hello again

i have ventured again into FS design, and started working on a little plane i created

i call it the Hellbird, a post-apocalyptic multi-purpose aircraft

here it is:





i´m working with 3dsMax (now that i´m in college learning this program i get to play with it also  ) and the Panda exporter

but i´m having some trouble with it, as it´s quite different from the Gmax FS export plugin that i´m used to.... so if anyone has any experience with these programs, please help me out

i cannot get the gears animation to work (or any keyframed animation for that matter)... i dont know why...

there´s an option for the animations in the panda plugin dialog for exporting as a Matrix or as Position, Rotation and Scale --



the first one simply produces no animations in FS... the other gives an error message in MakeMDL that goes like this :

Running model

Start! (C:\3dsMax8\meshes\hb.X)
Loading X C:\3dsMax8\meshes\hb.X...
Processing...
ERROR: Scaling null has a translation, ignoring it
ERROR: found scale animation (exterior)
Error!
Error!


i have then deleted all scale keyframes and used reset scale for all parts... still same error message... so i´m stumped here....

also, another problem i encountered was that i couldn´t get the interior model to display properly, i did it like i used to do in Gmax... i created 2 groups one called interior and the other called exterior... didn´t work... they both appeared overlapping each other on the exterior view

sorry about the long post... but if anyone know what could be causing these issues, please let me know

c ya

HarvesteR

ahh you noticed...

it was inspired by the Devastator... i wanted to make a similar plane but with a tandem seat configuration and these cool canard ruddervators  ... i dont know if they´d fly in real life, but it sure looks cool 8)

about the VC issue... i´ll give it a go as soon as i can...

keep the replies coming

HarvesteR

happy news today, i managed to figure out how to get the DVC in FS

you need to take a different approach than what we are used to doing in Gmax...

no groups, no linkage... what you need to do is create 2 separate models in 3d Max, one for the exterior and one for the VC... export them as "plane.X" and "plane_interior.X" or anything like that

then in MakeMDL, load the exterior model on the input box as usual, then (here´s the deal) go to the LOD tab, and add the interior model as a separate LOD model

MakeMDL will recognize it as an interior model and will compile them together

that´s how you do it

now i only need to figure out the keyed animations problem... i know that the right way to go would be setting that animation option to "Position, Rotation and Scale", but i need to know how to avoid that error message...

there must be something i´m missing...

keep the replies coming

HarvesteR