- Messages
- 26
Greetings and a Happy New Year to All!
First problem of the year: I am stumped by a very basic animation for FSX ("Gold" variant).
It's a test case for a scenery object (not aircraft) animation, supposed to simulate a lift moving up and down a tower (on the outside).
So in GMax I have a static cylinder (the "tower") and an animated box (the "cabin") running up and down it.
Position animation along the z-axis only, no rotation or scaling involved.
The cycle goes like this (total length of animation: 100 frames, just for testing)
frame
#0 - #20: stationary at ground position
#21 - #50: move to top
#51 - #70: stationary at top position
#71 - #100: move to ground
...rinse and repeat.
Looks OK in the TrackView function curve.
Works correctly in both GMax and MCX.
The problem: In FSX the cabin will "overshoot" instead of stopping at the top/ground.
It will slow down but rise above the top of the tower roof, or move into the ground, resp. There is no truly stationary phase, the overshooting "eats up" the planned pause time.
Now, I know this overshooting will happen if the Position controller is "Bézier" (the GMax default).
But I have changed all three controllers to linear (even Rotation and Scale which are not used at all).
I have also added extra keyframes, shortly before top and ground (#48 and #98) and halfway through the movement phases (#37 and #88).
All to no avail.
After much animation testing (and animated language, too) I eventually discovered that removing the two stationary phases seems to be the only trick that helps:
Even all those extra keyframes are then no longer needed.
The cabin will now run to the correct top and ground positions, without overshooting, but will then of course immediately continue with reversed direction, i.e. no pause any more.
However, those pauses are needed to give the PAX a chance to step in or out!
Hence my questions:
Cheers,
Martin
First problem of the year: I am stumped by a very basic animation for FSX ("Gold" variant).
It's a test case for a scenery object (not aircraft) animation, supposed to simulate a lift moving up and down a tower (on the outside).
So in GMax I have a static cylinder (the "tower") and an animated box (the "cabin") running up and down it.
Position animation along the z-axis only, no rotation or scaling involved.
The cycle goes like this (total length of animation: 100 frames, just for testing)
frame
#0 - #20: stationary at ground position
#21 - #50: move to top
#51 - #70: stationary at top position
#71 - #100: move to ground
...rinse and repeat.
Looks OK in the TrackView function curve.
Works correctly in both GMax and MCX.
The problem: In FSX the cabin will "overshoot" instead of stopping at the top/ground.
It will slow down but rise above the top of the tower roof, or move into the ground, resp. There is no truly stationary phase, the overshooting "eats up" the planned pause time.
Now, I know this overshooting will happen if the Position controller is "Bézier" (the GMax default).
But I have changed all three controllers to linear (even Rotation and Scale which are not used at all).
I have also added extra keyframes, shortly before top and ground (#48 and #98) and halfway through the movement phases (#37 and #88).
All to no avail.
After much animation testing (and animated language, too) I eventually discovered that removing the two stationary phases seems to be the only trick that helps:
Even all those extra keyframes are then no longer needed.
The cabin will now run to the correct top and ground positions, without overshooting, but will then of course immediately continue with reversed direction, i.e. no pause any more.
However, those pauses are needed to give the PAX a chance to step in or out!
Hence my questions:
- Is this a known problem?
- If so, what is a solution?
- Or am I overlooking something trivial?
Cheers,
Martin