Project Blender Mesh Tools add-on

[Buck Rogers]

still using 3.1.2, any advantages in upgrading (for Orbiter devs)?

 

[Blake]

Probably not, if that is working for you. A lot of the work in Blender is in areas we don't much care about for Orbiter work. Still, I usually work with the latest that will work with the plugin. For now that is 4.0. I do notice that 4.0 is slower to open on my machine, so there is that.

 

[Blake]

By the way, I can recommend this guy for some great Blender tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/@grabbitt

This is a good series of his for beginners: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn3ukorJv4vvv3ZpWJYvV5Tmvo7ISO-NN

 

[Buck Rogers]

Thanks, good to know. I'll take another look when 4.1.2 comes out (hopefully no compatibility issues)
(I'm a little worried that updating will change the layout, I have an older version installed for 3ds support but except for import/export I can't use it!)

 

[Buck Rogers]

How can I get Blender to export vertex normals texture uv coordinates for a mesh group without texture?

I'm trying to get HUD, MFDs working and figured out the problem is that the display panel is only a material and blender exports it without uv coord., (only 6 and not 8 entries in the vertex list) which is correct, but HUDs etc. need them. I've tried adding a uv map, use nodes image, but it either exports without or an error due to missing tex. file?
I've done this in 3dsmax and not had this issue. Does anyone have any experience making HUDs, MFDs in Blender?

 

[Blake]

How can I get Blender to export vertex normals texture uv coordinates for a mesh group without texture?

I'm trying to get HUD, MFDs working and figured out the problem is that the display panel is only a material and blender exports it without uv coord., (only 6 and not 8 entries in the vertex list) which is correct, but HUDs etc. need them. I've tried adding a uv map, use nodes image, but it either exports without or an error due to missing tex. file?
I've done this in 3dsmax and not had this issue. Does anyone have any experience making HUDs, MFDs in Blender?

For a VC?

In Blender you will have a plane that represents the HUD or MFD surface, unwrap that and assign it a texture. SR-71R does this, and uses the same texture where the VC controls are laid out. In Blender you will see that texture on that plane, but you don't see it at runtime--just whatever is drawn to that surface.

The code to load the HUD looks like this:

bool HUD::handle_load_vc(bco::vessel& vessel, int vcid)
{
    // Register HUD
    static VCHUDSPEC huds =
    {
        1,                        // Mesh number (VC)
        bm::vc::HUD_id,            // mesh group
        { 0.0, 0.8, 15.25 },    // hud center (location)
        0.12                    // hud size
    };

    oapiVCRegisterHUD(&huds);    // HUD parameters
    return true;
}

The mesh file entry:

LABEL HUD
MATERIAL 4
TEXTURE 4
FLAG 7
GEOM 4 2
-0.0634 0.8619 15.2558 0.0000 0.0000 -1.0000 0.0001 0.0004
0.0633 0.8619 15.2558 0.0000 0.0000 -1.0000 0.9996 0.0001
-0.0634 0.7352 15.2558 0.0000 0.0000 -1.0000 0.0004 0.9999
0.0633 0.7352 15.2558 0.0000 0.0000 -1.0000 0.9999 0.9996
...
... <MATERIAL 4>
MATERIAL VC_100_Cockpit_MAT
0.800 0.800 0.800 1.000
0.000 0.000 0.000 1.000
0.000 0.000 0.000 1.000 49.030
0.600 0.600 0.600 1.000

 

[Buck Rogers]

Thanks for the clarification. So I can link it to any texture to get it to export the UVs, and then I can set tex, to 0 manually in the .msh file or just leave it.
Works, thanks again