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Bizarre animation problem

A

artmartin

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us-arizona
Hey all. Long time since I've posted here. Been taking a bit of a break from scenery design to get to know my family again. Recently started playing a bit with GMAX animations. What I'm trying to do is create some glider and tow plane activity around a small glider port so I've created some real basic plane and glider objects. I've attached the tow plane and glider together as one full object and have it following a path up the runway and into the air. About the time it gets airborne and starts its turn, the time limit on the animation runs out. What I do then is have a second combo plane/glider object animated that begins at the place the first object left off. That way I can have longer flight sequences. My eventual goal is to have at one of those transition points a separate plane and glider object start their animations while pulling away from one another.

I got the first transition to work perfectly but, if I add too many keys to the 2nd animation, the model won't compile. Is there a limit to the number of keys, or does Makemdl simply get to a point where it can do no more complexity? Does that limit depend on the number of polygons in the anim? I see no rhyme or reason for the failures. I can leave off the last key, it compiles perfectly, I put a new one in, and it bombs. Doesn't seem to matter what I do in transition or rotation. Just seems to be some limit I'm plowing into.

Art Martin
 
Hi Art,

There is a limit, and Arno and I found this bug before from memory (Arno?). I do not think we ever put our finger on the issue.

This is something I hope to see sorted in FSX.

In the mean time, Arno I hope can help.
 
How many keys do you have? Are you sure your animation is below 1024 frames?
Does gmax crash compiling the file or does it just take a long time. I once had a similar problem with mdl-tweaker and the solution was just to wait 2 minutes for the compilation to finish. :D :o

Anyway I would love to see the result - a nice idea of making longer animations. :)
 
Thanks for the replies. I limited the animation to 900 frames, down from 1000 as a troubleshooting step. No change in behavior. Probably have no more than 6 - 8 keys in each of the two animated objects.

The thing crashes with a Makemdl error that completely crashes Makemdl. Waiting wouldn't make a difference. Once I get some time I'll post some screenshots. It really defies logic. I've used this technique before for animating cars on the highway and it's worked fine. You simply create multiple animated objects that start where others leave off and you get a very long and extended sequence. Problem lies in that they all have to be part of the same model or the timing doesn't work.

Art
 
Found a workaround

Seems my basic problem was related to number of frames. One object animated just fine at 900 or 1000 frames but the crashes for multiple objects went away when I made the total length 800. I was able to animate at least 8 separate objects, a combo plane/glider taking off, another combo climbing and turning, the separation of the two aircraft and two more sequences where the glider finds a thermal, climbs and then finishes with a dive, while the tow plane circles down quickly.

If you follow the entire sequence there's over 4 minutes of action. Nice thing about all the concurrent animation is that, if you fly in to the glider port I installed this at, there's almost always something to look at as you pan around.

If you go to my web site support forums (www.simulatingart.com), I'll have some screen shots posted tonight with the results. Thanks for the suggestions.

Art
 
Hi Art,

I forgot to answer this question earlier. I think the error Nick mentioned is not your problem, as those happened after using CAT on animations, while you have it right away.

Have you thought about tweaking the source files to make animations with over 1024 frames possible? This might be even easier than using multiple objects.
 
Yes, I am interested in how you are timing each section to run, one after the other.
 
Arno, I've just briefly looked into your techniques for extended animations. I've yet to play with tweaking any .asm files except with your tools but it's something I'd like to learn more about when I have the time to really delve into it.

Nick, the timing takes care of itself inside GMAX since these segments are all part of the same animation model file. The total number of frames of the final product is just 800. What makes it seem so much longer is that all the segments are running at the same time. In other words, the beginning of the segment where the glider and tow plane separates happens at the same time the combo begins moving down the runway. The reason you can get away with this is that those starting points are separated physically by a long distance and the user is almost never looking at both spots at the same time.

It looks a mess in GMAX when you have so many animated objects on the same page but that's because the distances are compressed. Once in FS, it turns out pretty cool.

I've used this same technique for animating people on inner tubes floating down the Salt River and for animated cars on the freeways. It's just a matter of cloning objects and starting their animated sequences at the exact spot where the orginal object's animation ends.

Hope this makes sense. Send me an email and I'll send you the GMAX file I created.

Art
 
Ah, I see now what you have done :) NICE :)

Do you not have problems with the timing of the "joins" if the framerate dips? Things getting out of sequence etc.
 
My machine screams right now so I'm not experiencing any real dipping of frame rate. I'll have to look at it on my son's machine.

Art
 
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