Stick animation

[Guest jlwoodward]

Anyone tried to animate a stick using V2? I managed to get the right/left movement ok. For the fore/aft movement I copy and pasted the stick and renamed it, but I can't coordinate the movements. It ends up with two sticks going in different directions. I must be using the wrong method or else I am not linking them correctly.Thanks,John Woodward

[Guest odog]

your close,This is gmax method, but should apply.make the fore aft animationthen make a 'dummy' cube and animate left right.now link fore aft to the dummynow you can either give the dummy a transparnt texture or 'hide' it inside the stick.

[Guest jlwoodward]

ThanksSounds like that should work. For my first attempt I ended up scattering the parts, so I will try again another day. It seems with this animation you have to do things in a certain order and you can make a mess by trying to edit an existing animation. Probably better to start over.John Woodward

[Guest]

In GMAX you can create a part by itself, define the animation for it, test it in FS, then import (actually called Merge in GMAX) the part into your a/c model for final use. Perhaps you can do the same in other applications.For my engine controls this is what I did. I created a control box and three levers with knobs. Then I applied animation to each for throttle, mixture and prop pitch (well, I haven't done this one yet).One thing to understand about GMAX animation is that individual objects are animated, not the whole scene or "picture" like a traditional animation you see in a Disney movie, cell by cell. You can have several animated objects running at once. I had to get my head around that first.If one object in the part moves, but others do not they probably need to be linked (at least in GMAX). For example, my throttle handle is linked to my throttle lever. The animation (rotation) is applied to the throttle lever. No animation is directly applied to the handle. The handle moves with the throttle because it is linked to the lever. The lever moves because it is tied to a FS stock animation by giving it the name throttle_lever01 (if memory serves). Any object with that name will move through an animation time frame of 0=full throttle, 50=no throttle, 100=full reverse. Because my a/c is a prop plane I only use half the animation time frame from 0 to 50.Steve

[Guest jlwoodward]

Finally got it to work. I made a small cube and put it at the stick pivot point. I animated the cube fore and aft, then animated the stick left to right and linked the stick to the cube. As soon as I linked the parts the stick moved to some other spot on the plane and it took several trials to move it back and get it to stay. That part I don't understand. Maybe with FSDS2 there is either a right way or no way.Thanks for your help,John Woodward

[Guest]

your method is OK. Moreover, in part's properties dialog box there is a case called "Hierarchy node". Check it and your cube will be invisible. A similar method is also used for animating a steerable gear.