setting contact points

[Guest jetBlue_83]

Let's say you've just built an aircraft and exported it and it works fine. How do you make the wheels touch the ground? Are the contact point defined based on the models placement in gmax (above, on, or below the grid) or otherwise? Feedback will be greatly appreciated!!

[Guest Firestriker]

Looking at your aircraft in side view and with the gear extended, select one of your main gear tires and go to Modify, Point sub-object and select the bottom most point. Click on the Move button on the menu bar and read the points 3d position from the figures on the bottom of your screen, right below the animation time line. Jot these numbers down. You will need to enter them in the Contact Points section of the aircraft.cfg. The values must be entered in decimal feet. One will be the longitudinal X location or side to side, of which you will need to enter in a positive value for the right gear and a negative value for the left gear. The lateral position, front to back, is the Y value and the Z value is your verticle position and should be a negative value. I usually add about 0.5' to start with. Set the Static Gear height to a positive value of the Z with out adding the 0.5'. Besure NO other contact points are lower than your gear contact points. You will have to play with your Static_Pitch angle in the aircraft.cfg to get it right but increasing the value above 0 raises the nose and values under 0 make the nose go below the "water line".Lou

[Guest jetBlue_03]

Thank you for the information!!!

[Guest Karl R Pettersen]

To verify, it is usually a good idea to put light effects (white nav) at these locations, just to be sure.