Simviation Forum - Tail Stinger

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Tail Stinger (Read 256 times)

Sep 24^th, 2004 at 3:46am

pavespawn Offline
Colonel
Hey, this helicopter is
older than I am...
Hurlburt Field FL

Gender:
Posts: 14

Along these lines guys... I am modifying the Rory Pave Low to better match the real acft. As far as animations, I am only having one problem. I need the tailstinger to go up when the gear does. At the same time, I need the stinger to extend when the gear goes down but retract when there is weight on wheels. How do I link these actions together? Do I need to rename the tailstinger? It is a tailhook right now.

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Reply #1 - Sep 24^th, 2004 at 10:22am

juri Offline
Colonel
Finland

Posts: 74

are you making this for fs2002 of fs9?

and is it ok for the tailstinger to come back down when you take off but gear is still down? actually, what is a tailstinger???

-juri

"Persistence and determination are omnipotent." -Calvin Coolidge

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Reply #2 - Sep 24^th, 2004 at 1:31pm

Travis Offline
Colonel
Cannot find REALITY.SYS.
Universe halted.
Dripping Springs, TX

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Posts: 4515

I would suggest this:

In Gmax, gear has a certain number of animation keyframes. 0-200, really.

0-100 is the extension of the gear.

101-200 is the compression of the gear when it sits on the ground.

So make the gear extend all the way (including the tailstinger) from 0-100 and then make the tailstinger compress all the way back in from 101-200. This will ensure that the tailstinger (tailwheel?) will retract like you wanted when the aircraft settles on the ground, but when it is in the air the tailstinger will be extended.

Now comes the tricky part. To get this animation to work, you're gonna need to fiddle with the contact points in the aircraft.cfg, which requires you to kinda know what you're doing.

I would go download the SDKs on Aircraft Creation from the MS site (link in my signature). They will tell you everything you might want to know about the intricacies of the contact points section.

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Reply #3 - Sep 24^th, 2004 at 2:04pm

juri Offline
Colonel
Finland

Posts: 74

if your choppers center (or actually any) gear lifts straight up when retracting, you could link your stinger to center gears lower part and animate a little extra movemets upwards starting from frame 101 till frame 200.

this way, when your center gear compresses, the stinger goes back into hiding.

in case your gears rotate out, you could still link the stinger to one of them, and try animating counter-rotation and downwards movement to frames 1-100, and then put some extra upwards movement from 101 to 200.

-juri

"Persistence and determination are omnipotent." -Calvin Coolidge

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Reply #4 - Sep 26^th, 2004 at 8:25pm

pavespawn Offline
Colonel
Hey, this helicopter is
older than I am...
Hurlburt Field FL

Gender:
Posts: 14

Hey Guys,

Thanks a lot for the help. I am sorry if my lingo confuses some. To explain the tail stinger a little better, it is a strut that extends so that we do not hit our tail rotor on landing. When there is weight on wheels, it goes up so we can load vehicles or what not. I will try to link the parts together and see what happens. Here is a picture of the heli with the stinger highlighted:

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Reply #5 - Oct 1^st, 2004 at 7:43pm

pavespawn Offline
Colonel
Hey, this helicopter is
older than I am...
Hurlburt Field FL

Gender:
Posts: 14

Hey Guys,

Just wanted to give a bit of an update on my Pave project. I have managed to get the stinger to do what I want and this is how I did it. I set the animation so the stinger extends to 100 and then retracts to 200 as previously recomended. Then I renamed all the parts of the stinger to r_gear_XX where xx is sequential numbers. Now FS thinks that the stinger is a gear. I did the same thing with my tail scanner on the ramp. I renamed him door_passenger_xx and he now moves with the ramp. I was afraid that there was going to be a lot more to it than that but it worked out great (and it only took me a week to figure it out)! This is probably old hat to you veterans but hopefully it will help fellow newbies like me.

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Reply #6 - Oct 2^nd, 2004 at 2:49am

juri Offline
Colonel
Finland

Posts: 74

that is good to hear!

how about animating the tail scanner so that he walks to the ramp... Grin

-juri

"Persistence and determination are omnipotent." -Calvin Coolidge

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Reply #7 - Oct 2^nd, 2004 at 3:51am

Travis Offline
Colonel
Cannot find REALITY.SYS.
Universe halted.
Dripping Springs, TX

Gender:
Posts: 4515

Just so you know, anything that is linked to a part (such as the tailgear) will move along with that part. If you animate it to retract and then disappear (like with the gear bays) the parts that are linked to it will disappear as well. So if you want to cut down on the polygons in a model, you could link it to parts that disappear when they aren't seen.

This cuts down on polys, and it makes the model easier to render when it displays in FS, so you get better framerates.

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Reply #8 - Oct 2^nd, 2004 at 5:22am

Gnome Offline
Colonel
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Posts: 244

The vanishing parts tip is a good 'un.

Kev

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