adding effects to the actual model...

[crawl55]

Ok...I am creating a tilt rotor...and i want to add the nav lights to the engine nacels.  I want the lights to rotate when the engines rotate...

does anyone know how to do this...

I attached a dummy object with the effect attached to that but it didnt work.

what is the proper way to do this??

[Gnome]

It's actually quite easy.
Make a simple object - I use a cube, about the size of the light you want.  Place it on the nacelle and link it to the nacelle so that it will rotate with it.

Name it LIGHT_NAV_green if it is the right hand one and colour it green, LIGHT_NAV_red if it's the other one etc.

These objects won't be visible in FS, just the light effect, so don't worry about unrealiastic cubes all over your model.

I used this technique on the Enterprise series Airships as they tilt in flight to hide the strong nose-down pitch that develps as you gain speed (sneaky huh?  ;-)), that way I didn't have to compromise the flight dynamics in any way.

I linked the LIGHT_NAV_xxx objects to the animated pivot along with the rest of the external model.  I did the same with LIGHT_STROBE and LIGHT_BEACON.

Hope this helps.


Kev