Part 5A: Creating Scenery for MSFS 2020: Making a House in Blender and Exporting to MSFS

[@stefstaf]

When I nonchalantly hit the download button and install a new scenery totally free, now I know how much effort and work and detail and time was put in this project from the creators, for me to enjoy realism in my simulator. Thank you very much sir for this.

[@everettpence61]

Thank you for taking the time and effort to create these tutorial videos! For anyone following the part 5 series, make sure to watch through part c as it fixes some problems and allows you to complete the project.

[@myphysicalworld3958]

My pleasure!

[@brianbuckley6713]

Hi Christopher, first off, stop apologising for you long videos. My 64 yearly old brain is able to keep up with the speed of your tutorials so no need to apologise. Second, I have been doing things the long way it appears. I’ve learnt such a lot more from this one video so thanks again for another great tutorial. Cheers Brian

[@martinroeeidhammer9108]

While I think I need to find some tutorials on the basics of Blender elsewhere, your videos are a great inspiration. Your attention to detail is what I have been missing in many other scenery creation videos. Keep 'em coming!

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Awesome, thank you!

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Blender Guru: follow his donut tutorial! I've made that thing probably a dozen times...LOL. Also CGEssentials puts some good stuff up. For more advanced, try Blender Bob. Good luck and keep practicing.

[@tradari]

awesome effort as normal. I know you said this is not a blender tutorial I think there were a lot of steps in that that will really help people out

[@myphysicalworld3958]

I hope!

[@trusselee8437]

Hello my friend, I started less than 2 weeks ago learning 3d to make some stuff for flight simulator. More than once, I was going to quit even though I like very much all of this but because of you and your videos, I’m still giving a chance to 3d modeling and being patient with all the mistakes I make and problems I find. I’m still improving my methods and searching for the best practices and you have been a great aid! If you can, for me and for people like me, please continue your fantastic tutorials. Big thanks! Take care!

[@myphysicalworld3958]

So, how is it going?

[@trusselee8437]

@@myphysicalworld3958 Hi mate! I'm Diogo from your facebook group ;) 5million triangles and counting... I would like to share with you some pics since you are one of those responsible of making me work hours in this ahahaha. Is there any way to share just with you? Do you have discord or something like that? I will post the progress at our group, but I want to make it better before doing that ;)

[@ryuhaneda]

I haven’t quit yet - finally got through the video. The things I have learned here are great and I’ll put them to use! I didn’t find the exact same textures you had so I had some close approximations for the texturing part of the video. Otherwise, thank you very much!

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Awesome!

[@geoffelks204]

Hi. Thank you for your tutorial series your measured and honest delivery of what we need to do is just right for me. I am used to using directories/folders etc to run things but haven’t done that for about 20 years. Well done I have a question I have imported an auto and model into blender( .stl file. ) Just to paint. It. I have unwrapped the painted model. There are a lot of faces in the unwrap area painted. Are these paint /textures to be put in the project textures folder ( tut1-materials) in your tutorials. Would I need to add roughness to them to give them a texture. Many thanks. Geoff Elks😊

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Actually, textures used to paint objects are placed in the "texture" folder of your modelLib folder. The "Textures" folder in your materialLib is used for "in Sim" ground textures.

[@rhammond174]

Hey Mr. World, I don't know if you've addressed this in a future video, but at 44:50 you refer to the Metallic texture slot as a roughness slot. This is in fact a composite texture slot. This composite texture consists of 3 grey-scale maps: Ambient Occlusion in the Red channel, Roughness in the Green channel and Metallic in the Blue channel. This texture is usually named with a _comp suffix. If you assign just a roughness image to this slot, it will mess up the AO and Metallic maps since you would be assigning the roughness image to all 3 maps. There are some pretty good videos on the construction of this composite texture.

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Nice. I have to review what I said and take a look. Thanks for the input.

[@rhammond174]

Keep up the good work.

[@mustafanasir91]

Thank you

[@myphysicalworld3958]

You are welcome!

[@ViolinPilot]

Curious, when you put in your "Normal" and "Roughness" textures (for the corrugated roof), they were not rotated 90-degrees and scaled down (like the first texture), would that not make a difference in appearance?

[@jonathanlambert7004]

Really enjoying your tutorials. Everything was going well until I tried to build outside the sim . The command prompt window gave me errors and some extra folders. I think the sdk has been updated since your video so it may of been that but I am such a novice. My main question and its something I just cant find an answer .. Can I import a hangar from MSFS into blender and write some signage on the doors like a nice logo ...Then export it back into the sim ... I then got side-tracked watching this tutorial which I am loving the blender part of it ...

[@myphysicalworld3958]

The current fspackagetool.exe is august 11, 2022. I would need to see the list after the build to see what is going on....Join my discord: discord.gg/drcb7Rd3 and we can help. Unfortunately the default buildings are in a .BGL and it isn't so straight forward to extract them.

[@frysimulation]

Watching your series. I am a former Software Engineer so the SDK is much easier for me, but I lack in modeling skills. So is Blender used more often than Krita. Also what series of your videos would be best to watch for Blender skills. Thanks

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Krita is a "paint" style software (used for creating textures), whereas Blender is modeling. Playlist "Fairfield Inn" or "Quonset Hangar" will give an idea on modeling in Blender.

[@rms59]

Very well done video Sir. Subscribed

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Thank you!

[@myphysicalworld3958]

I saw your second comment however it will not allow me to reply to it....strange....however...I think you have to have the SDK on the same computer as MSFS....I could be wrong....but I have never tried a separate computer.....Also....are you left mouse dragging and dropping? That's how you have to do it. Hope that helps.

[@ghrasko]

One problem. Through the window you can look through the opposite wall, i.e. from within the house the walls are transparent. This canbe checked already in Blender with a single cube. If you assign the texture not in the MSFS section, but in the default section, the walls are not transparent from inside. So there is a problem with the MSFS shader flow.

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Apply double-sided, problem solved..

[@ghrasko]

@@myphysicalworld3958 I am a beginner at Blender, but I will figure out, thanks. Also, probably I will create "real" thick walls and there this will not be the problem as there will be normals pointing to inside the building as well. Anyhow, this is the first video I have checked from your channel, and I was very pleased. I am working in IT, make presentations about science and IT frequently and I have to say, the pace, depth of this video lecture was perfect. In many such videos the presenter is just going through the steps very fast and you just realize what was the purpose afterwards. In your video I (mostly) always knew what you would like to achieve in the next step. Thanks very much, I will go through several of you other videos.

[@TractorMonkeywithJL]

Good video. I have a question for you sir. Under the msfs params menu for adding textures. Your screen says Albedo for the first selection and mine says Base Color. Are they the same thing? I don't have an Albedo anywhere. I'm using Blender 3.2 and Multi-export glff 2.0 for the msfs addon. My msfs addon is a bit different from yours. Do you have any experience with it?

[@myphysicalworld3958]

It is the same thing. I use the Asobo exporter in 3.1.

[@kenrathjen2286]

I love your tutorials. They have been extremely helpful. I have already designed a couple of items for my home airport KIDP. I was a complete novice with Blender before I started but have completed a very satisfactory version of the terminal building at KIDP. I do have a question about using the fspackagetool.exe program. When I drop the .xml file onto it, I do get a command prompt window (formerly DOS window) to open up and the program runs normally. However, I don't get the "Press any key to continue" prompt when it completes its execution like it shows in your window. It just closes the window and I can't read the results to see if it has completed properly. Do you have any suggestions?

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Hmm, odd. Make sure you Left mouse button dragging and dropping? Also, when was the last time you downloaded the SDK and installed? I vaguely remember a past version of the SDK doing that....I think.

[@cptmete3504]

Hello, I export the model the same as in the video. Batch export fails when Lods is not opened. I open it but it only exports the xml file. Could you help? Thank you...

[@myphysicalworld3958]

I am assuming you are using msfs2blender exporter. Batch exporting for LODs doesn't work. You can run it once to create LOD00 and the XML, but you will need to export the other LODs individually without the batch export. However, if you switch to Blender 3.1 and use the Asobo Exporter that problem goes away. I have a video "Levels of Detail" around the 20 minute mark telling how to overcome the bug in the exporter.

[@cptmete3504]

@@myphysicalworld3958 You answered the moment I solved the problem. thanks anyway :)

[@geoffelks204]

Hi Christopher Have paint now as a texture in texture file. I have problem. Have followed the blender file export to the letter. I am not getting the 3 extra files only the export XML. With guid No .bin or gltf file. Please can you advise.

[@myphysicalworld3958]

In Blender, go to File, Export, glTF and make sure to select xml, bin create.

[@geoffelks204]

Thanks Will try now.

[@geoffelks204]

Have selected the drop down under format.glTF separate(.gltf +bin +textures) but still doesn’t make the bin and gltf file Can’t. Find any other selection. I am using blender 4.1 and msfs tools 0.40.0

[@myphysicalworld3958]

@@geoffelks204 There's the problem. Above Blender 3.3.x is not supported as of yet. You need to use V3.3.x and Asobo's Exporter. Link in description should point to Asobo Exporter.

[@geoffelks204]

Oh ok thanks

[@gunnarschlueter]

Hello Sir :-) I am desperate. I have Blender 3.0 and am trying to learn your tutorial. Can you please tell me the key combination to make the roof higher? In the video at minute 7:42. Thanks very much. Sorry my english is not that good.

[@BlAzInLoNdOnToWn]

I'm guessing it's G to move and then Z to restrict movement to the Z axis.

[@jazzman198]

I know it is not a Blender Tutorial :) However there is a piece of software which is recording the mouse buttons when operating and shows it over the display. Same like in the offcial Blender tuts btw :) may be helpful for some of the newbies :)

[@Kampegowda]

Hi Chris, Can you share another way for GUI. I use C4d for 3D and there no option for automatically GUI assignment. Thanks, great tutorials.

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Not sure I understand the question.

[@Kampegowda]

Is there another way or may be standalone soft for create GUI outside of Blender/3dmax? That what i meant.

[@Kampegowda]

I'm using Cinema4d application and no MSFS plugin for C4D. I hope now is clear.

[@myphysicalworld3958]

@@Kampegowda What do you mean by GUI. Do you mean GUID? Sorry for my confusion...lol.

[@Kampegowda]

@@myphysicalworld3958 Ohhh, sorry Chris, of course GUID. My mistake. So, question the same , is there another way to create GUID for models and materials without Blender/3Dmax?

[@adrienseppanen5517]

Love these videos they have helped me a bunch! Im just wondering, I have an existing project and got done with the first terminal and i have some texture issues where they show up pink or i have a face missing in the sim, im just wondering how to fix them in blender so that they would automatically update in the sim. do i have to create a brand new file and project or do i replace the xml file and run it through fspackagetool?

[@myphysicalworld3958]

Pink means missing texture...it does not know where to find it. Make sure you are exporting with the correct path. Miss face is most likely a face that has it normals facing the wrong direction....flip the normals.

[@adrienseppanen5517]

​@@myphysicalworld3958 I figured that pink textures are missing ones but I'm not sure why since I have it properly sized and in the correct texture folder where every other texture that loaded into the sim is in. I will redo the texture and try to look into that but after I am done, should it update by itself when I bring it out of blender? Or do I repeat the steps of bringing it into the sim? Or can I just update the files in the existing project.

[@myphysicalworld3958]

@@adrienseppanen5517 Gotta love the strange stuff that happens sometimes....I had pink textures "once", a long time ago. I think I just went into Blender (after confirming size was good and that it was a PNG) and re-added the texture to the object, re-exported, re-built. It doesn't by chance appear "purple" in Blender does it? If it does, then Blender cannot find it...(I'm sure you are not having "that" problem or you would have mentioned it). Does your build show any errors or warning?

[@adrienseppanen5517]

@@myphysicalworld3958 No it appears normal. in my textures tab (where you see all your different materials that you used in the project) some textures appear pink also, which is strange because they appear normal in blender and in the sim. I dont have any other warning except that file name is invalid 😂 But I will re-add the "missing" texture and then rebuild it in the sim I will see what happens!

[@myphysicalworld3958]

@@adrienseppanen5517 do you have "../texture/" in the export settings?