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"Running Rabbit" ideas ?

fog

fog

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48
Country
norway
Hi all!

I want to make "running rabbit" lights on my airport.. the clue is that they are not straight in like they normally are. The running rabbit lights follow the cirk lights in an arc to the threshold.

So, to get theese light to flash as they should, what to use ? Gmax animation, effects ??

And also.. is it possible to set som criteria like they should only show when visibility are reduced ??

Thanks in advance!

Freddy
 
The best way to do this would be to to write a series of effects, and place them. Each effect could have an offset time.

Search the forum for my Wig Wag lights, and that would give you an idea of where to start.
 
The only problem of using fx is that they will be visible from all sides.
 
Hi Nick,

I just cannot find the post that you mentioned (about the wig wag lights). Could you please insert the link?

Greetings
Gianni
 
Ok... then I have started. Firs attempt now is using GMAX animation. I first draw a reference line that with my Threshold as point x,y to 0,0. My rabbit is running in an arc, and I simply drew a triangle, with the name tick18_rabbit, and the material LIGHT_NAV. As I have 9 lights, I used a timeframe of 18 FPS, just to test. After animation, I got an error when exporting it, seems my little triangle was causing a C++ compiler error due to the small size... so I jut added an "invisible" box at a proper size to avoid the error..

After compilation I opened the *_0.asm and edited the IFMSK so that my light would be visible. recompiled to mdl using bglc_9, and then, after entering the correct data into the XML, compiled to BGL..

First test was ok!,. lights were moving as I expected, only way to fast!. and the light was to hard to see.. So I added some more LIGHT_NAVs in the *_0.asm to get it brighter, and altered the total timeframe in gmax.. so then speed is ok, and brightness is also ok..

BUT THEN: I now see the light as it is smoothly moving along from lightpole to lightpole. It is not jumping fast from one point to the next, but it is a smooth move,.. so question is: Is it possible to "Hide" the object in gmax between segments in animation, ore is ot possible to get it to move really fast from eac lightpole and hold a bit longer at my ref points ?. I also tried to let the object go down into the ground before moving to the next pole... but then i clearly see in FS that it is popping up from and going down into the ground...

If there is no solution that will help me here, i recon I have to use effects instead... but holding of a bit now waiting some guru`s reply :) (Arno ? Nickw? )..

Rgd

Freddy
 
fog said:
BUT THEN: I now see the light as it is smoothly moving along from lightpole to lightpole. It is not jumping fast from one point to the next, but it is a smooth move,.. so question is: Is it possible to "Hide" the object in gmax between segments in animation, ore is ot possible to get it to move really fast from eac lightpole and hold a bit longer at my ref points ?. I also tried to let the object go down into the ground before moving to the next pole... but then i clearly see in FS that it is popping up from and going down into the ground...
Click to expand...

Hi!

Yes, that is possible, that´s exactly what I did with my wig-wag-lights, those that are mentioned in the thread that Nick refeers to! It requires a fair bit of ASM editing (using the 2002-gamepack) but works nice. Unfortunatly, I´m of to meetings until 1600h this afternoon, if you want to I can explain further tonight?

/hans
 
Hi!

Ok.. would bee nice... Pls contact me using msn, ICQ, Yahoo ore AIM.. (recon we can communicate better in our native languages too :))

Until then, I want to try the effetc solution.. if someone could kickstart me in the right direction ? :)

Freddy
 
Hi!

Not meaning to be unfriendly, but to begin with I think I´ll just post here, so that (other) talented designer can comment and/or correct! But do remember, the problem I had was largly solved by Arno a couple of years ago, so I´m not responsible for all the brain-action here... :) The original discussion can be found in the old Gmaxsupport.com forums, nowadays located at TurboSquid.

We´ll start of with the animation. I´ve attached a zip-fil which contains my wig-wag lights. Zoom in really close on one of the lights and play the animation. You´ll see that I move the lightsource (LightLand) from one light to the other, during a period of appr. 40 frames. What we did to prevent the smooth gliding was to move the lightsource, just a tiny bit, in the place where the light is supposed to be. This causes MakeMdl (FS2002 Gamepack) to export 4 positions for the animations instead of just 2. Then, (I´m not going to say simply!!!) you edit the sourcecode so that you have only 2 coordinates for the animation to display (the small movement other gives FS 4 coordinates), such;

Code: 
JUMP   ESMO_HS_anim_3; Anim Tick18_LIGHT_NAV_R_2
ESMO_HS_pvan_3        label word
ESMO_HS_trans_3       label word
    dw           1       ; 1: Point (translation) 
    real4     -1.0       ; Previous panim value
    real4 16 dup (0.0)   ; Cached matrix 
    dw           4       ; number of entries[B]
    real4      0.0,  1.612990,  2.923570, -1.290112 ; frame/x/y/z values
    real4     20.0,  1.612990,  2.923570, -1.290112 ; frame/x/y/z values
    real4     21.0,  3.144118,  2.923570, -1.290112 ; frame/x/y/z values
    real4     40.0,  3.144118,  2.923570, -1.290112 ; frame/x/y/z values[/B]

The key is to have the movement taking place in a very short timeframe (frame 20 & 21 as seen above). You will now get an animation that is to the eye static from frame 1 to 20, then move very very fast (jump) to the second postion between fram 20 and 21, and then be static between 21 to 40.

I´ll leave it at this, it was a couple of years since we solved this and ASM editing is not my strongest side. I´ll think a little and then post more info, unless someone else has filled it in for me.

Hope this is what you need! Lycka till, Freddy! ;)

/hans
 
Last edited:
I can not add very much to this at the moment, sounds like a clear explanation to me :). This technique should still work in the Fs2004 gamepack by the way, although you will have to do some extra tweaking to get the BGL_LIGHT command working properly.
 
Hi again!

Well, actually, there are one or two things that might be important that I forgot.

For my own reference - I actually managed to find my own thread over at TurboSquid - but I need to work on confirming my e-mail address... :scratchch
Animating flashing lights discussion
It´s truly a trip down memory lane... and one post is written by a certain Nick Whittome... :)

First - the small movements: these also require keyframe animations. This means that in Gmax you will have to insert keys inbetween the main keys (those that you want to keep). Looking at the keys in the gmax scene attached in the above post (select the Tick18-objects and they appear), you´ll find that there are keys at frame 1, 10, 20, 21, 30 and 40. The keys 10 and 30 are used to register the small movement. But here´s the tricky part - I think I remember that I manually removed these keys, but it has to be tried out by exporting, and I don´t have the FS2002 gamepack installed. Maybe the same result will be achived using the FS2004 gamepack as Arno writes, but I´ll have to try that out.
Anyway, if so, in the ASM-file remove the unwanted frames manually, it´s quite simple as long as you remember to do the frame-number right.

Then you have to edit the same ASM-file so that the lights might be visible from one side only, and/or, as we did in a later scenery, make the animation radiocontrolled. I will not get into this in this thread.

Ok, one last thing that my stupid memory has misplaced (I really notice now that I´m not a programmer, I have far too little organization & comments in my material, darn!), if you run into trouble there is a setting regarding animations in Gmax that changes some setting from a "wave-form" to a "square-form" (or quartz??), that might need changing, but I can´t find it now... Oh well, nevermind, it might not be a problem. But I need to learn to write this stuff down.

Sorry about the long and not quite informative post!

/hans
 
Hi again!

I have now managed to get a pretty good result using animation, The clue here is to get the light to appear just a short time at each lightpole-- So after a tip from "knygar" in this forum via MSN the animation is simple enough.

-1- -2- -3- -4- -5- -6- -7-
||| ||| |||-----||| ||| |||

Point1: Light position at first lightpole in scenery (X-Y value), but with a negative Z value (actual point of light minus approx 30 meters), hiding the light from visibility.

Point2: The light goes up to the positive Z value of the light (same X and Y as in point one) light is visible in scenery

Point3: Same position as Point one.

Then a short break... and the light is now moving underground to the next lightpole ( point 5, 6 and 7 ). Same procedure here.. the light is only visible in point 6, and has the same X-Y value in all points.

then its only a matter of adjusting how many frames and lights you have. In my scenery, i have 9 lightpoles that run in an arc to the threshold. And the whole sequence is about 1.5 seconds from the first to the last pole.. So I used 36 frames for my entire animation.

Then its a bit of a trick to get this to appear as a "strobe". Using the LIGHT_NAV, I edit the *_0.asm after exporting, I make more instances of the actual lightpoint from the "rabbit".. using the same polygon as source.

I will post a small video soon, so you can see how this appears in FS..

Freddy
 
Hi!

Ok, I can see that your solution might work, and I can´t argue if it is better than "mine". However I found a new interest in this method, as I might also need a proper approach lightning system, but without the rabbit. And ofcourse movement is always interesting!

/hans
 
@fog

the method you are describing works with lights placed on the ground, am I right?

If I see this right, how about the approach lights that are mounted on the T-bars with a slope according to the approach-path? Wouldn't then the light slide downwards to disappear in the ground and the slide upwards at the next T-bar and so on?

:scratchch
Greetings from Austria
Gianni
 
The important thing is to have no frames between the negative z and the positive z.
The light then moves so fast that it is noticeable only from short distances.

This is not the perfect solution, but gives a pretty good result in the lack of a better method.
 
knnygar said:
The light then moves so fast that it is noticeable only from short distances.
Click to expand...

Well, I do absolutly not want to be a bore, but if it is as quoted above, then the method I used is better, since it has no such movement. Or perhaps it does not apply so well to running lights? It should, I think, the procedure is the same, you manually remove the movement between 2 given locations.

/hans :)
 
I'd agree with that. It's better if the lights only appears at the points where it should appear, no matter how fast it travels.
 
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