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

Link

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)
Intensity	0.50	How intense (bright) the specular reflection of the material is. All materials in an OBJ must have the same specularity

XPlane2Blender Settings

To get certain performance boosts or to have a valid export, some settings (such as Blend Glass and Normal Metalness) must be

Setting	Default	Description	Requirement(s)
Draw Objects With This Material	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
Draped	Off	If checked, geometry with this material will hug the ground	Only valid for "Scenery" and "Instance Scenery" exports
Normal Metalness	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	Export Version must be greater or equal to "11.0x"
Blend	"Alpha Blend"	Controls how texture's alpha channels are blended with each other. See the Blend Mode Options Table for more details
Alpha Cutoff Ratio	0.5	For this material's textures, alpha levels below the Alpha Cutoff Ratio are rendered as fully transparent. Alpha levels above the level are fully opaque. Values can range from 0.00 to 1.00	Blend must be set to "Alpha Cutoff"

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"

Cast Shadows (Local)

Setting	Default	Description	Requires
Cast Shadows (Local)	True	Controls whether the mesh with this material will cast shadows	X-Plane Version must be >= "10.10"

Surface Behavior

Surface Behavior settings control how this material interacts with X-Plane in non-visual ways.

Setting	Default	Description	Requires
Surface Type	"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.
Deck	Off	When checked, objects with this material can be flown or moved under	Surface Type must not be "None"
Camera Collision	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
Override Light Level	Off	When checked, X-Plane's chosen object night lighting is overridden with custom dataref driven values
Value 1	0.00	First value to be mapped to the dataref	Override Light Level is on
Value 2	0.00	Second value to be mapped to the dataref	Override Light Level is on
Dataref		The dataref to change the value of the material's night time lighting level	Override Light Level is on

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)
Tint	Off	If checked, Albedo Tint and Emissive Tint settings will be enabled.
Albedo	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
Emissive	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)
Polygon Offset	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)
Part Of Cockpit Panel	Off	If checked, objects with this material will use the OBJs panel texture and will be clickable
Cockpit Region	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