Game Development Community

Spring and turn animations

by John Cooney · in Artist Corner · 04/05/2005 (3:04 pm) · 7 replies

How do I export a vehicle model with spring and turn animations so that the animations work independently of one another. Right now, when I load my vehicle into the game, the turn animation sequences are affecting my spring animations. When I turn left or right, the spring animation resets to the first frame and sometimes when I'm driving straight with no turning, the spring animations don't get activated until the turn sequences start playing. This is very puzzling since the suspension parts aren't even being animated within the turn sequence.

#1
04/05/2005 (6:52 pm)
Unless you are trying to do something special, you dont need to animate the turns... the engine handles that automatically.
#2
04/06/2005 (9:06 am)
I actually have a driver in my vehicle and he has a turning animation. The passenger doors swing open too upon turning. I've only animated the suspension axles during the spring sequence duration. When I make it a blend animation, the spring animations don't play at all.
#3
11/17/2008 (6:26 am)
START AGAIN:
-----------------

I hate to dig up an old thread... but this I think is a slightly unused feature in Toruqe, or just badly documented.
Does anyone have a sort of 'check list' that should be checked to make sure that Spring animation works in TGE?!
I have recently made a vehicle and only seem to be able to get the left suspension going and not the right.. (this would also only be on the rear wheels as the front wheels do not need visible spring animations.
Thanks
C
#4
11/17/2008 (6:52 am)
Rear 'spring' animations on a two axle, 4 wheeled vehicle are named "spring2", and "spring3". Try using those namingConventions for the rear spring animations....on a 2 axle vehicle.


I've animated springs, steeringWheel, wheel suspensions.....fitting together nicely, :), looking real. I've got doors on helicopters working, Damage indicators working for non driving passengers....all very doable; plus a heck a lot more!


The CombatStartKit, has a few 'WheeledVehicles' in it, along with Source art in a UserFriendly format[Ms3d]. I also did an extensive document on how I got the vehicles setup and tuned for the shipped Pack. It might be a good place to start for 'wheeled' vehicles...source art.
#5
11/17/2008 (6:58 am)
Hey Rex

Yeah, I'm also using 'spring2' and 'spring3' but only 'spring3' is showing up in the engine. My animation is simply the key frames on the 'hub2' and 'hub3' nodes and that's driving all the other mesh movements. Kinda weird that only one spring animation would show up in the engine whilst the other does not.

I am using the BraveTree car kit and busy reverse engineering that in Max 7, so far only the one spring though, lol!

~C
#6
11/17/2008 (7:18 am)
Very odd, as I just ported the CSK humvee into a stock 1.5.2 Demo and it works great!?? Very odd indeed.

How are setting up the 'spring' sequence, in keyframes, if I may ask?
#7
11/17/2008 (11:17 pm)
Hey Rex,
Yup got it working... my setup after all was perfect, ran it thru UnmessDTS and that seemed to get things going.
Before UnMessDTS ShowTool would show the movement of the nodes, but not the mesh, afterwards the mesh and the nodes move together. Weird!!
Thanks for the help though :)
~C