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Newbie - animating aircraft parts (Read 477 times)
Apr 2nd, 2007 at 2:46pm

Thunder   Offline
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Hi, I'm trying to understand how to make animations, but so far no success...talking about FS9 sdk, how am I supposed to export animations? Is there a plugin or something?
The sdk SUCKS, it has a list with a kazillion animation names, but what am I supposed to do with those? Is there an xml file to write or something?

FSX: I open the animation manager, select the object I wan to animate, set start and end frames, and elevator percent key, I click create (the one next to delete). Now what? when I export the model it creates an *.xanim file, I know there's something about it somewhere in the sdk...

well any help is appreciated, and yes, my brain is melting....
 

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Reply #1 - Apr 2nd, 2007 at 4:01pm

pepper_airborne   Offline
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Lets say you want to animate the gear, then you put it in its up postion and lock a keyframe, then you put it in its down postion and keyframe it, and then you name it Gear_L or something similair to that.

Here is a tutorial concerning the gear.

http://www.simviation.com/gryphon/tutorials/gMax_07.htm#7c
 
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Reply #2 - Apr 4th, 2007 at 5:10am

Thunder   Offline
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Thanks, I'm reading the tutorial and will try something later on Wink
 

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Reply #3 - Apr 4th, 2007 at 6:52am

Thunder   Offline
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I've been able to animate almost everything with stock animations!!! Now I'm learning keyframe animation...BTW, how can I modify an animation to make it more complex (eg. animating elevons, or canards that maintain a 0 deg AoA etc)?

Thanks in advance Smiley
 

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Reply #4 - Apr 4th, 2007 at 4:10pm

Katahu   Offline
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Here are some rules you need to follow whenever you do get the hang of keyframing.

All keyframed objects are noted with an asterik
  • and the names "interior" and "exterior" will be the base nodes if using either the heirarchy export or group export method:

    [What's allowed by Makemdl]

    Quote:
    Exterior
    > Object01
    > C_Gear_Top*
    > > C_Gear_Bottom*
    > > > Rudder01
    > Lever_Stick_Fore_Aft*
    > > Lever_Stick_l_r*


    Quote:
    Exterior
    > L_Gear_Top*
    > > L_Gear_Bottom*
    > > > L_Tire_Still
    > > Object01


    [What isn't allowed by Makemdl]

    Quote:
    Exterior
    > L_Gear_Top*
    > > L_Gear_Bottom*
    > > > L_Tire_Still
    > > L_Gear_Bottom_01*
    > > > L_Gear_Bottom_02*


    If you notice, you don't want your key-frames to branch out into two other key-frames; however, it's ok to have one key-frame branch out with non-key-framed objects on one branch and key-framed-ones on the other branch. Over all, the key to linking animations is to simply keep the key-frames linked in a SINGLE line.
  •  
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    Reply #5 - Apr 5th, 2007 at 6:31am

    Thunder   Offline
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    Thanks for the info, will keep that in mind. BTW, can I use a helper for the exterior and inerior nodes?

    Anyway, the things you explained are useful for linking objets, but how can I make a single object have different animations, or act in a certain way that I define? If for example I want to make an elevon, how can I tell the sim that the same object is both an elevator and an aileron and "mix" the two movements?

     

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    Reply #6 - Apr 5th, 2007 at 7:29am

    Felix/FFDS   Offline
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    AVOID using a "helper"  object.  IT is better if your interior and exterior nodes are small boxes correctly oriented and placed at themodel's 0,0,0 point!
     

    Felix/FFDS...
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