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it's known that mirroring a part using the "mirror" button causes that part to have it's normals inverted in FS

a workaround to this, is to clone the part, and apply the mirror modifier

but when i do this procedure with animated parts such as flaps and gears, the animation gets all twisted on the mirrored part

so how do i mirror a part while preserving it's animations??

What I tend to do is after I mirror the object like you said, I just reverse the animation procedures.  

If the object rotates around a center point that needs to be moved, find out where it is on the other object and reverse it.  8.47 becomes -8.47.

If the movements are keyframe, such as gear, select the object and either write down or remember what the angles are at the end of the animation.  Then select the offending part and click on ANIMATE with the slider at the end of the animation.  Now do the reverse thing again, so 35 degrees becomes -35 degrees, and so on.  Do the same for any distance ones.

If this will absolutely not work, you may have to delete all the animations and unlink everything, then redo the animations from scratch.  This is usually not a bad idea anyway, as I have encountered some issues with this when exporting to FS on some occasions.

the thing is:
on my previous project, i actually was able to mirror animations

plus, it's not so easy to redo all the keyframes on the fowler flaps as they have a pretty complicated movement that took me hours to create

Sometimes there is no easy fix

i think you've already said that to me....

when i was having the exact same problem with my previous model

the big problem here is that i can't just do the animations all over again, first, because it took me 2 hours to do just the flaps, and second, because the animations would look different from one another

there must be a workaround for this
i know it won't be an easy one, but anything would be better than reanimating everything again

i did manage to mirror animated parts in my previous project, but it happened accidentally and i have no idea how it was done... as i remember i just cloned and mirrored like i always do, only the animations worked fine

so that's why i'm pretty sure there IS a way to do tihis without animating again

Well, what I do when I can't get the animations to work right after mirroring is erase all the animations on the part I am doing and then switch to the side view.  Since you're doing flaps, this will work well.

Select the part that has the animations on it.  Now move the animation sequence to the point where the first movement of the flaps ends.  Use a calc to figure out the change in rotation and/or position.  Now animate as you normally would and instead of using the cursor to move the object into the right position, enter the values you copied down into the corresponding area.  Just remember to change the lateral value (x?) to a negative or positive, depending.

Now just follow the procedure again for the next bit of animation.  It's tedious, but it's better than doing it over from scratch.

And perhaps you could do something about the animating and mirroring.  Try using the mirror command, BUT, after you mirror it, select all the polys and flip them.  That should make it appear normal in FS, although it won't look right in Gmax.

i tried mirroring then flipping but that created a weird lighting problem in FS, i think it got inverted...

ever had this problem?

Dont know if this help  ;)

but i have find that if whe mirror heach part (not whit the modifier parametric deformer mirror ) of the objet whit the copy box option checked   (insted of cloned and mirrored the thing !) its work very good whit no poly trouble  :) !

i have just to reverse the animation of heach part after (changing the position number in the animation sequence)

Hi there,

I

No,flipping never solves this problem.Even if faces will be with right side out in fs it cause shading problem.
But usually when mirror button used instead of mirror modifier even flipping faces daznt solve the problem.Faces remains flipped in fs anyway.

Using mirror modifier seems to be only solution.

Sometimes troubles with mirroring animated part appear when part is not placed straight horizontally or vertically-like flaps on wing wich is not horizontal and placed with little angle with tip up slightly.In this case flap's pivot point is also slightly rotated,so when mirrored and cloned to other side,pivot point has opposite rotation of rest position,so when animated  it's not aligned with the wing and rotating in strange manner.I thing in case like this there is need to deal with pivot point of cloned and mirrored part.