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Old 29th September 2008, 07:24 PM   #1
Stiglr
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Default X-Plane Animation plug-in QUESTION

I just discovered the great new plug in that allows at least a small level of animation support in AC3D for the X-plane system.

A nice video tutorial was published for it as well, early this year.

I have a question, though:

Does the interface provide information for the yellow hinge angle of a rotation? In other words, if I have a hinge point identified (via two vertices in space someplace) how can I discover the angle off of that line from "straight" or "zero" X, Y, or Z from either of the points?

Similar to the distance readouts you can see when you are dragging an item about with the move command, or similar to the 3D location you get when you click on any one vertice, is there anything like this in the rotation animation plug in that provides this information?

In addition to building and timing and previewing animations, I need to know the angle of the yellow "hinge line" in order to position the part properly in my simulation application, Targetware.

If this tool does this, I'll be happier than a pig in slop!!!! If it doesn't, I'd like to make a very humble plea to perhaps incorporate this in any later builds...
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Old 30th September 2008, 04:14 AM   #2
Andy
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Default Re: X-Plane Animation plug-in QUESTION

The custom axis (press 'c' on the axis-rotate panel) can be shown but this is a vector - may or may not be useful for you.

http://www.inivis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4937

Not sure about the X-Plane plugin - it's so comprehensive that it might do what you want - anyone?
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Old 30th September 2008, 02:42 PM   #3
Stiglr
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Default Re: X-Plane Animation plug-in QUESTION

I've done the edit, but I'm not sure I'm getting the right results (or what I'm expecting to see).

For example, I have an aileron on an aircraft.



It's on a wing with a 5 degree dihedral (so this is known, and confirmed by actually rotating the part "flat" in AC3D from the vertice). But, if I select two leading top edges of the aileron (to use as the "hinge"), click Set axis, then cut and paste the results into a Notepad, I get:


0.995928 0.00242298 -0.0901201 (I'm assuming this is in X,Y,Z order)

None of these values is anywhere near 5 degrees (presumably this should be in the Y (nose to tail axis). The first value is basically one degree, the others are very close to "straight", as is indicated by the position of the part.

Also, when I click the Set Axis button, the message I get at the bottom of the screen is "Got axis from vertices OK". I'd much rather just see the numeric values... does this mean I don't want to use the code snippet for "copy and paste" onto the clipboard? What I'd like in the end is to see the values when I hit the Set Axis button, and then be able to copy-and-paste the results into a different application or a Wordpad document.
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