Virtual cockpit animations

[+Bongodriver 20]

As the post title suggests, do virtual cockpits alow for user created animations i.e. if I chose to make a model with manually opening canopy, could I make the same effect with the cockpit?

[+Jimbib 747]

Do you mean to say can the canopy be animated whilst being in the internal cockpit view? If so, that can be done, Mago has done that with his MiG-21 cockpit add-ons. If you are asking about other types of animations, like levels moving or switches flicking, gunsight mountings being moved etc, I would imagine so as TK has recently put in 10 additional animation slots that can be user-programmed within the game. For this to be used however, the animation has to be defined and set within 3DS Max.

[+Bongodriver 20]

Yes basically that is exactly what I am talking about, I did see the mig 21 with the opening canopy but I noticed that it is set as an AUTOMATIC type of animation, linked to airspeed I believe, I tried changing the ini file for it in a similar manner one would to change an external models canopy animation to MANUAL, but it did't work (my guess is that it wasnt modelled that way as you mentioned)

 

so you suggest the animations CAN be set to opperate manually as long as the cockpit model is animated in 3ds max right? and would the ini entry be set the same way as for an external model?

[+Jimbib 747]

Personally, I'm not the guy to be talking to about the advanced ini dancing, however from what I've seen posted throughout different forums, I would imagine that its the same type of setup as the external model methods shown so far. As long as the animation is defined in 3DS Max then I believe it can be manually operated by a key input. Some of the guys in the community who are the 3d modelling and ini experts are definitely the ones to ask about the topic.

[+russouk2004 6,958]

Personally, I'm not the guy to be talking to about the advanced ini dancing, however from what I've seen posted throughout different forums, I would imagine that its the same type of setup as the external model methods shown so far. As long as the animation is defined in 3DS Max then I believe it can be manually operated by a key input. Some of the guys in the community who are the 3d modelling and ini experts are definitely the ones to ask about the topic.

 

 

In theory you should be able to animate the canopy...you may or may not have seen the new anim slots in the game preferences.....you can assign the slot via the data.ini .....I have some anims for private models that use the slots...some use key presses such as CTRL_0 CTRL_9 etc etc...

so I guess you might be lucky...I would confirm this with TK 1st...or a fellow moddeller here...

Russ

[serverandenforcer 33]

Interesting thread. I have a question on this subject. Is it possible to control texture animation in the virtual cockpit, such as assigning a key to change a display to something elese on the dashboard that can give real time info on stuff. I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to simulate real MFDs

[+p10ppy 2]

Hello

 

I'm not sure is this is helpful

 

But if you are animating something it the *_Data.ini it is possible to create a link to it in the *_cockpit.ini (not the reverse though I think) so the one input controls both animations

 

I used it a lot in the MoS-N to do cockpit gunfire animations (linked to the external MG animation) and things like the oil pulsator "gauge" (linked to the engine animation)

 

It's a little bit counter-intuitive (the name convention is a little odd) but easy and powerful

 

It's the only way I found for doing "constant" animations in the cockpit, by linking things to the engine AnimationID

It's also really useful for swapping low-poly external animations for high-poly animations visible from the cockpit (MG-fire in FE for example)

 

///snipped from *_cockpit.ini

 

[OilPulse]

Type=EXTERNAL_ANIMATION_LINK

MovementType=ANIMATION

ItemNumber=5/////////////////// is the AnimationID in the *_Data.ini you want to link to

AnimationID=9///////////////// is the AnimationID in the *_cockpit.ini to be linked

 

So if you set your canopy to use a speed deployment input (seems to be a common way) you should be able to link your cockpit canopy node to it, as long as both are using an AnimationID of some kind (things like GunFireAnimationID= are ok)

 

Hope that's helpful

[+Bongodriver 20]

Well on the face of it it sounded very usefull, I tried it immediately and no joy,

 

Here is an outline of how I have my external and cockpit models are set up, simple really, I made the external model with an opening canopy set as animation 5 (keyframes 41 to 50) and basically to build the cockpit i chopped off the front of my external model and made the cockpit from that, retaining all the same animation ID

 

My external model canopy is set in the ini to open manually, I tried setting a similar ini entry for the cockpit but no joy, I then tried your method and still no joy, my suspicions lead me to believe that the cockpit model doesn't support Manually deployed user defined animations.

 

I am still waiting on some more info from another member, perhaps the answer will be found, I think it would be quite a nice asset to have for modelling, perhaps inspiring alot more virtual pits to be made.

[+p10ppy 2]

Hmmm works for me (just tried it)

FE but that “shouldn’t” matter

Is the canopy animating externally?

 

Just to be clear (sorry if you know this stuff)

 

Set one of your components in your Data.ini to have a system (called canopy for example)

-----------------------------

SystemName[001]=canopy

---------------------------

 

Set the system up something like this

 

-------------------------------

[Canopy]

SystemType=ANIMATION

InputName=ANIMATION_1//the key to be pressed

DeploymentMethod=MANUAL

AnimationTime=1.0//any thing you like

AnimationID=8///from the external max file

------------------------------------

Animate the external node in max (set to 8 in this example)

Tag the external canopy mesh node to be removed when viewed from the pit (parent it to some thing if you need to)

 

Animate the internal canopy in max (cockpit lod)

 

Set the cockpit.ini like this:

An instrument name (just like a gauge)

 

------------------------------------------

Instrument[003]= intcanopy

------------------------------------------

[intcanopy]

Type=EXTERNAL_ANIMATION_LINK

MovementType=ANIMATION

AnimationID=6 //cockpit lod AnimationID

ItemNumber=8//same as the AnimationID for the external canopy

-------------------------------------------

 

 

Make sure you have a key assigned to the InputName=ANIMATION_1 slot

 

Hope that works for you

 

PS you will probably need to do it twice with two different keys and two IDs(open and close) if you are doing it manually

PPS thing that always caught me out with complex models is having the same AnimationID assigned twice in the same lod (breaks it)

[+Bongodriver 20]

Yep all as above, but still no joy, all I can think of is that having the external and internal animations set on the same ID are a problem somehow, both are set as ID 5 i.e both lod's are set with frames 41 to 50 for the canopy animations.

 

just to be clear, the external canopy is animating no problem,

[Guest capun]

Do you have the internal pit animated meshes set to use TCB motion controllers? Any Max version after 4.2 uses a non-TCB motion controller as default

 

You need to have all 3 motion controllers set to TCB, the scale is not exported but make them TCB just in case.

[+p10ppy 2]

Yeah, what capun said

I've noticed max reverting to the wrong ani controllers sometimes too

So it's always something to test

 

You should be able to link the internal canopy animationID to your cockpit throttle or rudder inputs (or somethingy) temporarily to make sure the animation is at least working

 

More depressingly, it could just be that the older 3rd wire engines don't support the EXTERNAL_ANIMATION_LINK type (I can't confirm that, I have no jet models to play with)

 

I have used the same range of frames across two differing lods to do this, so I don't think its that

And from memory I did try to use the Animation keys in the cockpit ini and it didn't work (I'm a bit hazy tho)

The link was the only way I got it to work

 

good luck