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P3D v4 Animations not exporting to P3Dv4

Adam_WMidsUK

Adam_WMidsUK

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Me again :-D

I've spent the weekend making a tiny step forward and slowly pulling my hair out. Fulfilling ... I think?

My animations are all showing correctly in the Animation manager in 3DS Max. They also appear to work in MCX when exported to MDL file. However the visibility tags don't seem to work in MCX so I see both the blurred prop, slow prop and still prop all together in MCX.

In the SIM (P3D V4) the animations don't run. The parts are showing but stay on the first frame (I.e. no prop movement and gear retracted.)

The only other odd thing was that in MAX, my right gear compression compressed as intended. However in MCX once exported, it was extending rather than compressing... had to change the xanim file for that animation by changing a positive value to a negative then recompile to mdl to fix it.

I'm not sure where to start with troubleshooting on getting the animations to show in P3D. My only thought is that I read not to clone parts with animations... which is what I did for my LODs. So I'm considering untagging all animations and retagging them. Does this sound sensible?

Cheers

Adam
 
Heretic

Heretic

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Adam_WMidsUK

Adam_WMidsUK

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Thanks Heretic

I'm pretty sure I tagged the animations correctly (And with key frames). However my LODs were created through cloning and when I went to re-tag the cloned parts I found they were already tagged (I.e. the tag had cloned with them) still so I left them.

Shame the OP doesn't state how the issue from a mirror modifier was solved (or specifically what issue had arisen). I DID use a mirror modifier (not the mirror button) during the model construction, But collapsed the stack once finished with it.

Cheers

Adam
 
Heretic

Heretic

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Use of the modifier is okay, even without collapsing the stack.


No idea what you've tried so far, but I'd try exporting the model piece by piece now and look very closely at the the export and compilation process for use of the correct modeldef. And, of course consult the P3Dv4 SDK documentation to see if there's any deviation from the norm.
 
Adam_WMidsUK

Adam_WMidsUK

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Thanks for the guidance.

I've tried exporting a single LOD now and still having the same issue. However, I have a couple of things to try. One thing I DID notice was that when applying the visibility attaches, the name generated was undefined_0 for EVERY attach. The SDK suggests each attach should have a different name, but also suggests that this is generated by the attach tool and that the number is automatically incremented. This is not happening for me. Do you find this is the case also on your models? Should each visibility attach have a different name or is this only relevant to new attach points rather than visibility attaches to existing geometry?

Cheers

Adam
 
Adam_WMidsUK

Adam_WMidsUK

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Nope, stumped!

I have now tried deleting the LODs from a temporary copy of the model. I have added the visibility attaches again after deleting them. I have also removed some groups I was using to animate the prop cone and blurr image together and applied and tagged the animations individually to each instead. Nothing is changing anything when I re-export and test in P3D. I have taken some footage to show the result I am getting. The model operating as AI in P3D is shown below:

http://www.mrbartlam.com/downloads/p3d.mp4 (12.2MB)

I have reduced quality significantly for file size, but it gives the general impression. Wheels at frame 1, all prop states visible but not animated. There is some flickering on the left prop which COULD be animation, but I'm not sure... could also be where the blurred prop cone is conflicting with the slow prop cone.... doesn't seem to happen on the right though.

I've also recorded below (at higher quality for text reading) my 3DS Max work (ignore the texture... I mapped it to the DDS file so it is inversed... works fine in the sim though)... Showing the visibility attaches I added (only a selection, not all of them), the animations in motion, the animation tool showing some of the tags I added (the frame boxes are blank, but WERE completed when I added the tags) and the animation tool summary showing the list of all animations added and the length of each.

http://www.mrbartlam.com/downloads/3DSMax.mp4 (14.1MB)

If anybody can spot where I'm going wrong that would be marvellous, because I've been trying different things all day and am currently out of ideas! Tommorrow I'll try ONLY exporting the core model with 1 animated part at a time... should that work to narrow down the culprit?

Cheers

Adam
 
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Adam_WMidsUK

Adam_WMidsUK

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Okay... SO... I finally found the solution. I am not sure which of these fixed it, but I think it was both of them together, each being an unrelated issue. I will report what I did below for anybody else who is danger of self-induced hairloss and who finds this post!

  • First... Thanks to Heretic's advice I read the posts he directed me to and noticed one of the pieces of advice on there was not to use groups for animation. I had set my blurred prop animations up with two parts, the blurred texture on a flat plane and a 3d cone for the prop hub. I had then grouped these in an open group and animated the group, tagging BOTH parts (and the group itself) with the blurred animation tag. This was wrong. I fixed I by ungrouping both and removing the animation and its tags. I then linked the blurred texture plane to the hub as a child and animated the hub only and re-tagged the hub only. BOTH parts still had the visibility attach set to them.
  • Second... Again, Heretic said to re-check against the SDK. I had read this already and had followed the guidance there, but I had missed 1 crucial sentence tucked away at the very end of the XtoMDL Tool as a note after the section... it reads: "Note: Animations are not supported without the modeling export tools. XtoMdl should function on non-animating scenery objects. Animated objects that are not exported from 3ds Max with the correct export tools can be used with XtoMdl, but will not animate." I had been exporting my model by simply doing file > export, setting type to 'Prepar3D v4 DirectX File' and exporting it. This did open the P3D v4 export dialog and I was ticking the options (e.g. export animations, etc.). I was them using the command line ""F:\Program Files\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4 SDK 4.0.28.21686\Modeling\3ds Max\Common\Plugins\XToMDL.exe" /XMLSAMPLE /XANIM "[XFilePath]"" to convert to a mdl file. This was NOT exporting the animations. I tried using the Export and LOD 'Export this Max File!' option instead, with the 'Build MDL File' option ticked. This worked. I had avoided this previously as there is a post somewhere on this forum which advised against using the aces tool to export it and to do it the way I had been. I can say that for ME, and perhaps because this is new for P3D v4, I HAVE to use the Export and LOD > Export option, otherwise it won't work.
In addition to this, I also spotted an error in the SDK. In the [Propeller] section of the aircraft.cfg explanation, it reads that the number_of_propellers property should give "The number of propellers driven per engine."... this is not the case... number_of_propellers must be set to number of propellers on the plane in total. I had set mine to '1' initially... i.e. "1 per engine" as per the SDK... but the right was then not firing up (at least as an AI model). Changed it to 2 and both then fired.

Thanks massively everybody for all your help! I've now just got to add LODs back in and I have an egg shaped nose wheel I need to correct (must have inadvertently squished it at some point)... but I know how to do all that.

Awesome bank of knowledge here. Much appreciated for this post and all my others!

Adam

P.S. - I'll host the videos on my webspace as long as I can but may have to remove them at some point if space ever becomes an issue.
 
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