MSFS20 Bone Animation wrong in msfs

[mamu]

I'm trying to solve this problem for days without luck
In Blender i'm animating a cylinder (windsock) with bones
The animation Is a typical Windsock movement, the windsock start from down (180 degree) position, goes up a Little bit (150/120) and than back down.
If msfs, It start from 90 degree and goes up to 60 degree and back down to 90
I think It Is a problem with the bone axis, my Bones are configurated with Z axis pointing upwards, X axis to the right and Y pointing towards the bone tail
I'm animating only the X axes with a rotation of a few degree



Of course in Blender the animation works ok, all transformation applied in object mode etc
(In Windows 3d internal viewer works ok, and in visual studio code internal viewer works ok too)

Here's the full source model folder + Blender file

windTest.zip

drive.google.com

Hope someone can help!

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[TangoGolf]

I had some issues with animations not following what I was seeing in blender and what I saw in MSFS and found it was the Transform order.

I see that yours is set to XYZ Euler, maybe change the order if you had used a custom transform alignment.

 

[Mikea.at]

if you go to the "pose mode" of the armature and select the second bone you see that the rotation in the "n" key panel is set to XYZ Euler. default is here quaternions. your other bones also have the quaternions option enabled. Redo this animation with all bones set to quaternions. maybe this is the problem.

 

[mamu]

Thanks you so much, gonna try with that!

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[mamu]

I've tried with all quaternion, all XYZ, tried rotating the bones with the Z axis pointing down, the animation Is msfs still look reverse or distorted
Even importing the windsock gtlf sample and exporting It gives abnormal distorsions
It's of course something wrong with my workflow (or maybe the exporter?)
Anyway, I've not seen any working example of a windsock in Blender exported to msfs, lots of tries here at fsdeveloper but no solution yet

I think i've to bit the bullet and try to get It working with 3ds Max (have to do this fast, my trial license wont last long)...uff!

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[Mikea.at]

i made that animation:

i also tried to add more details to the animation but that was not working so i think it is limited to "basic" animations but a animation like the flag in that quality was working.

 

[Luicid]

i made that animation:

i also tried to add more details to the animation but that was not working so i think it is limited to "basic" animations but a animation like the flag in that quality was working.

what kind of sorcery is it? lol

Can you share your blender file to see what's wrong with my flag please?

 

[Mikea.at]

That was a cloth animation baked to bones. I have to finish some other stuff then i will try to make a "tutorial".

 

[Luicid]

That was a cloth animation baked to bones. I have to finish some other stuff then i will try to make a "tutorial".

Thank you, can't wait for it

 

[Christian Bahr]

That was a cloth animation baked to bones.

In other words, did you apply a Cloth modifier to the bones?
The result from you looks very good, the animation looks very realistic!

 

[Mikea.at]

Not really, you add vertex groups to the mesh parts of the flag and then connect the vertex groups to bones using IK (inverse kinematics). Then you can bake the animation to the bones. After that you can push the animation to the nla track as usual.

 

[Christian Bahr]

Okay thanks. I always thought that I would be very familiar with animation. I have now learned something new

 

[Mikea.at]

so did some more testings and tried to do a tut with a windsock too.
now i believe that my flag was just an lucky accident that it was working.

with a windsock that is rotating and spinning around i get a weird animation too.

what i think:
the animation is better if you have square faces not crazy long rectangles.
it is working way better if the animation is just moving from left to right (what my working flag is doing)

edit: i checked the exported gltf file with the gltf viewer extension from visual studio code. there the animation is correct. so it looks like msfs is working with modified animation definitions and not the default .gltf definitions for animations.

 

[Mikea.at]

HOLY COW i think i have the solution

to make the animation there is the step where you parent the object to the armature and it looks like this:
with this step you can start the weight paint:

BUT!

if you have everything done the whole animation push down to the nla track. then select the cylinder and the armature and parent it to an empty so that the cylinder and the armature is on the same level parented under the empty. then it looks almost "perfect"

 

[Luicid]

Woooow ! Gonna try that!
Thanks for your help, thanks for taking your time to discover what's wrong

 

[Luicid]

Not even close in final:

https://imgur.com/YdqAJ8e

 

[Mikea.at]

that was a lucky accident too. i was allready at that point that it is not possible.
rotation and scales applied?
weightpainting done with constant offset? that you really get "1" as wight on the vertex?

 

[Luicid]

that was a lucky accident too. i was allready at that point that it is not possible.

 

[Mikea.at]

if you like you can post your blend file of the flag. then i can take a look if i find something.

 

[Luicid]

This is not my thread but since we all have the same issue about bone animation in msfs2020, here is my two blender file (one with pushed animation, other one just with the cloth on it check the modifiers)
Again, thanks for your time