Exporting animations

[arno]

Hi,

I have made some changes today that allow me to export animations to the X file format (and thus to FSX MDL files). You will get the first implementation with tonight's build.

But I must warn you that it is not yet working correctly. The animated parts have some problems with being mirror around some axes. I have not yet been able to solve that.

So you can test it, but don't export objects with animations if you want to use them in your scenery project :).

[arno]

I fixed the problem with flipped parts. The only part I still have to do is write the right animation type, now all animations in the export are Ambient (I need to read the modeldef.xml I guess). That I will continue on tomorrow.

So if you import a default object with animation now, it should export fine (and keep the animations), except that they all become of type ambient.

[adr179]

:) I waited for this functionality as a starved wolf :p

[arno]

I see it more as a step on the way to support animations from API macros. Importing a FSX MDL with animations and then exporting it again without losing them is not really a step forward :). So once I figured out the last few issues, I will start working on support for SCASM animations.

[adr179]

You have many gifts, one of them, looks like, is also reading other's minds:) - SCASM animations being converted into FS X animations is what I'm waiting for - a a starved wolf and fox together:D:D

[arno]

I have just committed some final changes to the exporting of the animations. These are related with the /XANIM attribute being set automatically for XtoMDL when needed and looking up animation names from ModelDef.xml when needed while creating the XANIM file.

I have tested that things work by importing a FSX MDL with a simple animation I made. I can export it again and the resulting MDL file still has the working animations :).

I also tried it with a default aircraft, but in that case the exported animations don't work anymore. I guess there are more aircraft specific things that I am missing some how. But for the moment I won't give that priority, scenery objects are the main goal still. If some aircraft designer can later explain me a bit more about the other aircraft related stuff in the MDL file I can try to improve it.

So now the next step is to modify the SCASM reader to understand animations in there and add them to the object model...