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Some objects I want to share with scenery developers. These will be released in a short time for everyone's use.

You flew a grey "no entry" sign?

When you get to the animation stage of things I highly recommend you give ac3d a try. In my opinion it's far superior to blender for that and if that's all you end up using it for it'll still be a good investment. That's just my opinion but I know there's plenty of others out there who agree with me.

So I'm giving up, uninstalled it, going back to painting. But that's the problem - how many others have been deterred from taking up making something for xplane, because Blender is unnecessarily complicated? A short beginners manual explaining what should be installed where, and more importantly, what files should be downloaded, would go a long way to getting people into making things for xp.

Okay, so I wanted to scale some luggage, that someone else made, for a helicopter. The luggage is in xplane obj format. Reading that Marginal did Blender AND the xplane2Blender, I figured that was the best to try, as Sketchup still needed another plugin to read/write xplane obj files anway, whereas at least Marginals ones should at least talk the same language. So I went here and downloaded xp2b version 3.09 noting that it says it "requires Blender 2.4x." And here to download the Blender 2.40 exe file. Great, I install Blender onto my system (WinXP) but not sure where to put the bundle of loose files in the xp2b zipfile. I left them all in a temporary folder in My Documents and ran Blender. And then hit the Install icon in the xp2b folder. No problems there. Back into Blender and I try to import the luggage.obj file from its location. No, I get a box telling me I have Blender 2.40 and "xp2b is written for 2.43." Even though the page I got xp2b from said it needs 2.4x. grrr So I uninstall Blender 2.40 and back I go to the download page and download Blender 2.43 and go through the installation again. And re-hit the xp2b install icon. And back into Blender and try to import the luggage.obj file. I can see it, I can highlight it, but I can't open or import the damn thing. I can double click on it left, right and centre but it just won't open. The help page in the xp2b folder is a dead link, and the Blender Quick Start manual is a bit too advanced. Right now all I want to do is import a file, not design an airport. I've spent most of this evening just trying vainly to resize a bloody suitcase, and I still haven't managed to even open the file. I know Blender has a steep learning curve, but this is ridiculous.

Could you please stop harassing me? You are doing the same thing on X-Plane Paintshop and I find it very tiresome. As I have said on XPP I'm not the person you think (or want to think) I am, and you know this because if I was the person that you believe (or want to believe) I am then there would be proof of that and you would show it, but since you are not showing any proof then it prooves that I'm not the person that you think (or want to think) I am.

I downloaded and dumped it 6...count it, "SIX" times before I finaly stuck with it. I would not describe blender as unnecessarily complicated because anything you don't know how to do can be labeled as such, but what is lacking is decent information and communication about it and how to get things done and where the pitfalls are. There is a lot to take in so posts are a difficult way to convey the potential pitfalls along the road. In 2014, I hope to start a comprehensive training program on developing for x-plane and through videos and blogs, provide step by step information on how to do things. While Dan has provided his great aircraft series, its a narrow range of information he covers and all the pitfalls are not discussed, nor advanced techniques. I reallly want to make it my mission to get folks having fun developing for x-plane. If you use the blender 2.4 series, then you need to use the Blender 2.49b version. You can find it by googling for older blender installations. If you use this older version of blender, then its probable you must have an older version of python installed on your system, like Python 2.7. It is entirely possible than blender 2.49b will not work with the newest versions of Python. If you have multiple versions of python installed on your systems or you have a newer version only, then there is probably some magic dance you have to do to get the older system on there and TELL your system which version of python you have to use....indeed these are the initial headaches. I've been working on the older version of pythong 2.7 for a while now...I know this works with blender 2.49b. Once you get the proper versions of blender and python installed, then you have to obtain the proper scripts and locate them in the proper place. This is different on windows than it is on mac...and furthermore, you have the ability to set a path in blender to point it to the scripts so really...while there is a "proper place" for scripts...technically, you can leave the blender2xplane scripts anywhere you want and point blender to it through its preferences pane, which can confuse things a bit more. There are lots of buttons to push and lots of things to check along the way which is why a post is not a good way to convey. A video would be better and I promise one day I'll have one. The next "surprise" might be that after you get these scripts installed and try to import stuff, you'll find that these old scripts do NOT support a lot of the newer commands that OBJ files have so the script will 'choke' when trying to import objects....and in those cases, you have to go into the OBJ text file and strip out the lines causing blender to choke. For simple mesh objects that do not have complex animations though, the import usually goes fine. The final surprise is that when you do an import, the mesh is imported relative to blender's 3D cursor position, so if the cursor is NOT at the 0, 0, 0 position, then the mesh will import in the wrong location and when you export it back out to replace whatever it is you were trying to improve, then it will be in the wrong spot....and on and on it goes. Liser has a good summary above....and will work if none of a few potential "gotchas" crop up but you can address those on a case by case if needed. TomK

That's a real nuisance. I have only ever used Blender in its vanilla state; I have never tried XP2Blender. Commiserations, etc ...

Thanks Guy. I just found that trying to even get Blender, XP2Blender and Python all working together just killed off all the enthusiasm right out of me. In the space of one evening, I went from wanting to modify something, then to creating my own instead, to "I just can't be bothered, sod it." Great success story. It's no wonder we have so many empty airports, if that's what happens to others.

I'd endorse that, too. Absolutely possible, and you would learn an enormous amount in the process. Developing for X-Plane has always been very much about "learning by doing": there would be times when you're banging your head against a wall, and a lot of pleasure when the penny drops and it all works. Do you have 3D skills? If not, that will be a steep learning curve. It takes a while to get your head around navigating a 3D model and creating shapes by extrusion and manipulation. This has nothing to do with X-Plane. Like any skill, perhaps learning a language or a musical instrument, it takes time, effort and patience. It's definitely possible, though. The ACF format is modular, and you can drop a replacement cockpit straight in. As for Project Two, there could be an intermediate stage purely with animation. I am not familiar with either aircraft, but it's amazing what you can achieve purely with existing datarefs and animation. For example hiding the hot-spot for a key-click so that a switch can not work until another switch or lever is operated first — that sort of thing. Of course, if you want to extend the functionality of X-Plane itself, then you need to write a plug-in program. Guy.

Much as I admire Blender and its enormous capabilities, I have always found it unnecessarily complicated to achieve the most basic things. By contrast, AC3D looks like software from the 1990s, and appears to be light on features, but what it does it does well. I use Blender for its advanced lighting effects, but only once the model is made. I prefer AC3D for modelling, animating unwrapping and laying out a texture UV map, and exporting to OBJ8.

It's possible without a doubt. From a personal perspective I don't usually like working with other peoples models but it's really up to you. If you're talking about making all the 3D instruments and everything that's not a huge task in and of itself but it'll certainly take a fair bit of work. There's a lot of animations you've got to get down but once you've learned all of that it'll help for future projects because you can build up a sort of instrument library and re-use animations and things. The modeling isn't that hard for the instruments, the animations are a lot harder.

When you're dealing with an obscure file format that uses the same file extension as a very widely used and popular format I'd say that you're pretty much screwed from the word go. Most tools have been focused on getting data into OBJ files, not out of them... import has traditionally been crap at best. A lot of artists don't care either, its a poor mans form of DRM when its difficult to modify the 3D assets.

Blender is like Linux, it's only free if you have the time.

Here is the picture...

Arrogant? I think its the other way around Besides nobody takes you seriously.... By the way, the new King-Air looks amazing! I particularly love the style of their textures, I don't know how to describe it...but it has a crisp metallic feel.

A quick flight before work.

That's a real nice looking car! They're definitely harder to model than planes in my opinion. Lots of work on the Bede main gear getting them stuffed into the wheel wells and getting the retraction animation working correctly. Since I do plan on finishing this in a reasonable amount of time I'll start a thread for it pretty soon.

Bentley Mulsanne, named after a straight in the Le Mans raceway where the drivers reach their highest speeds, kinda cheeky name for a car that is as huge as the Mulsanne

Absolutely Kris ! Would love every turboprop of that kind to come out ... even B1900 !

It's one of my favorite aircraft, very sexy ... looking forward to it very much! There can NEVER be enough KingAir C90B's or 200's ...