Atomic Systems

Of course, I didn't realise. Thats a shame, hopefully the program will be available before then...

Either way I'm sure people won't mind. IMHO Its no big deal to not have it slip.

Ant

karma99 wrote:Hmm, that's actually a MAJOR problem.
As said previously, due to the Blender exporter limitations I've had to animate all the parts seperately. I need to be able to do 1 animation with all 3 wheel sets, the rods and the lubricator but that's impossible until Henning comes through with a decent exporter.

Ah the joys of RS-RW animation with Blender

karma99 wrote: I'd even take hacking the ban files together myself by hand, however they seem to be the one type of file that serz.exe chokes on and you can't convert and fiddle with. MOST annoying

I use a hex editor for the ban/ia files. Henning's ia analyser can provide you with the information on the file structure, with the relevant offsets to the various bits for any particular file.

As a simple heads up, the file starts with a header containing the object references, there's a byte which contains the frame rate, which can be used to control the speed of animation, and a byte which contains the number of frames. The frame data is contained in two sections at the end of the file, first is the set of positions, then the set of rotations. I'm afraid the data is represented as quaternions, which are apparantly easy for computers and maths geeks to use, but incomprehensible for a simpleton like me. Luckly you can find euler to quaternion converters on the net.

Dave B

ps
How are you finding the continuous wheel rotation performance? No matter what I tried when animating fans I couldn't stop the rotation from "pausing" at the end of each rotation.

karma99 wrote:I've started to build a Q1
So far, we have some rather complicated wheels...

25th November. 10 days ago.

Wow.

davveb wrote:
I use a hex editor for the ban/ia files. Henning's ia analyser can provide you with the information on the file structure, with the relevant offsets to the various bits for any particular file.

As a simple heads up, the file starts with a header containing the object references, there's a byte which contains the frame rate, which can be used to control the speed of animation, and a byte which contains the number of frames. The frame data is contained in two sections at the end of the file, first is the set of positions, then the set of rotations. I'm afraid the data is represented as quaternions, which are apparantly easy for computers and maths geeks to use, but incomprehensible for a simpleton like me. Luckly you can find euler to quaternion converters on the net.

Dave B

ps
How are you finding the continuous wheel rotation performance? No matter what I tried when animating fans I couldn't stop the rotation from "pausing" at the end of each rotation.

Hi Dave
Well had a look inside an ia file but to be honest it's just total gibberish to me. Ascii characters a plenty but nothing that makes much sense. I don't even need to mess with quaternions, I have all the values, I just need to combine 4 animations into 1 file. But I think it's going to be beyond me unfortunately.
I haven't come across the wheel jump issue, however I've got the wheels set up using the model object system rather than an animation so RS/RW does the rotation. The 2nd fake bogey contains the animations for the 4 other parts. However, none of those jump at all.
I did them all with 360 frames, starting at 1 making a 1/36 adjustment (multipled by 10 for rotations to fix the OTHER major ia export bug!) then juming to 10 frames so ending back at the start position on frame 361, however I only export frames 1 to 360. Maybe that would fix the jumping?

Thanks for the help anyway, I fear I am going to have to wait on Henning to do this right. It works for now, but it's not ideal.

Pete, that's astonishing in such a short time

I've a soft spot for the Q1's -- I always liked their simplicity and that they looked different.

I like the 'Austerity' locos for much the same reason

Rik.

Hi Pete

Looking absolutely fantastic I love rugged looking engines and their industrial look.

You have a PM mate.

Cheers Sly

The curse of the unwrap... pipes! NOOOOOOOO!

Pete, that is seriously nice work mate. I cant wait to see what it looks like covered in soot.

Pete I am gob smacked I am so looking forward to this

Regards



John

partyspiritz wrote:Pete I am gob smacked I am so looking forward to this

Regards



John

Seconded!

Hi Pete.

With regards to pipework, 3ds Max has a tickbox option that will unwrap your pipes for you as you build them, providing you don't collapse the stack. I'm not sure if Blender has anything similar, but it's worth looking into as it'll save you hours of stress.

@g0fthick
Not something I've come across, but sounds like a great feature. I shall just have to do it the old fashioned way


Now, as Professor Farnsworth would say.. good news everyone!
Sly has been hugely generous and after having me send him my wheels and lubricator he has sent me back the full animation all in 1 neat package. So no more weird body/wheel twisting, no more dodgey fake bogeys messing with the physics, and the wheel slip... oh, the wheel slip!

Hugely indebted to him for offering and taking the time to do it, once again this loco build has felt like a true community effort.

So with that all nicely sorted, it's back to placing pipes and repeatedly reminding myself I should probably start the tender soon

Lubricator details

[/quote]

Just wow!

I most sincerely like this.

Cheers,

Manuel

Mate need to pick my jaw off the floor. there's not much else to say



Regards



John