Facing Animations

[Balto-the-Wolf-Dog]

After a fair bit of general modelling, texturing, and implementation, I decided it was time to try for animations. I'm not completely clueless with the 3ds system and I've learned my way around Unity's native animator, but beyond simple, linear things I'm not sure where to start. I've created a 2.5m inline science lab with animating shutters that work nicely, but for the interior I've built up a relatively detailed, sizable telescope that I'd ideally like to animate such that it automatically faces the selected target, basically in the same manner as the eye on the mechjeb pod.

The telescope is set up with appropriate pivots, but I'm not sure how to actually go about that kind of an animation, particularly given the telescope 

A) is located in the IVA, which might be problematic from a coordinate perspective, though I imagine approachable

B) needs to obey the physical limits of its pivot

 

I haven't had any trouble finding guides for linear animations, nor have I had any trouble making them. Dynamic is another matter though, so any insight would be appreciated.

[nli2work]

Mechjeb eye is probably part of the mechjeb plugin.

You should be able to do this with Navball Internal module... but there's no rotation limits on that. And the  telescope will orient based on your SAS settings, not exactly realistic. I don't know for sure if IVA updates while in Flight view, but worth a shot.

Edited April 29, 2016 by nli2work

[Balto-the-Wolf-Dog]

8 hours ago, nli2work said:

Mechjeb eye is probably part of the mechjeb plugin.

You should be able to do this with Navball Internal module... but there's no rotation limits on that. And the  telescope will orient based on your SAS settings, not exactly realistic. I don't know for sure if IVA updates while in Flight view, but worth a shot.

How would I rig a model to be handled by something like that? To be honest a plugin to do that sort of thing should be within my low-to-moderate C# ability, though I would need somewhere to start. It looks like the actual API isn't really unlike kOS, minus the lolcode-like syntax.

Edited April 29, 2016 by Balto-the-Wolf-Dog

[nli2work]

nest transforms for each rotation axis, just like a real nav ball. harder part is getting them oriented correct to work in game. takes a bit of trial and error.

[Balto-the-Wolf-Dog]

1 hour ago, nli2work said:

nest transforms for each rotation axis, just like a real nav ball. harder part is getting them oriented correct to work in game. takes a bit of trial and error.

But I wouldn't actually animate anything myself. Just set up the pivots?

[nli2work]

yea, there's no animation. just assign the pivots in the internal module config. best bet is open up the stock navball for reference.

[Balto-the-Wolf-Dog]

1 minute ago, nli2work said:

yea, there's no animation. just assign the pivots in the internal module config. best bet is open up the stock navball for reference.

Given that, should I define the whole thing as a prop or do it within the internals config? Does it matter? What I've read suggests it doesn't.

[nli2work]

it would have to be a PROP {} to use Internal Modules unfortunately. can't mix Part Modules and Internal Modules.