P3D v4 P3D / MSFS Fokker 130

[Ronald]

Congratulation on your (first?) livery creation Osian..
KLM (Sky) Blue i'm loving it!

 

[Osian]

Congratulation on your (first?) livery creation Osian..
KLM (Sky) Blue i'm loving it!

Well I have quite a lot of experience making liveries, I started in 2010 but yeah this is the first time on my own model

 

[Big777jet]

Will it be available for FS2004 model please?

I'll converter texture from dds to bmp if you release FSX upload. But please include FS2004 model.


Thanks,

Stuart

 

[Osian]

I'm sorry but there will not be an FS2004 model.

 

[Osian]

So I am stuck right now on the flap animations and the wingflex, is there anyone who uses Blender and knows how to do this ? I would love some help

Anyway this is what I have right now

 

[Marc L]

Woaww, She is so beautiful :O

 

[Heretic]

Wasn't there a recent discussion about the very subject of animating flaps?

 

[lionheart]

Lovely work, Osian.

 

[Ronald]

For flap animation: see Krispy1001 excellent Blender2FSX videos on Youtube:
- https://www.youtube.com/user/kpgamemods/videos?view=0&flow=grid&sort=da

And see my YF16 WIP thread (part 17) over here, how I rigged my YF16 to a external control panel
- http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/wip-general-dynamics-“yf-16-prototype”-project.440049/

 

[Ronald]

NOTE: I do not know if this works of when exported into FSX, but it works inside Blender for now, for me:
Here are few screenshots from another Blender-air craft-project i'm studying on Disney's "Dusty Cropphopper"

1 - Put an armature with a few animation bones inside the wing box and merge it with the wing-volume

2 - Make sure the wingsections has enough loop-cuts, which are equal to the length of the individuals bones.

.

3,4 - "Weightpaint" every individual bones to deform a section of the wing

5 - Switch to Blender [POSE-MODE] in the 3D viewport and you are able to flex-the-wing in any way you want.

 

[Ronald]

PART 2 Adding 2 Dimensional (length, widht) wing flexing (like flapping wings on a bird, just for a laugh)

10 - Add a second (loose) bone at the end of the wing

11 - Switch to Blender [POSE-MODE] and pull one of the end-bones up to create the flapping wing movement (trailing edge up)

12 - Switch to Blender [POSE-MODE] and pull one of the end-bones down to create the flapping wing movement (trailing edge down)

13 - Switch to Blender [POSE-MODE] and pull the other end-bone up to create the flapping wing movement (leading edge up)

14 - Switch to Blender [POSE-MODE] and pull the other end-bone down to create the flapping wing movement (leading edge down)

This is how I personally created aircraft wing-flexing and wing-flapping (like a real-life bird does)

Question to the (already Blender wing-flexing-animation) experts:
Is this Blender (armature and bones) animation method exportable into FSX? P3D?

 

[F747fly]

Question to the (already Blender wing-flexing-animation) experts:
Is this Blender (armature and bones) animation method exportable into FSX? P3D?

Well this relies entirely on weight paintts which as far as I know doesn't work with FSX/P3D. The way I do it is by making vertice-groups and parent the object to the bone (this is a proven method)

 

[Ronald]

Thanks Frits

 

[Heretic]

When rigged correctly, bones are also useful for animating mechanisms like gear actuators and downlocks or folding rails.
But keep in mind that FSX' limit is 128 bones per model, that each bone needs explicit keyframes (in *Max, these can be generated from the bone's trajectory in the context of a hierarchy-based animation) and that the material of the sourrounding mesh must have the "skinned mesh" property set.

Also, for wings, each flap element (if double or triple slotted), slat, spoiler panel and aileron requires its own bone. This may drive bone count up quite quickly.


A simpler way to implement wing flex is cutting up the wing spanwise into three or four segments, ideally along boundaries between control surfaces, create an appropriate hierarchy and then just rotate each part slightly along the boundary. Look at the Project Airbus models in ModelConverter and you'll see what I mean.

 

[F747fly]

Also, for wings, each flap element (if double or triple slotted), slat, spoiler panel and aileron requires its own bone. This may drive bone count up quite quickly.

Actually it doesn't you can make your flaps in such a way that they are part of the wing as far as the armature is concernced. In that way you only need the few bones needed to rig the wing. Depending on how many you plan to use on other parts, you can make this part quite smooth with around 10 bones per wing.

 

[ozzman1997]

You can also “break” the wing into 3-4 segments lengthwise and parent each one to the next until you arrive at the fuselage, then rotate them all by maybe 1 or 2 degrees for the animation. Then link every control surface to its respective segment. You might also want to extrude small edge loops at the joints so there aren’t visible gaps.

Even in Max, I can never get bones weighted properly, especially with swept wings.

EDIT: Looks like Bjoern already explained this technique above.

 

[Heretic]

Even in Max, I can never get bones weighted properly, especially with swept wings.

Both methods can be combined for a better animation. Slice up the wing, create a bone chain with one bone per wing segment (starting from the wing root), then create an IK chain and voilà, a wing that can be lifted and twisted with a single input. Could be useful for gliders.

 

[F747fly]

Both methods can be combined for a better animation. Slice up the wing, create a bone chain with one bone per wing segment (starting from the wing root), then create an IK chain and voilà, a wing that can be lifted and twisted with a single input. Could be useful for gliders.

As an outsider I must ask, Max has trouble assigning bones to deform mesh? In blender simply assigning with vertext groups gives an an absolutely fine result.

 

[Heretic]

As an outsider I must ask, Max has trouble assigning bones to deform mesh? In blender simply assigning with vertext groups gives an an absolutely fine result.

It principally doesn't. It's the structure of the surrounding mesh that defines how well vertices can be assigned to each bone and therefor, how convincing the result will look.

For a good example for bone-based wing flexing, look at the GMax source file of the default DC-3. The wing is a single object deformed by several bones, but the bone envelopes are clearly defined by cuts in the geometry.

 

[Ronald]

But keep in mind that FSX' limit is 128 bones per model, that each bone needs explicit keyframes (in *Max, these can be generated from the bone's trajectory in the context of a hierarchy-based animation) and that the material of the sourrounding mesh must have the "skinned mesh" property set.

A simpler way to implement wing flex is cutting up the wing spanwise into three or four segments, ideally along boundaries between control surfaces, create an appropriate hierarchy and then just rotate each part slightly along the boundary. Look at the Project Airbus models in ModelConverter and you'll see what I mean.

Thanks Bjoern.