Wheel rotation issue

[ojdee]

Hi, I've hit a stumbling block with my undercarriage.
I am using gmax.

I have successfully animated a wheel to rotate automatically on the ground using the attachpoints _blurred and _still, and 0-100 range 360 degree rotation.

My question is how to maintain this keyframed animation when the wheel has to perform undercarriage retraction/extension.

How do I get the wheel to rotate 360 degrees using keyframes and also animate through 200 for undercarriage animations?

Also, should I be using the auto rotate feature of the animation tool, it seems to insert keyframes at 0,25,50, 75 and 100, but if I enter 0 and 360 in the boxes for x axis for example, the motion is all over the place.

Cheers
Oli

 

[hairyspin]

Hi Oli,

The retraction/extension animation is handled by animations applied to the gear, not the wheel. All you have to do is make sure the wheel is a child to the gear and it'll follow the gear up or down, in or out.

The hierarchy would be, say

l_gear_1
--l_gear_2
----l_wheel_still
----l_wheel_blurred

 

[lionheart]

Just a side note, I never use the 'blurred tire' animation in FSX, only the 'tire' animations. When the tire is spinning, it is pretty blurred already and doesnt need a blurred texture. Just my own two cents on that. You might have found a very good use and texture though for that.

Like HairySpin wrote, the landing gear operate the 0-200 zone, and the tire is simply spinning on its axis.


When animating the tire, make sure you go fully to 360 degrees. I use animation points 0, 25, 50, 75, 100 for animation Key Frames (KF) and rotation is in 90 degree increments so that the 4th turn is the full return to zero point or 360 degrees, (90, 90, 90, 90 noted in the bottom 3 windows that show your movements, and equal 90, 180, 270, 360).


Just so there's no loss of detail on it.


Some people animate basic rotations with more KF's, such as tires and props. Bill Leaming will use 8 KF points instead of 4 for a more smoother animation. I cannot see the difference and just animate at 4 points now. My eyes may not be as well tuned as Bills. (My giant eyebrows may be blocking the view).



Bill

 

[ojdee]

Thanks guys, I have it working now. As soon as I forgot what was happening in the viewport and just methodically input the 4x90 degree values in the x box for the wheel, it was fine.

I was having an issue try to follow the wheel around through it's undercarriage retraction animation and apply rotation to wheel at the same time.

Cheers
Oli

 

[n4gix]

If the wheels are already linked to the gear hierarchy, and have not yet been animated...

...simply move the slider to frame 100, un-link them temporarily, and then keyframe animate 'em...

When done, move the slider back to frame 100 and re-link them!

BTW, I've never been able to use the supplied "Wheel Animation" tool at all...

...and, it really seems a bit pointless anyway since I can keyframe animate all of the wheels at one time in about 30 seconds!