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jyarddog

jyarddog

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Nowhere else to post this... CAT forum seems archived.

Can't get my gate to animate.

Used Makemdl and tick 18
animation looks proper.
program created the asm file
opened it with CAT
animation condition Bounding box -20 and 20 in all boxes but bottom one 0 and 20
trigger nav2 min and max both 1200h
next files are ready.
then compile
Works - no bgl error... I se the new mdl
rename it
place in its own library and put that LIB in an active scenery
I go place it with IS3 as I have done in the past successfully.
pull my 737 up to the gate and activate nav2 to 112.00
NOTHING HAPPENS.
Any ideas? Thanx, Bob
 
Hi,

Is the bounding box big enough for the size of the gate?

And you save a bgl from IS3 and then test the animation? I don't think it will work in the live preview mode.
 
Hi,

I know that you are doing this for FSX. I therefore wonder whether the MCX conversion from an fs9 tweaked mdl to FSX will not break the animation?
 
There was no mention of using MCX, that for sure will break the CAT animations. They only work in a FS2004 mdl file.
 
The box is 20 meters square. At one time I looked at it in MCX but I did not export, just viewed. The animation timer bar runs but no animation which is proper and expected when viewing fs9 type ani. does the Plane have to have engines shut down? And I have the mdl alone in it's own library. There are no xtomdl items in that library - only this. At the moment I am trying a 737-800 default Boeing, and I can't find where I turn off the engines. hahaha
 
Hi,

CAT does nothing with the engine state, so it doesn't matter if they are running or not.

If you load the CAT MDL file into MCX you should see the animation in the preview, if that is not the case it might be that your animation is not setup correctly. Did you test the animation in the sim before using CAT?
 
Arno, one hypothetical question from my side (hope I am not interfering):
If I would import the FSC file into MCX and export it again to a format that Gmax can read, do the necessary in Gmax and then import again to MCX to make an FSX or P3D mdl, would MCX do the job?
 
I'm not sure I understand the question. Yes, such a workflow would work in general. But when CAT is involved no processing with any other tool should be done after using CAT.
 
But exporting to GMAX will remove any animations, so you'll have to redo those if they were present.
 
I was already afraid you would say that, Tom.
I think it boils down to the fact that if you want any decent animations to be done for FSX or later, you need Gmax , Blender or the unaffordable 3DS Max (because SODE is no alternative either, as far as I know, when objects and their animations are made with FSDS?
Correct?
 
Look- I've done these many times successfully in the past, so saying that yo need Gmax or Blender or the spendy one instead is not correct at all. FSDS has done just fine with triggers along with CAT, using makemdl and tick 18. I had a question that was not answered - does one have to shut done the engines on the plane before any animation with start? This I cannot remember.

done gates, hangar doors etc with triggers from CAT... using FSDS. I'm just missing a small item here, using CAT since I haven't done this in quite some time.
 
robystar said:
I was already afraid you would say that, Tom.
I think it boils down to the fact that if you want any decent animations to be done for FSX or later, you need Gmax , Blender or the unaffordable 3DS Max (because SODE is no alternative either, as far as I know, when objects and their animations are made with FSDS?
Correct?
Click to expand...
Excuse me? I model with Sketchup and make all animations via FSDS with final conditioning done with Arno's excellent MCX, of course. The workflow is relatively simple; export to Collada, open in MCX export to FSDS, perform animation save, open in MCX using the Join Tool to add it back to the rest of the model, export to FSX/P3Dv4 model format and use in sim. However, it appears that you are expressing the imperativeness of an alternative to FSDS and if that is the case, you are mistaken.
I don't make FS9 animations, but I convert them to FSX/P3D standard with fair success. The Conditional Animation Tool is like an animation controller, adding extra conditions, in this case, the condition of a specific radio frequency, to the functionality of FS9 animations. Tick18 is a FS9 native animation that is the equivalent of the FSX ambient tag, so it runs continuously. CAT inserts the control of a radio frequency to freeze the animation when that trigger is not present. While this works fine in FS9 and many FS9 animations work in FSX, I do not believe the special conditions like radio frequencies and bounding box proximity are supported in FSX. I've never had any luck implementing them and I could be mistaken, but that may be all that is happening here. I'd look into that, Bob.
Regardless and not to minimize your travails, but to get back to Roby's assumption, the problem with animations rises from the differences between how they are structured and often around the tick18 tag, it can serve as sort of a master parent and all the animations fall apart when they become orphaned. The problem or challenge is not from FSDS inherently, it was simply one of the most popular and accessible 3d softwares at the time. Any program working through that SDK would produce the same results.
 
Bob,

I answered your question about the engines already. It doesn't matter if they are running.

Did you test in FS if the animation works before using CAT?
 
Arno- yes I did, but I will again to make sure. I used the generated mdl. When I saw it was working I used the _Temp. asm (without the 0) Unless that is the wrong one to use. ;)
 
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