Hi Gypsymoth, my little experimental projects also import Blender data. I’ll give you a sneak preview of a Tutorial I am creating for the scenery editor.
To make sure your Blender work is suitable for use in MSFS, install the appropriate Blender glTF 2.0 addin (Khronos/Asobo tools for MSFS)
…in the Blender Export dialog, you will export to glTF 2.0 for MSFS (lowest choice). Check “GenerateAppend”, fillin your object name and check “Create Guid”. Set include the currently selected object(s). Make sure you have an object selected, else your mesh will be empty.
As a result of the Blender export, you will get at least three files. A glTF, a BIN, a XML. If you have used textures in Blender, make sure you copy the PNG’s seperately (see below)
The main path structure for my project is copied from the SimpleScenery example in the SDK:
A “binary compile” takes place on the Project Build stage. Textures of type jpg, png are translated into DDS files and your Khronos gltf (json) meshes are translated into a binary .BLG file. When you are not sure if your project part has been compiled or not, check if new files created in Packages\
The PackageSources path is the only path you’ll have to actually fill… you find 2 paths, that is scene and modellib.
Forget scene for now. In scene\objects.xml a file is placed by the sim, that contains the position of your objects. You won’t have anything to do manually with that.
Your actual scenery project is in \modellib, mine looks as follows now:
My object under test is e.g. in \texturecube10. These are the files from Blender (bin, gltf and xml) except the textures, these will be placed in …\texture. In my projects, I use a shared …\texture, if you don’t fillin the target texture directory in Blender, you will get the files together.
Now go to the sim… switch on developer mode AND FIRST load the airport where you want to put your objects. Then…
Open your project (in above case: “SceneryProject.xml”) and click Window/Console so you can see progress. Now build your project, by clicking “Build”. In the Console, you will see some red lines. At this point, clear the console… and build your project again. Then it should work (0 errors) else there is really something wrong with your blender project.
In the compile stage of Project Editor, the sim has done all binaries (BLG and DDS files) and everything is set up to load your scenery. At this point, click…
And then click the Load Assets Group button. And wait. Note: this wait is the most important beginners error ! People open View Objects and expect their objects to be searchable right away, but they are not. You have to wait until the scenery has been loaded. To see that, open View Objects and just watch… at some point, you will see other objects appear… and then you can type your object name in the Filter box. In this case that would be “texturebox10”. If you start typing before that point, it is lost and you’ll have to start the dialog again.
When you see your object was found in the little list, select it and then “Click once to place”, use your mouse to put the object and click left to fix it somewhere. Mind that this allows repeating… a little confusing, when you have only 1 object to place. Go to Click once to place again, to switch it offf. Then you can move the object with the SDK options. Key W to move, key E to turn the object.
A few pitfalls: if you don’t see your object, first check the Console if there was a compile error for your project. Build again, reload the project and build again. Then click “Load Assets Group” again. If still nothing appears, check the files compiled. Where did you move your files after creating them with Blender? I always make a new directory with the object under modelLib.