FL Animations
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Placing that dummy-root pyramid: I’d say put it into the very center of your ship, if possible… In my experience, NPCs will always fire at the center of the Root - and if the Root is not inside the ship, the NPCs will have some rapid horrible aim.
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Thanks for the help, guys. I’ll definitely be looking into this more and tell you my results of it.
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A couple side notes:
- As mentioned by BBalazs, the part will use its 0,0,0 origin as the rotational point. This is why we see doors on many base models all biffed up when importing into Milkshape. Previous importer versions did not take offsets into account when importing, so they all ended up at their natural origin of 0,0,0.
This has two side effects:
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You can leave parts where they are within Milkshape, and have them rotate or slide from there. To see this, have a look at my Hive Habitat; both side rings are exported exactly as they appear there, so no further offset modification was necessary, it is a spherical model after all. I was working on a funky pyramid base with outer walls as kind of armor. Each wall was child to a telescoping arm, child to a central pivot. The inner walls were solid but for one opening, so if you timed it right you could actually get inside and dock with the base itself. Unfortunately, working with only 4 walls ends up requiring 16 parts due to each component only able to rotate or slide on one axis. So that left 2 meshes for the rest of the base
![😕](https://the-starport.com/forums/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f615.png?v=mhmq9j4qrjg ":-\")
not real ideal. Just a little tidbit to keep in mind. -
Or you can do the most common method; move your moving parts to 0,0,0 and then tweak their positions via offset. As noted, DA used polygons as bases of rotation for doors. So parent = door_poly01, child = baydoor_1 etc. This allowed them to place the poly where it needed to be and only need to tweak small amounts from there. Crack open an Outpost to have a closer look at this.
- Just because an item is located within Fix or Pris does not mean it can’t be attached to a Rev component or vice versa. This is another area Parent -> Child relations play an important role. That’s how I managed to attach working dock doors to the central rotating rings on the Habitat, and the side rings rotating on X, while central rotates on Z. It’d be nice in the future if we could exceed 18 (or was it 21?) parts for cmp export. But still, there’s quite a lot we can do within the current limits.
Good luck animating
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Good point w0dk4. You can create the node name, but that’s it really, or you can copy over a node from another cmp file. In either case, you’ll need to hex edit the contents to add / subtract parts within the node data.
To do that, I usually keep an exported Fix, Rev, and Pris file handy. Open a file with the required node already present, select the node, then click the “Export” button and save it as a .bin so you know what it’s for; example: “RevTemplate.bin”
You really only need one entry in each for a template, since you can select all -> copy and then paste once for each new additional part. After re-saving the modified .bin file with your to-be-modified cmp’s name, switch back to UTF editor and this time click the “Import” button with the corresponding node selected. Re-save the cmp, then use UTF v4 to edit the numeric values, and UTF v3 to edit the strings (parent / child names) via the “Edit XXX data” buttons. You could edit these names while in your hex editor, just be sure you know the character length limits of each name (mentioned earlier in this topic). -
Btw.: Could someone upload the UTF Editor v1.3 somewhere?
Because I couldnt find that version anywhere on the net
Not a big surprise W0dk4 as that version was never officially released, I’ll have a look in my files and upload it in a bit.
EDIT
I’ve uploaded it to the downloads section, but as it hasn’t appeared I guess it needs someone to authorise it first.
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@Freeworlds_Sushi:
Would love to see this tutorial. I could really use it for X-wings/B-wings in FWs.
ive played freeworlds, alot actually
if ya could manage that i would absolutely “try” the mod out ;D
Well then, I better pray that tutorial for this function comes sooner rather than later…lol.Check our boards Sushi
I’ll release the tutorial later on here at TSP, if it is helpful within our dev team.w00t:
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Would someone take on making the wings on the Rheinland Valkyrie work? It has the slots under each wing near the fuse-lodge to appear as if they actually move.
I feel that all the parts that appear to move, should actually move as in w0dk4s vid. Bay doors open etc…etc…Why not everything this is supposed to, do so? ;D
Hop to it you guys.
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Would someone take on making the wings on the Rheinland Valkyrie work? It has the slots under each wing near the fuse-lodge to appear as if they actually move.
I feel that all the parts that appear to move, should actually move as in w0dk4s vid. Bay doors open etc…etc…Why not everything this is supposed to, do so? ;D
Hop to it you guys.
;Ddo you mean this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDJtW-HvbEw ?
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umm… the Valkyre actually already has animations for wings, so I dont understand whats so special about making them work. Its one line in shiparch to bind the animation.
Sure but u need to know how to and than u must do a vid of it that’s pretty much work ;D
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umm… the Valkyre actually already has animations for wings, so I dont understand whats so special about making them work. Its one line in shiparch to bind the animation.
Sure but u need to know how to and than u must do a vid of it that’s pretty much work ;D
err
just Video, its rly easy^^
an simple .utf editor to see: there is something left and knowledge where you can aktivate an anomation
thats all
soo…@w0dk4: /signed
@FW Video: rly cool
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That was an awesome tutorial, W0d
Look what I did with it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CvJuS6M19c
