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animations with lights

T

tshikwara

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29
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australia
I am trying to animate a refueling truck which drives up to the aircraft when called on Nav2 with CAT. I am using GMAX to build the model. It works fine until I try and add a flashing beacon to the truck, and headlights (using the light_landing naming convention). I realise that these lights are actually animations, but they dont use the tick_18 naming convention, and therefore dont have any keyframes. Is it possible to add beacons / headlights with movement? :confused:
 
Hi Mike,

The LIGHT_LAND is only the material name, you should be able to use tick18_ in the part name as usual and then animate your object.

In the Fs2004 gamepack it could be a problem that the LIGHT_LAND option does not work right away, it requires some source tweaking. But I never tried to run CAT on it after the tweaking.
 
Arno
If I get your drift, you name the light tick18_light (for instance) and give the material the name landing_light and that should do it? Would I need to set up some keyframes as well?
 
Hi,

Yes, you would have to animate the object as usual. Just like any other animated object, that will create the keyframes for you.
 
Thanks Arno
I've been away a couple of days flying! Will give that a go and let you know how I get on.
 
Any light OR effect can be linked to the main object that is animated (even if it is a hidden object)

The only thing that cannot be done is linking an effect to an animation that is edited by CAT.
 
Hi Nick,

But did you not make a truck with a animated rotating light in the old Fs2002 gamepack? I guess that technique should also still work.
 
Is this to say that in CAT animations in FS9 that we can not have Gmax attachpoints that are animated? How dissapointing! My deicer looks so cool when it is fully animated and the deicing fluid is spraying (this of course, is the effect I speak of). And it does work in FS9 before I "cat" it.

With all the great things FS9 has done, there are always those things that we can't work around!
 
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I now see the answer. (I found it in another post) I have been trying for the past 3 hours to hand code the change in the attachpoint, but it has been useless. I have not found a way (and Arno, in your other post I saw that you hadn't either) to put conditional statements in the ATTA section. I was wondering if there was a global variable of some sort that we could store the attachpoint value in and then use that variable in the ATTA section in place of the attachpoint value (calling it by name instead of by value). Possible?
 
Hi Matt,

No, I don't think that will work. The command that sets the attachpoint expects an integer value at compile time, not the address of a variable. So the animation/translation to use for the attachpoint are also set at compile time and can not be changed at runtime anymore.
 
Well, I'm not one to be defeated by code! :)

I've tried messing with the SCEN table. I was hoping to look for the condition in there. It might work, but I cant seem to get my offsets right.

Here's the original code:

Code: 
bgl_scene_graph_entry_15 label byte
BGL_SCENEGRAPH_ENTRY 15, -1, -1, bgl_animation_command_end_15 - bgl_animation_command_start_15, bgl_animation_command_start_15 - bgl_scene_graph_entry_15

And here is what I've changed it to:

Code: 
bgl_scene_graph_entry_15 label byte
IFIN1 myjump1, 6h, 2, 2
  BGL_SCENEGRAPH_ENTRY 15, -1, -1, bgl_animation_command_end_31 - bgl_animation_command_start_31, bgl_animation_command_start_31 - bgl_scene_graph_entry_15
  BGL_JUMP_32 myjumpe
myjump1 label word
IFIN1 myjump2, 6h, 5, 5
  BGL_SCENEGRAPH_ENTRY 15, -1, -1, bgl_animation_command_end_47 - bgl_animation_command_start_47, ;bgl_animation_command_start_47 - bgl_scene_graph_entry_15
  BGL_JUMP_32 myjumpe
myjump2 label word
  BGL_SCENEGRAPH_ENTRY 15, -1, -1, bgl_animation_command_end_15 - bgl_animation_command_start_15, ;bgl_animation_command_start_15 - bgl_scene_graph_entry_15
myjumpe label word

I've left the ATTA section as:

Code: 
BGL_ATTACHPOINT_ENTRY 15, attachpoint_name_kbwideice_0

So, I'm trying to keep the attachpoint at 15, but make the SCEN table entry point to the correct animation for that point in the sequence. That would be 15 for the beginning/end point, 31 for forward animation and 47 for backwards animation. Just can't seem to get the offsets right. Then again, I may be way off course!

:banghead:
 
Hi Matt,

Give up, and save yourself more :banghead:

It is not possible as the effects are designed to work in their own "space". (Or you can read Arnos technical explaination earlier in this thread).
 
I agree with you Nick that the attachpoint for the effects are called in a separate section named ATTA. We can't change the attachpoint that is called in this section as noted above. However, I was trying to take one step back from there. Instead of changing the attachpoint that is called, changing what that attachpoint contains in the SCEN table. Now if the SCEN table is also read in at compile time instead of run time than this will not work. The animations matrices are definitely there, I'm just trying to figure out how to access them in a usable way.

I am quite stubborn about solving these kinds of things. Especially, since I made such a nice spraying effect for my deicer. Either I have to lose the animation and have a static deicer with a nice spraying effect or lose the spray effect and have a nicely animated deicer with some bad looking poly as my "deicing fluid". :rolleyes:

Thanks for the replies!
 
Hi Matt,

Good to see that you don't believe everything we say here :). That certainly helps in exploring new ways to do things.

But for this one I am afraid, as Nick said, that it will never work. I have given up on this one myself. It seems the commands like IFIN1 to apply the conditions are only valid in the BGL section of the RIFF format. Most other sections have a specified format and only a few commands can be used there.

For example the RIFF section defines the child/parent/peer relation between the different animation tables. So it is a sort of table and no conditions can be added there.

mattperry78 said:
Now if the SCEN table is also read in at compile time instead of run time than this will not work.
Click to expand...

This table is not really read at compile time, it is just a structure (as I explained above) that is stored in the MDL file. But I think due to the structure of this table, conditions are not allowed in it.
 
Okay, I give in! :whiteflag Thanks for putting up with it for the past couple of days. If anything, I have learned quite a bit about the way asm works! Thanks!

I've decided on a compromise. I'll make 2 models. One with the deicer sitting 30m away from the plane and the other one will be the animated one that is deicing the plane. I'll tweak it so one mdl shows when a condition is not met and the other one is showing when a condition is met. So all I'll be missing is it driving up to the aircraft. Wait, MDLTweaker does work with effects, right? I'll just have to find out! :idea:
 
Of course, I wasn't sure if MDLTweaker worked magic in the .mdl file, but I found out quickly that it doesn't. Back to the drawing board all together...
 
Nope, MDL Tweaker adds the same kind of conditions as you tried with your ASM code. So they only apply to the BGL section as well.
 
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