• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

MSFS glTF-Blender-IO-MSFS / import export Addon

Mikea.at

Mikea.at

Messages
372
Country
austria
Mikea.at

Mikea.at

Messages
372
Country
austria
At the moment they are rewriting the code. I tried the rewrite branch. It was working to export the models but there was a problem with the rexture path inside the gltf file. And the xml generation is not yet implemented. If you use a other blender version than 2.92. there you find some branches with a stable release of the exporter. I did not try other branches. Just waiting until the next update and then i try again.

Just want to mention this developement here because it is active and no one knows if the toolkit from this site will get updates in the future. And i think flybywire is able to make a good exporter addon. :)
 
clements

clements

Messages
123
Country
unitedstates
I have been using this addon for a few days. It takes some getting used to if you've been using Blender2MSFS but I find it to be pretty darn good. Working with Materials is a little different butI have find the implementation powerful and more complete. The ability to import MSFS gtlf files is fantastic. Seeing how Asobo's WIndsock works is fantastic.

Thanks for turning us onto this, Mike.
 
K

karlo922

Messages
171
Country
germany
clements said:
I have been using this addon for a few days. It takes some getting used to if you've been using Blender2MSFS but I find it to be pretty darn good. Working with Materials is a little different butI have find the implementation powerful and more complete. The ability to import MSFS gtlf files is fantastic. Seeing how Asobo's WIndsock works is fantastic.

Thanks for turning us onto this, Mike.
Click to expand...
Hi! Could you explain whats the difference for "us" as users? What can be done now what was not possible before? I still wasn't able to get it export my texture.
 
clements

clements

Messages
123
Country
unitedstates
karlo922 said:
Hi! Could you explain whats the difference for "us" as users? What can be done now what was not possible before? I still wasn't able to get it export my texture.
Click to expand...

To fix the texture problem: uncheck Emulate Asobo Optimization under the Flight Simulator section. This will export materials correctly.

As for what's the difference between the two utilities:
  1. The most obvious difference between the Blender2MSFS and Blender-IO-MSFS is that you can import MSFS-ready gltf files with Blender-IO-MSFS and you cannot with Blender2MSFS. I recognize that this makes some people nervous with regards to potential stealing or misappropriating of IP, but I find it valuable to see how
  2. The Materials panel and setup changes significantly in Blender-IO-MSFS. The layout itself looks different but there are also additional options. This includes more UV Options and the addition of Pearlescent Options. The main branch supports "tinting" textures, which Mikeat.at has implemented for us. It seems there is a "bug" with Decals. The Material does not pick up the albedo's alpha. I have manually linked the albedo's alpha to the shader which seems to fix the problem.
  3. I do not think Blender-IO-MSFS has implemented lights, whereas Blender2MSFS has. Blender-IO-MSFS supports emissive textures but not lights. I think there may be a workaround for this but have not had time to experiment.
  4. On Export, Blender-IO-MSFS feels more like the default GLTF exporter. It also does not generate the XML file (or GUID) for the model like Blender2MSFS does. The XML file needs to be done by hand. I tend to do a lot of XML editing anyway. So, this is not a big deal for me.
Those are the differences that I have noticed. I hope it helps.
 
tml

tml

Messages
85
Country
finland
So sad that they write just single-line commit messages. But yeah, the upstream KhronosGroup/glTF-Blender-IO isn't much better.

I don't understand why the they don't attempt to get their changes upstream?
 
M

Michael2

Messages
406
Country
ca-britishcolumbia
I installed the stable version for Blender 2.92. I have to say I find the different versions and branches somewhat confusing -- not really sure if this is supposed to be a reasonably complete working version.

So far just playing around with importing aircraft models including my own. For some reason, although material identities are imported, no textures are assigned. Am I doing something wrong, or is this a known issue?

Overall, it looks promising and it seems like development will keep going.

One problem I have with the other exporter is that I can't get any animation attached to another animation to work. I'm going to try the new exporter to see whether the same problem exists.
 
M

Michael2

Messages
406
Country
ca-britishcolumbia
I see that I misstated my problem in the post above. Parented object with animations are OK. The problem is when I try to parent an armature to an animated object, the animated object won't animate in the sim. I have the same problem with the FBW exporter.

When I import a default model, I see it has just a single armature with many different animations for the different bones. That would solve my animation problems if I could duplicate it. I simply can't figure out how to assign different animations to different bones within an armature.

By the way, I went to the FBW discord site and learned that the developer of this new importer/exporter is burned out and putting the project aside for a time.
 
tml

tml

Messages
85
Country
finland
Michael2 said:
By the way, I went to the FBW discord site and learned that the developer of this new importer/exporter is burned out and putting the project aside for a time.
Click to expand...
Ouch! Hope he recovers nicely. Good reminder to us all to not be too obsessed about work (or hobby).
 
R

Rafael

Messages
29
Country
brazil
Apologies for the possibly silly question, but I haven't found any releases in the project's page, just the source. Did you guys compile it yourselves?
 
ebo77

ebo77

Messages
67
Country
england
Lagaffe

Lagaffe

Resource contributor
Messages
790
Country
france
Indeed it seems that the will of ASOBO as it had been announced in the official forum of Q&A was concretized rather quickly.
I advise you to test this new plugin in a dedicated version of blender. The portable versions (ZIP) of Blender are very good for that.

As the last version of Vitus's plugin (v0.41.4) was compliant with Blender 3.x, I wil try to test this one in this Blender version.

[EDIT]
Currently, this plugin is W.I.P : you should "install" it by copying the io_scene_gltf2_msfs directory (find in the ZIP) under scripts\addons and validate it in Preferences.
After that you only find the label MSFS Material Params under Material Properties windows and any sub-params under this one.
 
Last edited:
M

mailman

Messages
9
Country
germany
Hey guys!
It seems that I'm stupid. I've been watching the development of the official Asobo plugin and they released it today. But I am an absolute noob when it comes to Github... for me that's all pixiedust and I have absolutely no idea how to work with it properly. So I managed to download release 1.0.4. Unzipped the file and copied io_scene_gltf2_msfs into the Blender 3.0 addons directory and activated it in the Blender Prefs. I can see the MSFS Materials tab and can assign and set things, BUT for import and export I can only see the normal glTF entries and nothing with MSFS (like compared to the other exporters). WHAT am I doing wrong?! I hope someone can help me out here.
Thanks you very much!
 
S

superspud

Messages
356
Country
unitedkingdom
mailman said:
BUT for import and export I can only see the normal glTF entries and nothing with MSFS (like compared to the other exporters). WHAT am I doing wrong?! I hope someone can help me out here.
Thanks you very much!
Click to expand...

There's an extra menu down the bottom of the standard gltf export. But I can't find an XML option yet. And MSFS invisible is not invisible in Blender which makes it very annoying to work with.

Anyone know if this makes usable collision boxes? That's the only reason I'd change.

The forked one did also create collisions but they are nothing like the standard Asobo ones, when the plane hits something it's immediately thrown to the ground, so I stopped experimenting with it.
 

Attachments

  • image_2022-03-02_152859.png
    image_2022-03-02_152859.png
    142.4 KB · Views: 272
Last edited:
Lagaffe

Lagaffe

Resource contributor
Messages
790
Country
france
Asobo announced in the Q&A forum that this plugin will not be complete before the release of the SU9 so please be patient ....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top