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Animation-again

pks1414

pks1414

Messages
406
I have a flag animated in 3dsMax8, I export and tick the boxes and in my destination folder I get both X and Xanim files. The flag shows okay in FSX but no animation. Do I have to do anything else other than drag the X file onto my Compile box? that produces the placement and the MDL file okay, should I be doing anything with the Xanim file as well? my target file is as below

%windir%\system32\cmd.exe /K G:\Compiler\XtoMdl.exe /XANIM /DICT:G:\Compiler\modeldef.XML /XMLSAMPLE

Thanks for any advice

Paul
 
Did you remember to use the Animation Tool to tag the appropriate bones with the "Ambient" animation?
 
Have you studied the example "waving flag" in the oil platform model included in the SDK? If you haven't, you should. It is very clear what ACES did to animate the flag.
 
This has now got me going crazy, to be honest its been 12 months since I created my flag and compared to the one in the Oil Rig example, well frankly it looks naff:( So I thought I would try again. Created the bones, one up and five across. I have spent the last 2 hours trying get them to animate something like a flag (just what is the best way to animate these things) when I do end up with this jerky final 'animation' (and I use the term losely) when I put the flag/skin the top of the flag moves but the bottom seems stuck..DOH!

Would some kind persom please talk me through this as at this moment in time I am getting nowwhere

Cheers

Paul
 
You need to skin the flag to the bones. The best way to do this is to apply the skin modifier to the flag and then add all of the bones into the modifier (using the Add Bones button).

Once all your bones are in the flag, press the "Edit Envelopes" button. Select the last bone in the chain. Check the "Vertices" check box in the "Filters" group box. Then select the last vertices on the flag. Crank the "Abs. Effect" spinner all the way up to 1.0. Now select the second to last bone. Then select the next rown of vertices (the ones that are lined up with the end of the second to last bone) and crank the "Abs. Effect" slider up to 1.0. Work your way down the chain of bones and vertices until they have all been applied.

If you want to get tricky, once you have assigned a value of 1.0 to all the bones, you can then go in and adjust accoringly (like selecting vertices in the middle of two bones, selecting one of the bones and then adjusting the "Abs. Effect" spinner to 0.5. That will give both bones equal effect on those vertices.)
 
Thanks for that Torgo, I have got all that, whats the best way to 'manipulate' the flag, I have been grabbing the vertices and pushing them sideways (does that make sense)

Cheers

Paul
 
FSX Flag Animation

Hi

I have uploaded a flag animation tutorial on AVSIM some time ago.

Make a search on the 'flag_animation_tutorial.zip'

all should be easy.

kthy2003
Serdar Nuzhet
 
I still cannot get the animation working, its one of those things that is not going into the old crust:( I have followed both sets of instructions to the letter (using Max8)but although everything exports sweet as a nut, nothing happens in FSX, flag just sits there. Should I be able to see the animation in Max before I export, if so how?

I will get there..eventually

Well the flag appears in FSX but is complteley static, it looks good though with the ripple effect I put in Max, why won't it move????
 
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I am obviously missing something here as the flag doesn't move, not even in Max. I have followed your Tutorual to the letter but I am still not getting anywhere. Am I supposed to manipulate the flag or does it work off the abs effect?:confused:
 
You must animate the bones per Katy's Step 3. :D

You must also add the Ambient controller to the bones using the Animation Manager, again as Katy has described and illustrated.

You do NOT animate the flag's mesh... :eek:

So yes, you should see your flag animate in Max/GMax when moving the time slider back and forth, or if you click on the "Play" button.
 
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Hi Bill, this is where I am getting confused:confused: I cannot see where he adds the animation key in step 3, it doesn't say anything about manipulating the bone...does it, when I follow the instructions I get a lot of key entries (about every 5)am I supposed to be doing something else?? I am not touching the skin/mesh. I made the abs effect 1 for each vertex. If I have to change the position of the bone to reflect movement how do the keys get picked up?
 
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If you are in 3ds Max than the simplest way to animate is to press the "Auto Key" button down in the keyframe section of the UI (bottom right). It will turn your time slider red and put a red halo around your viewports. When that button is checked, every move, scale or rotate you do afterwards will set a keyframe on the object at the time that is set in the time slider.

So setup your bones how you want them to start.
Set the time slider to 0.
Then press the "Auto Key" button.
Set the time slider to frame 20 (or whatever you want your first keyframe to be).
Rotate the bones to the place you want them to be at that keyframe.
Notice that a keyframe will be set at keyframe 0 and keyframe 20.
You now have animation on the parts you animated.
Scrub the time slider to see the animation.
Continue through the rest of the animation setting keyframes when you need them (20,40,60,80,100,etc.).
 
Ha! thanks torgo, that works, just a quick question though, the top of the flag moves great, however some of the botton seems stuck? Is it best to put the bones in the centre of the flag?
 
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