• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

MakeMdl Tick 18

Deano1973

Resource contributor
Messages
384
Country
unitedkingdom
Hi folks,

A quick question: I'm in the process of building an animated hangar using FSDS 3.5.1, set to use MakeMdl, with the old FS2004 SDK installed. The plan is to use Farfy's guide with Arno's CAT to animate the doors using a proximity / bounding box trigger. My problem is that I cannot find "scenery keyframe animation" in the drop-down menu in FSDS properties. This is where the Tick18 animation resides and can be selected and assigned to the respective doors for animation.

Even Google has let me down here as I can't find any XML to input Tick 18 directly. Does anyone know what I'm missing here? BGLComp and MakeMdl are both installed, every other option except the one I want is available ( typically! ).

Thanks in advance
 
Messages
677
Country
ca-quebec
Your FSDS is set to MakeMDL?

Try to name the part "Tick18" directly in the name box of the part properties. You can have several animated parts, as Tick18_01, Tick18_02, etc.
 

Deano1973

Resource contributor
Messages
384
Country
unitedkingdom
Thanks Jean-Pierre. I'll give that a go, but I'm not sure it will have any effect if the xml in MakeMDL is not present. Worth a shot though! :)
 

Deano1973

Resource contributor
Messages
384
Country
unitedkingdom
Unfortunately that did not work. The animation fails to compile as expected. Anyone else know where Tick18 is located, or has the XML they could post here so I can enter it into the MakeMDL xml myself pretty please? :)
 

tgibson

Resource contributor
Messages
11,327
Country
us-california
It should have worked, since Tick18 is an "intrinsic" animation and does not need to be in the XML file.
 

Deano1973

Resource contributor
Messages
384
Country
unitedkingdom
I got it to work by exporting the hangar as a scenery object ( mdl ) with Tick18. The animations show up in FSX now, but the hangar cannot be added to libraries as it's not considered a bgl. I suspect this is due to the somewhat fragmented way in which I've gone about this, so I will do some more testing and report back here. As I can now at least see the hangar in FSX, I suspect I can finish the job and get it all working okay using Farfy's tutorial.

There seem to be quite a few threads here about this process and about having animated hangar doors, so once I have sorted it I'll list what I did and upload the finished hangar to simviation or similar so that it can be used by others.
 
Messages
677
Country
ca-quebec
It's always work for me using InstantScenery. Dont remember with ADE.
 

Deano1973

Resource contributor
Messages
384
Country
unitedkingdom
Okay, got the hangars into FSX and the animations are running. They are of course on a loop: Farfy's tutorial followed to the letter, but unfortunately CAT comes up with "File or command not found" upon attempting to compile the new mdl. Everything up to that point is fine.

The crucial XML code that Farfy requires to be altered is below:

bgl_riff_start_AnimatedHangar label BGLCODE
db 'B','G','L',' '
dd bgl_riff_end_AnimatedHangar - $ - 4
LOD_0_AnimatedHangar label BGLCODE

; Alpha
AnimatedHangar_NonAlpha label BGLCODE
BGL_CALL_32 AnimatedHangar_RotateAroundX_1 ; Node 1 - RotateAroundX

; NonAlpha
AnimatedHangar_NonAlpha label BGLCODE
BGL_CALL_32 AnimatedHangar_RotateAroundX_1 ; Node 1 - RotateAroundX


AnimatedHangar_RotateAroundX_1 label BGLCODE


Farfy's example only has the non-Alpha line included. Maybe that's what's causing the issue? Any help much appreciated - I think I'm almost there but scouring the forum here for previous threads to see if I can solve it myself too.
 

Deano1973

Resource contributor
Messages
384
Country
unitedkingdom
I found an older thread where the line changes were slightly different. Recompiled everything with XML as below but still got CAT's error message :(

bgl_riff_start_AnimatedHangar label BGLCODE
db 'B','G','L',' '
dd bgl_riff_end_AnimatedHangar - $ - 4
LOD_0_AnimatedHangar label BGLCODE

; Alpha
AnimatedHangar_NonAlpha label BGLCODE
BGL_CALL_32 AnimatedHangar_RotateAroundX_1 ; Node 1 - WORLD__FRM_1

; NonAlpha
AnimatedHangar_NonAlpha label BGLCODE
BGL_CALL_32 AnimatedHangar_RotateAroundX_1 ; Node 1 - WORLD__FRM_1


AnimatedHangar_RotateAroundX_1 label BGLCODE


Everything seems fine right up to the compiling moment and then it simply fails with the same error code. Checked Arno's corrected lines and copied as per above but no joy. Any ideas folks? Is it because the XML above has both an ;Alpha and ;NonAlpha entry?
 

Deano1973

Resource contributor
Messages
384
Country
unitedkingdom
Hi,

I can't make CAT work in any OS after Windows XP...

That's a real shame, if so - I was looking forward to playing with it further. I have downloaded other hangars with NAV frequency controllers for animated doors which work fine in FSX, so I suppose they must have been created some years ago. There is I suspect a way of tweaking the ASM files manually to get it to work, which is the process I think by which Arno decided to create the CAT tool. Unfortunately that's something that I don't know enough about to attempt myself, at least at this stage.

I did wonder whether there might be some way of creating an ambient FSX animation that causes the doors to open and close once every two minutes for instance, as a substitute, perhaps on a model rather than a bgl?

Arno, if you stumble across this thread do let me know if manual manipulation of the ASM files is possible. I'd be willing to give it a go just to get the job done. Alternatively, does SODE not achieve the same results? Or does that require some other kind of input from the pilot in FSX / P3D?
 
Messages
677
Country
ca-quebec
I was able to run CAT on Vista. I dont try on W7 because FS9 SDK is not installed.

I look now to SODE, FSX-P3D compatible...
 

Deano1973

Resource contributor
Messages
384
Country
unitedkingdom
SOLVED!!!

The problem was that I was using a shortcut to CAT on my desktop. When I used the C: Program (86) Files>SceneryDesign.org> CAT the program worked first time and I now have an animated hangar door system that opens when I'm within about 200 metres and closes when I leave.


Perseverance pays off chaps :) I will immediately set about refining the hangar and then post a copy of the library at simviation. I followed Farfy's method here;

http://farfyscenery.katuu.com/Tutorials/Animation 5 with FSDS 3.5.1 .htm

followed by the CAT tutorial that follows, linked at the end of his piece. Tagging animations in FSDS 3.5.1 with Tick18 and Tick18_1 worked just fine.

Thanks to all, hope this thread helps those who are struggling :)
 
Top