• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

MCX: Edit Doors Animation

Mick_S

Mick_S

Messages
55
Country
germany
Hello everybody,

it might be simple to do, but right now I'm a bit lost looking at the enourmous possibilities of Arno's outstanding tool ModelConverterX while not knowing what I do in detail. Unfortunately the tutorials don't go so much in detail as needed here... maybe one of you would be willing to give me a few hints?

My goal is to prevent a part of the doors from opening when using the Shift-E commands, so that only the doors used at the stand (e.g. from AES or other ground services) are opening. I'm experimenting with a copy of the default 'b747_400.mdl'. What I found out by now:
  • The doors seem to be organized in numbered groups, which I can successfully enable / disable groupwise (i.e. all the doors tagged 'exit_1' do or don't open). I guess the easiest approach would be to change the group assignment of some doors and make my own groups (something like 'exit_0' for passenger doors, 'exit_1' for freight doors and 'exit_2' for emergency exits). But such a function I can't find in MCX, neither do I have any idea for a workaround.
  • Using MCX Animation Manager, I can edit the animation list and e.g. fix the upper left door (1st-class exit), which amongst others isn't used at airports. This having the drawback that fixed doors wouldn't open at all anymore... since I'm not playing around emergency, I could very well live with emergency exits not opening (as a workaround).
For me, editing the animation list is a bit confusing (MCX development release) considering the fact that it's not numbered or ordered (yet?), and not hiding unselected items (yet?). As a result I have dozens of entries like 'door_1len=100' distributed within hundreds of animation entries, which makes it hard to even find the relevant ones, even when selected. For my purpose
  • Is there any workaround or setting with which I can get a better overview in the list?
  • Alternatively, would there be a way / setting to make the selected "animation parent" parts visible in the picture box?
  • Activating one (relevant / door) entry after another while playing the animation, I can see the doors moving - but not every entry seems to be active, many just don't show any animation. Can I delete such entries or would that result in malfunction(s)?
  • Choosing each of 8 entries 'door_0len=100' one after the other shows the lower left 2 doors in front are both opening together (no matter which entry selected) and not separately. How can I fix only one of them? Are 7 of the entries obsolete?
  • ... more questions to come :(
Maybe there are better or easier techniques existing? Or would another tool be more recommendable for such a purpose?
Thank you very much
Mick
 
Last edited:
arno

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
32,886
Country
netherlands
Hi,

In the animation list you see all animations. It is very likely that some are part of another lod, so that's why you sometimes don't see them in the preview.

I believe it's on the wishlist already to only show active animations in the preview instead of everything (a bit like the isolate in the hierarchy editor).
 
Mick_S

Mick_S

Messages
55
Country
germany
Hi Arno,

glad you notified this thread. I found some help from other members in another thread, because after encountering wildly distributed contact points I opened a new one concerning the CP issue. The new thread developed into the same direction while this one still waited for a first response... funny, but "shit happens". At least, considering other readers, I tried to avoid mixing up the issues.

Now having the crosslink should help other users to follow the issue, but if you wish to summarize it here feel free to move any entries. See you over there or go on here? It's up to you.

Thank you and regards
Mick
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top