Material Settings
XPlane2Blender's material model is different from Blender's. In XPlane2Blender, all Blender objects must have a material. If you have multiple materials, only the first one is chosen. A material can have any number of texture slots that do the majority of the work changing how an OBJ looks in X-Plane.
Due to some inconveniences of Blender's data model, some UI elements will be shown even if using them would result in an invalid OBJ or would have no affect.
Relevant Blender Settings
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Link
- The data-model linkage of the material must be set to "Data". If you have materials that are linked by "Object", it is recommended to remove them to keep things neat
Specular
Setting | Default | Description | Requirement(s) |
| 0.50 | How intense (bright) the specular reflection of the material is. All materials in an OBJ must have the same specularity |
XPlane2Blender Settings
Draw Linked Objects
These settings are used to decide when and how to draw the material.
Setting | Default | Description | Requirement(s) |
| Off | If checked, any object that uses this material will be drawn. If left unchecked, any object that uses this material will not be drawn | |
| Off | If checked, geometry with this material will hug the ground | Only valid for "Scenery" and "Instance Scenery" exports |
| Off | When checked, X-Plane will take the blue channel of this material's normal map and use it as base reflectance. This is commonly used for metal-like surfaces |
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| "Alpha Blend" | Controls how texture's alpha channels are blended with each other. See the Blend Mode Options Table for more details | |
| 0.5 | For this material's textures, alpha levels below the |
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Blend Mode Options
Blend Mode | Description | Requirement(s) |
"Blend Shadow" | In shadow mode, shadows are not blended but primary drawing is | |
"Alpha Cutoff" | Textures alpha channel will be used to cutoff areas above the Alpha Cutoff Ratio | |
"Alpha Blend" | Textures alpha channel will blended |
Blend Glass
The alpha channel of the albedo (day texture) will be used to create translucent rendering. Export Version
must be at least "11.0x"
Surface Behavior
Surface Behavior settings control how this material interacts with X-Plane in non-visual ways.
Setting | Default | Description | Requires |
| "None" - a smooth surface | A drop down menu of types of surfaces that X-Plane can simulate the bumpiness of. Grass is more bumpy that concrete, for instance. | |
| Off | When checked, objects with this material can be flown or moved under |
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| Off | When checked, the X-Plane camera will be prevented from moving through objects with this material | Always shown in UI but will only affect Cockpit objects |
Light Levels
Setting | Default | Description | Requires |
| Off | When checked, X-Plane's chosen object night lighting is overridden with custom dataref driven values | |
| 0.00 | First value to be mapped to the dataref |
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| 0.00 | Second value to be mapped to the dataref |
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| The dataref to change the value of the material's night time lighting level |
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Day-Night Preview Balance
Day-Night Preview Balance
- This setting provides a convenient way to preview the material in Blender's 3D View. To enable the Day-Night Preview feature, add an albedo texture (uses Diffuse->Color) and a night texture (uses Shading->Emit) to the material. Adjusting this slider sliding this will automatically adjust their preview in the 3D Viewer. It does not change the content of exported OBJs.
Instancing Effects
These settings can only apply to Instance Scenery
exports.
Setting | Default | Description | Requirement(s) |
| Off | If checked, Albedo Tint and Emissive Tint settings will be enabled. | |
| 0.0 | A float between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 is no darkening of the albedo (day time) texture and 1.0 is total darkening of the albedo texture | |
| 0.0 | A float between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0.0 is no darkening of the emissive (day time) texture and 1.0 is total darkening of the emissive texture |
Polygon Offset
Setting | Default | Description | Requirement(s) |
| 0 | Indicates to X-Plane what order the object should attempt to be drawn in, from farthest away from the player camera to closets. 0 tells X-Plane to automatically chose drawing order. Very useful for an object with many parts that are close together. See the blog post The road to hell is paved with ATTR_poly_os for a more detail |
Cockpit Panel
Setting | Default | Description | Requirement(s) |
| Off | If checked, objects with this material will use the OBJs panel texture and will be clickable | |
| None | Defines which region this material should appear in. If set to none, no region will be used. The region number refers to the regions defined in X-Plane Layer's Cockpit Regions |
Custom Properties
See Object->Custom Properties
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