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FSXA bones and controll wires ..

S

Stiz

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unitedkingdom
Im currently doing a plane which has controll wires that move, i've tried animating them useing the old keyframe method but it looks messey as heck so i was thinking about useing bones and slideing them. However i dont really know how to go about doing it :confused: I know how to set the bones up and doing a skinned mesh, but how do you go about streatching and compressing the wire a few feet :confused:
 
Hi Stiz,

I found skinned mesh animations perfect for control cables and such and make massive use of them in my Bleriot XI, as all the mechanics are visible. Depending on the mechanics, different approaches to the setup of the bones may be necessary. Take the rudder as an example. The rudder of the Bleriot is quite simple. You have this rotating piece of wood under your feet (you can't really call it "rudder pedals", can you?), and wires connected on each side of board are running straight back to the lever of the rudder.

cable1g.jpg


I am using 6-faced meshes, derived from splines ("generate mapping coord." and "display mesh" on) for the geometry of the wires.

cable2.jpg


And two bones for each cable to make the wire move. In the hierarchy, one bone is attached to the wooden board, the other one to the rudder. The next pictures show the envelope of both bones:

cable3b.jpg

cable4.jpg


Now for the animation:
1. Make sure that you don't animate the mesh directly nor attach it to a moving part in the hierarchy!
2. The bones are connected to the corresponding moving part (board/rudder), so when the rudder moves, the end of the bone is already in the right place.
3. You just need to "rotate-animate" the tip of the bone in a way that the cable is always straight.
4. sometimes the "align" tools, or even "constrains" can help you with this.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Vitus
 
nice explanation vitus, certainly helped in setting them up, however my wires go round a pully system rather than being directly connected :(

Heres a pic of the wires

controllwirepic.jpg


the pulling is on the strut, wire in the middle, controller at the front. In the shot its in the stick netural position. The controller goes forward 20* when the stick is pushed forward, and back 20* when its pulled back. What i want to do is instead of animateing the entrie controll wire right back to the evelvators and around the pully, is just have the bit of wire before the controller streatch and shrink as the controller moves back and forth. I've seen about slideing joint bones which sounds like the thing i need, but i dont have no real idea about how to animate and tag them so fsx recognizes them :confused:


By the way, nice Bleriot!!! .. need a tester/breaker? or someone to keep it flying when your away? :D
 
oh dear.... pulleys!

I played with this as well and first I really tried to really bend the cable over the roll. But you need to subdivide the wire in really small segments, and use a huge number of bones in order to get a smooth movement. It is just a lot of hassle... Not impossible but probably impractical.

So I ended up using the method as you described it and it looks ok. Plus it is really simple to do!
cable5.jpg


You can use the same setup as described above - you need one bone on one end, and one bone on the other end of your wire. Link the bone on the pulley side to the pulley and the bone on the lever side to the lever. Set the envelope of the lever bone in a way that each bone encloses all vertices on the respective side of the wire. If you only have vertices at the end of the wire, you dont even need to animate the bones...

Quite simple really.

Vitus
 
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