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MSFS20 Flag waving in the wind direction

Just to be sure that we talk about the same here: You are trying to use the animation in a normal scenery object instead of a simobject for now, don't you?

I noticed that the animation looks a little bit different. In particular, it has this star in front fo it instead of this keyframe symbol. Maybe this type of animation is not exported correctly? I'm not an expert for animations in Blender though.
 
SinusJayCee said:
Just to be sure that we talk about the same here: You are trying to use the animation in a normal scenery object instead of a simobject for now, don't you?

I noticed that the animation looks a little bit different. In particular, it has this star in front fo it instead of this keyframe symbol. Maybe this type of animation is not exported correctly? I'm not an expert for animations in Blender though.
Click to expand...
I wanted to test the weaving animation first to make sure it works, as a scenery object. Previously, when I did the same but with just rotation left and right, not cloth simulation, it worked. Once it's working I wanted to try another animation for wind direction - then I would try simobject like advised. I need both animations to work, so I wanted to test the weave first as supposedly a simpler one.
 
All right, I somehow thought you had the cloth simulation already in the sim, but then I confused it with the rotation animation.

Please let me/us known about your progress! Since I'm working on a windsock, I'll soon have the same problem ;)
 
Well, I'm officially stuck. I can't find any resources on how to get animated cloth smulation into the sim. I can't find any tutorials that deal with that. There is not much sense working on the wind rotation when the flag itself cannot be animated, it would look weird. So hopefully somebody will figure this out and let me know. I just don't know what else to try. I can export the flag in a single frame "wavy" state by checking "Animation - current frame" box in Blender2MSFS. It doesn't show flat - it looks good but it's just a single frame. So in theory, MSFS does understand this kind of vertice animation/position. But I can't get cloth-based animation to work. Rotating animation does work in a simple form, but not cloth. I hope someone can figure this out...
 
That's bad :( Unfortunately, I had no time to investigate this topic. I'll also give it a try once I find some free time. But since I'm not an expert in that field, please don't expect too much.
 
You get it for free, so you don't have to give anything for such a simple object. Do you have a template, i.e. what dimensions the flag should have, how high the mast should be?
 
Christian Bahr said:
You get it for free, so you don't have to give anything for such a simple object. Do you have a template, i.e. what dimensions the flag should have, how high the mast should be?
Click to expand...
I would appreciate if you could share how you can actually do an animated flag, because this is what I'm trying to do and failing. I'm sure other people will appreciate it too.
 
RomanDesign said:
I would appreciate if you could share how you can actually do an animated flag, because this is what I'm trying to do and failing. I'm sure other people will appreciate it too.
Click to expand...

This is the same principle as with a windsock: the flag is moved by bones!

Depending on how exactly the flag should be animated, the more or less bones you use. The special thing here is a noise controller. This noise controller is attached to each individual bone. In the noise controller setup you can then determine the axes and the strength with which each bone should be animated. At the end you "bake" the animation.

Another way to animate a flag is to animate a flag according to real physical laws. This is then done using the MassFX plug-in built into 3ds Max. In combination with wind, gravity, mass, etc., extremely astonishing results can be achieved. However, this setup is somewhat more complicated than the setup using a noise modifier. A long time ago I made a video about the "physical windsock" (from 0 to 1:30 min):

 
Christian Bahr said:
This is the same principle as with a windsock: the flag is moved by bones!

Depending on how exactly the flag should be animated, the more or less bones you use. The special thing here is a noise controller. This noise controller is attached to each individual bone. In the noise controller setup you can then determine the axes and the strength with which each bone should be animated. At the end you "bake" the animation.
Click to expand...

Ah, thanks! Sounds logical. I need to learn how to do that. Do you have an idea or a tutorial video about how to simulate convincing flag weaving with bones in Blender, and how to bake animation properly so MSFS understands it?
 
If you look at this simple bone setup first, it might help. The flag consists of a plane with 2x3 segments. This mesh is controlled by 9 bones. To bring the bones and the flag together, a so-called skin modifier is added to the flag.

flag_bones_skin.jpg
 
Very interesting tread going to put 10 different flags at my airport, anyone succeeded making one in Blender which works and are willing to share ?

Thanks
Claus
 
I successfully exported a Blender bones animation to MSFS! I created the bones following this tutorial:

My actual bones setup looks like this:
bones.jpg

This is supposed to be a flag that is attached at the top and left side. Accordingly, the long bone at the top and the two small bones at the left side don't contribute to the waving animation. Before exporting the model to MSFS, it is important that scale and rotation are applied to all objects in the model. Otherwise, the mesh will look distorted. The rest is as usual with specifying the animation in the XML file.

Here is how it looks in the sim:

Note that this is was just a quick test if and how it works. The animation itself doesn't look very realistic so far and will be improved ;)
 
SinusJayCee said:
I successfully exported a Blender bones animation to MSFS! I created the bones following this tutorial:

...

Note that this is was just a quick test if and how it works. The animation itself doesn't look very realistic so far and will be improved ;)
Click to expand...
If you actually succeed in making a wind-dependent flag - I would appreciate if you share your blend file and XML etc. - so I could adapt it to my files. This all is so time-consuming that I will never complete my airport at this pace...
 
SinusJayCee said:
I successfully exported a Blender bones animation to MSFS! I created the bones following this tutorial:

My actual bones setup looks like this:
View attachment 64288

This is supposed to be a flag that is attached at the top and left side. Accordingly, the long bone at the top and the two small bones at the left side don't contribute to the waving animation. Before exporting the model to MSFS, it is important that scale and rotation are applied to all objects in the model. Otherwise, the mesh will look distorted. The rest is as usual with specifying the animation in the XML file.

Here is how it looks in the sim:

Note that this is was just a quick test if and how it works. The animation itself doesn't look very realistic so far and will be improved ;)
Click to expand...
Did you have any issues with the object duplicating? I made my animations using the same method and after I reload the sim sometimes the objects have double animations. Trying to figure out where I went wrong.

When I have the scenery editor open they display fine.
 
Auscene said:
Did you have any issues with the object duplicating? I made my animations using the same method and after I reload the sim sometimes the objects have double animations. Trying to figure out where I went wrong.
Click to expand...
I indeed had the same issue. For me, it disappered when removing "Random" after "AutoPlay" in the model's XML file.

RomanDesign said:
If you actually succeed in making a wind-dependent flag - I would appreciate if you share your blend file and XML etc. - so I could adapt it to my files. This all is so time-consuming that I will never complete my airport at this pace...
Click to expand...
Once I find some free time to cleanup my files a little bit such that other can work with them, I can share them.
 
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