Simviation Forums

I hope there's a cure for this....

I just applied some keyframe animations to the radial engine I'm making for a high wing '30's monoplane. The engine rocker arms work fine but where I once had a perfect model geometrically, several major assemblies are now severly misaligned.
I had to reset the pivot points for the rocker arms in the hierachy but I don't think this caused his much damage OR maybe it did?

Help!

I hope you have established a system of saving versions before or after major changes.  This is of course helpful for "fallback", but also for merging forward objects that you didn't notice had issues until days later.

Use a simple structure so the names are informative like:
aircraft_date_version_changedescription

Example: ac500_04-06_3_afternosegearanimation

As to your specific issue, not enough info to help there.

Thanks Milton for the suggestions.

I'm on build 105 of this project so have many to fall back on.

I ran across a statement in the gmax creation document to the effect that nodes(interior, exterior) need to have a center of 0,0,0 and be free of any transform or scaling. I might have violated this edict somehow. (It was late and I was tired!). I'll let you know what I find out.
Here's a picture of "Miss Poly", my current headache...

holy... that's a pic of it in fs2k2/2? geeze! i could never do an aircraft that good! but for the scale thing, go into the hierchy tab(where you reset the pivot) and down at the bottom you can reset scale and transform. hope that helps. and i don't belive the reset pivot harms anything.

Thanks for your kind comments!

I used to do this a lot but got kinda burnt out and dropped out for a couple of years. I've got my site up and running though there's not much there. Its   http://www.airfieldofdreams.com

Gmax and 3ds MAx are great tools compared to the old ones but learning is pretty hard for this old man!

Your suggestions helped me solve the problem! I really appreciate the help and hope to give back what I can as time goes on.

A couple of things I learned...
Nodes (exterior and interior) really need to have their center of rotation moved to (x,y,z) 0,0,0 co-ords. I recall that in the older BGL files as in FS98 all animations are referenced to this point so it makes sense.

I downloaded Microsoft's Directx 9.0 SDK which includes an X file exporter similiar to the one we know that comes with the Flight Sim SDK. I ran my files through it and it gave me a Matrix scaling error that the other did not. It even gave me the name of the part. After resetting the transform and scale on the offending part, things went back together without a hitch! You can do a search of MIcrosoft's site and find it pretty easily.

Cheers!