Walking, Flying, Custom Replica T-Rex Mech[.23.5]

[VR_Dev]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/76334-Joined-Parts-in-Blender-Animation-Question?p=1087212#post1087212

Post regarding my current animation dilemma

[VR_Dev]

Animation vid coming soon hopefully. It's super close. I will now be able to animate all the parts and it shouldn't take very long. The head involved learning everything. Now I'm good to go

[VR_Dev]

Lights!

[VR_Dev]

It's fcking sweet I think. I'll update the main post with whats next. Does anyone know how to have two separate animations in blender?

[stoland]

Geeez. Great progression.

[VR_Dev]

Thanks a lot stoland. The head animation is relatively straight forward. The legs and tail are much more complicated. I explain why in the main post I just updated

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Hi congrats on an excellent project ,If you still need it I have found a way of combining animations in unity,

I use 3ds max so i dont know how easy this would be able to be done in other applications.

I required a cargo deck to elevate but to be able to have a smaller elevating section within it, now i also had thought this wouldnt be possible.

So in preparation i made sure the whole object was sitting correctly in max and unity, then attcked the part with quickslice so that i could isolate sections without disturbing any othe parts .

Then animated the major cargo elevation so in effect the whole object moved as one, then exported that to unity and set it up as you would a normal animation, then because the model was split into essentialy several large parts I could remove the sections I wanted to add extra animations to.

Swapping back to max I deleted the opposite half to that i deleted in unity which gave me access to build the second elevator, Through all this the main parts are never moved so as to keep the relationship, the new animated part is the exported to unity and dropped under the same game object and the alignment checked out.

The trouble seems to be that you need a unique animation name for each animation and unity wont let you rename them, so to get round this using the FBX exporter you can choose scene name for the animation, of course as you want this name ultimately for your config it pays to make it a simple short name

After exporting to KSP and deciding which plugin would let me do what i want and unsuprisingly it turned out to be the Firespitter ones that work perfectly.

So i now have animations named deckdown and elev down that are operated individually no matter what the other animation is doing.

There does appear to be an occasional gremlin in the fact that very rarely swapping back and fwds between local vessels will bring the lag Kraken to the multi animation, I've seen bug this mentioned elsewhere with multi anims, in porkworks flat hab thread i think, anyway hope this has been some help and i've made some sense and good luck with the development

Edited April 14, 2014 by SpannerMonkey(smce)
typos

[VR_Dev]

smce, I really really appreciate the detailed explanation. I'm spending way to much time on this thing because I want to see it done so badely. So thanks a lot for taking the time to type that out.

That seems like a pretty genius way to do it. And I will defiently give that a try after the way I'm trying it now. I'm at work so I can't post the thread I've been using but appartenly in blender there is a way to add an additional, seperate keyframe timeline to a part. I worked on it briefly this morning to no avail. So if anyone knows anything about that, it would be incredibly useful to me.

From my experiece you can name animations in unity. Under the animation tab my part says "Default Take" is the name of the animation, as that is what blender called it automatically. If you change that to what you want, hit enter, then apply the animation name is whatever you want. "Open mouth" is what my head's animation is called.

[VR_Dev]

Well I finally got the damn nodes figured out. All the parts attach via correctly placed nodes now so it no longer explodes on launch. I also animated the hip joint to rotate and tilt up and down. Next is finishing the leg then the tail. I still have to figure out separate animations for one part for the tail, so if you know how to do that in blender please let me know.

I don't really have any time to work on this today. So if someone wants to be super helpful you could download the IR plugin source code here, pop it open, and try and find what the name of the animations are for the parts. Somewhere in there it must call "open" or "move" or "default take". Or something like that. If I could name my animations the same thing the IR plugin could control my parts, which would be super helpful, at least for testing.

Edited April 15, 2014 by clown_baby

[m1sz]

very nice job clown_baby!

[VR_Dev]

Thanks as always man. Don't quote me but it should be standing on its own tonight, with animated parts. Tail opens but doesn't move back and forth yet.

[VR_Dev]

Almost there. Real world stuff to do now. Then mirror each piece, texture it, reverse the nodes, and it'll stand. Then its all programing from there. Oh also the arms. And I wont lie, the frame rate is pretty average. Kerbal runs pretty average on my macbook though. If I turn down the graphics it just works fine. I'll probably release a fully detailed and low detailed crafts

[mordin86]

I'm not into mechs but wow, this thing looks really cool! Mechagodzilla in KSP - cool idea

[sirkut]

Hey IR plugin doesn't manipulate animations it manipulates the actual mesh contained in the model. Most IR parts contain two meshes. One is fixed and the other is the one that will move. In each cfg there is a line that specifies the mesh (I think it's fixedMesh, haven't looked in a while) and you use the name you give it in your modeling software or via unity for that mesh.

[VR_Dev]

Awesome! thats huge. I figured the fixed mesh part out. All of my parts have fixed meshes that are the parents to the rest of the meshes. I'm working on the animations now. If you turn off the limits of the IR hinges and it just spins continuously. I'm trying to make my parts like that. It's the only way to have two directions and a center position.

I'm giving them 360 degrees of rotation and looping them. The problem is I can't get it perfectly fluid when going from the 360th degree back to 1. But it's a start. I'm gonna try and program it now with the new info you just gave me.

Seriously man, thanks a lot. And I'm glad your jazzed mordin. I think it's turning out great

Edited April 16, 2014 by clown_baby

[VR_Dev]

Well, two things. Sirkut was right. Giving the .cfg of my part the fixed mesh of my part does move the part, and I can set the limits and what not. But it simply pivots the whole part at the mesh, it doesn't activate my animation. It's not good. Controlling those parts is gonna be way harder now.

Also, I'd show you guys it standing but now the nodes don't attach at the hip anymore. I know the nodes are programed right at x = -1, because the part snaps into place. When the node isn't pointed in the right direction it wont snap into place. It's a problem we've all had when the part is in place but wont turn green. You can usually fix it by messing with the camera angle, but it won't turn green at any angle. I hadn't changed anything from the pics up top, and it attached just fine there.

I can probably figure that out, but this robotics thing isn't good

[sirkut]

Not sure what your expectations are but like I said it doesn't handle animations. I would look into snjo's firespitter animation plugin to see if there is some help with that.

[VR_Dev]

Yeahh I thought fixed mesh just referred to the part of the animation that was the base, and that the animation operated in reference to that. But that was my uneducated guess. I'm digging through firespitter now. All I need is a plugin that runs my animation with limit and speed variables. And what would be ideal is variables that can be changed in flight. I know that's a steep request but the B9 vtol changes can change it's limits mid flight. Really I just need someone who's better in C3 than me.

I'm just pondering my options before moving forward. I really owe you sirkut for helping realize that wouldn't work before I got too far

[VR_Dev]

I updated the main post. Really all it says is I need code that can reverse the animation after a set amount of time, and also return the animations to their starting postions as they will spin continuesly unless told to stop. I'm looking into loops for the timing

Edited April 17, 2014 by clown_baby

[Parallax]

why don't you make all the joints separately and use stock ir servos for motion control? you could set it up so when the parts are mated, the servos are hidden.

I found when I built my walkers that very subtle changes in things like cog and the locations for all the toe/ground contact points can make big changes in how the craft behaves. if your parts can only be put together in one way, you will have a hard time getting the balance just right.

[VR_Dev]

Boom homies. This one has all my animations. Parallax you're right, it'll probably have to be IR parts. But someone hit me up if you wanna take a crack at this

The foot supports will lower at some point

Edited April 18, 2014 by clown_baby

[VR_Dev]

The lighting is poor, but my computer blows. Hit me up if you wanna try programing it, I'll send it to you

Edited April 18, 2014 by clown_baby

[locustgate]

GREAT FLYING TREXS BATMAN! Awesome and damn that brings back a lot of memories.

[VR_Dev]

I need to design rockets into the sythes and feet. Does anyone know a where a good explanation of engine design and animation can be found? I'm on the hunt while at work, but nothing I find deals with rocket animation.

Edit: In some of the stickies it talks about thrust transform and the exhaust code. But nothing on how to get the parts to change. Like how the basic engine changes color as it heats up

Edited April 18, 2014 by clown_baby

[VR_Dev]

The sythe arm is proving to be a real btch. It's slow going. I need to learn how to use the particle emitter, but like a lot of things, there's not much material explaining it