FSXA Converting from P3D V4.5 to FSX; Materials Workflow

[lionheart]

Hey all,

I have successfully converted my model from P3D 4.5 to FSX, but the materials didnt do to well on the switch over. Some are not showing up, some appear to be missing bump maps, etc.

What is the usual work flow when doing this? Do you go back in with MCX and check things in the model? Is there a process? Or do I just need to kind of figure out whats going on? Does one normally set some form of setting when doing exports and things? Did I miss something when creating the exports?

I would be very grateful for any advice, or perhaps a webpage here where someone has had a similar experience.


Many thanks,


Bill
LHC

 

[lionheart]

Just paruzing through things (mainly materials) in MCX. It all looks good. The only thing I could see is that materials are all spelled with small letters. I use Caps on the first letter of words, like VikingFuselage, which in MCX became vikingfuselage. Would that be causing the issue perhaps with materials going a bit odd? Mind you, the 'vikingfuselage' material is showing up, but looks like its having an issue with its system, such as a malfunctioning bumpmap.

Interior parts are also powerful in their specular outputs. But... That aside, its showing up really nice otherwise in MCX, but in FSX its a bit rough. Just wondering how to correct that.

 

[arno]

Hi,

Any P3D specific material setting is lost on conversion to FSX. Did you use a lot of them? For the rest it should be quite straight forward.

 

[Deleted member 1281]

1. In MCX, load a working FSX model, not the one you want to convert.
2. In MCX's Material Editor, create templates from existing materials for the texture types you want to use, e.g. Props, glass, and gauges.
3. Load your PBR model, set Materials and Exporter to FSX.
4. Adjust the materials using the templates saved in step 2. Make sure you get the appropriate FSX parameters right.
5. Export as FSX model.
6. Check diffuse texture for appropriate alpha channel settings; possibly create the _spec and _fresnel textures. Bumps should be alright.

This process can also be inverted, of course. You could create two very basic 'template' models, one FSX, one PBR, and upload it here. Might be useful for other members, too.

BTW, a p3d 4.4+ PBR model will happily work with FSX materials, even a mix of materials.

 

[lionheart]

Arno wrote;

Any P3D specific material setting is lost on conversion to FSX. Did you use a lot of them? For the rest it should be quite straight forward.

Roger that, and yep, all P3D materials, but not PBR.

BTW, a p3d 4.4+ PBR model will happily work with FSX materials, even a mix of materials.

THAT is REALLY Great news...! Many thanks for that.

Thanks for the workflow. I'll start the process.

Many many thanks.

 

[arno]

Roger that, and yep, all P3D materials, but not PBR.

I was not talking about the material as a whole, but specific attributes. For example P3D has more detail texture settings.

 

[lionheart]

Hey Arno,

I couldnt really find any differences. Oddly, in MCX, the plane appears fine. The FSX model in P3D appears fine as well. But if I put it in FSX, its horrible. It appears like a plane missing the bump maps, where it looks like its illuminated from the ground, the glass looks like golden chrome, the prop dics were solid black. In MCX, I have (in the Material Editor) the 'FSX' flyout selected. I go through the settings of the materials and look in Max (checking back and fourth) and they all look normal.

Whats crazy is I was just exporting planes recently from P3D thru MCX to FSX, and nothing went wrong. It was quite smooth. Now its not. Ive done something wrong, I guess.

Tonight I spent a couple of hours trying to rehash my old way of exporting through P3D SDK's, thinking I might remember how I did it. I think I was exporting V2x into X format, and from there, running it either thru 1.4, or (and) through MCX. I tried so many ways... 2.0 thru 2.5. I cant export V1.4 purely as its 32bit, and my computer is 64bit.

what a mess...

 

[lionheart]

Also, I found out how to change materials in MCX to transparent (as that must have been lost in the conversion from P3D to FSX) and they become invisible. The prop cannot be seen, the glass appears gone. Also, no (that I could see) to tell MCX that a material is a $pan (instruments) texture. (I might have missed it, but I looked hard for quite a while).

 

[lionheart]

Why would they show up nearly perfect in MCX and even P3D, but not in FSX?

 

[Deleted member 1281]

Perhaps because the IsPBRMaterial flag is still set to True ... or some other conflict in the material settings small print. We could use a selection of the problematic parts of your model for local tests I guess..

Still not sure why your Max doesn't want to play along... you should actually have access to two versions of Max, one 32-bit and one 64-bit, please verify (I have those two in my 2011 installation). If possible resurrect the 32-bit version alongside the 64-bit that you are using now, and try an ordinary export via V 1.4. (you can happily run 32-bit progs on a 64-bit computer).

I'll try to convert one of the default v4.5 models to FSX and will report what gives.

BTW, $-materials for gauges are present in my MCX.

 

[Deleted member 1281]

OK, tried to export the default 60 ft Pusher Drone (a genuine v4.5) to bog standard fsx.

First, added-merged a bogus glass sphere because the Drone doesn't have any glass surfaces per se.

Then, following the workflow sketched above I created texture templates for fsx glass and fsx propblur from a true FSX model. Then applied these materials to the Drone, and exported as FSX. Had to add missing textures for glass and prop and to rewrite aircraft.cfg and model.cfg due to incompatible format stuff. Drone does show up okay in FSX (pictured), with working prop blur and glass sphere. Workflow seems to work out OK but there are some traps such as missing textures (which may also explain the black surfaces in Bill's model, I guess). You might also check if the '_normal' texture used is an FSX compatible Bump.

 

[lionheart]

Manfred,

A thousand thanks for this. I didnt think to try to bring up a 32bit version of Max. Max was fine with it, it just couldnt work with the SDK as it was in 32bit. But yep, that might be possible. I would have to download that from Autodesk. That might be difficult. If only I could just use my regular installation. But what ever it takes. I had a route around it so I didnt need to do this. So odd... I lost my way.

Question; How exactly (exactly) do you create a new template?
Do I create a new one? Can I import one? How do you import a working material from another plane? Plexi for instance, or an exterior material?

Question 2; What would cause plexi to be totally invisible? The settings for having Alpha active are all there. There are also no sliders that I could see (percentage figures) for adjustment of visibility, but that should be controlled by the material's Alpha, which wasnt working for some reason.

Thanks for your help on this. Very much appreciated.

 

[lionheart]

Just going through the menu of the Material Editor. (This is new to me. I have never used this in detail before. I knew it was in the system but only used it once to make one tick adjustment in the past. That was it. Nearly zero knowledge on its functionalities.

Some screenshots of what I am looking at on my end.

Oddly, most all of these settings are preserved in the FSX which are the same in P3D, in Max. They are all proper. I wonder whats causing the malfunction in FSX.

This is put to FSX.

Also, from what I am gathering, its only a guess, I would use the Apply button to add the text property (shown here is Add Night Texture) to add to the selected materials. So if I selected 4 materials that were transparent, I would select them, select transparent from the flyout, and then click 'Apply' and then all of those materials have transparency added to them. Yes?
Would I need to hit 'Apply' when I make small adjustments to ticks on a materials properties?

 

[Deleted member 1281]

Bill, here's a mini-tut for creating material templates. It will be saved to the list of templates when you exit MCX in MCX's HomeDir, subfolder templates. You can even distribute a material template file, and get other people to test it. If you are very careful you can even edit it.

 

[lionheart]

So MCX stores these templates in its own directory somewhere. Good to know. So I would open a template, rename it, then change out the textures. Seems easy enough.

 

[lionheart]

So one doesnt just simply go and click a button and all the settings from a 'Template' are transferred to the existing material in the plane you are converting. One must go through each setting, 81 lines, and change each one. The templates act as a comparison. You can click the 'Add Property' which saves you a bit of time, but you still have to do all of these one at a time. I tried doing multiple selections (from 2 to the entire stack of 81 lines) and found you can only select one at a time. I say this to make sure, is this the way its done? or is there a secret button, one I am missing, probably right in front of me, that imports all settings from the template into the new one you are trying to export to FSX.

I had created a serious quick stack of materials to use as existing FSX working materials from some of my other projects.

 

[Deleted member 1281]

So one doesnt just simply go and click a button and all the settings from a 'Template' are transferred to the existing material in the plane you are converting. One must go through each setting, 81 lines, and change each one. The templates act as a comparison. You can click the 'Add Property' which saves you a bit of time, but you still have to do all of these one at a time. I tried doing multiple selections (from 2 to the entire stack of 81 lines) and found you can only select one at a time. I say this to make sure, is this the way its done? or is there a secret button, one I am missing, probably right in front of me, that imports all settings from the template into the new one you are trying to export to FSX.

I had created a serious quick stack of materials to use as existing FSX working materials from some of my other projects.

No, that's not it. After you have created your template, all the settings can indeed be transferred to any existing material! You don't have to check all 81 lines etc. but a spot check (always a good idea) will show you that the template's settings are indeed overwriting the existing material.

I think you may be missing one crucial step. After you have created your template as illustrated above, the list of available templates is updated in MCX, and now, in order to actually replace an existing material, you click the downarrow next to 'Apply', and the templates list will open. From that list you pick the template you just created, and then click Apply. The main thing left to do is to check the texture file names.

 

[lionheart]

Ah so.....! Thanks, Manfred. Off to try this.

 

[lionheart]

You guys...

I found it... I found the issue...

I prayed just now. I talked to God about my issue. 2 Days I worked on getting this to appear in FSX. I started again, trying to export another set of MDL's that would work in the sim... I was looking at the plane. It was showing certain textures, but not others. I remember flags popping up in MCX stating it couldnt find certain textures. I looked in the texture folder and they were there. But MCX wasnt finding them. I couldnt figure it out...

In FSX, once again, testing another set... Another export idea... and it hit me... about 5 minutes after praying... staring at the plane... It couldnt see the primary 'texture' folder. My configs were corrupt... Just like the MDL file config, these were also corrupt. I copied off some from another FSX plane into this one... and behold.. She was proper all the time. Her configs were just messed up.

Thank You Lord...

So close, so far...

I am so sorry to have put you guys through this. My humble apologies. Thank you so much for your kind help. God bless you immensely.


Bill
LHC

 

[Deleted member 1281]

Nice little plane. Remember to check all animations and mouse rects and vis conditions in your MCX exports.