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.”](https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/gltf-blender-io-msfs-
import-export-addon.451879/) 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
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.
I believe our developer reached out to him months ago and received zero
response, unfortunately.
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.
I would raise 10 hands for this if I had them!
That would be a great addition! I cant afford 3DMax…
Nothing prevents others from working on the code already. Its
readme.md says:
1. The license of the software can be simplified as follows:
2. Do whatever you want with it.
3.
4. 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;)
Please guys do this, Blender is so much more important than 3Dsmax
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
Hey @IcemanFBW are you guys still maintaining
that plugin? The exporter is broken at the moment and no commits for 3mths.
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.
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
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 :).
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.
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
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)
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!
Great news! Love It!