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Animation Of Control Cables For Control Surfaces

krispy1001

krispy1001

Resource contributor
Messages
707
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unitedstates
Hi Everyone!

Does anyone know how to make an object used as a control cable follow a path when animating the control surface?

Thanks, Krispy1001:)
 
I would suggest investigating the "Follow Path" and "Clamp To" constraints... Can you post a screenie of that area of your model so I can have a look at the mechanical behavior of the parts?

Take care :)
 
Hi Capt_X!

I have tried the "Follow Path" but I could not find out how to attach the cable too both objects. I will try the "Clamp To Constraints".

Thank you very much for all your help Capt_X!!!!!! :)
Here is a picture of what I am try too do. :
image1.png
 
Difficult, I've been thinking of this before but decided to reject it. But, one day, I'll need to get it working anyway...

You might think about rigging?
 
Hi Kris,

I have cooked something up for you so, please have a look at the attached file.
  1. Play the animation to see what it does.
  2. Take a look at the hierarchy in the outliner. cable_right is a child of rudder and link_right is a child of c_wheel. And there is an empty (pully_right) inside the rear of the fuselage representing the pully that cable_right goes into. This is the basic setup.
  3. cable_right is easy to set up. Simply apply a Locked Track constraint with pully_right as the target. Have a look at the constraints panel of cable_right to see what I mean.
  4. link_right (the part of the cable between the rudder and the tail wheel) is a bit more complicated. You need to rig it. Placing the armature is a little tricky, I had some trial and error here... You need two bones: Bone_c_wheel for the rotation of the landing gear and Bone_link_right to follow the motion of the rudder horn. Apply a "limit rotation" constraint to the former, limiting its X and Y movement to 0°. To the latter, apply an IK (Inverse Kinematics) constraint with cable_right as the target. In this setup, Bone_c_wheel will now rotate as the rudder horn moves back and forth. You are done rigging.
  5. Apply a copy rotation constraint to c_wheel to make it follow the rotation of Bone_c_wheel. Be careful with the Space: it should be Local Space <-> Local Space.
  6. Finally, Apply a Track To constraint to link_right with cable_right as target.
Throughout all of this, notice where the origins (pivot points) of all the objects are. In rigging, an object is merely identified with its origin, so if the origin moves (or rotates), all children move (rotate). A Locked Track or Track To constraint always aligns an object axis along the straight line between the source and target origins.

Regarding animations. You will notice that the only animated part (with keyframes) is rudder. All other moving parts do so simply by following constraints. BUT... Before export, every moving part will need the correct FSX animation tag, even if it doesn't have keyframes. So don't forget to tag c_wheel, etc.

About rigging. We have rigged the landing gear with an armature, but it is not a skinned mesh! In fact, do not export the armature, it is solely a helper object to create the animations which are baked into the object on export. Exporting the armature (bones) is only necessary and allowed for skinned mesh objects, which are not yet fully implemented in Blender2FSX.

I hope you can work your way through this. If you have any questions, just ask :D

Take care:)
 

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Hi Capt_X, and DutcheeseBlend!

Thank you very much Capt_X!

I figured out how too animate my cables. I figured it out before I saw that you wrote me Capt_X. I will try the way you found out too. Just too see how it works. Thank you very much for taking the time to find a way for me too animate my cables.
Capt_X you are a true Friend. And I appreciate that very much. ("If ever you need help on a project, I am at your service.")

To get the animation to work; Basically what I did was set the cable object parent too the rudder control horn. I then used "Track To Constraint to an empty object pointing in the direction that I wanted the cable object to travel. And it work very well.

Below is a video on how my cable animation works: http://www.kp-coolstuff.com/tmp/CableTest.wmv

I will add animation of control cables too my video tutorials.

Thanks your friend, Kris:):D
 
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