Simviation Forum - Landing Gear Naming/Parenting

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Landing Gear Naming/Parenting (Read 587 times)

Nov 5^th, 2007 at 6:49am

Dornep Offline
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Hello all It's been a good long while since I tried animating landing gear and the last time I did that I was using FSDS2.I'm sure this has come up a thousands times but I couldn't seem to find a clear answer using the search, so here it is.

When animating landing gear, say C_Gear.. Does each individual part attached to that section of gear have to be named C_Gear, C_Gear_01, C_Gear_02, etc to animate correctly ingame?

OR can I just parent the lower portions of the landing gear to the upper portions and leave them named C_Gear, Cylinder18, Cylinder19, etc? I'm guessing I will have to use the C/L/R Gear tags on the gear doors anyway..

I'm just trying to avoid renaming 30-40 objects with the C_Gear/L_Gear/R_Gear tag.

Any help is much appreciated.

My Gaming Rig.

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PII 400MHz

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32MB SDRAM

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Quantum Raven 16MB PCI

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12X CD-Rom

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Reply #1 - Nov 5^th, 2007 at 8:46am

Brett_Henderson Offline
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Are you still using FSDS ? If so, the short answer is, "yes"; each part that will move on its own during gear retraction/extension needs to be named c-gear_XXXXX.

You have to parent the parts, no matter what, if they're to move with their parents (like parts of the strut, fork and the wheel/tire itself). The doors cannot be parented, else they'll move up and down with the gear, as well as open/close on their own.

If you're using GMAX and the FSX/SDK, you can name parts anything you like, and then associate their movement with the animation manager.

Edit.. I'm not familiar with the latest FSDS (3.5 ?)... it might very well have its own version of an "animation manager". It pretty much has to, to avoid FSX animation conflicts (everything is key-framed now, and I'm pretty sure the backward compatability that allows for ported FS9 planes with the old, axis-based animation to "work", is part of the problems we're seeing)

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Reply #2 - Nov 5^th, 2007 at 12:26pm

Dornep Offline
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Sorry about that, I should have been more specific. I'm using 3dsmax 7.

I've been unable to get FSX to run on my PC so I'm going for an FS9 release first, and then I will probably try and find somebody to hand it over to, so they can get it into FSX.

So right now I'm trying to get everything animated properly for FS9. If I have to use the landing gear tags on each part and parent them to C/L/R_Gear, that won't be too bad.

While I'm on the landing gear subject, I could use some clarification on the steerable nose wheel. The FS9 SDK says to use the C_Wheel tag, Key 100 being 0 Degrees, Key 200 being 360 Degrees Clockwise.

Do I parent the C_Tire_Still/Blurred to a part named C_Wheel which is keyframed for left/right rotation?

Thanks for the help

My Gaming Rig.

CPU:

PII 400MHz

RAM:

32MB SDRAM

GFX:

Quantum Raven 16MB PCI

CDR:

12X CD-Rom

OS:

Dos

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Reply #3 - Nov 5^th, 2007 at 12:54pm

Brett_Henderson Offline
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EVERY OUTER MARKER SHOULD
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That all depends on what parts of the landing gear "turn"..

You need to have c_wheel "on top" of everything that turns.. On some nose gear, that would be everything.. on some you can get away with just "turning" the fork and wheel/tire.

The little red box (arrow indicated) is the c_wheel here(and the parent to everything below), because everything (struts, scisors, landing light, fork, splash-guard, wheel and tire) turn as one, on the ground.

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Reply #4 - Nov 5^th, 2007 at 5:01pm