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Idea

IcemanFBW suggested Jun 9, '21 Losco_Nosciuto commented Mar 5, '22

Provide an official Blender export plugin

Currently, the only somewhat complete Blender plugin is "MSFS2Blender" created by Vitus, but the last time it was updated was in September of last year, and lacks some key features and functionality, according to our developers/modelers who have used it here at FBW.

One of our developers has been hard at work for several months on a completely new, open-source plugin which aims to be a complete suite for taking full advantage of MSFS's GLTF spec, and supports importing as well as exporting. Although the exporting functionality is still incomplete, users have mentioned it as having an implementation that is "powerful and more complete." However, our developer no longer have the time to work on it for the forseeable future, and it is difficult to find someone with the specific skillset and knowledge to pick up on their work.

We would appreciate if there could be an official import/export plugin, whether from scratch or picking up on this work (which is open source under the Apache license). Although 3DS Max may be useful for some people, its cost is VERY prohibitive to most people, and dissuades hobbyists and freeware developers for producing for MSFS. Blender is free, and another industry standard.

Here is the link to the repo: https://github.com/flybywiresim/msfs2blender2msfs

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Fortn00b15 commented Jun 9, '21

Hey Iceman,

Have you guys at FBW tried reaching out to Vitus? I know he's super busy with development work on aircraft for MSFS but he strikes me as the kind of guy that would be open to allowing his MSFS2Blender project to be worked on by others.

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tml · Jun 26, 2021 at 02:23 AM

Nothing prevents others from working on the code already. Its readme.md says:

The license of the software can be simplified as follows:
Do whatever you want with it.

Use it personally, internally or commercially. Change it, redistribute it, sell it. You can credit the original authors. Or don’t, and collect all the glory for yourself.

I created https://github.com/tml1024/Blender2MSFS2 for that, to be a place where people can co-operate on improving it. Maybe eventually that will actually happen;)

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IcemanFBW tml · Jun 28, 2021 at 11:48 PM

After looking over the code, we found that in order to make a superior plugin which can meet the functionality of the official 3dsmax exporter, it was a better choice to fork the official Khronos GLTF plugin for Blender.

As mentioned in the original post, we have that repository here: https://github.com/flybywiresim/msfs2blender2msfs

It also has full import capabilities (MSFS GLTF to Blender), which Vitus's plugin does not have. We do urge the community to contribute to our repository, as it is licensed under a proper, established open source license and is actively maintained by FBW

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IcemanFBW · Jun 09, 2021 at 09:02 PM

I believe our developer reached out to him months ago and received zero response, unfortunately.

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OzWookiee commented Jun 10, '21

I would certainly like to see this as well. Vitus is extremely talented but can go AWOL for long periods which leaves the current exporter languishing. For the new developer, Blender is INCREDIBLY enticing with it's rich feature set and even better price.

If you do not use Blender, do NOT confuse it with GMax as being the "free" 3D software. Blender is very much toe-to-toe with 3DS Max, Maya etc and is very quickly being adapted in all sorts of areas.

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ZdenniZ commented Jun 11, '21

I would raise 10 hands for this if I had them!

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KWhy commented Jun 19, '21

That would be a great addition! I cant afford 3DMax...

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tonypezz commented Jun 28, '21 tonypezz published Jun 28, '21

Please guys do this, Blender is so much more important than 3Dsmax

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OzWookiee commented Jul 26, '21

Hey @IcemanFBW are you guys still maintaining that plugin? The exporter is broken at the moment and no commits for 3mths.

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pepperoni · Jul 30, 2021 at 02:02 AM

I'm the developer in question who was working on that plugin - I was on a break for a while but I'm back and continuing to work on the exporter now.

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IcemanFBW · Jul 27, 2021 at 06:09 AM

We only had one developer who was willing to work on it, and he's currently unavailable for a couple months. Which is part of the reason we would love to see Asobo pick up on this work and finish it, as Blender is much more accessible to most 3rd party devs than 3DS Max, whose cost is prohibitively high.

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SonantAlpaca commented Jul 27, '21

Hello,

We actually wish to provide a Blender exporter. But for now we don't have the bandwith to work on that (including from an existing solution). We'll keep you posted as soon as we get started!

Alyzée

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ZdenniZ · Jul 28, 2021 at 09:03 AM

Alyzée, I can't even express what I felt reading your above message! If you really do that, you will literally have an army of thankful people and that would give the MSFS dev pool a HUGE boost! Please do that sooner rather than later :).

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Losco_Nosciuto commented Jul 30, '21 Losco_Nosciuto published Jul 30, '21

My 5 cents.
More than "Asobo", I'd rather like the input to come from Microsoft itself.
Let's break it down a little.

- Adobe just bought Alegorythmic suite for 3D painting (Alchemist / Designer / Painter).
- Then Adobe Joined the Blender Foundation.
- After that, Adobe released a somehow useful and "not that basic" SBSAR support for Blender.

That's the right mentality to make a product grow.
By now, I'm glad Microsoft supported The Blender Foundation becoming a Gold Member, but see how damn good of a boost was for Adobe to release Blender Plugins for both Mixamo and Adobe 3D Suite.

This could happen with Flight Simulator if they only saved ONE PROFESSIONAL, for 8 / 16 HOURS, to release a first iteration in cooperation with the community. Nobody asks for a perfect importer/exporter on DayOne, but a continued support over MSFS Versioning and toward the stability of the Plugin itself

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Losco_Nosciuto commented Aug 23, '21 Losco_Nosciuto published Aug 23, '21

By now I was thinking, I can (barely) understand not developing a dedicated Blender plugin, BUT.

What about AT LEAST .blend samples other than .max?

The community is moving at a decent pace (Mostly thankst to @pepperoni from the FBW team) for the exporter, but let's give the community at least a few samples so they can see the process "behind the curtains" of each one, and sort the exporting out themselves.
Properly create the assets can make things easier for both creators and people who work on the exporters (seeing what it technically takes in an asset could help figuring out what and how to implement in the exporter itself)

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SonantAlpaca commented Nov 22, '21

Hello,

Just to keep you updated: we currently have someone working on an officialy supported Blender exporter.

It's a little bit too soon to tell which existing exporter we will reuse, but we're not starting from scratch. I'll keep you posted ASAP!

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mamudesign · Nov 22, 2021 at 02:22 PM

Great news!

Love It!

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ZdenniZ · Nov 24, 2021 at 09:35 PM

Hi Alyzee! This statement of yours completely made my day! Thank you! One question - will you be accepting contributions from the community and/or develop the plugin on GitHub? Thanks again!

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tonypezz ZdenniZ · Jan 21 at 10:58 AM

Hello SonantAlpaca,

Thank you so much for this, would it be possible to know a more about the current progress and expecations?

Also an estimated time for a WIP release we can test to provide you feedbacks?

cheers!

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