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Another animation question

S

soarnut

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us-tennessee
My first post. I am a new user of gmax. I am building models of clouds to use for marking thermals. Is it possible to have the cloud image rotate so it is always facing the plane? MS has done this with their clouds and say in the cloud tool SDK that you need to have a camera in the scene so the cloud can always be rotated toward the camera. The cloud tool doesn't seem to work in gmax.

I have tried this in making the clouds as a cloud.mdl file, but it doesn't work for me. I have linked the cloud object to the camera using all the methods that I can find. Thanks for any suggestions you might have.
 
Update on the cloud problem

I didn't mention in the first post that I am working in FSX. In the FSX SDK the cloud example is a .max file which does not run in gmax. I have since installed the FS2004 SDK. It has a cloud file that runs in gmax. It has a camera which allows the cloud to always point to the camera. This might be helpful.
 
Hopefully someone can help you, but I have never tried to make new clouds myself. To be honest I think you have just posted the first question about clouds on this entire forum :).
 
Thanks Arno. Do you know of a way to do rotation so the object is always facing the user that works in FSX? I tried MDL Tweaker and got an error message that the MDL file was not of the proper format. Does MDL Tweaker only work in versions earlier than FSX? It was easy to do this back in the days of SCASM, but all that has changed now. Thanks.

Ed
 
Progress so far

I made a simple object in fs2004 gmax and applied rotate to user with MDL Tweaker. It worked OK in fs2004 and also in FSX. So I made a cloud mdl and applied rotate to user. It works OK in FSX and is a big improvement over my previous non-rotating clouds. So far, it only works at one specific position. My library bgl file has the fs2004 format GUID which does not work in FSX. I need the FSX format GUID to use it in the airobjectvisuals.xml. Any tips on converting the GUID formats? Thanks Arno for the MDL Tweaker.

Ed
 
Hi Ed,

MDL TWeaker indeed only works with Fs2004 MDL files at the moment. I am not even sure yet if the FsX MDL format can contain such tweaks (like rotate to user).

About the GUID, I think you should also be able to use the old format in the XML file. BGLComp should work with both. It is possible to convert the format as well of course, but I don't have the logic at hand at this moment.
 
Now it works

Hi Arno,

Thanks again for your help. Here is how I found the proper format for the GUID to use for placing the FS2004 clouds into FSX.

My library file holding the cloud.bgl was in the addon scenery.
The name assigned by FS2004 gmax was

ModelData name="2471AA7146F2403248BC7D93B77176A8"

I used the Object Placement Tool in FSX to place a cloud using the add
scenery feature. I noted the GUID that the OPT displayed. It was

{2471AA71-4032-46F2-937D-BC48A87671B7}

This is what I put into the AirObjectVisuals.xml. It works OK now.


Also of interest, when I placed the cloud into FSX using the Object Placement Tool, at the top of the boundary box for the object it was labeled with the hex notation

02471AA71h, 046F24032h, 048BC7D93h, 0B77176A8h

Using the Object Placement Tool in FSX is a convenient way to convert the
FS2004 GUID format to the FSX format. I noticed in some earlier posts that
there was a lot of discussion about how to convert FS2004 GUIDs for use in FSX, so I hope this will be helpful.

Ed
 
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