FSX GMAX Bones Mesh skins etc

[Guest richie35]

Hi everybody,Is there any tutorials available that explains what the bones and skin mesh is regarding FSX GMAX designed aircraft? The SDK is sooo sooo confusing!!!! I have designed but not completed a Global Express for FSX and am partially complete with a Paintkit for it.I am having problems understanding the animation of the control surfaces in regards to applying the bones structure and mesh. Also could somebody explain the conversion of Tick18 to Ambient in the Animation Manager? The turtorial refers to ambient as a lighting function and not animations. This is regarding trying to animate doors on a hangar that I originally designed for FS2004 and used Arno's animation tool to control the animation (Radio Nav Freq).Attached is a screen shot of my project as it is presently.Regards,Richie35

[Guest Patrick_Waugh]

Bones and skinning are used in scenery, not aircraft. There is a sample in the SDK. You animate control surfaces the same as before, but all animation is keyframe, and you must do so per the SDK directions. If you have a specific question AFTER reading and trying to work through it, post it here, telling us what you did, what you can't do, and what you wish to do.

[n4gix 4,955]

>Bones and skinning are used in scenery, not aircraft. Er, that's no longer true. Although not available except in a .max file, the DC3 example shows how ACES has created "bones" in the wing's structure, and applied "flexible skin mesh" to the "bones."How else would ACES have managed flexing wings on the default glider unless FSX supported 'bone & skin' animations in aircraft? :)All that said, I do know that to go back and "convert" existing mesh to utilize 'bones and skinned mexh' would be - at best - difficult; nay, probably impossible.This is best accomplished from the ground up. I do not know of any tutorials on the subject as of yet, since this is still too "new..." :-wave

[n4gix 4,955]

>Also could somebody explain the conversion of Tick18 to>Ambient in the Animation Manager?In the context of animation, "Ambient" refers to motion, not lighting. It is an unfortunate choice of terms that obviously will lead to continued confusion.Note that there are SEVEN "Ambient" animation controllers and SEVEN "NonRandomAmbient" animation controllers. Each of these animation controllers has a different time length, and allow for two animated objects side-by-side to have non-synchronous movement.The difference between "Ambient" and "NonRandomAmbient" is that the "NonRandomAmbient" controllers occur at fixed, repeatable intervals, whereas the "Ambient" controllers will "fire" at random intervals, which also adds to the sense of diversity.For example, if you had a row of animated "flags" in FSX (such as at the UN), it would look silly for all the "flags" to move in perfect unison! ;)Although "broken" in the current Animation Tool, SP1 promises to "fix" the conversion button to ease the pain of transition.In the meantime however, simply select your named "tick18_part" and apply one of the "Ambient" controllers to it via the Animation tool. :)

[Guest Patrick_Waugh]

No doubt I'm wrong, but I remember reading (I thought) in the SDK that it was for scenery only such as the moving jetways.I'll have to re-read the jetway example to see what it said to be sure though. I thought you could animate wing flex without it like the first guys that did it in FS2000/2 on their freeware 737s. Can't remember the name of it though. They are/were great models.

[n4gix 4,955]

>No doubt I'm wrong, but I remember reading (I thought) in the>SDK that it was for scenery only such as the moving jetways.Unfortunately, ACES doesn't provide much help in HOW to implement skin-and-bones in aircraft models, and frankly the jetway example isn't much more informative.The SDK's "new aircraft procedures.html" file however, mentions skinned animations in several places.The first, shows how to configure the "Skinned Material" in the Material Editor:"Skinned meshes need a special material in order for the animation to work. This is essentially identical to the General Material with the addition of checking the Skinned mesh box under Enhanced Parameters"The second allusion to this is in the section about adding Attachpoints for .fx files:"However if a light is attached to a moving part (including wings with flex) or if the light is a landing light, then we need to create an attach point for the light effect."The third mention is in the section about a "pilot figure," but without providing much detail. :-bang "Skin animation is used for some pilots and wing flex on aircraft, although the DC3 sample has rigid mesh pilots. Skin animation pilots should only be used on aircraft where the pilots are more visible.Animating a skinned pilot is essentially the same as animating rigid meshes except that bones are tagged, rather than meshes.There is a limit of 128 bones per model in Flight Simulator X, and a limit of 22 connected bones. Any one vertex of a model can be influenced by a maximum of four bones. Models will fail if they exceed these limits."