Author: Ted Greene

XPlane2Blender v4.1.0-beta.1

Download from GitHub!

XPlane2Blender v4.1.0-beta.1

This is a beta so make backups of your work before using!

New features!

Custom Spill Lights

Custom Spill Lights are now implemented (#312)! To use, make a light datablock with the XPlane2Blender light type as Custom Spill. Relevant properties are:

PropertyFunction
Light ColorRGB color for the light
Light RotationSpot light direction
Light Spot SizeThe width of spot light
SizeSize parameter (in meters)?
DatarefDataref that controls the light

Custom Spill lights can make dataref driven custom omni-directional billboards and directional spot lights.
As with Automatic Lights, the goal is What You See Is What You Get.

In this photo the green light is a Custom Spill, where sim/graphics/animation/lights/traffic_light changes the color between green, yellow, and red! The white lights have different widths, all made without doing any math by hand.

Cockpit Device

X-Plane has pre-made high quality GPS devices that are easily accessible to the artist. Thanks to (#481) using one is as simple as making a mesh, and giving it a material with a Cockpit Device set. Pick the device, at least 1 electrical bus (matching Plane Maker), the lighting channel, and if the screen’s brightness should auto-adjust. You’ll get a fully functional GPS device just like that! You can have multiple devices in the same OBJ, as well as use of the panel texture.

cockpit_device_ui
image

The Cessna’s cockpit provides 2 great examples of using cockpit devices.

Cockpit Features UI

Given the changes and additions to our Cockpit Features, the UI has been changed slightly. On the material Properties tab use the “Cockpit Features” to find “Cockpit Regions” and “Cockpit Device”. The updater should adjust the setting for you if you were using regions.

Minor features

(#426) Shadow Blend’s Blend Ratio can finally be set. Thanks @kbrandwijk!
(#548) Non-Exporting Lights are back in. They’re intended as “work lights” and will never ever show up in the OBJ! Simply set the X-Plane Light Type to “Non-Exporting” and use freely.

Important fixes

  • Light Level can now be used multiple times in the same .obj without tricks or getting lucky!

Thanks to everyone who downloaded alpha.1! I’m glad that this series has been so successful and I can wait to see what you make with the new light features! As always make backups!

Posted in Aircraft, Aircraft & Modeling, Cockpits, Modeling, Panels, Scenery, Tools by | 4 Comments

XPlane2Blender v4.1.0-alpha.1

Download this from GitHub!

XPlane2Blender v4.1.0-alpha.1

This alpha contains changes to the updater. Make backups before using!

Global Material Settings -> OBJ Settings

This new version contains one of the most requested fixes (#357#599) for XPlane2Blender: Normal Metalness, Blend Glass, and Global Tint have been moved out of the Material Properties Tab and into OBJ Settings! The annoying “All Materials in an obj must have the same Normal Metalness/Blend Glass Value” error is gone!

The updater tries its best to guess if you wanted Normal Metalness, Blend Glass, or Global Tint, however it isn’t perfect. If you have to manually correct more than 3 of your OBJ settings, please tell me.

These new settings can be found under the Textures section of the OBJ Settings.

global_material_options

Emissive Panel Texture Only and Panel Mode Selector

#595 Also known as ATTR_cockpit_lit_only, this directive has actually been in X-Plane since 11.10, but now is accessible in XPlane2Blender! It makes a panel only use the emissive “Lit” texture – a great speed boost if that is all you need. This is the perfect feature for computer displays.

For Aircraft or Cockpit export types, look in the Cockpit section for “Panel Mode”. This changes the meaning of “Part of Cockpit Panel” for the whole OBJ. Setting it to “Emissive Panel Texture Only” mode activates the feature. You cannot mix panel modes.

emissive_panel_texture_only
Cockpit Regions

People who use Cockpit Regions will have to manually change “Panel Mode” from Default to Regions to see the UI and have regions export again. A one time fix. A future updater will do it for you. Until then I hope it isn’t too many OBJs to change.

Updater Version History Synchronization

#471 The updater now synchronizes its last version across every scene and new updater functions will not use data cleaning to protect against accidental or purposeful updater re-runs. Simply put this means a safer to use XPlane2Blender (but still make backups). Since this is new updater code, however, it had to be put in an alpha. People with multiple scenes should be especially on the look out for problems. I feel very confident about it however.

With testers and users like the ones XPlane2Blender has we’ll be getting to v4.1.0-rc.1 much much much much faster this time! For the users who requested moving Normal Metalness and Blend Glass, thank you for your patience. I know now just how annoying that error message was! I’ll certainly keep this experience in mind for future decisions and don’t worry, “make it the same across every material” is not going to be chosen again without an extremely important reason!

Posted in Aircraft & Modeling, Cockpits, File Formats, Modeling, Panels, Scenery, Tools by | 11 Comments

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-rc.1

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-rc.1

Download this from GitHub!

We did it folks! Long in development (mostly because I kept adding features, not because of many disastrous releases) we can call this complete! A huge thanks to our dedicated volunteers who beta tested, send bugs, e-mails, and trusted their projects and livelihoods to us. We hope to live up to that trust everyday. Again thank you. Also thanks to a few people who contributed code (Premek Truska and @kbrandwijk)!

This release notes page serves as an overview of important new features and changes since Blender 2.79. Since the manual has not kept pace with development, you’ll find documentation on the new features in past release notes. This is being worked on.

Don’t be surprised if you see the words “Exportable Collection/Object”. That name was later changed to “Root Collection/Object”. Read more about that change here.

New Features

Blender 2.80-83 upgrade!

  • Blender 2.80-83 is supported! XPlane2Blender in Blender 2.90 has been tested by some with positive results but is not officially supported yet.
  • The UI is almost entirely the same. The replacement for the Layers Mode feature, “Root Collections”, is almost identical in nature (but also much more powerful!). A few unclear property names and poor tooltips have been reworked, but are still in the same place. Unlike Blender 2.80’s large UI change, we have changed much at all.
  • I have yet to meet an artist who, after learning modern Blender’s UI, wishes they could go back. Have no fear in upgrading!

Root Collections and Root Objects

  • Blender 2.79’s 3D View’s layer system has been removed and replaced with Blender 2.80’s Collections. To adapt, we removed “Layers Mode” and replaced it with “Root Collections”. It is nearly the same as Layers but is much more flexible. The updater preserves Layers Mode projects and the UI for this workflow is still in the Scene Properties Tab. For old tutorials you can, in general, replace the word “layer” with “a collection”. Read more about the feature here. “Exportable Collection” and “Root Collection” refer to the same concept, don’t get confused by the old name.
  • You can use Root Collections and Root Objects in the same scene, no need to pick only one workflow

Automatic lights

  • Automatic Lights makes lighting in XPlane2Blender easy! Automatic lights are aimed for you without the need for tricks, any parameters are filled in automatically or with easy to use Blender properties, and the exporter and UI prevents many types of lighting mistakes. Pick your X-Plane light name and What You See Is What You’ll Get! Read more here.
  • Knowing what lights to use and how is now easier. The “Create lights.txt Summary” button makes a text block with light names available and what parameters an Automatic Light will be setting in an easy to use format. See the “Feature Controls” table in beta.2’s release notes for the translation between parameter name and Blender control.
  • Don’t worry, Named and Param light types haven’t been changed at all.
  • Though it shouldn’t be necessary to read lights.txt anymore, it has been cleaned up quite a bit!

Split Animations

  • “Split Animations” offers a new way of sharing animations between objects and even .obj files. An excerpt from the manual explains some uses: Split Animations allows you to share animations that are outside the current root collection. *Its purpose is to reduce the manual labor of keeping these shared animations in sync. Some examples uses of this feature include
    • Synchronizing the motion of a landing gear and wheel in separate OBJs
    • Synchronizing the movement of complex wings flex and their lights
    • Synchronizing the movement of the cockpit OBJ’s door handle manipulator and a door OBJ’s door mesh
    • Having groups of manipulators follow the animation of a parent element of the cockpit
    • Many useful cases I’m sure no one else has dreamed of yet!

The feature is activated by very specific uses of Collections and parenting instead of checkboxes and buttons, so read the tutorial on how to take advantage of this powerful new feature.

Override LODs

  • The Levels of Detail feature in XPlane2Blender has been expanded to reduce the amount of clicking required and also to accommodate the removal of Blender 2.79’s 3D View layer system. How Root Objects projects use LODs had to be changed. See details and backwards compatibility instructions in alpha.5’s notes.

Optimizations

  • Thanks to Premek Truska and @kbrandwijk the Vertex Deduplication algorithm (aka using the Optimize checkbox) is set) takes almost no time at all, even for large .objs
  • A one time keyframe gathering pass makes Objects with many keyframes export twice as fast as before
  • Highly optimized string formatting increase the performance of the exporter across its whole write and logging operation
    All optimizations work automatically, no work is needed to enjoy the benefits! A full export of the BD-5J on my computer now takes 14 seconds over 2.79’s 30. Other people report similar or better results.

Removed

  • Layers Mode removed due to Blender’s choice (but Collections are far better anyways so this isn’t a big loss).
  • Blender removed Texture Slots so we removed autodetection and certain texture validations. For now the root’s texture file path string properties must be used.
  • 2.79 support. Additionally v3.5.1-beta.2 is cancelled (not that anyone ever asked for it of course). Future versions of the converter will consider Blender 2.79 a pit stop before Blender 2.80.
  • Include In Export, Export Mesh In Layers for being redundant and broken

Fixes for bugs that existed in 2.79

  • #570 Drag Rotate Bug Fix

Again, thank you so much to everyone who uses this addon and sends screenshots and bug reports and e-mails and forum posts and stories of all the great things you’re making. X-Plane wouldn’t be X-Plane without talented people like you making the world real with Blender and XPlane2Blender!

Posted in Aircraft & Modeling, Scenery, Tools by | 3 Comments

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-beta.3

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-beta.3

As always make backups

So close to release!

Unless something’s gone wrong, this is rc1!

A big speed boost for aircraft!

  • By fixing #571 and #569 aircraft with complex animations should receive seconds off their export time! It basically marks the end of the “can squeeze more out of Python” quest which is good (and a bit sad).

Drag Rotate Bug Fix

  • Fix for #578. For those struggle with trying to make things like trim wheels that rotate multiple times around (going from -1440 to 1440), this beta fixes it. Please let me know if this fix broke other manipulators.

A tiny UI fix

#570 is fixed for anyone who was bothered by this. Yes, even the small bugs matter to me I swear!

Once confirmed that these have gotten the fix, we’re at rc.1!

Posted in Aircraft & Modeling, Scenery, Tools by | Comments Off on XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-beta.3

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-beta.2

Download this on GitHub!

As always, remember that this is a beta, so make back ups!

We’re Going Back To Saying ‘Root Objects’

  • #544 – it appears the “Exportable Collection/Object” naming scheme was confusing. We’re going back to 2.79 phrasing “Root Collection/Object” in the UI, error messages, bug reports, feature requests, e-mails, everything. If I make a mistake please correct me quickly!
Old NameNew Name
Exportable RootsRoots
Exportable CollectionRoot Collection
Non-Exportable CollectionOrganizing Collection
Exportable ObjectRoot Object
Non-Exportable ObjectObject

Automatic Lights

Our bright and shiny new fun feature is here! Automatic Lights (also called WYSIWYG lights) replaces Named and Param lights. It fills out parameters and aims directional lights for you in the most efficient way possible! No more doing math by hand, no more reading the lights.txt file, no more being scared to experiment! The UI guides you and prevents mistakes! Automatic lights are the new XPlane2Blender default light. Download this example to see many different uses of this feature!

upward_camera_shot_lights

Feature Controls

We’ve tried to make this as intuitive as possible, but just in case you’re not sure what fills in what parameter, see this table:

Blender Property UsedPARAM NAME
Light’s color pickerR, G, B
XPlane2Blender’s Index propertyINDEX
XPlane2Blender’s Light Size propertySIZE
Spot Light’s Rotation (in any mode)DX, DY, DZ
“Omni” if light is a POINT else Spot Shape > SizeWIDTH, DIR_MAG
XPlane2Blender’s Flash Frequency propertyFREQ
XPlane2Blender’s Phase Offset propertyPHASE

Any other parameter found in lights.txt can’t be changed in Blender.

Limitations

  • Some very very old lights are not compatible.
  • This is currently an opt-in feature only. An updater for old named and param lights would be difficult and limited and likely won’t happen.
  • A dataref search window style feature feature is planned, but currently to get a list of lights and their parameters you’ll need to click
    “Create lights.txt Summary” and look at the internal text block “lights.txt Summary
  • The lights.txt included is the same content as X-Plane’s lights.txt, with slightly different formatting. Your .obj will be completely correct in X-Plane, but X-Plane’s old and currently shipping lights.txt is not compatible with XPlane2Blender. This will hopefully be corrected soon.

Please send me pictures and stories of what you’re trying now that the light system is more easy! I can’t wait to see more sparkling lights across the skies and airports of X-Plane!

disco_lights

Posted in Aircraft & Modeling, Scenery, Tools by | 11 Comments

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-beta.1

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-beta.1

Download it from GitHub!

As always, make backups!
Well folks, we are finally feature complete, very stable, and as bug free as we can be at the moment! This update was for some small bugs and to wait and see if there would be feedback on alpha.6.

Features

  • When attempting to export a project with no exportable collections or objects you’ll get an error asking if you forgot to check any Exportable Collection|Object checkboxs, Hopefully this helps beginners find those checkboxes and get started.

Bugs Fixed

  • #504 Where, when the collection algorithm starts in the middle of the tree, walks up, and re-enters the exportable collection it started in, it now respects the visibility and ensures the XPlaneBone is re-used. For an example of this weird case see parent_out_of_collection_snake_out.test.blend
  • #514, #536, #538 which all related to making the Hidden or Visible feature work as intended – not including what shouldn’t be included. Hidden Lights with the Default, Strobe, Traffic, or Flashing lights no longer include the VLIGHT table entry. ATTR_manip_ is not included across split animation OBJ boundaries, Objects hidden by other means than their or their parent’s visiblility are still counted as hidden (“True WYSIWYG”)

Sorry for keeping XPlane2Blender in Alpha for so long. I develop everything with the knowledge that the artist community will jump on the latest and greatest as soon as it is out there and strive for the greatest possible quality at all times. In the future I think we’ll not use the label as much. It caused a lot of concern about whether or not it should be used, even when it was quite ready.

XPlane2Blender is developed using Blender 2.80 because some Linux Distros are slow to update Blender, and some people are slow to update Blender versions. If you are using Blender 2.82 it should work, but, tell me how it goes. I haven’t heard anything bad yet.

As always, please report any bugs you find and thank you for using XPlane2Blender!

Posted in Aircraft & Modeling, Scenery, Tools by | 4 Comments

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-alpha.5, aka LODs

Download it here: XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-alpha.5, aka LODs

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-alpha.5, aka LODs

As always, make backups! This includes making backups before saving a 2.79 file in 2.80. There is no going back from that!

Override LODs feature and backwards compatibility

A quick LODs recap

This release includes the last must-have feature for 2.80 – LODs. For those who haven’t used LODs before, it stands for (Levels of Detail). It is a way of defining what to draw when the camera is a certain distance away from an OBJ. In XPlane2Blender we call those ranges “buckets” and put Blender Objects (meshes, lights, armatures, empties) “inside them”. For instance, suppose an OBJ of a hanger with 2 defined ranges (buckets) 0 to 200 and 200 to 400. It has two meshes “HangerDetailed” (bucket 1) and “HangerLowPoly” (bucket 2).

When the camera is close (0 to 199 meters), only the “HangerDetailed” mesh will be drawn. When it is far (200 to 399), only “HangerLowPoly” will be drawn. At 400 meters and above, nothing will be drawn. This is very useful for increasing the performance by not drawing what is too far away for the pilot to see.

There are two styles of Level Of Detail: Additive (where every bucket starts at 0) and Selective (where the end of one bucket and start of the next are equal (see example above)). Use one or the other depending on what you need to draw when; don’t mix between them.

LODs Mode in XPlane2Blender

Using LODs in XPlane2Blender is very easy: Define the ranges (buckets) in the OBJ settings, and tell Blender Objects which buckets they should go in.

“LODs Mode” is considered On when you have specified a number of LOD buckets in the OBJ settings.

image

This means that:

  • LOD validations are on (see later section)
  • Objects must be placed into defined buckets or they will not be drawn. This is where the new “Override LODs” checkbox on Blender Objects comes into play.

[Picture]

The LODs feature works just like 2.79’s Layers Mode LODs, with a new time saving feature and some very small backwards compatibility notes.

Override LODs
  1. In the Object Properties Tab of the Properties Editor, you’ll see a new “Override LODs” checkbox.
  2. When checked, the familiar 4 LOD bucket choice checkboxes will appear.
  3. Specify which buckets an Object will go into. All children below it will also go into the same buckets. Children who also override LODs will pass their new choices on instead.
image


In this picture HangerDetailed has its “Override LODs” checkbox checked, and has been placed into bucket 1. Its child, WindowDetails, will automatically be placed into bucket 1 too.

An Object’s LOD choices will only be used if “Override LODs” is checked.

The idea is that just a few objects in the Blender Hierarchy will need to override the LOD choices, and old projects can be quickly reorganized to take advantage of this new feature. Inheritance will greatly reduce data entry.

Backwards Compatibility

There are only a few differences from 2.79 to be aware of

Backwards Compatibility ConcernResolution
In 2.79 “No buckets chosen = Write to every LOD“. In 2.80 “No buckets chosen = Object not writtenUse the new feature to quickly specify which objects should be in all buckets
2.79 Layers Mode projects did not have an “Override LODs” checkbox, LOD choices hiddenYour old choices are remembered. Use the new Override LODs feature to quickly get the OBJ correct again
2.79 Root Objects Mode used layers 1-4 to put Objects into bucketsQuickly restore your project like this: Make an Empty for each layer used, override the Empty’s LOD buckets, and re-parent the objects so that all Objects are in their former buckets. If an object was used on more layers, make more empties to organize these cases
LOD Validations

For mistakes like not starting the first bucket at 0, having gaps or overlaps between ranges, and etc, an error will be emitted in the log.

Other Bug Fixes

  • #518 – When Export Type is “Cockpit” LOD buckets is now shown.
  • #512 – “Deck” (a rarely used Material property which controls how planes collide with this surface and the area beneath it) is now renamed to “Only Slightly Thick” implying that this collide-able surface is “Only Slightly Thick” as opposed so something that “extends the earth up to that surface”. Imagine a bridge that could not be flown under because under it is “an invisible mound of rock and world surface” vs a bridge that can be flown under because “its deck is only slightly thick”. Get it? Well, maybe the new name will make more sense to everyone without needing to know this example.
  • #511 – People will now be able to use a Particle System File again
  • #276, #525 – Some UI cleanup. “Scenery Properties” will no longer be shown when Export Type is Aircraft or Cockpit, “Autodetect Textures” is no longer drawn because it doesn’t do anything and confuses people on how to use an essential feature: specifying texture paths. The value isn’t removed and one day we’ll have that feature back in some form.

Many thanks to all the people who e-mailed me and helped me design the new LOD feature. This is an alpha feature so if the overall response is “this isn’t doing what we need” it can be ripped out, but, I think it will meet expectations. Also, especially tell me if it difficult to take a 2.79 project with LODs and make it work again. The goal is that it an artist should be able to do it in about 5 minutes without the use of an updater for most projects.

I’m so glad to be working on a project with users who are very willing to send in good bug reports and great constructive feedback and criticism! Very refreshing! As always, if something goes wrong write a bug report (preferable) or e-mail me!

Posted in Aircraft & Modeling, Modeling, Scenery, Tools by | 5 Comments

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-alpha.4

Download from GitHub here!

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-alpha.4

As always, make backups!

Over the past month people have reported to me all sorts of weird things:

  • OBJ geometry moving with every export
  • Blender Objects moving after every export
  • Animations spiraling out of control
  • Even simple renaming Blender Objects and restructuring of the Blender hierarchy might trigger a bad export.

And the only cure was to apply all transformations or restart Blender!

Thanks to your bug reports and e-mails I was able to track down the source: all these problems were facets of the same bug!

To make a long story short: I have a fix for XPlane2Blender, but other Blender exporters and users may not be so lucky. I’ve filed a bug with Blender itself, but that is nothing to worry about for X-Plane artists.

Please continue to send me your bug reports! I do read every one of them, even if I don’t get back to you right away.

Posted in Aircraft & Modeling, News, Scenery, Tools by | Comments Off on XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-alpha.4

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-alpha.3, aka Exportable Collections!

Visit the Github release page to download!

XPlane2Blender for 2.80 has crossed a new milestone! Exportable Collections are in! They work just like root objects (which we are now calling Exportable Objects), the settings for them are just where Layers Mode settings used to be, and Layers Mode projects keep their OBJ settings automatically. More details down below.

As always, make backups! This is still an alpha and how collections work could change!

New Name For Root Objects

As mentioned, Root Objects – the concept – has been renamed to “Exportable Objects”. Everything is the same, it is only the name that is changing in the UI and the docs. This was done to let people know there really isn’t much difference between using the new Collections and the old Root Object system. Half the name is the same! Otherwise it sounds like “Root Objects vs Exportable Collections” are as different as how it used to be with “Root Objects Mode” vs “Layers Mode”. From here on I will use the new names – Exportable Collections and Exportable Objects.

New Features

Exportable Collections

We’re very excited about this: Collections are in! Many thanks to the people who talked about it on #450. I think the feature will be able to do all or most of what you wanted. Here’s how to use them.

  1. When you open a 2.79 file in 2.80, the contents of Layer 1 will be put into a collection called “Layer 1_{the scene’s name}”, the contents of Layer 2 will be put into a collection called “Layer 2_{the scene’s name}” and etc.
  2. Blender has new and exciting ways of using Collections and the 3D View. If Show is on but you can’t see the contents of a collection, try right clicking on it in the outliner, go to Visibility and ensure Render and Viewport are enabled.

I highly recommend reading
New Outliner Controls
Collections Overview. Complex instancing is planned but not supported: #495 and #452.
View Layers

  1. You’ll find the exact same OBJ settings in the exact same layout where Layers Mode used to put them.
  2. The updater will have copied the previous settings if the layer had some object in it or the OBJ settings was changed in some way.
  3. Collections can be marked as “Exportable” or not. Non-Exportable Collections can be used as a way to organize your project, similar to using Empties. Unlike empties
    • An important terminology note: Datablock Objects (Meshes, Lights, Armatures, Empties) can have 1 Object parent and many Object children. Collections can have 1 Collection parent and many Collection children. This means a datablock objects can have 1 parent and be in multiple collections. When an object is linked to a collection, it is in that collection and all that collection’s chain of parents.
    • Collections do not have a location or rotation.
    • A mesh, armature, or other objects can have a blender parent and be in multiple collections. A great opportunity for re-use that XPlane2Blender supports. Also key for another new feature called “Split Animations”.
    • Every object inside the exportable collection and its chain of child collections is collected and exported together as one OBJ. Any children of those objects found outside the exportable collection are ignored, just like how Layers Mode used to work.
    • Each object is included once. Attempting to make duplicates by putting an object in multiple sub-collections of the exportable collection won’t work. In this example Cube only appears once in the OBJ.
  4. What is exported only depends on what objects are in what collection and the value of that collection’s Exportable Collection checkbox. Viewport visibility doesn’t matter.
  5. Everything inside the exportable collection and any of its child collections will be exported. If any object has a child that is outside of the exportable collection, that child and all its children will be silently ignored.
  6. There is no more “Layers Mode vs Root Object” divide, and projects can use Exportable Collections and Exportable Objects at the same time (just not nested).

Here is a picture showing a side by side comparison of the relevant UI in 2.79 and 2.80, using the BD-5J Microjet. After opening the file I hit export and it just worked!

image

In this picture I’ve unchecked Exportable Collection on Layer 2_Scene. Now it won’t export.

Split Animations

Split Animations is one of our most exciting new features – something never before possible in XPlane2Blender! See the guide in the manual, click here to find more.

Other Bug Fixes

  • #493 Unit test system slowly healing and getting back to usable.

Caveats

Things Move On Every Export

There appears to be a Blender bug in 2.80 where sometimes after every export (of any exporter) the objects drift apart. It is unknown why this happens but there are two ways to fix it.

  1. Restart Blender and try again and hope it works
  2. Select all objects and bones and use Apply > Transformations > Scale. And if that doesn’t work, Apply > Transformations > All Transformations. These are drastic, but, if it works, please e-mail and help confirm this bug that we can report to Blender.

Updater Changes

The updater has had some changes and not all of them tested 100 times over like I normally like. I don’t think it will be a problem however. Please e-mail me if you have trouble. If you have a multi-scene project, double check your updated OBJ settings and tell me if you see an automatically made collections with names like “Collection.001”. They should have been renamed.

For those of you patiently waiting for an e-mail back from me about a problem you’ve had with your .blend file, thank you for your patience. I’m going to try to respond to all of them this week!

Posted in Aircraft & Modeling, Scenery, Tools by | 1 Comment

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-alpha.1

XPlane2Blender v4.0.0-alpha.1, aka Time To Try Blender 2.80!

This is the first release of XPlane2Blender for Blender 2.80! As always, make backups, because there is no going back from overwriting your 2.79 .blend file with Blender 2.80.

The goal of this release was to having something people can play with right now without worrying about the design decisions coming down the line about Collections and LODs.

Features

  • XPlane2Blender UI is preserved!
  • Root Objects is the only useable mode (despite Layers being left in the enum). Attempting to use Layers will cause the exporter to fail.
  • Since Texture Slots are removed and use of EEVEE hasn’t been decided, the only method of specifying texture paths is the Root Object’s Texture Paths fields. Uncheck “Autodetect Textures” to see it.
  • Files with LODs won’t crash – but probably won’t work well. Since this feature’s future is undecided my goal was to just make things export instead of making something that worked correctly. The quick hack is supposed to be this

The 1st LOD bucket is the contents of the first collection (alphabetically), the 2nd LOD bucket is the contents from 2nd collection, etc. The list of collections is taken from every single scene Again, the goal was “make it export” not “make it export perfectly”. I don’t recommend trying to use LODs when trying out Blender 2.80.

aaa_gun_249_280_proof
F-4_cockpit_249_280
F-4_exterior_249_280

Even with just these limitations, I was able to successfully export several scenery objects and two of Laminar Research’s planes. As you can see, the converter is doing its job well!

(F-4 process from 2.49 to 2.79 then 2.80 going from left to right. Ignore the odd geometry under it. I simply forgot to take it out for the picture.)

Things to watch out for:

  • I spent a while trying to figure out the difference between “Hide In Viewport” vs “Enable In Viewport”. Tip: Old layers that weren’t visible are “Shown In Viewport” but “Disabled In Viewport” – “They would be shown in the viewport, if they weren’t disabled”. Right Click the collection > Visibility > Enable In Viewports to see it in the 3D View.
  • It seems that sometimes if an image block in 2.79 had a filepath to a file that doesn’t exist, Blender 2.80 removes said image datablock on load.
  • In order to view a mesh’s UV mapped textures, you’ll first need to give that mesh a material, turn on Nodes and give it an image texture node connoted to the principle BSDF’s shader’s color input. Pick the same image texture that the UV texture is.
  • One file I tried had a weird thing where a yoke was excessively shiny as if it’s normals were messed up, and when it’s manipulator associated with it was deleted, panel textures went black. I think this is very very very project specific, but, keep an eye out for weird Shade Smooth/Shade Flat issues or bad normals.

Thank you so much for your patience while the converter got its last push during September! I can’t wait to see those Blender 2.80 screenshots!

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