• 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.

Triggering an animation

Cees Donker

Cees Donker

Messages
176
Country
netherlands
Hi Guys,

I wonder, is there a good tutorial on how you can build a trigger in Gmax to start and stop an animation, like the opening of hangar doors when approaching and closing when your inside?
Mind you: I'm a novice with three day experience in Gmax!

:D

Cees Donker
 
Hi Cees,

That is not something that GMax supports by default, so it can not be done from within GMax. But check my CAT tool, it will allow you to add conditions just like these.
 
Arno,

First of all: thank you for all the great tools you have made! Second: where can I find the in the readme of CAT mentioned asm source files?
edit: found it! Onto the next barrier!

Cees
 
Last edited:
The next problem: the hangar doors open allright, but are closed very abruptly and not smoothly like the animation itself. ?????
Any ideas anyone?

Cees
 
Hi Cees,

The closing should be just the reversed animation of the opening. So it should go just as smooth. What kind of trigger did you use for the animation? And what kind of motion is the animation (sliding, rotating, etc).
 
Hi Cees,

That is weird, it should work fine like that. Can you maybe send me the source of the object? Then I can take a look if something is wrong in there.
 
Yes, please.
 
Hi Arno, and scenery fanatics... :)

I have taken up with doing scenery again after some time off for medical reasons. I have also gotten rusty at how this all works. I am having the same problem as Cees. I used Gmax to create my quonset hangar, and created two sets of three sliding doors that when they are open they stack side by side at the end of a track. When closed they are still in the same horizontal tracks, but over lap each other slightly causing the opening in the hangar to be closed. See pics below:


Quonset_Hangar_01_clsd.jpg


Quonset_Hangar_01_open.jpg


As you can see from the pics, I used a single opening animation of 200 frames to get smoothness in the animation. All the doors have tick18_ as the prefix in their names. The animation works fine when normal, it cycles like it should when not altered by the CAT tool.

I then export the object as an .MDL file, and save the files as required. I then run CAT 1.01 on the .ASM, and create a bounding box width -13x13 m, length -0x20 m, height 0x3 m, and 0 rotation as the hangar Y axis in Gmax is at 0 deg.

Next I create a trigger using the bounding box again. Width -13x13 m, length 0x20 m, height 0x3 m, and 0 rotation. I skip the next step cause the object has no seconadary animation. I then set the input file to the saved .asm file related to the hangar. After compiling the _cat.MDL, I change the name to the same name without the _cat suffix, add this .MDL to my library .BGL for the scenery area, and create the .BGL for the objects in the same scenery area.

The trigger works fine, but the animations don't. As I approach the trigger area the doors open as expected, but as I move farther into the hangar, and get to the opposite side of the trigger bounding box, the doors slam closed with no animation. The same is true going from inside the hangar to the outside. The first animation that is triggered by the bounding box works smooth as it is intended, but as I go beyond the outside point of the bounding box, the doors slam closed, no smooth action.

Can anyone explain why this happens? I thought the reverse animation was to be as smooth as the original animation, only in reverse.

I have included the Hangar_Quonset_01.mdl, which is the .mdl created with CAT, the original Hangar_Quonset_01.asm, the scenery area .xml, and the scenery area object .xml. I hope they help, and if you need others I will be glad to send them.

At one time I had this down to a science, but my time away from scenery creation has lead me to start the learning process over.
 

Attachments

Cees, Gmax isn't much of a problem for me, it's the added effects and animations that give me trouble. Also, the lights limitations in FS9.
 
Yah, Cees, but I am a bit rusty at FSSC. I use the XML scenery procedure for FS2004. As of today though, I will not be doing much in FS2004. My Dell took the big walk to the outhouse, and the CPU quit working, no fault of the Dell I am sure. I was doing some case cleaning, and things didn't go right. I am using my old IBM for now. It is slower, and older, and the best I will be able to handle in FS is 2002. Oh well, life goes on until I get a new CPU.

But I will try to help if I can, feel free to send an email.
 
Hi John,

I still need to study the source files of Cees to see what his problem is, but in your case I am pretty sure it is because you use the same condition for the animation condition and the trigger. I am not sure what happens if when you leave the animation condition, while the trigger untriggers at the same moment. The trigger is not supposed to be the same as the condition, as you can drop the condition in that case.

But I will try to check this with your sources as well later :).
 
Hi Cees,

I was just looking at your source code and came to the same conclusion :D.

For the next version of CAT I'll take a look if I can make it more logic. So that the reverse animation is shown first after the condition is no longer valid.
 
Thanks Arno, for your help! That's what makes this hobby such a great hobby! All these people like you, who are willing to help out.

Great!

Cees
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top