Elevating Objects in Blender

[FlorianR]

Sorry, i wasn't sure wether i was supposed to post this in the "Help" section or here, but decided since its a scenery i am working on, this would be more appropriate.

A week ago i bought the Aerosoft EDDT-Scenery and had some help form a great friend converting it. It looks really well now, except for the jetways. The jetways are at ground level, instead of being in the air. Being fairly new to building sceneries and Blender, i thought i might try to elevate them in Blender, hoping to learn some important skills on the way. So i identified the six obj. files that make up the jetway for Gate 1. I impoted them using the Blender2X-Plane plugin. After working out some small bugs i probably caused myself ( ), i managed to have them all in their correct place in Blender. Below should be a screenshot of what i have so far. I have two problems now: 1) the jetway is completely untextured. 2) i have absolutely now idea how i should raise all the objects to their correct height. Do i simply drag them all up?

Can someone please explain in a few descriptive sentences how i should proceed to raise the jetways? Thanks so much, and all help will be appreciated!

Cheers 

Dude123

[tkyler]

Dude123,

Sorry if I insult your Blender skills, I certainly don't mean to.  These instructions are for Blender 2.49

I'll just describe the way I would do it.  First, in blender, make sure your 3D cursor is at the 0, 0, 0 location.  Whenever blender imports x-plane objects, it does so wherever the 3D cursor is located.  By putting the 3D cursor at the 0, 0, 0 location, you ensure that the object is imported into blender exactly in the way x-plane will load it instead of offset.  The way to set the 3D cursor to 0, 0, 0 is to go to the menu in the 3D view and select "View > View Properties" and a view properties box will appear.  In the X, Y & Z fields for the 3D cursor, type zeros in each field and the 3D cursor will move to the 0, 0, 0 position.  You can then hit the 'c' button (Blender 2.49) and it will center the view at the origin of the grid.

Now, once you have the 3D cursor at the zero position, THEN import the jetway into Blender.  After the jetway is successfully imported, then use the 'A' key to select everything.  Then hit the keys 'GZ' and move the jetways up to their proper level.  The G keys says "move" and the Z key says "only move up in the Z direction".   I then recommend you save your blender file with your newly imported jetway.

As far as the texture goes, if you get a message that says "texture not found" during import, then you'll need to tell blender where the texture is.  If you do NOT get a message that says "texture not found", then simply hit the 'D' key while the cursor is in the 3D view, and that will bring up a menu.  From that menu, select, "Textured Solid" and the texture should appear.  At this point, simply re-export the object using the export script and you should be good to go.  If the texture isn't found by blender during import, then we'll address that in another post.

[FlorianR]

Thanks for the help so far. When I import the object files for the jetway, I get an error message that says something like: cannot read texture file "Users/florianradack/desktop/EDDT Berlin Tegel/objects/TXL-164a.dds. Nevertheless, the object still opens, except it is gray. Next I "elevated" the object using the grab tool. I then saved the whole file as a .blend to my desktop and went back to Blender to export the component as an .obj file. However, when I try to export the file I get a similar error message that tells me "cant load texture file: "/TXL-164a.dds" and nothing happens. Once again, thanks for the help so far and all other help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[tkyler]

The problem is that the texture is of the format *.DDS.  The blender importer cannot read *.DDS files.  You need to convert the DDS file to PNG format.  XPlane can read both formats and usually DDS yields less VRAM usage but is more of a headache for developers.  What I would suggest is that you:

1.)  Convert the DDS to PNG somehow.  I use GIMP with a DDS plugin that  I can't remember where I got it.

2.)  Open up the *.OJB file with a text editor BEFORE importing into blender and at the top of the file, you'll see a line that says "TEXTURE" followed by a path to the image.  Change the extension of the image from  .dds  to  .png  This tells the blender importer where to look for the png file and because it is now a png file, blender will import it. 

3.) Import into Blender and hopefully you'll see the texture.

4.)  move the mesh and export your new object.

5.) Make sure that the file path given in your exported object file (after the word "TEXTURE) is the correct path in your scenery package setup.

[FlorianR]

:'( no, sorry. I did exactly what you told me to do, and the texture error message disappears, but I still don't see any textures. I forgot to mention this in the post before: I also got an error message that said --ignoring unsupported "ATTR_no_blend"--. That message still appears when importing the .obj.  Not sure if that has any impact on the textures, but i thought it might be worth mentioning.

Thanks

[tkyler]

don't worry about the ATTR_no_blend.

no, sorry. I did exactly what you told me to do, and the texture error message disappears, but I still don't see any textures

Is your 3D view in "textured" mode? If not, you need to be..and if it is, then do the following:

1.)  Import that object with PNG textures per above instructions

2.)  split your windows in Blender so you have a 3D window and a UV editor window open

3.)  Select any object in the 3D window and hit "TAB" to go into edit mode.

4.)  In the UV editor window, go to the menu "Image > Replace" and in the ensuing file dialog, navigate your way to where the PNG file is and hit the "replace image" button.

Note...to navigate "up" a folder level in blender, click on the two dots at the top of the file listing.

What you're doing here is telling blender explicitly where the texture file is

5.)  make sure you're 3D window is in in "texture draw" mode.  

[FlorianR]

Sorry that I am still bothering you with this, but I still can't export the file. Once again, I get an error message (see screenshot). I double checked by obj.'s text file to see if it was really linked to the texture, and it was. Am i doing something wrong, or am  doing something wrong  ??? ?

Thanks for the help!

Dude123 

[tkyler]

We're making progress and hopefully you're learning and that's what counts!  So what was it that allowed you to see your texture finally?  Using the "texture draw" mode?  or using the "image > replace" menu command?

Sorry that I am still bothering you with this, but I still can't export the file

Actually, that error message comes up after a successful export so you are exporting the file...it's just that the script is not writing any filepath before the texture name.  Now that error message is fine and indeed common as long as the file path given in the object file points to the texture.  

It is very normal when you have a custom x-plane object, that the texture file be located in the same folder as that object.  If the x-plane export script is unsure of or doesn't trust the filepath to the texture (for whatever reason I don't care to read the code to find out), then it will simply write the name of the texture file in the object file with no preceding path.  If the texture is located in the same directory as the object, then this will work in x-plane.  So even if you get that error message, as long as the object and texture are in the same folder, you will be fine.

What the error message is saying is that it has no idea what path to write to the object file so it's just going to forget the path and write the name of the texture file only...and as I said, by having the texture and object in the same folder, this works.

I cant' tell you more without seeing the file structure of the converted scenery.

Now I can't say with any certainty, but if you use the UV menu "Image > open" instead of "image > replace", then you might not get that error message....it seems that each of those commands handles filepath info differently..but they'll both yield the same result onscreen.  

[Simmo W]

Thanks for your very clear instructions Tom, and patience. I've bookmarked this thread to assist my own early experimenting with Blender. I feel I need it for any complex scenery stuff that arises, plus it looks much better for texturing.

I saw your point about .DDS. Is it still worthwhile converting a lot of textures to .dds, considering we now have that 'compress textures to save vram' option in xplane? Reason I ask is that my KMMH scenery uses alot of .pngs. I'd convert if it saved 20% of vram or so, but would rather not!

[Cameron]

I saw your point about .DDS. Is it still worthwhile converting a lot of textures to .dds, considering we now have that 'compress textures to save vram' option in xplane? Reason I ask is that my KMMH scenery uses alot of .pngs. I'd convert if it saved 20% of vram or so, but would rather not!

Definitely recommended, Simon. Even with that box checked, DDS always seems to win. It's unmistakable, especially in large ortho areas.

[FlorianR]

Thanks for all the help! I finally figured out my problem: I have to save the object as a .blend file in the objects folder first, and then i can export it. Silly me, i should have read the instructions that came with the X-Plane2Blender plugin.\

Ironically, i have encountered  a new problem. Some of the objects that are correctly placed in Blender dont appear in the right place in X-Plane. Has this ever happened to anyone? Any help will be appreciated, thanks!

[FlorianR]

edit: ignore the ladders, i hadn't saved the object and thats why the ladders are in a different place in the screenshot. But the rest of the objects should be......hhmmm.

[Simmo W]

Thanks Cam. Too late for this one, although I may try to convert after release, good practice.