ModuleDeployableSolarPanel - How to Constrain Pivot?

[Apollo13]

How do I constrain the pivot axis to prevent this situation?

Both the plane of the solar panels and the suncatcher mesh face in the direction of the green line before attempting to track the sun.

The suncatcher mesh is non-rendered. As an experiment, I applied a collision mesh to the suncatcher mesh to determine if that would prevent this. The red-circle is the pivot. There is also a collision mesh that surrounds the vertical truss section; I ensured all face normals faced out.

In this image, the sun is to the left of this position.

My part.cfg file:

MODULE

{

name = ModuleDeployableSolarPanel

animationName = Scene

resourceName = ElectricCharge

sunTracking = true

raycastTransformName = suncatcher

pivotName = pivot

chargeRate = 12

powerCurve

{

key = 206000000000 0 0 0

key = 13599840256 1 0 0

key = 68773560320 0.5 0 0

key = 0 10 0 0

}

}

EDIT: With a special thanks to raidernick for his help. Read the thread to see how he resolved the problem.

Edited September 22, 2014 by Apollo13

[raidernick]

It's not a matter of constraining it. The panel only rotates on one axis, you have the gameobject in unity facing in the wrong direction.

[Apollo13]

I just went into Unity editor. Selected the GameObject, and entered 180 for the Y rotation. i still have the problem. How do I correct this in Unity?

[raidernick]

The panel rotates along the "green" axis in unity. You can't rotate it in unity, when you import the mesh from blender/3dsmax the pivot point has to already be facing in the correct direction. Rotate it in your 3d editor and bake that rotation before importing to unity.

[Apollo13]

thank you. will do. when you say green axis, I assume that is Unity's Y-axis, not the green axis in my image.

Edited September 20, 2014 by Apollo13

[raidernick]

Yes, the fact that unity reverses the axis on import pisses me off so I usually refer to them by color. No idea why it does this.

[Apollo13]

I just went into Blender and rotated the entire part 90 degrees about the Z-axis (Unity's Y-axis). I still have the problem. I'm obviously missing something very basic.

My Blender file

Edited September 20, 2014 by Apollo13

[raidernick]

I fixed it for you. Use "rotate" as the pivot name instead of "pivot" and try this out: https://www./?rbwiq0sr5qbbonl

In blender you can change the transformation orientation to "local" instead of "global" to see the direction the transforms are facing.

Edited September 20, 2014 by raidernick

[Apollo13]

Thank you very much. that worked perfectly. Now, I've got to understand what you did so I can replicate that success.

Also, I've got to work on the collision meshes. When the panel is extended, it doesn't collide, like the stock solar panels do.

Questions:

1) you added an "empty" (rotate). Why?

2) Both the local and global transformation orientations are the same when I select "rotate". How did you do that?

When I switch between local and global on my own models, the arrows change.

How did local versus global allow you to fix this?

3) The "rotate" empty is a child of the panel It is the parent another empty (pivot main) which is the parent of of the pivot. Why these relationships? Why isn't the empty the parent of all?

Edited September 21, 2014 by Apollo13

[raidernick]

1) I added a rotate because you already baked the rotation on pivot to the wrong direction and flipping it would require adjusting the rotation of each child object(the panels) and redoing the entire animation. You don't need to do this if you have it facing the right way from the start.

2) They shouldn't be the same, the rotate transform is rotated 90 degrees relative to the pivot transform.

3) The middle empty pivot object I added was because when I parented rotate to your pivot it screwed up the rotation of the panel, you won't need this if you do it right from the start. All you need is an empty game object as the pivot(facing the correct way) and the child objects being the rest of the panel.

[Apollo13]

All you need is an empty game object as the pivot(facing the correct way) and the child objects being the rest of the panel.

How do I know if an objects pointed the correct direction? How do I ensure I start out right?

By "empty game object" (in terms of Blender), I don't understand.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Apollo13

[raidernick]

Create an "empty" plain axis, set the transformation orientation to local for that object, this will be the pivot. The panel will rotate along the Y axis in blender.

[Apollo13]

OK. I'll give that a try with a test part. Thank you for the information you've provide. I especially appreciate your patience.

Tomorrow, I plan to publish this mod on the Hex Truss thread. The ReadMe.txt file includes a paragraph acknowledging and thanking you for your help.

[Randazzo]

Bit of a necro, but after spending 6 humiliating hours in defeat, the information in this thread paved the way to glorious victory.

Ok, that's dramatic, but it was very helpful.