LightWave X-Plane export plugin in the works

[OlaHaldor]

I got in touch with a guy on the NewTek forums who seems very interested in making a plugin for LightWave in order to export models directly from Modeler to the X-Plane .obj format. I'm testing the plugin today, and so far so good. Here's the procedure.

1. Model

2. Make all polygons quads or triangles

3. Make UV map (in Modeler or other tools like 3D Coat)

4. Texture it (Paint in 3D Coat or Photoshop, or apply textures to different surfaces and bake with LightWave Layout)

5. Copy the geometry and UV to a new object and give the object ONE surface

6. Apply the texture to the model using UV map

7. Save the model and hit the XPlaneConverter button.

TADAA!

You now have a .obj with the UV map attached, and it's ready for you to make a TEXTURE_LIT too. All you need to do is save the night texture with the same name as the day texture and add _lit to the file name.

Things are looking  bright for future development.

[OlaHaldor]

The first test. Model a very simple house / hangar, texture it with both day and night textures and export for X-Plane. Everything from modeling to texturing to baking the textures was done with LightWave.

[Kesomir]

What about animations?

[OlaHaldor]

There haven't been any talk about animation yet. I'll bring it up, but that might be another export plugin for LightWave Layout then since you can't animate in Modeler.