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CAT and lights

ajweber

Banned
Messages
64
I hope I'm not repeating a question that's been answered and I haven't found it yet, but I have a two fold question about using CAT to animate lights.

First of all, The ship is compiled using FSX SDK and the lights are compiled using the FS9 SDK in order to use CAT.
I am attempting to animate a helo aircraft carrier's lights to appear to come on when the helicopter comes alongside of the ship, and whithin a certain distance.

Since GMAX won't let me compile the attach points with the lights by themselves, I've created a small box with no attachments to link the attachpoint lights to in order to be able to compile the file. I then animated the box to move up and down just enough for the attach point lights to disappear below the deck and appear off. When I compile just the .mdl before useing CAT, the lights are on a loop, and work perfectly. After using CAT, and setting the animation to work on a NAV2 frequency, the box animation works, but the lights don't move. Can someone give me a workaround for this?

That's the first question.

Next question: I want to have the light animation triggered with a bounding box. Where exactly am I measuring the reference point from, 0,0,0 of the GMAX scene or the animated box? For example, the box is approx -12.50 along the y axis from the scene 0 reference point, and about -60.0 along the x. would I be working off of these numbers to set the bounding box, or the animated box's ref point? So if the distance I need the length goes from -12.50 to -14.75 in GMAX, am I putting min-12.50, max -14.75 in the length box in CAT?

Am I making any sense? And if these questions have already been answered, somebody please just direct me to those post.

Thanks.

AJ
 

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
32,858
Country
netherlands
Hi,

You are using effects for your light? These can not be conditioned with CAT. The tweak to add the condition can not be placed on attachpoints.

It would work if you use the lights generated with the special material names (light_nav, etc).
 

ajweber

Banned
Messages
64
Well, I tried uding the Special Material tag of Light_Nav on boxes named Light_Navxx and no lights. Do those tags work in FSX if compiled with the FS9 SDK?
 

ajweber

Banned
Messages
64
Never mind on the last post, saw the .ASM tweak thread on the subject, and I have light now. Just need a heads up on the bounding box info and I'm good to go!
 

ajweber

Banned
Messages
64
Got the bounding box question answered.

Thanks for your help Arno on the first question.

AJ
 
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