World Editor 2.2 Beta
Michael Minnhaar’s continuing work on WED development means builds of WED 2.2b1 are now available. Please give it a try and file any bugs you find here. Read More
Michael Minnhaar’s continuing work on WED development means builds of WED 2.2b1 are now available. Please give it a try and file any bugs you find here. Read More
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!
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.
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.
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
Exportable Collection checkbox. Viewport visibility doesn’t matter.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!
In this picture I’ve unchecked Exportable Collection on Layer 2_Scene. Now it won’t export.
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.
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.
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.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!
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.
Root Objects is the only useable mode (despite Layers being left in the enum). Attempting to use Layers will cause the exporter to fail. 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:
Right Click the collection > Visibility > Enable In Viewports to see it in the 3D View.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!
After some unfortunate delays, the 2.49 converter is released! The instructions for installation, configuration, and use are quite long, so I won’t copy them here as usually do. To download the files, scroll down to the bottom of the page to “Assets”.
The GitHub page has an updated copy of our the 2.49 scripts. Download and install them.
The converter will only get better from real world examples, so please send me your feedback and screenshots so I can fully understand the world of 2.49.
And don’t worry, it was designed to work without Blender 2.49 if needed.
Download here! I can’t wait to see life breathed into these old projects!
Here’s a feature that went into X-Plane 11.35 that will be really exciting to a very small number of scenery authors: in X-Plane 11.35, line files (.lin) can have custom painted end-caps on each end, and the texture repeats can be aligned to a grid.
Scenery authors who have gotten deep into X-Plane’s scenery system will already know from that first paragraph why this is useful, but for normal people who have seen the sun in the last 30 days, .lin files are the art files that define the look of thin linear features. X-Plane uses them for the painted yellow and white lines in the airport environment, but a developer can use them for anything linear.
Line files repeat, tile, and can follow the ground in a bezier curved path, which makes them great for curved taxiway lines. Their achilles heal up to now has been that when the line ends, the line just … stops. This makes them inappropriate for really thick uses, where that hard “cut” at the end of the line would be really noticeable and ugly.
In X-Plane 11.35 you can provide a start and end cap for each line definition. Like the line itself, it can be mulit-layered if desired. So, for example, you could use it to make dirt paths between buildings in a rural airport – where the path ends you can have a “soft” ending to the path and not have to worry about tucking the line under another scenery element to hide the cut.
We’re not using these in the default art yet, but the code is done, and I have updated the .lin file format specification with the new syntax.
Download it here!
It has been some time! I have been working as hard as I can on the converter (to great applause so far!), but, there have still been some features and fixes developed along the way. By now it was time to collect and release them!
As always This is a beta. It makes data model changes which may still have bugs. Make backups!
Previously, you could only set “Cast Shadow” to be on or off for “Scenery” and “Instanced Scenery” export types. This would, for the whole object, turn on and off shadows. Now, “Cast Shadow” has been removed from the OBJ settings and “Cast Shadow (Local)” has been placed in the material settings. With this, individual meshes can have shadows or not and it works for Aircraft and Cockpit objects too!
Read MoreYou can now grab the WED 2.1 beta here. This is a minor update with bug fixes and enhancements such as extending the facade preview to all types of facades and to the map window. You can also read Michael’s extended release notes here.
We’d like to point your attention especially to the new “2D” or “3D” meta-tag for export targets of 11.30 or higher. This tag tells the X-Plane GUI to list the airport as “2D” or “3D”.
Before X-Plane 11.35, the information in the “Features” column in the X-Plane airport selection menu came from any scenery in a user’s Custom Scenery directory, rather than being an entry in the system-wide apt.dat in the Resources/default scenery/default apt dat/ directory. The assumption was any addon airport would always be 3D. But starting with X-Plane 11.33, all global airports, even those with 2D-only layouts, were now included
in the Global Airports –which made the X-Plane GUI effectively list every airport as “3D”.
At export, WED 2.1 will analyze the scenery for 3D content and look for the existence of the meta-tag “GUI label”. If the export target is 11.30 or higher it will warn if the tag is missing or improperly set, ultimately leaving it up to the designer how they want the airport to be listed in X-Plane. If the target is “Gateway”, it will forcibly create or update this meta-tag to always be set correctly according to the actual scenery exported.
In order to fix the 2D/3D display in X-Plane 11.35 and later for any scenery not submitted via the Gateway, authors will need to manually add the tag via “Airport->Add Meta Data” and then re-exported to a target of X-Plane 11.30 or higher.
Gateway airports live in two locations in the X-Plane install folder: 3D airports live in Custom Scenery, while 2D airports live in Resources. X-Plane 11.33 now includes all airports in the Custom Scenery Global Airports folder.
This could cause issues with how your Custom Scenery pack displays. We saw this with the KSEA demo area — the 2D non-customized Gateway pack suppressed our KSEA Demo Area pack for some users.
We are fixing this for X-Plane 11.33r2, but as a general recommendation: please make sure that any custom airports you have installed are higher in the scenery_packs.ini file than the “Global Airports” pack that comes with X-Plane. This way the gateway airports won’t hide your custom scenery.
Thanks to Michael Minnhaar’s unceasing work (and willingness to nag us 😉 ) official builds of WED 2.0r1 are now available. This calls for a celebratory gif!
Please note that this is a major update and the minimum system requirements have now changed to: 64 bit versions of Windows 7/10, OSX 10.9, or Linux with GLIBC 2.23. Read More
As some of you may be aware, Blender 2.49 is old unsupported software that is becoming increasingly less usable on modern computers. To make matters worse, authors have large projects that are currently stuck on this platform, jeopardizing their work!
We are creating a 2.49 XPlane2Blender converter inside of XPlane2Blender 2.7x, so that opening a 2.49 Blend file in 2.7x will automatically convert meshes, animations, materials, lights, textures, and XPlane2Blender properties into a modern format. This isn’t just an idea, we currently have a strong proof of concept that animations can be converted from old to new!
The goal is
That if it exports in 2.49, it exports in 2.7x as similarly as possible.
That the conversion process is hassle free and also transparent.
That your work is safe and won’t be lost if there is a problem.
To accomplish this we’re going to need a lot of test .blend files and projects – to make it work for artists in the wild we need projects in the wild! We’ll take anything working and not working.
Again, just as with any other time someone sends me a sample to debug, it is kept secure and private, kept only for as long as needed, you can ask me to delete it at any time, and is only used for the development of that specific bug or feature of XPlane2Blender. They would never be used to develop any Laminar Research asset.
If you’re willing to submit a project to me, please get in contact via e-mail, DM, comment, or especially Github bug #397.
Please ask any questions!