Gmax Animation, IE; Oleo Struts

[OleBoy]

To get right to the point, HELP!

My god, the process of animating the Oleo Struts is a tedious affair. I would have never thought this would have be so difficult.
I have the strut animation keyed (started at) 100 (full extension) and 200 (full compression) That part works great!
When I try to animate the scissor links they don't appear to want to work as I thought. I tried a (extended) key at 100 and a compression key at 200 while moving the links as needed. Hmm, not working. The links are a slower speed and not aligned. Or one is out of sync. So I tried a rotation key at the start of each link, then a position key at points between. That's not working either. I've been messing with this on/off throughout the day. I just can't figure it out.

Oh Gurus of the know, enlighten me!:isadizzy:

 

[N2056]

Have you tried starting at keyframe zero? Nothing happens from 0-100, then you have your animation from 100-200. Assign the animation with keyframes 0-200.

 

[OleBoy]

I didn't until you just mentioned it. I never even considered it actually. After starting at key frame 0 and going through the cycle, all worked like it should after reaching key frame 100. From 0-99 the bottom link moved and opened downward before I got anywhere close to 100. So, not knowing if this is right or not, I grabbed keyframe 0 and slid it to 100. That closed the gap and eliminated the animation prior to 100. Once I did this the animation works as it should. No idea if what I did by moving 0 to 100 is the correct thing to have done. Is it?

 

[hairyspin]

Yes! It's always worked for me.

 

[Dev One]

Yes! Me too. I find I have to do that type of move also if one has say a gated lever with a side movement as well as a rotary one.
Keith

 

[OleBoy]

Thanks for the response Tom, Kieth. And Robert for clearing things up. This stuff can be a headache.

I finally got the animation to work correctly. In sim the static compression, max static compression and animation all work great for the left side.
The right side however, is not. And I'm at a loss as to why because the animation routine is identical to the left side.

In sim, and when the gear is off the ground, all looks as it should and linked. It's only when the gear is in a compression state that it looks broken.
I went and checked everything to make sure there wasn't a stray animation key anywhere that could be causing this, but there's nothing I can find.
In the PARAMS for the left gear I have position/rotation to Linear. The settings are identical on the right.

I had a look in the aircraft.cfg settings to see if the conflict might be there. I didn't notice anything out of sync.
You'll have to excuse the looks of the aircraft.cfg file for being (not in columns) wonky.

[contact_points]
//CLASS = [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
Fore/Aft L/R Up/Down
point.0= 1.000, -16.500, 0.000, -0.775, 1200.000, 0.000, 0.238, 90.000, 0.200, 2.500, 0.800, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000 //Tail Wheel
point.1= 1.000, 1.000, -3.500, -4.530, 1600.000, 1.000, 0.728, 0.000, 0.300, 2.500, 0.700, 0.000, 0.000, 2.000, 0.000, 0.000 //Main Gear Left
point.2= 1.000, 1.000, 3.500, -4.530, 1600.000, 2.000, 0.728, 0.000, 0.300, 2.500, 0.700, 0.000, 0.000, 3.000, 0.000, 0.000 //Main Gear Right
point.3= 2.000, -1.000, -17.700, 1.800, 800.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 5.000, 0.000, 0.000
point.4= 2.000, -1.000, 17.700, 1.800, 800.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 6.000, 0.000, 0.000
point.5= 2.000, -14.400, 0.000, 4.500, 800.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 9.000, 0.000, 0.000
point.6= 2.000, 5.400, 0.000, -2.200, 800.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 0.000, 4.000, 0.000, 0.000


If there's anything that comes to mind I might check, I could use some help.

Update I took a break for awhile and closed Gmax. I came back a bit later and fired Gmax up again to evaluate the problem some more. I ran the animation slider to view the gear. Previously when I ran the animation the gear appeared to be animated and in sync. This time when I ran the animation, neither of the links were animated. Weird. Another Gmax bug. I ran through animating all the parts again, tagged it to r_gear and exported it. Would you believe (Of course you would. It's Gmax. Expect bugs!!) it works flawlessly like the left side.

Finally this phase of the animations is good to go.

Thanks for the help everyone!!:salute:

 

[N2056]

The gear animation code works like this...0-100 is the retraction/extension motion, and 100-200 is the suspension motion.