Could anyone point me to a tutorial for keyframe animations?I have a complex animation which works well for various parts that have been linked but one section (set up with the keyframe) doesn't work correctly. The part in question is a beam attached to two cranks of different radii so using links and constraints does not give the flexibility I need. When I set it up via keyframes the animation fails - the parts end up revolving around the crank.Thanks,boneshttp://fsaviation.net

Hi,are You asking for FSDS animation or GMAX?Goran BrumenFS Slovenija 2002 teamhttp://slovenia.avsim.net

Ah. Sorry for not being explicit.. It's for GMax..Further experiments have taught me a few more facts but I'm not totally of of the mire yet. I've found that you can attach parts to a Tick18 object and they will animate quite happily - as long as you don't try to add and rotation, scale or position constraints. They look good in GMax but fail in FS2002.Some of the keyframe animations I have just created work well but some fail. In particular a connecting rod attached to a crank will accept the positional keyframe movement but not recognise the rotational keyframes. I've tried this several ways but without any breakthrough right now.It's odd because a disc I gave rotation to works fine and then adding position change with a second keyframe animation was also accepted in FS2002 - it looks as though it is rolling across the ground.Do you have to input position and rotation separately and not change both attributes at the same time?Thanks for any help you can give...boneshttp://fsaviation.net

following this with interest, wish I could help but ur beyond me. I just worked with keyframes quite a bit, and learned a lot, but I was just rotating a single object.Good luck,Bob B

I think it should not make a difference if you rotate or translate at the same time or not. Ussually I add all movement at the same time and ussually that works fine.A few ideas that might help,- Are you use you have added the Tick18_ in front of all objects you are trying to animate?- Are you not trying to animate vertices of the object? You can only animate the entire object in GMax (and not let it change it's shape).One final question, you write like you are using two kinds of animation, keyframe and another. I thought there is only one way (keyframe), or did I understand you post wrong?

Hi Arno,1. Tick18 is applied to all the objects I have moved/rotated for keyframe animation.2. Yep, I'm definitely just trying to alter the position of the object in space. It follows the same path as a conrod - rotational at one end but moving in a single plane at the other end. I'm moving the crank at 30 degree intervals and repositioning the conrod to match. This involves both rotational and directional adjustment. It looks fine in GMax but in FS it is only moving up and down - no rotation.Whilst experimenting with animation I tried the other approach of linking objects together. I found that if I made a disk and gave it 360 degree rotation then any object I linked to the disk also acquired the same rotational properties. Useful but then I also found that applying rotation or position constraints to tune the animation didn't port over to FS..I only mention it because if you have a simple animation of a complex shape - say an axle, hub, spokes and outer rim - you can rotate the axle with a Tick18 call and then just use the link tool to connect the rest of the parts to the axle. This works fine in FS.I tried to attach a gmax file showing an example of these but without success. Sorry about that - I thought it might be of some use for other beginners in animation..boneshttp://fsaviation.net

.. the previous post shows an attachment but there's nothing there.. :)boneshttp://fsaviation.net

I tried both files you attached but none are there. If you want you can email it to me ([email protected]), I am curious to have a look at it :).

OK, coming over now. Just basic shapes in this demo but clear enough to understand.boneshttp://fsaviation.net