MSFS Animations with Blender exporter

[evilnando]

Hi again
Does anyone have tried to make animated objects export to the sim via the blender exporter?

thanks

 

[DaveWG]

Tried, yes, succeeded no.

 

[OzWookiee]

Yes, I'm just troubleshooting some issues I have at the moment and asking someone for some assistance before I make a post here that I hope will help others as well.

TLR Name the animation the same as your defined animation in your XML file

 

[delta_foxtrot]

Yes, I'm just troubleshooting some issues I have at the moment and asking someone for some assistance before I make a post here that I hope will help others as well.

TLR Name the animation the same as your defined animation in your XML file

yay!!

 

[DaveWG]

Ah, so you name the animation. I was naming the part.
I'll try that later, thanks.

 

[OzWookiee]

Ah, so you name the animation. I was naming the part.
I'll try that later, thanks.

Name the part for MouseRect and Visibility.
Name the animation for Animation.

 

[DaveWG]

Brilliant, thanks.

 

[Deano1973]

You must name the animation as it appears in Blender in the little animation box to bottom right, in the animation window. Blender adds the word Action to a part name to signify an animation.

A part named l_gear would thus have an animation name of l_gearAction - this is what the gLTF exporter seems to look for.

Also, don't rename parts once animated - I tried that in early experiments and it killed the animation and required re-keying the frames to bring it back to life. Just stick with Blender's conventino in your coding and things should animate fine.

 

[DaveWG]

Thanks Dean.

 

[OzWookiee]

You must name the animation as it appears in Blender in the little animation box to bottom right, in the animation window. Blender adds the word Action to a part name to signify an animation.

Actually You can RENAME that animation

 

[OzWookiee]

Expand the objects in the inspector, open the animation and double click the name to rename

 

[Deano1973]

Yes, but in my experience once exported to MSFS this then kills the animation. They seem to have to be animated AFTER being named - doing it the other way round doesn't work.

 

[OzWookiee]

Yes, but in my experience once exported to MSFS this then kills the animation. They seem to have to be animated AFTER being named - doing it the other way round doesn't work.

Yea if you rename the object I think i renames the anim so rename object first then animation. Will have more on this as the week progresses. Elbow deep in digging stuff out of an AIR file into cfg's

 

[DaveWG]

Hi chaps,

Slowly getting to grips with the animation process. Is it possible to have the same animation name on more than one part?
At the moment if I name a second part animation with an animation name that's already been used on another part, Blender renames the first animation to "animation_name.001" and it then no longer works in the sim.
I can get around it by making unique entries the the behaviour xml for each part, but that's going to be a right pain for complicated animations.

 

[Deano1973]

I can get around it by making unique entries the the behaviour xml for each part, but that's going to be a right pain for complicated animations.

Right now, that's the only way I'm aware of - unique entries under each main heading ( c_gear, l_gear etc ). A pain indeed, but once you have that all down, you can re-use much of it for other airplanes as long as you name the parts the same way.

 

[OzWookiee]

Haha @Deano1973 beat me to it Looks like unique entries at this point and yes that will make things complicated, but can new reused.

 

[DaveWG]

Ah, ok, thanks. It's not too bad on my current model, that's only a handful of duplicated animations. Now I know I can press on.
Cheers.

 

[evilnando]

will this work for animated scenery objects? or marshallers are considered also "simobjects" instead?

 

[OzWookiee]

I believe so since each model needs a behaviour file

 

[JRollonPlanes]

I am having the problem with the parent and child animated with same name it adds 001, 002 , etc to the name. It is not elegant and not good maybe for performance and for sure for maintenance of the xml files to add separate names per same parent-childs objects.
In 3DStudio max there is the Babylon Animation Groups. You select all parent and childs and all are named under that name:

https://gyazo.com/b8d5002ddb42f8165c187f03c6607188

Is there a way to program that in the Blender exporter? Thanks!