Some bomb bay animation questions.

[KJakker 901]

Since getting the F-86D/L rocket pack to fire like that of the Lightning I have been working on getting the weapons bays of a number of add-on aircraft animating properly. The following aircraft were not working properly on an external visual level on my system. Julhelm's A/F-24 Shadowcat, Dels F-23A Black Widow II, F-22A Raptor by Dave, and FastCargo's F-35A/B/C Lightning II. The F-102 and F-106 from the Mirage Factory are a bit of a different story. I have managed to get most of these aircraft weapons bay animation working correctly as it seems that some of them simply had the wrong AnimationID= entry in their AircraftData.ini.

 

I am still having a few minor problems however. In the case of the F-22A and F-23, and to a lesser extent the A/F-24, the AIM-120's are going straight out through the front of the aircraft like they are being rail launched instead of being ejected ventrally. I put EjectVelocity=0.0,0.0,-40.0 in the weapon stations concerned as according to the knowledge base...

 

EjectVelocity=0.0,0.0,-1.0 (-Left/+Right,-Back/+Forward,-Down/+Up)

-This is used to eject the weapon in a direction other than the default direction (down). The format is G Forces in X,Y,Z format.

...that setting should make the missiles eject with the 40G's of force that I have read the LAU-142/A AVEL produces however I am not seeing this behavior. Secondly I was wondering if there is a way to have two animations occur at the same time. The reason I am asking is that when I drop bombs from the F-35's weapons bays the weapons bay animation works fine but the other door for the associated sides missile bay does not open in conjunction with it and so visually interferes with the released bomb, they look perfect when launching AMRAAM's however. If I could make duplicate weapons bay entries that occupied the same StationGroupID= slot but activate both of there respective sides animations together it would solve the visual appearance problem.

 

The MF F-102 I have working perfectly, including the rockets in the bay-doors, using the same method as I did on the F-86D/L. The new F-102 included in the NATO Fighters 4+ Update pack in another story however. Finally I can't seem to get all of the stations in the F-106's bay working automatically unless I make all four AIM-4 stations into a single group. I saw someone else's post that has lead me to believe that it is impossible to leave the group as they are while keep an automatic doors with the existing model. Is this so?

 

Thank you.

[FastCargo 412]

First, there is no MF F-102. There is a Razbam F-102, a Veltro2k F-102, and the MF F-106.

 

Second, up until Expansion Pack 2, each weapon station required it's own animation slot. That means for something like the F-22, you could need up to 6 separate hardcoded animations (2 inner, 2 outer, 2 intake). And lord help you if the same weapon bay required multiple separate weapon station entries because the same weapons bay now requires an animation entry for each of those weapon stations. An example would be an F-22 bay needing large enough ini entries to fit a 1000 lb JDAM, but a separate weapon station entry for the same bay to fit AIM-120s...to avoid a situation like a Phoenix missile getting put in there.

 

Anyway, if you didn't know this, you would get strange visuals with something like the F-35 (which I'm pretty sure I made work unless someone screwed with it), weapons firing through the bays, that kind of thing. I'm pretty sure I made Veltro's F-102 work as well...again, unless someone screwed with it.

 

This may have changed in Expansion Pack 2 with this line:

 

GroupAnimation=TRUE

 

What TK has said this line means is that any weapon station that is in this weapon group will use this animation. In effect, it solves the problem of having multiple weapon stations using the same animation in that now, they should work properly.

 

I have not tried this myself yet to verify that it works.

 

One other thing...if you want your missile to drop, you probably need this line changed in its data.ini:

 

RailLaunched=TRUE

 

In addition, if you want it to drop, you may need to increase the BoosterStart time.

 

FC

[Wrench 9,834]

Actually, the F-106 is by Pasko

 

wrench

kevin stein

[+Julhelm 266]

I don't know what problem there is with the AFX other than that the AIM-120's sometimes refuse to fire.

[KJakker 901]

A bit late getting back to all of you on this. FastCargo, I have re-downloaded the F-35 pack and it seems you were right about the bay doors being properly set up. I might have accidentally messed them up myself. Still I learned a lot about INI editing in fixing the problem. However I am wondering if it is possible to make a single event trigger two animations? With the F-35 for example, when the AutomaticDoors=TRUE command for [WeaponsBay1] triggers BombBayAnimationID=8 is there a way for it to also trigger BombBayAnimationID=7 associated with [MissileBay1] at the same time? I now that when I was looking at the F-22 if I set the GroupAnimation=TRUE tag in the left and right IRM bays that the doors on both of them would open regardless of which one was launching a missile. This would be the reverse with two animations occurring across trigged by a single event.

 

If not, then I had another thought, in a future version is there a possibility that GroupAnimation= in combination with ReverseModelOrientation= and ReverseAnimation= could be used to make a single animation work separately for both left and right bays in a single group allowing you to free up animation slots so that an an additional animation could be made to resolve the visual interference issue or would some kind of ReverseModelPosition= entry be needed for that as well?

 

Next, the missile ejection issue. Thank you for the advice on the booster. It seems I needed to get the timing between the launch delay and the booster delay just right. Now it looks perfect except when perfectly level while inverted. In that situation the doors just sit open for a few seconds with the missile hanging in the bay before it is ejected, odd but given that such a launch position is virtually guaranteed not to happen in any kind of realistic situation I consider the issue solved.

 

And it was the Veltro2k F-102 I was thinking of. I got it confused with the MF F-106. I have not done any more experimentation on the F-102 or F-106. Maybe at a later date.

[+WhiteBoySamurai 1,094]

Sorry to drag this old topic up, but I'd like to find out how to properly use this "GroupAnimation" thing.

 

I was doing some aftermarket mods on the F-22 to enable support for both JDAM/JSOW (as in the SF1 version) in addition to the SDBs (as in the SF2 version). The only problem is that I can only get the bays to animate for one or the other. Like FastCargo said, there just aren't enough animation slots, and I can't get the bays to animate for both weapon types.

 

So how exactly do we use this GroupAnimation thing? I just can't get it to work.

I tried "GroundAnimationID=1" to match the StationGroupID: Nope.

I tried "GroundAnimationID=4" to match the animation ID number: Nope.

I tried both of the above both with and without individual BombBayAnimationID entries: Nope and nope.

 

Any ideas?

 

Here are the relevant entries, with the broken parts commented out.

 

[WeaponBay]
SystemType=WEAPON_STATION
StationID=1
StationGroupID=1
StationType=INTERNAL
AttachmentPosition=0.0,0.0,0.0
AttachmentAngles=0.0,0.0,0.0
EjectVelocity=0.0,0.0,-10.0
LoadLimit=1340
AllowedWeaponClass=EOGR,EOGB
AttachmentType=USAF
NumWeapons=8
AttachmentPosition001=-0.486,4.6998,-0.3513
AttachmentPosition002=-0.246,4.6998,-0.3513
AttachmentPosition003=0.246,4.6998,-0.3513
AttachmentPosition004=0.486,4.6998,-0.3513
AttachmentPosition005=-0.486,2.3984,-0.3513
AttachmentPosition006=-0.246,2.3984,-0.3513
AttachmentPosition007=0.246,2.3984,-0.3513
AttachmentPosition008=0.486,2.3984,-0.3513
DiameterLimit=0.21
LengthLimit=3.61
AutomaticDoors=TRUE
ModelNodeName=WeaponBay
NoJettisonWeapon=TRUE
BombBayAnimationID=4
BombBayOpenTime=0.50
BombBayCloseTime=0.75
//GroupAnimation=TRUE
//GroupAnimationID=???

[WeaponBay2]
SystemType=WEAPON_STATION
StationID=2
StationGroupID=1
StationType=INTERNAL
AttachmentPosition=0.0,0.0,0.0
AttachmentAngles=0.0,0.0,0.0
EjectVelocity=0.0,0.0,-10.0
LoadLimit=1340
AllowedWeaponClass=EOGB,NUC
AttachmentType=USAF
NumWeapons=2
AttachmentPosition001=-0.366,3.8,-0.26
AttachmentPosition002=0.366,3.8,-0.26
DiameterLimit=0.488
LengthLimit=4.0
ModelNodeName=WeaponBay
NoJettisonWeapon=TRUE
AutomaticDoors=TRUE
BombBayAnimationID=4
BombBayOpenTime=0.50
BombBayCloseTime=0.75
//GroupAnimation=TRUE
//GroupAnimationID=???