afxHelicopter

With the deprecation of IFL animations from T3D, I, like many others, have been searching to find an easy way to animate helicopter blades, ceiling fans, etc. This can be done by mounting the object as a ShapeBase but afx provides in afxModelData a handy way of doing this as well.Here's an example of using afx to do the work:

First, I took a static helicopter model, selected the rotor blades and shaft, and separated them into their own mesh. I then added a node [in my case, mount5] where the rotor shaft meets the helicopter body. I then saved the body as a separate dts model without the rotor mesh. Next, I centered my new rotor mesh, offsetting it's origin to be below the rotors in the center of the shaft. Then I animated the entire mesh to rotate 360 degrees, and saved it as a dts file with the animation 'baked in' as 'ambient'.

In the helicopter script file, I added this:

// =============================================================================
// Gibstah's afxHelicopter
// =============================================================================

datablock afxModelData(HELI_Rotor01_CE)
{
   shapeFile = "art/shapes/vehicles/heli/rotor01_anim.dts";
   sequence = "ambient"
   sequenceRate = 1;
};

datablock afxEffectWrapperData(HELI_Rotor01_EW)
{
  effect = HELI_Rotor01_CE;

  constraint = 'helicopter.mount5";
};

datablock afxEffectronData(Equip_Chopper_Rotor)
{
	duration = $AFX::INFINITE_TIME;
	execOnNewClients = true;
	addEffect = HELI_Rotor01_EW;
};

function equipChopper(%chopper)
{
    %chopper.rotor = startEffectron(Equip_Chopper_Rotor, %chopper, "helicopter");
}
 
function jetHeli::onAdd( %this, %obj )
{
   
	//Parent::onAdd( %this, %obj );
	%obj.setEnergyLevel(%this.MaxEnergy);
	%obj.setRechargeRate(%this.rechargeRate);
	%obj.setRepairRate(0);
	%obj.mountable=true;
   
	equipChopper(%obj);

	//remainder of generic ::onAdd goes here, blah, blah, blah...

Before and After: