animating jet pipes

[+Bongodriver]

Hi Folks,

 

Another modelling question, I thought I had all the knowledge I needed but I can't figure out how the jet pipe is animated, I thought it was something as simple as scaling the diameter of the rim with keyframe animation, but it does not seem to work in max, from looking at how the jet pipes animate in game it seems to be the way.

 

anyone know how?

 

 

Craig

[+Bongodriver]

Oddly enough I found the solution immediately after this post, it's all about using auto key as opposed to set key.

[+JediMaster]

You can link an animation to throttle position? I didn't know you could.

[+Bongodriver]

Hi Jedi

 

If you look in a data ini of an afterburning aircraft type you will see reference to a nozzle node, this is how they animate the jet pipes, so if you make a model and make a part animate in the same frame as the nozzle, in theory you will have an animation linked to throttle position, for a non afterburning type you might just have to edit the ini so it has an afterburner in the engine section and hey presto the same job done.

 

as far as linking an animation directly to throttle position I couldn't comment.

 

Craig

[+Bongodriver]

OK back to square one,

 

Can one of you genius modellers explain the animation process for jet pipes please, I have the jet pipes animated in 3ds max by basically expanding the vertices at the periphery of the jet pipe (is this right?), I assigned all controllers as TCB and this is when the trouble starts, when testing in game the game just hangs when at 80% into the loading screen, but if I reassign all animation controllers on the jet pipes to the default then the game loads but as expected jet pipes don't animate.

 

Craig

[+ErikGen]

Hi Craig,

if your animation is made by a SCALE command it can't work. This because the exporter can handle POSITION and ROTATION only.

[+Julhelm]

On the A-5 I made the nozzles petal for petal, and then animating those individually.

[+Bongodriver]

Hi Guys,

 

Thanks for the responses, I have some interesting news with reference to using scale, well believe it or not, I was wrong on my last post and the jet pipes DO animate,which I found surprising after reading that scale is not exported, but I can confirm that my jet pipes are animated using scale in 3ds max and I have TCB set for position and rotation but bezier set for scale, and they are animating in game, maybe this is unique to jet pipe animations and others like gear etc can't handle scale.

 

Perhaps I have stumbled on something genuinely usefull, I will keep you updated on what I manage to find as I build this model.

 

Craig

[Guest capun]

Hi Guys,

 

Thanks for the responses, I have some interesting news with reference to using scale, well believe it or not, I was wrong on my last post and the jet pipes DO animate,which I found surprising after reading that scale is not exported, but I can confirm that my jet pipes are animated using scale in 3ds max and I have TCB set for position and rotation but bezier set for scale, and they are animating in game, maybe this is unique to jet pipe animations and others like gear etc can't handle scale.

 

Perhaps I have stumbled on something genuinely usefull, I will keep you updated on what I manage to find as I build this model.

 

Craig

 

I have tried many times to use scale, some with gear meshes, some with canopies, but none work.

 

If the jet petals work then we need to ask TK what does and what does not, but IMHO I think it is all or none.

 

Keep up posted on this experiment

[+Bongodriver]

Well I have looked through again and I can say that scale is a supported feature (for jet pipes anyway), my jet pipes are modelled as more or less a basic tube (no individual petals) and I have made the animation by scaling the vertices at the periphery I.e. the rim of the exhaust, and the controllers are set as position XYZ, rotation euler and scale bezier, the animation is set as animation ID 1 i.e. keyframes 1 to 10 and that works in game perfectly, just one word of advice would be to animate the jet pipe before texturing.