or metallic map. Even without an albedo texture it should work...

I've just sussed it. It was something you said earlier about selecting the object. I had been clicking off the object in blender before exporting it, this is what was producing the strange results.

If I click on the object in object mode (after selecting all of the correct albedo textures / colours etc) so that its highlighted. And then follow the steps in DragoB's guide, it works. I've managed to compile (build) them from within the project using build from the inspector and they show up as textured objects. Admittedly I need to work on some of the textures, but the exporter works and all is good with the world. Thanks for your help.

 

[Robert Richardson]

I feel I'm within spitting distance of something but not sure quite what!
Can anyone point out the mistakes I have made here?
Any help would be gratefully received.

 

[seskadog]

Has anybody successfully used PBR textures? I have managed to get normal textures working with no issues but would like to use PBR.

I have 5 files and I have no idea where to put them on the nodes - Colour, displacement, metalness, normal, roughness.

Does anybody have a screen shot in where they have used these and how they have connected the nodes?

I gave an educated guess on where they would go but then has issues with it stretching the texture rather than repeating it.

 

[OzWookiee]

That's what I've been trying to figure out, any thoughts? @Vitus

Yup glass and windshield materials are bugged at the moment. In using standard until @Vitus is able to fix. See my thread about what I've seen: https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/transparency-for-windscreen-textures.448565/

 

[delta_foxtrot]

Hi guys, anybody figure out the parallax effect? Does it work on the current build of the exporter? Thanks

 

[Vitus]

I feel I'm within spitting distance of something but not sure quite what!
Can anyone point out the mistakes I have made here?
Any help would be gratefully received.

This is most likely something to do with your packageSource itself. Just check, double- and triple check all those json/xml files to make sure that you set all those paths correctly. For my first package, I spent about two days until I found a stupid typo in one of the files........

I have 5 files and I have no idea where to put them on the nodes - Colour, displacement, metalness, normal, roughness.

The SDK is your friend - check out the sections on materials and textures for all the answers. In short:
Albedo is the base color of your material. This is an RGB map, or RGBA if you need transparency.
The metallic map combines metallic, roughness and ambient occlusion. So you need to use Photoshop, or Gimp, or Paint.net to generate this texture from the various maps that you have. You need to copy your AO map into the R-channel, the Roughness map goes into the G-channel and the metallic map copies into the B-channel.
The Normal map should be in the directX format and defines the normal vector for each pixel of your map. Oppose to FSX/P3D, you can plug a standard normal map directly into the normal slot of the Blender material.

Btw: don't use the nodes directly, instead use the material interface to fill up your textures. The node tree will automatically populated.

@Verticalsim and @OzWookiee the glass material works fine for me. It is a bit tricky to get to work though - you really need to turn down your alpha value and play around with roughness and metallic values for the textures to get a good effect.
As for the windshield - I am not quite there yet with my own model, so I don't have any first hand experience with it. I think it might work already, since the blend mode should be set to "alpha blend" by default. But stay tuned until I can verify this.

Hi guys, anybody figure out the parallax effect? Does it work on the current build of the exporter? Thanks

Check out the textures in the material sample and find the ones for parallax to get an idea of how the textures are set up. Essentially, you provide a bunch of rooms in the texture and in the material settings let the sim know how many rooms there are. The values for the room size define how much % of each of your room pictures defines the back-wall. So if the back wall takes up 50% of both width and height, you set the value to 0.5. The corridor-parameter will remove the left and right walls of the room and instead stitch more rooms together.
We haven't had the time to implement a Blender shader graph for this yet, so in Blender, none of this will show up correctly. However, it should be working fine in the sim, provided your setup was correct.

Note that the porthole material uses a similar effect as parallax, but it's designed for aircraft windows.

 

[OzWookiee]

@Verticalsim and @OzWookiee the glass material works fine for me. It is a bit tricky to get to work though - you really need to turn down your alpha value and play around with roughness and metallic values for the textures to get a good effect.
As for the windshield - I am not quite there yet with my own model, so I don't have any first hand experience with it. I think it might work already, since the blend mode should be set to "alpha blend" by default. But stay tuned until I can verify this

Hmmm well I have almost 100% Alpha, low metallic and low roughness and it's not blending. The glass is opaque.

Not disputing you have it working, it's just not working for me and I can't figure out why.

 

[hditano]

I made some custom modelling in Blender, and for some reason i cannot figure it out why it doesnt get build up on the sim.
Double checked and triple checked everything:

PackageBuilder | Reading F:\FS2020-Proyectos\Loberia2\Loberia2.xml...
PackageBuilder | Preparing asset groups...
PackageBuilder | Done, 4 asset groups registered.
PackageBuilder | Generating commands for package loberia2-loberia2...
PackageBuilder | Preparing commands for asset group ContentInfo...
PackageBuilder | Preparing commands for asset group myscene...
PackageBuilder | Preparing commands for asset group mymodellib...
PackageBuilder | Ready, 5 commands added.
PackageBuilder | Starting the build...
PackageBuilder | Building assets for the package loberia2-loberia2...
Compiling GLTF data file Hangar.gltf...
Compiling BGL file from in-memory data to output file modelLib.BGL...
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2006: Parse failed (0x80004005)
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2340: Failed to finalize MODEL_DATA!
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2032: XML Parse Error! Element tree follows:
ERROR: <FSData
ERROR: version = 9.0
ERROR: >
ERROR: <GLTFData
ERROR: sourceFile = F:\FS2020-Proyectos\Loberia2\_PackageInt\_tempFiles\loberia2-loberia2\mymodellib\Hangar\HangarPrincipal.xml
ERROR: >
ERROR:

INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2024: Failed to process closing element tag <GLTFData> near line 2!
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2607: Compilation errors detected, compilation failed!
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2006: Parse failed (0x 0)
PackageBuilder | Output path does not exist: F:\FS2020-Proyectos\Loberia2\Packages\loberia2-loberia2\scenery\global\scenery\modelLib.BGL
PackageBuilder | Skip mirroring due to command failures.
PackageBuilder | Skip generation of package information due to command failures.
PackageBuilder | Reloading assets for the package loberia2-loberia2...
PackageBuilder | Finished, 3 skipped, 0 done and 2 failed, took 0s105ms.
? false returned by Command=BuildPackages Comment=Rebuild the packages whose name correspond to the given filter, and for the given project (default fs-project.xml) NbParam=2 Line=BuildPackages loberia2-loberia2 * "F:\FS2020-Proyectos\Loberia2\Loberia2.xml" "F:\FS2020-Proyectos\Loberia2" 1

 

[xr219]

@hditano i was getting this error and the solution was to make sure you had selected the object in blender before you export it, and in the export options make sure “selected objects” are checked, as per DragoB’s guide.

 

[hditano]

@hditano i was getting this error and the solution was to make sure you had selected the object in blender before you export it, and in the export options make sure “selected objects” are checked, as per DragoB’s guide.

Sadly even tho i selected them..still get the same error:

Untitled_ Aug 27 2020 8_14 PM

Watch "Untitled_ Aug 27 2020 8_14 PM" on Streamable.

streamable.com

 

[hditano]

@hditano i was getting this error and the solution was to make sure you had selected the object in blender before you export it, and in the export options make sure “selected objects” are checked, as per DragoB’s guide.

Found the error..it was one of my buildings..which was pretty much using like 10 extrudes. Deleted it and it worked perfectly.
Thank god you dont need to reload the sim to make changes. Found out yesterday that you can keep the sim, and while exporting the new GFTL it will load up automatically working perfectly.

 

[neinnunb]

Hello to everyone. I cannot seem to have emissive (AKA LIT) texture not show during the daytime. I have "day/night cycle" checked in the materials options. here is screenshot of my issue. During the day, you can still see the yellow windows and green lines:

 

[delta_foxtrot]

Check out the textures in the material sample and find the ones for parallax to get an idea of how the textures are set up. Essentially, you provide a bunch of rooms in the texture and in the material settings let the sim know how many rooms there are. The values for the room size define how much % of each of your room pictures defines the back-wall. So if the back wall takes up 50% of both width and height, you set the value to 0.5. The corridor-parameter will remove the left and right walls of the room and instead stitch more rooms together.
We haven't had the time to implement a Blender shader graph for this yet, so in Blender, none of this will show up correctly. However, it should be working fine in the sim, provided your setup was correct.

Note that the porthole material uses a similar effect as parallax, but it's designed for aircraft windows.

Thanks for your response! Unfortunately, I still could not make it to work. Maybe kinda stupid of me. Do you have a sample blender file of a working parallax? Thanks and apologize for hassle.

 

[delta_foxtrot]

Hello to everyone. I cannot seem to have emissive (AKA LIT) texture not show during the daytime. I have "day/night cycle" checked in the materials options. here is screenshot of my issue. During the day, you can still see the yellow windows and green lines:
View attachment 61229

I also have this issue. For meantime I just turn down exposure for a temporary workaround.