Elvas Tower: Blender 2.8x to MSTS Exporter - Must Enable LOD Collections - Elvas Tower

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Blender 2.8x to MSTS Exporter - Must Enable LOD Collections Rate Topic: -----

#1 User is offline   wacampbell 

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Posted 14 December 2019 - 04:59 PM

I recently noticed that my modifier stack wasn't being applied properly on one of the models I was working on. The part with a mirror modifier would look OK in blender, but in Open Rails it would be missing the mirrored half of the part. This applied to other modifiers also.

I tracked it down to not having the LOD collection enabled in Blender when I exported the model.

BEFORE EXPORTING YOUR MODEL, ENSURE ALL THE LOD COLLECTIONS ARE ENABLED IN THE OUTLINER

eg MAIN, MAIN_0300, MAIN_1000 etc , make sure the check boxes beside these names are checked.

I'll add a fix or warning in the next update to the exporter.


Wayne

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#2 User is offline   Hamza97 

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Posted 17 December 2019 - 10:38 PM

Hii Wayne ...

First of all thanks for exporter ... !!! :sign_thanks:

Today I tried exporting my in-progress loco using 2.81 ..., Unfortunately it seems that new version requires every object to have a MATERIAL and UV map assigned to it, which I believe is little problematic because while in modelling phase I regularly export the model just to check it in-game and don't UV unwrap until every thing is completed. And I believe others would agree too. So its a request to remove this restriction if possible pls .. ^_^

Currently I have to copy objects to older Blender 2.79 and export from there. :sweatingbullets:

#3 User is offline   wacampbell 

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Posted 18 December 2019 - 10:30 AM

> Unfortunately it seems that new version requires every object to have a MATERIAL and UV map assigned to it,

Good suggestion. Certainly its an error for these to be missing. Neither Open Rails nor MSTS will load such a model. But I understand how it would simplify things. I'll make the Exporter warn about it, but then continue, filling in the missing values with some sort of defaults.

#4 User is offline   Hamza97 

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Posted 18 December 2019 - 09:03 PM

Quote

Neither Open Rails nor MSTS will load such a model.


OpenRails would load the model just fine, even ShapeViewer loads it. The older exporter just assigned a "blank.ace" image for the file. In game the model would appear grey (obviously due to not actually having textures) but other than that it would work just fine, including animations.

#5 User is offline   Hamza97 

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Posted 28 October 2020 - 09:59 PM

Hello .. :) Sorry for bumping this topic .. ^_^

However I have come across what is possibly a bug.., Or maybe a suggestion .. :(

I have observed that exporter requires the UV channel to be named "UVMap" , otherwise it would throw up an error and wont export the model.. :huh:

This issue is on same lines as post #2 above about exporter requiring material and UV channel., However naming the actual channel "UVMap" may not be possible every time due to various reasons.

I noticed this today only because the model I am working on is modeled in Maya and imported as an FBX in Blender.

I know joining everything and just renaming the channel name is possible, but I would like to keep parts separate for variety of reasons .. :D

#6 User is offline   pwillard 

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Posted 02 December 2020 - 02:34 PM

View PostHamza97, on 28 October 2020 - 09:59 PM, said:

Hello .. :) Sorry for bumping this topic .. ^_^

However I have come across what is possibly a bug.., Or maybe a suggestion .. :(

I have observed that exporter requires the UV channel to be named "UVMap" , otherwise it would throw up an error and wont export the model.. :huh:

This issue is on same lines as post #2 above about exporter requiring material and UV channel., However naming the actual channel "UVMap" may not be possible every time due to various reasons.

I noticed this today only because the model I am working on is modeled in Maya and imported as an FBX in Blender.

I know joining everything and just renaming the channel name is possible, but I would like to keep parts separate for variety of reasons .. :D


I ran into this issue with the DAE import from 3D Canvas. None of the UVMAPS on objects that were imported used that name so the exporter blew a fuse. Renaming all the maps fixes it. Its possible to automate a fix with the script snippets we talked about in that thread.

#7 User is offline   Андрей TH33 

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Posted 12 December 2020 - 06:00 AM

Hello. My name is Andrey and I'm from Russia. I am engaged in modeling Russian locomotives for RTS. Recently I discovered for myself that although Blender is not more convenient than 3ds max, it is very good at working with textures and their baking, unlike vray or corona. Faced the problem of transferring a model from 3ds max to blender and then back to 3ds max. I learned from other developers that there is a converter for Blender and came to your site. So I can't download it until I type 50 messages. If it's not difficult for anyone, please help out with this converter for blender. Thank you in advance. Sorry for my English writing through a translator.

#8 User is offline   wacampbell 

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Posted 12 December 2020 - 06:15 AM

View PostАндрей TH33, on 12 December 2020 - 06:00 AM, said:

... So I can't download it until I type 50 messages. If it's not difficult for anyone, please help out with this converter for blender. Thank you in advance. Sorry for my English writing through a translator.


Hello Andrey,

Your post in this forum brought you so close to the answer. All you had to do was look up :-) Check out the spiked post at the top of the forum here:

http://www.elvastowe...eling-software/

It provides publicly accessible links for the converter. Use the Google Drive links if you don't have download privileges on Elvas Tower.

Welcome to the world of Blender and MSTS. Have fun and drop back here to show us what you have built!


Wayne

#9 User is offline   Андрей TH33 

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Posted 13 December 2020 - 02:48 AM

Thank you so much. Sorry did not see this topic right away)

#10 User is offline   pwillard 

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Posted 13 December 2020 - 07:38 AM

I think a warning needs to be given though.

The Exporter for 2.79 of Blender has more options available than the 2.8+ exporter but Blender also dropped 3DS file support after 2.79 so if you need 3DS features, you need Blender 2.79.

Both of these issues prevent the exporter from being useful to you in 2.8+ versions of the software. The 2.8 compatible exporter ONLY creates S files for ORTS and MSTS.

So... you will need to be using the older version 2.79 of blender.

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