Solar Panel Setup and Animation in Unity

[curtquarquesso]

Hey all,

I'm asking for myself, and other mod-authors out there. I have yet to see a really in-depth tutorial on how to setup and animate solar panels in Unity. I'm really pretty new to modding. I've been messing around with it for days, and I can't find any resources that can help me out.

My setup:

Wings3D for modeling

Photoshop for texturing

Unity for animation and everything else.

My first set of solar panels are ESA ATV replica panels.

I just want to be able to set up sun tracking, tell Unity which part of the model is the photovoltaic surface, and setup complex animations in Unity. Rather than animating each and every component, is there a way I can set up joints that are somewhat intuitive?

Thanks in advance.

Edited August 7, 2015 by curtquarquesso

[Ven]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the complex animations bit but here's what I've gathered about solar panels:

The parts rotator and those parented to it are just the panels themselves and don't do anything for the panels sun tracking abilities.

If you want to see multiple working solar panels in action (also: nearly every part in the game) , download my VSR master folder here.

Though it is 1.2Gb so... fair warning!

Hopefully this helps in some way!

[curtquarquesso]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the complex animations bit but here's what I've gathered about solar panels:

http://i.imgur.com/wplpgLt.png

The parts rotator and those parented to it are just the panels themselves and don't do anything for the panels sun tracking abilities.

If you want to see multiple working solar panels in action (also: nearly every part in the game) , download my VSR master folder here.

Though it is 1.2Gb so... fair warning!

Hopefully this helps in some way!

Wow. Very helpful for the Unity setup. Looking through all of it now. For the deploy animation, are you able to link the panels with joints/hinges somehow, or are you animating them all completely manually?

[Ven]

Wow. Very helpful for the Unity setup. Looking through all of it now. For the deploy animation, are you able to link the panels with joints/hinges somehow, or are you animating them all completely manually?

I just complete them manually, I find it simpler that way.