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P3D v3 Animated FLAG - exporting from blender.

Ripcord

Ripcord

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I used the blender toolkit, and following the instructions with amazing success, but I could not get the animation to show up in MCX.


All I got was a flag, and even that was just one sided.

I did initialize the toolset and set the animation to ambient. I've been able to export animated objects in the past. Ideas?

Is this just another limitation of the sim here? Too many vertices, too many moving parts?

EDIT: OK I think I might have it... I didn't have any keyframes marked. Except this isn't a simple rotation or location, so I don't even know how to do the keyframes.
 
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Haven't totally figured out the keyframes, but I did somehow manage to export a file that MCX does recognize as being animated. Plays the animation, but nothing moves. So not victory, but maybe progress.

Also found the little toggle button for the double sided textures, so that is another step forward.
 
Ripcord said:
Haven't totally figured out the keyframes, but I did somehow manage to export a file that MCX does recognize as being animated. Plays the animation, but nothing moves. So not victory, but maybe progress.

Also found the little toggle button for the double sided textures, so that is another step forward.
Click to expand...
Hi Ripcord!

Did you make sure to check the "Skinned mesh" box when exporting your project? If you export your project without "skinned mesh" checked your mesh will not be animated.

Thanks, Kris
 
I don't think this is possible unless you amanges to capture the cloth animation with armatures (which would require some sort of reverse animating)."
If it's possible to use the clothsim to capture it in the first place is a difficult issue though. If it were to be possible though, Krispy is right, make sure you have skinned mesh enabled and that skinned mesh is also enabled within your material.
 
I've done a test of using a sort of "reverse animating" like F747fly mentioned. First, I made a windsock using a cloth simulation, then I made a simple 5-bone chain and linked each bone to a vertex group in the flag. Once that was rigged I applied wind physics to the sock and it (along with the linked bones) animated beautifully. For each bone, I added keyframes to capture their movement. The final step was supposed to be to de-link the bones from the sock which would leave you with an animated bone chain that you could then use to drive a regular windsock model, but when I did that my keyframes all went away as well.

The process wasn't my own - I found it described here: http://www.blendswap.com/questions/view/915 but that last step seems to render it useless. Maybe there's still a way, but I haven't found it yet, nor gotten a response to my request in that thread.
 
Blender uses an internal simulation to simulate cloth, particles, etc. You can't take this through export to FSX. The only things FSX recognises, are:

- Keyframe animated translation and rotation of objects.
- Keyframe animated translation and rotation of vertices through bones.
- Standard material properties (diffuse, specular, bump and environment maps).
 
Kris, yes I did have skinned mesh check. And as the others pointed out, I didn't have any bones in my blender model, just a flat plane.

So perhaps I can still do it a more simplistic version of this, if I work at it. We'll see.
 
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