Hey guys,

I am almost through with my 3rd version of the X-47B, presently doing testing. The model was redone from scratch to reflect the final production version. Just two things I need some assistance with

 

 

 

1. How to make spoilerons (not sure if that's what they are called). It appears that the X-47B uses its spoilers, as speed brakes, rudders and ailerons to an extent. How do I get the spoiler to perform 3 or 2 of these functions at once.

 

2. The landing gear doors, cut using the Boolean function are giving some problems to look flush when polygon smoothing is turned on. Snap to nearest vertex doesnt seem to work, and the problem somehow gets worse when I duplicate the part, create polys to join the cloned part to give the doors some "thickness"

 

Here is a screen shot of polygon smoothing turned off

 

 

Here is a screen shot of polygon smoothing turned on

 

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Modelled in FSDS v3 for fs2004

Hi,

 

1. Make small cubes and embed them at the hinge area of the surface. Then animate them using aileron, rudder, and elevator animations, and link them together (with the surface last in the chain). Now it will move according to all animations linked to it.

 

2. You can't smooth across multiple parts, but you can avoid the dark areas around the edges by using either smoothing groups (select surface polygons, assign separate smoothing group, etc.), or by detaching those surface polygons from the rest of the part, then Attaching them again (do not Weld vertices).

 

Hope this helps,

Thanks Tom, your advice has indeed helped. I've used to child/parent linking of ailerons and elevators to create elevons and the like, however, in the case of a spoileron. If a spoiler only pop up above the wing as a speed brake normally, wouldnt linking it to an aileron cause it to also go through the wing surface, when the parented aileron makes a downward rotation?

 

I'll also report back, when I try the varied smoothening groups. Thanks again

Hi,

 

The spoileron will not move below the wing if you use the keyframe animated aileron variable, and don't animate it to go below the wing. I.e. for the first (or last) half of the animation (when the FS variable would be going below the wing), it just sits still instead.

Ohhhhhhh thanks a MILL, I've been tossing that idea around in my mind for months now, wondering what will happen. Thanks again for your assistance Tom, greatly appreciated. I'll send you a copy of the completed model once its finished.

Glad to help.