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FSXA New To Animation

F

flynby

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us-texas
Using XP SP3 and FSDS 3.5.1. Trying to animate 2 doors on one side of a box.
Animation in FSDS works perfect. No luck in FSXA. Looks good--No workie!!
What is proper Key frame animation to use?
My goal is some day be able to animate doors on a AI. Do I need a aircraft cfg to make this work?
Thanks in advance
 
FSDS is no longer my turf as I left ages ago.

But... on AI, your doors usually do not work unless you have some really ingenius tricks.

And... if you are making this a flyable plane first, then make sure you have exits in your Aircraft.cfg file. Otherwise, only a single exit will work.

Also, make note to set your animation key frames from zero to 100. In Gmax, we have to put in key points, beginning and ending, in the FSX Aces Animation Manager, telling it when the animation starts and stops, which in doors should be zero thru 100. If you do not put that in, the doors 'no workie'.




Bill
 
Hi Bill,

I actually encounter a lot of problems that somehow have to do with - material. I have a material which shows up fine on non-animated parts, but as soon as I animate the part, it is a no-show in the FSX. Then, I create a default, base FSX material and assign it to the animated, no-show part, and it shows up and works. Why is material doing this, and is there anything that I ovelooked??

I work with Max 8, which is using Max 7 SDK. Is that the problem?

Thanks,
Misho
 
Hey Misho,

Man, that is an odd one. I have no idea why it would be doing this. I know that Aces mapped doors of their airliners on a different texture sheet, and that might be one of the reasons why. I wonder if this is a SP1a update issue?

I'll have to let Bill Leaming or someone chime in on this one.

In Gmax and Max 2008, I didnt have this issue.

Are you using a Bones material to map doors and things with? Bones materials are getting alot of bugs from what I keep hearing from people. (I havent tried them, but they seem to be buggy and cause alot of issues and scaling 'episodes' ).

Bill
 
Thanks Bill!! No bones. An incredibly simple lever animation tied to the canopy animation. I stripped the copy of the model to the lowest possible configuration, and narrowed it down to the material - one works, the other doesn't. I have the [exits] defined in cfg, and I think I looked at basically anything I could think of. Is there a material parameter that is interfering with animation?

Also - texture naming: SDK and the LOD checker say the naming convention MUST be followed, and yet, within the SDK documentation, they contradict themselves by specifying different suffixes for specular: _Specular in one instance, and _spec in the other. I never noticed the naming had to be strict - is that the case?

So, are you working with Max 2008 or Max 8? I always wondered if working with Max 8 would interfere with SDK's Max 7 utils/scripts. The thing is, I can't buy Max 9 any longer :(... I also don't have the FSXShaderTool working - although it seems to be available for Max 7... Is that working for you in Max 8?

Misho
 
Hey Misho,

We'll have to find out from someone else on the materials issue on your project.

Make sure you have the FSX SP1a developers update for your SDK pack. Its at www.fsdeveloper.com in the Downloads section.

I just name materials that are Specular maps with a '_spec' at the end. I doubt its important though as one places them in the FSX Material slots, such as the Specular slot, thus I think names will not matter. I do put the names on just in case and havent tested this.

For right now, I am not working in Max. I had Max 2008, which worked great for FSX, though its process of creating models is crazy, you need to learn the DOS entry for burning a model, etc, etc, etc. If you are used to Gmax, going to Max will confuse you for a while as a lot of things are moved around and names are changed for operations and buttons and things.

I hope you figure out why your material isnt working on animated parts. That is really odd.



Bill
 
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Thanks Bill - Oh, I have and work with Max 8 (Can't be 2008 because I got it in '06) and I'm quite good with it... it's just these little quirks that I keep running into, which are completely baffling me, and are HARD to debug and/or explain. They eat up most of my time, and I'm a kind of a guy that NEEDS to know the solutuion, not just implement a workaround. :D If I sent you a super simple Max 8 file, could you, or anyone, take a look at it and see if it does the same thing for you?

I am all up to date on SDK's SPs... unless one was released 3 or less months ago, since the last time I checked.

BTW - I run the LOD file checker, and on all accounts I get "As far as I can tell, this model is perfect" - except on some manifold geometry and co-located vertices (which for smoothng reasons need to be colocated). That wouldn't mess up anims, would it?? Those are just warnings - or are they?

Misho
 
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Texture names are completely arbitrary in FSX. The SKD's examples are simply that; examples of how to keep track of texture "sets" by using a consistent naming suffix convention.

In all my years of modeling and rigging textures in FS, I've never encountered a problem such as you're describing. It makes no sense whatever, so I'm completely at a loss for any form of explanation, much less a "fix..." :eek:
 
Misho, have you already tried "Reset XForm" on the part or totally reset the material in question and re-add it from scratch to the mat editor?

If that doesn't work, try reacreating a basic version of the part, then animate it and if it works turn it into the "real deal".

If you're not successful with that, send me the .max file you've mentioned and I'll take a look.
 
Thanks bill, no problem :)

Heretic said:
Misho, have you already tried "Reset XForm" on the part or totally reset the material in question and re-add it from scratch to the mat editor?

If that doesn't work, try reacreating a basic version of the part, then animate it and if it works turn it into the "real deal".

If you're not successful with that, send me the .max file you've mentioned and I'll take a look.
Click to expand...


Thanks Bjorn - I have tried re-setting transform - that doesn't work.

Setting new material works - that's why I was asking if there is something in the material that makes the Anims stop working. I am completely puzzled.


Re-creating the part also works - but as I said, I NEED to know why this is happening... I keep running into this and it is driving me nuts!! :banghead:

I'll make an appropriate (SIMPLE) case study and send you the link to MAX file... thanks!!!

Misho
 
Misho,

It just occurred to me. When you animate a part, do you have the Animation button on and is the key frame track illuminated red? That needs to be on when doing animations.

Also, you will have green tags on the key frame track that will be start-stop points. If its clear, there are no animation points on that part selected.


Bill
 
Another related thought - are you changing material with the animation mode still on? Defo no workie.
 
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