FXModuleAnimateThrottle emissive problem with multiple-mesh objects (like gimballed engines) (SOLVED)

[hoojiwana]

EDIT : The solution can be found in @NecroBones post below.

I'm having an issue with getting FXModuleAnimateThrottle to correctly animate an emissive animation on multiple meshes within a single part. The animation plays correctly on ONE mesh out of however many there are that have the animation component in Unity, mostly it seems to be the first mesh in the hierarchy. The incredibly frustrating thing is that all the stock engines that use this work completely fine, as does another mod part from a different author (the Zenit-style engine in AB Launchers that @Beale made). ModuleAnimateHeat also works completely fine on the exact same part(s).

I have tried all sorts of crazy Unity hierarchies including copying exactly what the stock Rapier uses. I have updated my Unity client (up to 4.2.2) to see if that was causing issues. I reinstalled the part tools, I've tried renaming everything over and over to see if an underscore or not capitalising something was breaking it. I did find a related report on the bug tracker, but there are a number of stock parts that simply are not having this problem so I don't know how relevant it really is. This is driving me completely up the wall and I have no idea what to do about it, has anyone else seen this? Does anyone know a way to fix it, or am I going to be stuck with using ModuleAnimateHeat until 1.1 and new Part Tools come out and hopefully fixes this?

Here's a few pictures to illustrate the problem:

 

Edited December 16, 2015 by hoojiwana

[Beale]

The multiple nozzle meshes need a unique name (I.E. Nozzle1) to animate correctly, no?

At least that has caused me similar issues to you in the past.

Not sure if that is the cause here though.

Edited December 16, 2015 by Beale

[Randazzo]

I have two multi-nozzle engines, one in which the nozzles heat up properly and one in which only one nozzle does so. I haven't gotten around to fixing them properly yet, but I'll have a look at their hierarchies tonight, and I'd wager Beale is correct or at the very least on the right track.

Though if we bait @NecroBones in here, he might have some insight on the subject as well.

Edited December 16, 2015 by Randazzo

[NecroBones]

I have been summoned!

 

I can tell you what works for me. My animations have always worked with both ModuleAnimateHeat and with FXModuleAnimateThrottle. I create all of the individual nozzles (of course) in Blender, which doesn't allow you to have same-named mesh objects anyway, so I always do things like "engineBell1", "engineBell2", etc. The legacy animation in Unity remembers the hierarchy of mesh names. I could see it causing issues with multiple meshes having the same name, but I haven't tested.

 

I would also put the animation object on the top GameObject (rapier3), not the "body" object. In the Animation window, you can drill down and have it animate the emissive colors for all mesh objects in the hierarchy from within that one animation. Don't make multiple animations for it. It's possible that the FXModuleAnimateThrottle module is just more picky than ModuleAnimateHeat about these kinds of things.

[hoojiwana]

2 hours ago, NecroBones said:

I would also put the animation object on the top GameObject (rapier3), not the "body" object. In the Animation window, you can drill down and have it animate the emissive colors for all mesh objects in the hierarchy from within that one animation. Don't make multiple animations for it. It's possible that the FXModuleAnimateThrottle module is just more picky than ModuleAnimateHeat about these kinds of things.

This is what fixed it! You have no idea how happy I am to have a solution to this, even if it is a little fiddly. Thankyou so so much!