Wheel Rod animation jumping

Same for me, it didn’t work. <!– s:( –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt="" title="Sad" /><!– s:( –>

I did quite a bit more study last night. The problem is not isolated to 3DC, Max users get it too sometimes.

The fault is fundamental to rail sim, whatever I do to try and fix it may cause problems elsewhere so I’m afraid I’ll have to give up this quest.

I have learned a lot about rail sim materials so I’ll pass that on shortly.

Hi

have a couple of loco models nearly ready for release but some of the beta testers have comented on the way the wheel rod animation jumps making it look clunky. I used Paul Gausdens Rod animation plugin to do the animation and I have version 7.1.2 installed. Is there anything I can do to sort this? I havent made use of the Train Sim Wizard… just export the IGS and IA from the file menu… and apart from above problem all seems well.

This is a known problem with 3DC. I’ve only seen it on the coupling rod which was linked to one of the wheels.
The only way I have found to overcome it, is to unlink the rod completely from the wheel and then animate it separately by hand.
(Have to say that I haven’t used Pauls rod animator so not sure if this advice is useful.)

Cheers,
Kevin

I reported this to the Rail Simulator guys and got no response. I’ve tested this extensively and am virtualy certain that it is a problem with Rail Simulator. I think that the main problem is with hierarchical animations.

It might be possible for me to transform the animated objects to the model’s root group and export the animation so it isn’t ‘hierarchical’. This is basically an automated way to do what kevm is doing manually.

Richard,
I did send a model, showing the animation ‘problem’, to the Railsimulator people a few weeks ago.

kevin

I had to do the same thing with the Trainz exporter.

I just recalculated all the key frames at root level, then generated 32 key frames with a bit of linear interpolation.

You can’t just convert the standard key frames to root or you will see octagonal movement of the rods around the wheel.

Richard – clsBone, storeAnim function
Max is set to 32, maxT is the number of keyframes present.

I have studied the IA format now and there is definitely a bug in rail sim.

The reason the Kuju models don;t show the bump is that they use animations at 300fps, 3DC exports at 60fps, so the jump is more noticable.

I have produced a small program that takes an IA from 3DC and converts it to 300fps.

I’ve not tested it yet but you’re all welcome to give it a try <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

Just copy the .exe anywhere and run it. Click on the first button to select the .IA file.

For most 3DC files, leave the check box ticked.

If it shows 60fps, click on the second button.

This creates a file xxx.ia.ia which should have a much smoother animation cycle.

Let me know if it works.

Hi Paul

many thanks for this…I’ll try it out as soon as I can but it will be a few days for me so if someone else can try it sooner so much the better.

KR Matt

Hi Paul
I tried and nothing happened. All the same like before.

Regards
Vlado