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MSFS20 Blender Tutorial Animated Jetway HERE!

Peter Hornfeck

Peter Hornfeck

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germany
We are developers and we are creative. So we want to create. Sometimes we do not know how to do something. But we all can learn from each other.
If someone hides his knowledge he only wastes the time of other developers. And in the case of FS2020 SDK, where samples are made with 3DS, which is really expensive, it could lead people to buy 3DS, hoping they will earn money later with their scenery. We all know, it is not that easy and could end in frustration and debt.

So I decide to show, everything can be done in Blender. There is no need to pay for 3DS or someone else. Everybody can make his own Jetway or other animation working using free Blender. And it is easy!

It would be possible to make a script for Blender, which could make a jetway animation. But nobody would learn from using a script. So I decide to make a series of tutorials. People could learn how it works.

And I could learn also something, because I'm not a Blender Guru and I'm sure, make many mistakes. Together we will have success.

3 Basic Tutorials are on the list.

1. IK-Chains
2. Wheel Animation
3. Hood Animation

I finished Tutorial 01. The result is a moving Jetway, which connects to the airplane. It is made without any bones, weight paint or other difficulties. All blender keys are explained and it should be easy to understand.

43.png


Everybody can download Tutorial Part 01 at my website:
Flightdeckmagazin

A video of this tutorial is also available at youtube:

Because the SDK only includes 3 IK-Chains, I didn't find a way to animate the Stairs. But maybe someone knows and if we only know a name of the IK-Chain, we could animate the stairs also very easy.

If someone wants me to buy a beer, a Paypal Button is under the video and on my webpage. But only if your Jetway is working.
 
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Part 3 is not tested. Because I can not download FS2020 from the microsoft store. Error Error Error.
But here you can watch a video, how it works in Blender so far:

Very important, the hood consists of 2 parts. One for the main structure and one object for the small part which connects to the airplane. Because it seems to be easier to weight paint them in this way.
 
SODE animation for P3D and FSX using a chain between the Node of the jetway and the stairs. But I think, the SODE engine could interpret this and move the stairs. And not the simulator. Maybe it is not possible only with the simulator. But I do not know exactly. The SDK only explains 3 IK-Chains. And I tried different chains. For the wheels I need only two nodes. One at the slider and one at the ground. I thought maybe it is possible to use a node between them for the stairs. But it also banks the slider for the wheels.
And my jetway has no sound.
 
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I bookmarked this thread because i'm sure i will need this very soon - thank you for your effort and contribution.
 
Hay there :) Thanks again for all your effort!

Just a couple questions. In Pt.3 you said:

"The bones, which are do this animation have no weight paint in main object. But this
could be different in your model. It is only the way, I did it because my weight painting
skills are bad. Maybe not the best way"

How can you manipulate a mesh without weight paint? Or maybe I misunderstood what you meant?

Considering I only misunderstood, and weight paint is necessary as I think, how did you achieve that good bending result?

When I do this is what happens:
1629478344258.png


Even tho the weight paint is a gradient, like in this case:

1629478386245.png



I even tried with a fully linear gradient weight painting like this on all the right bones BUT no matter how much weight a vertex have it follows up red areas without any difference (see screenshots below)

1629478449345.png


1629478496622.png


Hope somebody can help me with this, this is driving me crazy since 3 days now :)
 
You have 2 parts of the hood. The front part, which directly connects to the door (A) and the folded part (B) behind.

First select the object B, than the bones. Ctrl P and make the Bones parent to the object B. Use with automatic weights.
Next switch to weight paint, the last vertices of the mesh must be connected to a not moving bone.
1.png
 
3.png

4.png

Sure, the other bones must also be connected with weight painting. But I use only the function with automatic mesh before. So this are done by Blender.
The only I add with weight painting are the red vertices on the first picture. And I add for the Door_Top bones manually:
5.png
 
The mesh will still bend forward and have a gap between the Head and the Hood. To prevent this, you must use Normalize All in Weight Paint window. This is needed to calculate the influence of all bones on a vertice to get a balanced result between all connected bones.
6.png
 
The important steps to make it easy are:

1. Use automatic weight first.
2. Weight Paint only the parts which must be changed.
3. Use Normalize All to get a smooth result.

There are many ways to make weight painting easier. You could use the vertices mask to paint only the vertices you need. And if you could also move the animation slider to see how the vertices are moving. Every paint click on a vertice will directly been visible. This way it is not difficult to connect Part B moving with Part A moving. Choose weight painting for Part B and move the animation and only paint one vertice to see it changed his position.
 
Peter Hornfeck said:
The important steps to make it easy are:

1. Use automatic weight first.
2. Weight Paint only the parts which must be changed.
3. Use Normalize All to get a smooth result.

There are many ways to make weight painting easier. You could use the vertices mask to paint only the vertices you need. And if you could also move the animation slider to see how the vertices are moving. Every paint click on a vertice will directly been visible. This way it is not difficult to connect Part B moving with Part A moving. Choose weight painting for Part B and move the animation and only paint one vertice to see it changed his position.
Click to expand...
Awesome! I got one guy in the Blender discord to make me a full weight-painting course, it was quicker and easier than I thought ;)
1629652064721.png


Was quite a pain at first but both thanks to you and him I finally nailed it!
Also, there's a bit of an error in the guide.
About exporting you said to configure the model hierarchy like this:

1629652192595.png


This would lead to a compile error tho. If you leave the default "Model" folder name unchanged the "model=" line should be left empty or it won't find the folder, since it would look for "jetwaytutorial" instead of "model".

Although I could sort that, Now I'm getting this error:

Code: 
Failed to load container file info for container[0]: 'Y:\FS2020\lndesign-lfbp-pau-pyrenees\PackageSources\SimObjects\Landmarks\LFBP-Jetway\'

I triple checked the PackageDefinitions file, the sim.cfg and the Jetway XML file. none of them seems to be having any issue. Any clue on what can be causing this?
 
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