Anyone here got a clue about doing scenery animation with gMax? The manual says: "If a part name has the prefix from the following table and the part has a keyframe animation, then that animation will be tied to a Flight Simulator variable. The total number of keyframes must not exceed 1024, which means that the maximum animation cycle is approximately 56 seconds." The "table" lists only once such prefix -- Tick18.This, of course, doesn't work -- you can name any part you want with the prefix "Tick18", give it keyframes, export it to a BGL and it resoutely refuses to animate, at least with moves and rotation (haven't tried animating materials, but that's not too useful). I know aircraft designers get their parts to move -- anyone here been able to do the same for scenery?(Or, failing this, anyone know who to ask in Microsoft. Don't everyone laugh at once).

I've heard that some people have had trouble if the only object in their scenery is animated. Try adding a few static objects and see what happens.I've been meaning to do a quick tutorial on animation on my site -- I've been a bit remiss with this but it is the middle of winter here and not the best time to go out and get photos of trams, which is what I plan to animate. I might do something before spring though if there is a real need.

Thanks for the reply. Actually, I *did* have some static objects, but I'll try again tonight because I'm not so sure I wasn't using a grouped object at the time. At least that gives me something else to try (isn't that all we programmers ever want, just a few more things to try so we aren't completely stuck dead in the water? )

tick18 worked fine for me. As an experiment I made a walking man with 100 frames starting at zero. By chance I visited the scenery last night and he was still walking his heart out! Did you use just tick18 or did you add to the name? If so, be sure to use an underscore as a seperator (e.g. tick18_box5) Apart from that, I can't think of a reason why it shouldn't work.>(Or, failing this, anyone know who to ask in Microsoft. >Don't everyone laugh at once). People interested in scenery design have an *awful* lot of questions they'd like to ask of Microsoft. One particularly comes to mind: where the ***$

Thanks for the reply, Chris (and I think I'm seeing you on the gMax forum as well -- thanks for that).I got my animation working -- there were a *lot* of factors so I'm not sure at this point just what was right with my stuff, let alone what was wrong. For one thing I didn't use an underscore in the name, so that might have been it, although groups also seemed to play some part. In any case, I got it now and am slowly working my mind through in the conversion between Max and gMax.Yep -- we'd sure like MS to answer the scenery SDK question, wouldn't we? I know they'll have a presence at the conference, and that's my one mission (assuming it hasn't been released by then): to bug the MS guys about getting it out.

>Thanks for the reply, Chris (and I think I'm seeing you on >the gMax forum as well -- thanks for that). Yes - it's a small world!>>I got my animation working -- there were a *lot* of factors >so I'm not sure at this point just what was right with my >stuff, let alone what was wrong. For one thing I didn't use >an underscore in the name, so that might have been it, >although groups also seemed to play some part. In any case, >I got it now and am slowly working my mind through in the >conversion between Max and gMax. Mike, I'm glad it's working now. I think there is a problem with groups. If you animate a group it will work in Gmax but not in FS. You can keep the group, but every part inside has to be animated individually. That's an oversight that I hope will be fixed in a future version.>>Yep -- we'd sure like MS to answer the scenery SDK question, >wouldn't we? I know they'll have a presence at the >conference, and that's my one mission (assuming it hasn't >been released by then): to bug the MS guys about getting it >out. Good luck with that! My scenery is on hold because I can't generate FS2002-style coastlines. Many people have devoted enormous amounts of time trying to 'crack' these secrets, while all the time the answers are lying on a desk somewhere at Redmond. In fact one (Christian Stock) has given up on FS scenery altogether, which is a loss to us all. Hopefully he will return after the scenery SDK is released - assuming it does tell us what we need to know. The sad thing is that such little effort would be needed to issue an advance SDK within weeks of FS2002 release. How it can take the best part of a year is beyond me! As I said, good luck and don't take no for an answer! Best regards, Chris