I think my reply to Jim covered this; there are no plans to update the ac3d plugin, and to be blunt, it doesn’t make animation easier because ac3d has no native animation support.

Ah – so is the actual question:

“Why don’t we use a more common 3-d file format like Alias Wavefront OBJ for modeling, instead of a proprietary modeling format like X-Plane OBJ8”?

Just delete this after reading

It was the other way around Ben, convert from obj to obj-8 🙂
Reason for asking if the reversed way was if it was possible to convert over to using obj instead of obj-8 as default file format?

If you feel like answering, please use email or this thread/post
Thank you..

Many developers use Blender for creation 3D objects and ac3d for animations which seems to be much easier (from what I have read).

Are there any plans in the future to update the ac3d–> .obj8 plugin along with the included documentation?

Or at least documentation?

Thanks,

Andrzej

Hi Rein,

Currently the 3.20 XP2Blender script is the only Blender 2.7 script. I do not know if we will extend this script or create a new one; I have been in contact with Ondrej in the past and he has been a good collaborator – I have on my todo list to ping him again.

Re: OBJ files, I think you may have gotten the intent of my post exactly backward – I will try to write a new post explaining this in more detail, but the correct work flow is:

1. Work in modeling program.
2. Export your modeling program DIRECTLY to OBJ8 for X-Plane, no intermediate stops.

Hi Tom,

I don’t understand your comment re: obj8->obj in x-plane. It should really never be a goal to convert _from_ X-Plane’s OBJ8 to any other format. OBJ8 is a “final” format for shipping in X-Plane, it’s not an editing format for user work.

MeshTool’s README contains a lot of info but there aren’t any tutorials – it’s an advanced tool and not easy to use.

https://github.com/der-On/XPlane2Blender

Aslo from the post I understand that OBJ file should not be the one coming out of modelling software but some other format. DXF is mentioned. Does other X-Plane tools support the format or what should be the correct file format to transfer models from desing tools to X-Plane world for integration into sceneries/airplanes?

Second is it possible to convert from obj-8 to obj in x-plane – That way we could use all 3D program that support it..

PS.. Any good links to using Mesh Tools?

Hi Jim,

I expect us to support Blender 2.7 and Max in the long term. It is the same tools for aircraft and scenery!

cheers
Ben

Well, if your png files were correctly marked, even the previous version would get the gamma right. But with the new version, sRGB should always work.