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MSFS Blender2MSFS support thread

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27
Country
spain
Hello!

I am having issues with the animation names. To animate something in Blender, you have to name the animation and use that name in the XML to be referenced and seen in the simulator. The problem comes when there are multiple childs of a parent animation (landing gears, flaps, etc...) where blender don't admit the same name of the animation and it ads an 001, 002, etc.. breaking the animation. So the only way to use them is dupplicating (making 3-4-5..etc... times) the lines in the XML to define the animation, each with the name+001, etc...
In 3Dstudio max, there are Animation groups:

b8d5002ddb42f8165c187f03c6607188.png

https://gyazo.com/b8d5002ddb42f8165c187f03c6607188

where you can name the different childs and parent with same name, so the xml is much short and better. Is there a way to mimic that option in blender to MSFS exporter? Thanks!
 

Vitus

Resource contributor
Messages
1,480
Country
newzealand
I was meaning to create a quick how-to for a while now, but I just don't have the time....
In a nutshell: if you want to animate multiple parts, you need to create a Non-Linear-Animation (NLA) group for them. The easiest way is to finish up all the keyframes (editing later on is a bit complicated) and switch the view to "Animations". Then change the window to "NLA". You get a list of all animations in the scene - I'd recommend you change that to "selected only", for which there is a button somewhere. After doing so, you'll only see all animations of the selected objects.
OK... next, you'll notice that the kf-animations will be listed under each object and there's a little arrow pointing down. Click this for each of the animations, which will create an NLA track below. You can then rename the track for each of the part to a common animation name e.g. "c_gear".
That's all. Export your model and you'll find that the animations of your c_gear will be all listed under one <Animation> node.
 
Messages
111
Country
southafrica
All the scenery stuff is not my area of expertise, so I can't really tell you what's going wrong there. Are the texture sizes OK? Also check the GLTF file to see that the extensions were properly added. Other than that, I have nothing and hope that someone else can help out!

@MrJam there was an issue updating from previous versions of the toolkit - sometimes the emissive color adjustment was a bit wacky. I'd recommend you reset the material mode by simply selecting some other material mode and then switch back. This will rebuild the shader node tree for the material and should set up your emissive properties correctly.

PLEASE NOTE that for sceneries, you probably want to set the emissive color value to [1,1,1] (or even higher!), while for aircraft lights you'd want to set the value to [0,0,0].


Thank you very much, I will maybe post the question in the main forum... Hopefully somoene has knowledge on this.
 

Lagaffe

Resource contributor
Messages
857
Country
france
Hi Javier,
for this particular problem, Vitus has given a solution : https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/blender2msfs-support-thread.448402/page-13#post-854745
HOW TO ANIMATE GROUPS
Open the Animation view, change from the Dope Sheet to the Action Editor. Select your first object and it's animation and click on "Push down". Go through the list of objects you'd like to group and push all of them down.
Once done, change the view to "Non-Linear Animation". All the animations that you pushed down should now be in a NLA track. The only thing left to do is to rename the NLA track for each of the animations and export.

As you can tell, I'm not 100% firm in what all of this means, so if you want to find out what you're actually doing, check out some Blender tutorials on NLA and thou shalt be enlightened.
I hope that someone who has a better understanding of that topic could write up a how-to section for the Blender2MSFS wiki. If you'd like to do that, either make the changes in the wiki yourself, or PM me your article and I update it.

At least for now we've got a working method to get our gear animations into the sim

To illustrate this manip, I have find a video interesting:
PS: Sorry, I write a bit slowly ;)
 
Messages
15
Country
greece
The only documentation i found for the supported materials in fs2020 in sdk is this one:
Documentation/02-Asset_Creation/glTF_Materials.html

The exporter has many more options and settings per material.
So the question I have is... where does the specs come from? Is there a more detailed definition / schema somewhere?

thanks
 

Vitus

Resource contributor
Messages
1,480
Country
newzealand
@fsdev3d the materials in the B2MSFS toolkit are based on the materials found in the official 3dsmax plugin. For the most part, I used the glTF file of sampleMaterials to assemble the parameters of each material mode.The schemas in the SDK are really outdated. Most of the time it's better to look into the sample gltf files to figure out how different extensions are used in the sim.
 
Messages
8
Country
unitedkingdom
@fsdev3d the materials in the B2MSFS toolkit are based on the materials found in the official 3dsmax plugin. For the most part, I used the glTF file of sampleMaterials to assemble the parameters of each material mode.The schemas in the SDK are really outdated. Most of the time it's better to look into the sample gltf files to figure out how different extensions are used in the sim.
Would it be much trouble to advise where I can find this documentation.
Thanks
 
Messages
1
Country
germany
Hey, i made a Object in Blender, I added a PNG as Texture with the Plugin, but when I try to import the Model into the Sim, the object does not show up in the list. But if I don't use a texture, so that everything is white, it shows up... Any idea?
 
Messages
12
Country
unitedstates
Bug / Issue -
* Blender2MSFS version: 0.40.0 (also tried 0.37, my previous version of the program)
* SDK version: 0.6 (latest as of September 29th)
Blender version: 2.83

An issue with Blender2MSFS is causing the exports to not properly export with textures.

Texture files are being exported to the output directory "../texture/" and I get no console errors. Though upon loading the .gltf file in 3D Viewer (a program that comes pre-installed on Windows 10) it does nothing and says it's unable to load (as seen in the screenshot). Because of this importing assets doesn't work in the SDK.

When removing all the textures and using Material colors on my model as a workaround in the meantime, I exported it and my model is now visible in 3D Viewer. Which means I can import my assets to the SDK without any problems. In short, if the model is not visible in 3D Viewer, the model file is most likely corrupted and you have to re-export it without any textures.

Blender2MSFS is either causing the model to crash upon exporting or something within the code is making it not read any information.

20201003_145841.jpg
 
Messages
238
Country
finland
I have no problem viewing my glTF files produced with Blender2MSFS in the Windows 3D viewer. All of them open up nicely and the textures are there. You say it works without textures. So it must have something to do with the textures, I suppose. What are the dimensions of your texture files and have you saved them as PNG?
 
Messages
195
Country
us-california
All the scenery stuff is not my area of expertise, so I can't really tell you what's going wrong there. Are the texture sizes OK? Also check the GLTF file to see that the extensions were properly added. Other than that, I have nothing and hope that someone else can help out!

@MrJam there was an issue updating from previous versions of the toolkit - sometimes the emissive color adjustment was a bit wacky. I'd recommend you reset the material mode by simply selecting some other material mode and then switch back. This will rebuild the shader node tree for the material and should set up your emissive properties correctly.

PLEASE NOTE that for sceneries, you probably want to set the emissive color value to [1,1,1] (or even higher!), while for aircraft lights you'd want to set the value to [0,0,0].
Hi, finally got the new version installed. Pulling the tools folder wasn’t enough. I completely uninstalled both blenders .83 and .9. The installed 9 and the tools plug in. Works great! Can you explain, the emissive values comment. Where would I make that change you mentioned 1,1,1. When I attack an emmisve texture in the tools, tick day night cycle... no change. Thank in advance!
 
Messages
195
Country
us-california
Bug / Issue -
* Blender2MSFS version: 0.40.0 (also tried 0.37, my previous version of the program)
* SDK version: 0.6 (latest as of September 29th)
Blender version: 2.83

An issue with Blender2MSFS is causing the exports to not properly export with textures.

Texture files are being exported to the output directory "../texture/" and I get no console errors. Though upon loading the .gltf file in 3D Viewer (a program that comes pre-installed on Windows 10) it does nothing and says it's unable to load (as seen in the screenshot). Because of this importing assets doesn't work in the SDK.

When removing all the textures and using Material colors on my model as a workaround in the meantime, I exported it and my model is now visible in 3D Viewer. Which means I can import my assets to the SDK without any problems. In short, if the model is not visible in 3D Viewer, the model file is most likely corrupted and you have to re-export it without any textures.

Blender2MSFS is either causing the model to crash upon exporting or something within the code is making it not read any information.

View attachment 63129
For the windows viewer to work, I believe the textures need to be in the same folder as the model file. The ../ textures/ is a MSFS thing
 
Messages
40
Country
peru
Hello, regarding the MSFS exporter:

Why is the "generate XML" presented as an option with a checkbox and a filename textbox?

The reason Im asking is because so far the simulator ALWAYS require its own XML to be present and on top of that if the XML is not named EXACTLY like the object name the export will not be successful in the sense that you wont get the object to be integrated in the simulator

I would suggest these options to be removed from the exporter and have it always generate the XML internally and that the xml filename be selected from object name instead, removing this unnecessary step will save a lot of time

cheers
 
Messages
12
Country
unitedstates
For the windows viewer to work, I believe the textures need to be in the same folder as the model file. The ../ textures/ is a MSFS thing

Yup, this was the issue my models are now visible in 3D Viewer. Though now when I press 'Build Package' none of my textures show up in my 'texture' folder in the built package folder.

For my polygons and scene itself, I have the Output set to "Scenery", though for my Models I have it set to "Scenery/World/Models"
 
Last edited:
Messages
238
Country
finland
Yup, this was the issue my models are now visible in 3D Viewer. Though now when I press 'Build Package' none of my textures show up in my 'texture' folder in the built package folder.

For my polygons and scene itself, I have the Output set to "Scenery", though for my Models I have it set to "Scenery/World/Models"

Polygons and scene should go into scenery/world/scenery and models into scenery/global/scenery. Model textures then go into scenery/global/scenery/texture. MSFS is picky about this structure since 1.9.3.0.
 
Messages
8
Country
unitedkingdom
My suggestion is the following:

Read the Kronos tutorial on glTF files. https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-Tutorials

Use notepad++ and download the JSONViewer ver 1.4 (Notepad++ will download the plug v1.34, but it has some bugs) - https://github.com/kapilratnani/JSON-Viewer/releases

View attachment 63091

Thanks for taking the time to offer your suggestion.

FYG I am 71 years old and trying to learn/understand the gobbledygook of another app in order to learn about the app I want to understand is not what I was hoping for.

As a result I have decided to simply enjoy the process of modelling my bespoke airport buildings in Blender rather than jump through loops to get them into MSFS.

Again thanks for your time.

Perhaps I may resume in a few months/years when a User (stress User NOT technical) Manual becomes available. (wink wink)
 
Last edited:
Messages
12
Country
unitedstates
Polygons and scene should go into scenery/world/scenery and models into scenery/global/scenery. Model textures then go into scenery/global/scenery/texture. MSFS is picky about this structure since 1.9.3.0.

Hmm, I never had any issues putting my scenery and polygon files in only "scenery." It loads the scenery 100% of the time. Although something is causing my model textures to not get outputted to scenery/global/scenery/texture. All my models are packaged in scenery/global/scenery and textures get exported to /textures from Blender, but textures are just missing in general. Console shows 0 errors.
 
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