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.

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!

About Ted Greene

View all posts by Ted Greene →