Rotation Synchronisation Trouble

[drom 0]

Thanks to the help so far, I'm slowly getting there with my airport.I've got a bit of a problem though with my animation for my gates.It seems that position wise, my vertical and horizontal movements, I'm able to keep everything in synch. However, some of my rotations seem to lose something along the way.I have three objects that don't want to do as they're told. I've searched the forums to no avail and am about to give up on the silly thing as I've been at it for over a day now and still can't troubleshoot it.Scene/Objects details:I have a scene of 600 frames. Object AI need a rotation on an object along its X-axis (an aerobridge walkway maintaining contact between two points whilst one of the points rise), this needs to occur from frames 0 to 150 to keep in line with the rest of the animation (the vertical movement ceases here as a component of the gate laterally extends to dock with the aircraft).Object BI need a rotation of an object along its Y-axis (a cover that rotates to the right). This simply needs to rotate about 35 degrees around its pivot point.I've ensured the following for my objects:a) Start and End key frames:( TCB or Linear Rotation (Tried both controllers)c) No groupingsThe issue I'm faced with is that the rotation animations do not show correctly, either out of sequence or too fast. As stated before I tried both controllers in the MS SDK that are apparently supported in MS FS.Linear rotation - This just loops the 150 frames over and over, I've ensured there is a keyframe at the 600th frame and still get this result.TCB rotation - This does the full sequence, however it is some 4-5 seconds too early and thus does not line up during the animation.Also I have some stairs connected to a platform, the platform rises and the stairs rotate along the ground. This works fine except the stairs seem to have shifted along the Y-axis during export, there seems to be a positive shift for some reason even though it aligns in Gmax (i.e a static shift, not during the animation). This occurs in both TCB and Linear rotation (though linear rotation decides to pick up some windows and move them too :S)I can rotate a plain normal box, but as soon as I move some vertices to bevel the edges it seems to screw up. So does anyone know anything that I might have missed that is causing some of these most frustrating issues? Can FS rotate GMAX adjusted objects successful?Thanks for your time, I hope you can help.Jeremy

[arno 1]

Hi Jeremy,>Linear rotation - This just loops the 150 frames over and>over, I've ensured there is a keyframe at the 600th frame and>still get this result.Are you sure the additional key you have added at the end is of the rotation type? Another thing you could try is to change the rotation a little bit compared to the last normal key, I have heard that that sometimes worked for others.Another last option would be the check the source code (ASM files) and tweak/add the last key there manual.>TCB rotation - This does the full sequence, however it is some>4-5 seconds too early and thus does not line up during the>animation.Sorry, I am not familiar with that type. Would be interesting to see the source code produced for this one, to see why it is faster.

[drom 0]

Thanks,Will try those suggestions.I managed to get them working kinda, I reimported the objects and did the animations all again.Its extremely fickle though, if I make a change like insert another key frame it sometimes falls apart again.I imagine its something I'm doing wrong, hehe. I'll get there.

[Team_P3DSpacePort 6]

Hi,I Agree, I find that implementing rotation animation in FS is extremely finnecky. It holds togeter if exported, but it gets tricky when it comes to synchronization and timing, and when processed in CAT. I found that the TCB rotation works best. TCB stands for "Tension, Continuation, Bias" and it is intended to animate with a more of a natural feel to it (overshoot and inertia) but you can play with the TCB settings and give it a more of a "linear" feel that mechanisms have.Also, and this is very interesting: it is possible to add "helper" keys to the timeline, at a fraction of time (no the whole key) they will actually not display in the main timeline, only in the Track View, under Rotations timeline. You can copy the key and move it ever so slightly next to the "main" key... this can help you precisely tune your anims.Hope this helps,