D2 Animation Prob

[TMD_MickyD]

I've made a wind mill for a track I'm making and I've animated the blades of it. To do this the only way i could get the blades and the rest of the object to have they're pivots at 0,0,0 was to tip the windmill on it's side.  My problem is that in D2 there doesn't appear to be any controls to tip it upright again.

Am i missing something in D2, or do i have to figure out how to get the blades to spin in max without the pivot being in the middle of the blades?

Hope this makes sense 

[mcm2boys]

When i wrote this i tried to make it user safe, so i put in 'movement detection' so that if an object has a spline path, ie moves in the x,z plane then it can't be rotated up, (like you need to do) you can only position it around the terrain and position it up/down. Animations that are stationary you should be ablr to rotate,, so there is either something weird with your animation since the tower shouldn't be moving at all, maybe it's because it's on it's side, but with a simple rotation like that there shouldn't be any x,y,zmovement, it should just rotate.

You would need to make it in 2 parts, the tower separate from the blades. The tower should stand on the ground at 0,0,0 and the blades should have their axis at 0,0,0. This is before you start animating. Then when you animate it you move the blades to the position that they need to be in frame 0 and start making the rotation animation. Then export the VUE just for the blades.

It would be easier to understand if the whole thing stood the right way up but it shouldn't be necessary. You could send me the model and ani files and i'll take a look, or better still (for you) maybe Extreme could take a look.

Laurie

[Extreme]

your problem is one of 2 things

1. u havent ReserXForm and Collapse each part before and after your animation (after meaning the last thing u do before exporting it)

2. Linked them the wrong way around in max so D2 thinks your blades r the main object

Plus the blades need to be linked to the base before u start the animation

Extreme

[TMD_MickyD]

I've got it working, i just had to pretty much move it into place in max. I just got the impression that you had to keep all pivots on 0,0,0 from the tutorial.

One thing though, the animation rotates the whole object in D2 (uses the pivot point of the tower part), but in mcm it works fine.

Thanks guys.

[mcm2boys]

Glad you got it to work.

It's not a big surprise to me that it doesn't work the same in D2, just goes to show i had to work out how it works myself and Rainbow didn't give me any inside info. I would be interested to see the object and animation files to see if i can see why it works differently.


Laurie

[TMD_MickyD]

Is the email adress in your profile current?

[mcm2boys]

Yes, mcm2boys@netscape.net


Thanks

Laurie