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Rotor Droop.

atorque

atorque

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unitedkingdom
As the name implies im curious if anybody knows how to animate rotor droop in GMAX for FSX. I can model and animate but I have no idea how to animate rotor droop. Spinning rotors are not a problem. I can attach visibility with the attach point tool. I can attach animations with the animation manager but I dont have the faintest idea about the darn rotor droop. Im modeling an old helicopter which has alot of rotor droop. If anybody has any idea plz let me know.
 
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Hi Rick,

There are three states with rotors in FSX -- still, slow, and blurred. You can model the blade droop into the rotors to start with. This will be the still mode and also at very, very low RPM. The next state will be slow, which is for when the engine is running just below 50%. (i think it's about below 50, but i could be wrong.) The droop on these should not be so much...don't have the blades quite level, but they should have just a little droop to them. The third state, blurred, has an alpha channel and texture applied to give a motion blur effect. There are a few ways to do the blur. My personal favorite way is to create a box for each blade and map a blurred blade onto each box and add collective increase animation to it...makes for a very cool feature. Each rotor state will have to be named in gmax like the following:

rotor_still
rotor_slow
rotor_blurred

The same tags must be applied in the animation manager to those same parts.

If you have any more questions, let me know. If you have Windows Live Messenger, we can talk on there and I can help you more in detail if you'd like. ;)
 
Sory bruv not quite the answer I was looking for. All of this I allready know. There is a specific droop animation tag and I want to know how its implemented and modelled. Great effort and thx a mill for trying!
 
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atorque said:
Sory bruv not quite the answer I was looking for. All of this I allready know. There is a specific droop animation tag and I want to know how its implemented and modelled.
Click to expand...

From what I know, there are not any. It might be possible to make a custom XML animation for this...I'll have to look into this...I'd also like to know if it's possible.

Btw, not sure if you had seen my reply in your skid flex thread, but I had said that I've got a small helo design group for FS9 and FSX...if you need any help on the Brantly, we would love to see what we can do. ;)
 
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Might I offer a screenie of the animation tag? I hope it sparks your curiosity like it did mine. I hate seeing an animation tag and not knowing how to implementing it. Regarding help from your helo group...well my modeling skills arent that great yet so it is really just for practice but I very much appreciate the offer. I can think of something I will need help with later which is the guage programming so when it gets to that stage I will be knocking on your door.

PS: Sory the picture is a bit large.
PSS: If ur wondering about the splotches on the canopy....its bird poop ;)

droop.jpg
 
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I was also wondering about that tag. I have never figured out what it does. Maybe it's time to open the modeldef.xml file and try to determine what the code is supposed to do...

PS: The Brantly is looking good!
 
I found the rotor_droop XML code in the modeldef.xml file...still not quite sure what it does. We can say that it appears to be 100 frames long.

Code: 
  <PartInfo>
    <Name>rotor_droop</Name>
    <AnimLength>100</AnimLength>
    <Animation>
      <Parameter>
        <Sim>
          <Variable>DISK CONING PCT:1</Variable>
          <Units>percent</Units>
          <Bias>50</Bias>
          <Scale>0.5</Scale>
        </Sim>
      </Parameter>
    </Animation>
  </PartInfo>

EDIT: Interestingly, the rotor_droop tag is not listed in the Animation Tag examples section of the FSX SDK.
 
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Rotor droop

I have not tried this yet, so it may be wrong.

I would suggest having an animated "hinge" between the blades and the rotor drive and associate the rotor_droop animation with it. The animation is driven by DISK CONING PCT which is a variable. If you get the amount and direction of the animation correct I would expect you to see the blades droop when the rotor is not producing lift and for them to cone up when they are producing lift. Should be easy enough to do for rotor_still and rotor_slow, but somewhat more difficult for the blurred version.

You could also do rotor_bank with the animation affecting the main rotor drive so the rotor banks right when the cyclic is moved to the right. You can see this clearly on the EH 101. It is driven by DISK BANK PCT

There is also rotor_pitch which is at right angles to bank. This should make the rotor pitch forward when the cyclic is moved forwards. It is driven by DISK PITCH PCT.

The code for these animations is about half way down modeldef.

Since I'm working on a Seaking, I'll try to get these three working and let you know if I succeed

Roy
 
All I can say is thank you as allways guys. Brandon I hope you will re-read my previous post for a reply regarding help. Roy, I am curiously awaiting your results so please do get back to us on any development you might have.
 
atorque said:
All I can say is thank you as allways guys. Brandon I hope you will re-read my previous post for a reply regarding help. Roy, I am curiously awaiting your results so please do get back to us on any development you might have.
Click to expand...

Roger that, Rick. ;)

Roy, I too am looking forward to your results. :D
 
Three questions B. 1. How to become a member of ERS if possible? 2. Will the Enstrom be payware and is it nearing completion? 3. What kind of recipe did you use for your canopy glass? I guess that is 4 questions....oh well.
 
atorque said:
Three questions B. 1. How to become a member of ERS if possible? 2. Will the Enstrom be payware and is it nearing completion? 3. What kind of recipe did you use for your canopy glass? I guess that is 4 questions....oh well.
Click to expand...

1. We'd like if you had Windows Messenger so that we can talk with you, and in the future, send files, discuss projects, etc. If you don't have it, for now, just PM me on these forums or create an account on the ERS forums and PM me there. We can discuss your talents/capabilities. ;)

2. The Enstrom will be freeware and will be released sometime soon.

3. I used a recipe from a FSX GMax aircraft preparation tutorial, (available here) but I'd like to switch to this one by Bill Leaming, as it will probably give better results:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showpost.php?p=139863&postcount=2
 
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Roy Holmes said:
I have not tried this yet, so it may be wrong.

I would suggest having an animated "hinge" between the blades and the rotor drive and associate the rotor_droop animation with it.
Click to expand...

Roy, you are right on the money with your observatons.

I would suggest however that a "more advanced" technique would be to use animated/skinned bones for your blade animations. This way, you could have the blades curve downward realistically, and...

...also curve slightly upward when fully loaded...

...reverse coning! :D

If you are using a flat "disk" for the rotor_blurred animation, you'd simply animate the outer 'bones' of the disk rather than trying to achieve a smooth 'bend' in the cone.
 
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Rotor pitch and bank

I chose the easy ones first, pitch and bank. To make the effect more obvious I extended my rotor drive way up in the air and made it red. The attached jpg shows the effect.

Basically, I made a part called rotor_bank and animated it in the Z axis, -5 degrees at frame 0, neutral at frame 50 and 5 degrees at frame 100. I made another part called rotor_pitch and animated it in the X axis, 5 at 0, 0 at 50, -5 at 100. I set up the hierarchy with rotor_bank at the top, followed by rotor_pitch, with the rotors at the lowest level.

The tricky part will be the droop. I would love to do it the right way like Bill suggested, but I'm using FSDS and I do not think it is possible. I suppose I could have say three intermediate hinges spread out along each blade!

On the other hand, a real rotor system does have hinges to allow the rotors to move both vertically and horizontally, so I may be on the right track to just apply rotor_droop at the inner end of the blades.

Roy
 

Attachments

  • Rotor pitch and bank.jpg
    Rotor pitch and bank.jpg
    91.9 KB · Views: 460
Thx Bill L. I figured it had something to do with skin and bone animations to achieve the bendy bits but that is a little beyond my talents at the moment. Here is a pic for those who are curious....but I doubt anybody is. Roy why dont you consider trying GMAX?
 
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Very nice!!!!! :eek:

I don't think we even need to discuss much with you...you can just join ERS and it will be as simple as that. :D You definitely show signs of becoming an expert modeler someday. ;)
 
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I tried making a skin and bones animation for the rotor droop and the animation didnt show up in FSX. I have no idea what im doing wrong. Droop works but not when using skin and bones. Has anybody managed to make skind and bones work?


This is what I have so far.
brantly.jpg
 
The "skin" cannot be linked to any nodes in the project. IOW, they must remain at the root level of any hierarchy, otherwise they won't appear at all.

The "bones" can be linked within the hierarchy.
 
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