3ds modeling landing gear issues

[Miya_Sama]

am having many issues with a set of landing gear. mostly the issue is that have been unable to isolate the pivot points of the wheels despite selecting affect pivot point only in the heirarchy panel. tried to transform, but that caused more issues.

 

also, the gear animation shows up in 3ds, and works for one set of the main gear, but not the other side

 

please help, spent a couple of hours searching 3ds forums and did not find the solution

 

thank you

[Guest capun]

I did not quite figure out what you are asking, I'll attempt ot guess what you are asking

 

First of all, have you read ThirdWire's Exporter Notes? It's a key document to understand how to set-up the 3D Model

 

As for the problems

 

- Be sure that you set the motion controllers to TCB. The game engine requires them, depending on the version of 3DS Max the default motion controllers are other than TCB.

 

- Once you have moved/rotated/scaled your meshes and BEFORE you do the animation, you need to unlink the meshes and apply a RESET XFORM to set the meshes correctly, then convert them to Editable meshes/polys.

 

- After this then you can set your pivot points where your want the mesh to move/rotate

 

With the issue of only one side working, the other side does not work completely or just wrong. Did you cloned one gear to the other side?

[+bigal1]

I seem to have to set my pivot points when in (local) view , if i set in (view) view then they are not correct in game , maybe it is same for you .

[+Veltro2k]

I seem to have to set my pivot points when in (local) view , if i set in (view) view then they are not correct in game , maybe it is same for you .

 

First of all, have you read ThirdWire's Exporter Notes?

Edited March 18, 2008 by Veltro2k

[+bigal1]

I have been through the notes many times in the past but couldn't remeber it saying about the local and view modes .

[Guest capun]

I have been through the notes many times in the past but couldn't remeber it saying about the local and view modes .

 

Maybe you can post a couple of pictures so we can understand what do you mean by "local" and "view" modes and how you get to them.

[+Florian]

Maybe you can post a couple of pictures so we can understand what do you mean by "local" and "view" modes and how you get to them.

He means when you rotate a pivot point to the axis of movement, you must switch in the drop down menu (next to "move","rotate" and "scale" buttons in the top symbol bar) from "view" to "local", to move the mesh along the axis, instead of along global axis.

Not sure, if this affects the in game model, cause i never modified the pivot point, while in "local".

 

Miya_Sama, you don´t need to isolate the wheel´s pivot point, because the wheel must be a seperate mesh and the pivot point needs to be centered and transformed. You must take care, that all meshes you want to modify the pivot point, need to be unlinked from all parent meshes. If there is a parent mesh with different pivot point, the linked child-mesh will get screwed up.

[+bigal1]

Yup thats what i mean , if i leave the view mode set to ( view ) and change the pivot points when in game its messed up but if i change the view mode to local and do my pivot changes they are all good . I'm not sure if this is still something i have to do because of a setting or not but seems to work ok so i'm in no rush to change this .

[Miya_Sama]

Not to be disrespectful, but "First of all, have you read ThirdWire's Exporter Notes?"...the notes are far from all encompassing, to say the least. While useful, many issues that a novice 3ds person as myself simply are not mentioned in the aforementioned paraphernalia.

 

One has to spend considerable time using "Google" and known forums for many of the tricks / steps that some take for granted. I was simply inquiring here after considerable effort and using all of the tutorials and notes and documents posted on this forum in the fabled knowledge base and elsewhere.

 

Had I perhaps inquired as to why the F-22 does not have automatic opening weapons bays, then I could understand your tone, but as this is not the case in the least, I am perplexed as to your attitude "Veltro2k".

 

Please excuse my efforts...

[Miya_Sama]

AmokFloo, tried your suggestion, it worked in that transform reset the pivot point of the tyres, thanks! However, now it is rather wobbly and the gear animation reversed (as in the shocks push-out when pushed against by a deliberately hard landing instead of giving in).

 

Capun, thank you also. I did have TCB enabled, but honestly do not understand much about it, any insight would be beneficial and most appreciated.

 

Thank you, gentlemen!

[Guest capun]

First of all I don't think Veltro was disrespectful but we have seen that many of the issues with new 3D devs is that they have not read (and understood) the exporter notes and make the common mistakes. Things like motion controllers, linking meshes, pivots, scaling, etc. So it's always our first question.

 

Notice that the notes say about pivot points? they have to be set before you do any animation otherwise they get changed. One way to do it is to unlink the parts before you change the pivot points. And it is a must if you do a RESET XFORM, you cannot undo the changes after you apply it.

 

By tires being wobbly I am going to take a guess that the tires are not perpendicular to the ground (something like the tires in a Me-109), so after centering the pivot on the tires you then have to move the pivots so the Z-Axis is lined up with the tire rotation.

 

It's kind of hard to debug a model unless we see pictures, or movie or get the model to take a look at it. You have my email.

[+Florian]

I made a fast drawing of the gear setup, wich should work. It´s meant to be used, when you modeled the gear deployed (wich is best, to have the wheel sitting correct, to prevent it wobbling in some manner.

Best way to go for you is to delete all animation keys and do that all over again. i don´t think you would get rid of the wobbling tires without that.

 

[Miya_Sama]

Thank you, this is very helpful! Sorry, by wobbly I mean that they look fine and are perpendicular to the tarmac, until rotation of the wheel commences, and then they do not rotate as wheel do (unless the axle is warped).

 

It would appear that they are fine and that the pivot points are aligned with the world axis in 3ds max, though in the game they are fine until they rotate as in a take off roll.

 

Sorry, but I am hesitant to post any pictures for a multitude of reasons, mostly because my efforts remain at the most basic stage and I am rather vulnerable to criticism. Especially after wresting with a gear door for over 2 hours.

 

Also, I do not know how to make a movie in the game, and a screenshot does not really depict the issue (tried already).

 

This has been very helpful indeed! Thank you, gentlemen.

[Guest capun]

If you follow AmokFloo's diagram and you set the wheel's pivot when the gear is down it should work fine. If you set the wheel pivot point to be world aligned while is in the retracted position, you may get some funny results.

 

By wobbly do you mean that they are not rotating like a normal tire does but actually is spinning in the wrong axis?

 

If you set the wheel pivot point to be WORLD ALIGNED while deployed, then the data ini should not require any modifications as to the rotating axis, since it defaults to the X-Axis.

 

Check the data ini to be sure that the axis of rotation was not changed.

 

[FrontGear]

.

.

 

WheelNodeName=frontwheel

RotationAxis=x-Axis <- This is the default axis, you can change the axis of rotation to match your mesh

ReverseModelOrientation=FALSE <- If the tire is spinning backwards, set to TRUE

[+Timmy]

Wow AmokFloo, that little diagram would have saved me about 100 hours in the learning curve!

 

Miya_Sama, keep at it. I know that Max can be very frustrating. I sent my first model to Capun for him to look at and he pointed out some things that were wrong with my initial model and told me how to fix them. He was tremendously helpful in helping me get it into the game and I'm still very much in his debt.

[+76.IAP-Blackbird]

What are you building miya???

[Guest capun]

Wow AmokFloo, that little diagram would have saved me about 100 hours in the learning curve!

 

Miya_Sama, keep at it. I know that Max can be very frustrating. I sent my first model to Capun for him to look at and he pointed out some things that were wrong with my initial model and told me how to fix them. He was tremendously helpful in helping me get it into the game and I'm still very much in his debt.

 

Where and when do I collect? :)

[Miya_Sama]

Thank you, the diagram and the comments that you have posted are very concise and very helpful, gentlemen.

 

Actually, by disrespectful I was referring to the smiley icon which, as I understand it is in the "hey, you wake up" category. Again I apologize if I read his intent the wrong way, but it took me aback.

 

Eh, by exporter notes, please confirm that you are referring to the attached document, and that it is complete and I am not missing pieces of it. Though admittedly, there are aspects that I simply do not understand until impact with the proverbial brick wall and someone of considerable talent, such as yourselves, informs me. Again, thank you for your continued patience and support.

3D_Studio_MAX_Exporter_Notes.doc

Edited March 20, 2008 by Miya_Sama