Very well markag Remember its very important most of all its to export the plane into mdl (into the game as an mdl file) and make some of animation  work , I like very much this kind of thread ,I will show you my first plane ever made back in 2005 ,was an unshape model but I have in my mind one thing to make the engines landing gear , flaps , door to work inside FS2004 , I even paste a bitmap of a photo I found around

I even make a DVC and fully functional  





of course this was makemdl9 the format for FS2004 ,now with FSX-SDK things are much easy and friendly

My idea first of all was to make a dummy airplane works

and learn

before to jump to make a real airplane ,It work for me

I couldn't learn without others ,

so Ask

what ever you need to know and keep on the good job on that plane

There is no set way to do anything in Gmax     You just gotta feel your way through it.

What I do for propellers, is to model a single blade.. position it on the spinner.. set its axis point to match the center of the spinner.. and then clone the other blades (rotating them into position) (i.e..  90 degree spacing for four blades..  120 degrees for three blades.. and so on)..

Then of course you need to link them as children of the spinner..  then duplicate the whole thing (so you have a still and slow prop for animation).. and then take a third spinner (all by itself) and position a "flattened" one-segment cylinder for the "disk".. and of course child it to that third spiiner (it then becomes  the "blur" prop).

By a "flattened, one-segment" cylinder.. I mean.. Make a cylinder with one height segment, and one cap segment.. the radius of a prop blade (from its center)(or just eyeball it)... then make its height nearly zero.. weld all the pairs of vertices around the perimeter and then make it so that the two center vertices are about the width of a prop blade apart ...  it ends up looking like two, big cymbals, welded together at the rims..  The blades themselves are like modeling little, twisted wings..  I start with an 8-sided cylinder of many more height segments than I'll need (start with 20)(you'll prob end up with 8 or less).. flatten it.. taper it.. shape it and twist it..  

Another option for the "blurred" prop is to simply create a square polygon, then use the Alpha Channer to create the "prop's circle" with a transparency mask.

i dont know if this can be done, or is even appropirate, but cant you just steal or copy one from an existing plane and modify it to be spacific to your plane?

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Aside from the fact that you'd have to have the source code; it would be just as difficult to modify someone else's work, as it would be to do it yourself. Even if they're near identical gear.. you still have sizing, animation and texturing issues.


ANYway .. Gear hierarchy and animation can be as personal as modeling itself. There is no set way to do it.

The logic however, is the same. It's top-down, like you'd imagine, but the actual parenting is done bottom-up. With past MakeMdl versions, part naming was critical; as that's how base animations were applied. Now you can name to suit your method and then use the animation manager.

What get's parented, and where, and why, and to what; is part of the modeling process. It will seem daunting at first, but it will fall into place.

Here's a  "scissor"....



The bottom "scissor" is a child to the lower gear strut (piston), and that's where its pivot is set.  THe upper "scissor" is a child to the lower scissor, and where they "meet" is its pivot.

Where the upper scissor meets the upper strut (cylinder), ther is no link or pivot at all. As you animate gear compression, you'll animate a pivoting of both scissors so that it appears that upper scissor and upper strut are indeed linked at a pivot

Example.. As the gear compress; you animate the lower strut to pivot clock-wise. Since its child (upper scissor) will go along for the ride.. you animate a counter-clock-wise pivot for it... and with some geometry lessons and some trial and error.. you'll get it to where it looks like the upper scissor and upper strut never lose contact with each other.

Granted.. this is MY method, and might not work for you.. but i hope it gives you a visual on how to attack this.

As for the gear doors. They aren't linked to any part of the gear itself.. but they ARE assigned the same animation.. so that they will open/close as the gear are raised/lowered. This is where you'll get handy using key-frames.

With this type of nose gear.. you don't want the wheel coming down through the gear door, until the door has opened enough to allow it to pass by. SO..... for the first several frames, the gear is animated, but no motion initiates until the door has opened (it started it's motion from frame one and has stopped moving well before the gear is fully extended (or it might even re-close after the gear clears it)).

It's a combination of math and art .. (and a LOT of fun )  

Thanks guys

I'll have to take some time to process and try applying these techniques. I'm back at school now so my modeling progress has slowed down drastically. Thanks for the continued help.

Mark