Josh wrote, > Jim Wilson wrote: > >>From: Josh Babcock > >> > >>Melchior, (or anybody else) > >> > >>It seems that the material animation nullifies the alpha channel of .rgb > >>files mapped to the objects being animated. Here is an example. The > >>objects face and ball both have alpha channels which go away when this > >>animation is commented back in. Since I stole this from the mustang, you > >>should be able to see the problem there as well (though the original > >>ball is a solid object, not an alpha-mapped card). Example is attached. > >> > > > > > > If that is true, I may have fixed that locally. In any case, Melchior's > response is correct. > > > > The solution probably is not documented this way, but you can avoid > these problems completely by defining "groups" as the first animation > entries. > > > > Take a look at David Megginson's example work in pa28-161/Models/pa28- > 161.xml. The first couple entries are animation groups with no defined > types. They are named for the purpose of doing a manual "alpha sort" (see > the "PanelAlphaOrderGroup" animation entry). > > > > I believe that the same technique could be used for actual rotate, > translate or texture animations. > > > > Predefine all the groupings as the first "animation" entries with a name > but no type. Omit the type, and no call back will be linked. Further > down in the xml code, you can set the real animations up in whatever order > works best for you, referencing the predefined groups by name with a > single "object-name" tag per animation. Nothing gets merged (again) > because all the merging was done when the groups were predefined. The > only thing you'll have to remember is to put your larger groups first if > there are single objects appearing in multiple levels of grouping (not a > common requirement, but can happen). > > > > Best, > > > > Jim > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Flightgear-devel mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel > > 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d > > > > Well, embarrassingly this has become a moot point. After I fixed it > using the above techniques, I realized that that wasn't even the > behavior that I wanted. I'm pretty sure looking at pictures of surplus > instruments that these weren't illuminated, but rather used radium. If > that's the case, I should be able to do this with no animation at all, > and just have the faces and needles emissive all the time. >
It can be done quite simply - just look at any Hurricane instrument. The ordering of the elements in the .ac file is important, or as Jim said it can be done with an <animation></animation> tag. Sometimes you can get away with just one <material></material> tag, and sometimes you will need more. In addition to instrument lighting, the Hurricane also has 'floodlighting' of the panels and some 'stray' lighting around bits of the cockpit. Not real of course, just a tad of emission as required. This ordering thing is something we aircraft designers just have to get our heads around - there's no easy way, and when it comes to transparency ... HTH V. _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
