Animated parts not starting at frame 0?

[Team_P3DSpacePort 6]

Hi all,I have several animated parts that look fine in GMAX, but the synchronisation is all off in FS9... it seems as if they are starting all at random keyframes (instead at keyframe 0) and are running at slightly different speeds. All animations are Bezier Position Type... Any ideas how to get them to move "all together"?

[Jim Robinson 122]

I just had a problem similar to this in animating some sliding hangar doors. This is in FS9, BTW. The idea was that the left set of doors would open first and remain opened and still while the "attendant" walked over and slid the right set of doors open. The last keyframe for the left doors was then somewhere in the middle of the animation, the remainder of the animation concentrating solely on the attendant and right doors.Instead of remaining still in the open position as they did in Gmax, the left set of doors would open and slam shut about 3 times from beginning to end of the animation when I tried it in the sim. After much trial & error, my solution was to add endpoint keyframes for each door, animating them to move only a very slight (imperceptible) amount through the last half of the animation.Without the endpoint keyframe (and even with an endpoint keyframe but without motion) it's almost as if the sim didn't know what to do with the doors while the rest of the animation played out, so it apparently cycled them as if they were their own separate animation running independently of the main animation.I don't know if this has anything to do with your problem, it may be completely unrelated, but if your animation contains any frames where the parts are still, giving them a very slight amount of motion during the still periods may do the trick.Jim

[Team_P3DSpacePort 6]

Thanks for the tip, Jim! I had the starting and ending keyframes in there but not the intermediate ones... It worked to a degree - I had to pepper the still periods with keyframes, and now the things move in a more or a less of a properly timed cycle! I think I can live with that! Thanks again,Misho