Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: 8thJinx on December 08, 2017, 09:45:12 AM
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Has anyone animated a custom object exploding before? Not the shell burst or weapons effect, but the object transforming from intact to blown up.
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Requires a dead shape flag on the object nodes you wish to display.
In the object editor load your object, then click the edit tree button.
Choose the dead shape object node and click edit.
Check the Dead shape check box.
This makes the object hide when the shape is alive and displayed when the shape is destroyed.
Export it for example of how to set directly in AC3d.
HITech
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Thanks!
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Yeah, get on that gents! Those dang Yank aircraft at Pearl Harbor on the ground did't blow up when my Zeke gave them a peppering!
Was commenting that ground objects like the aircraft are an awesome immersion addition. Now, if they only blew up! :)
Love seeing your progression Jinx!, Keep up the good work so we all can enjoy!
(is it possible to spawn into one of those "objects" as if that air-frame was usable? Just a wild dream idea, but wouldn't it be amazing for the scenario if when you spawned in, it was into a parked aircraft and you took that 1 air-frame and it was no longer usable behind you... Probably a coding nightmare, but imagine the action/excitement! of "jumping into the action" from static parking locations on an airfield... Suddenly air-frames become limited (in context of limited time frame scenario) such that, if all the "parked" aircraft are blown up, no taking off from that "area" because no air-frames exist at that location....after they're gone, normal spawning from an approved base is the fall back) Weird wish rant over... sry for hijaking.
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FYI all, I spoke to Hitech, and I now have a real good read on what can/can't be done. I have a path forward!
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(https://s33.postimg.org/fgr02og4v/counting.png) (https://postimages.org/)
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(https://media.tenor.co/images/ce5996d5b78e4e3df4bf0e89d23e6978/tenor.gif)
I have a path forward!
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(https://i.imgur.com/fbatCvH.gif)
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technically still forward progress :rofl
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:rofl
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:rofl You guys crack me up sometimes.
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Yeah, get on that gents! Those dang Yank aircraft at Pearl Harbor on the ground did't blow up when my Zeke gave them a peppering!
Was commenting that ground objects like the aircraft are an awesome immersion addition. Now, if they only blew up! :)
There is a way to simulate it blowing up and burning. It will take some work, but you could make a copy of the plane object, make it destructible with a hardness, give it a "dead" skin (all blackened and such), and then park an ammo bunker under the surface of the plane and make it really soft. That way when you strafe it, the bunker goes up and starts burning, and at the same time the plane turns into a blackened hulk. I did that to a building in a test terrain and it worked (although I haven't strafed it yet - all I did was 'destroy' the objects from the clipboard). I also think there's a way to get it to burn without using a bunker but I haven't got that far yet.
One thing you can't do is animate the polygons that make up a whole object.
I'm working on a bridge where the bulk of the structure is not destructible. But partway over the bridge there's another object, a decking span, that I want to make destructible. So you hit the span with HE or drop a bomb on it, and the skin changes from the 'live' wooden decking with smooth bump map, to a 'dead' span with a see-through skin (making it invisible), and an extreme bump texture that you can't drive over. It's a long process, but it's all been done before on different objects in the main arena.
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coudnt you use the rubble from town objects to make the destroyed deck?
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Sure, but I don't know how to associate the rubble pile with the deck changing to 'dead'.
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In the object editor load your object, then click the edit tree button.
Choose the dead shape object node and click edit.
Check the Dead shape check box.
This makes the object hide when the shape is alive and displayed when the shape is destroyed.
Export it for example of how to set directly in AC3d.
HITech
Hitech, what makes the rubble pile appear?
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You can include any dead shape you like in the object, but just like the live object, you need to create it the same way unless you find one you can use instead. Like Hitech said, you need to set the dead flag.
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You can include any dead shape you like in the object, but just like the live object, you need to create it the same way unless you find one you can use instead. Like Hitech said, you need to set the dead flag.
Understood. In AC3D, every object clearly has a live shape and dead shape baked into the wireframes, with live bitmaps and dead bitmaps. And the dead flags are in the object hierarchies. Totally understand it.
Here's what else I've learned today:
1. If you place an object (such as a town building) in your terrain from the terrain editor, and change the Object Type to "Bunk Fuel", and give it a down time, point value of 1, and hardness of 1, then when it gets destroyed in the game, the building goes to its dead shape and not only burns, but the rubble pile appears.
2. If you place the town building in the terrain and change the Object Type to "Void", leave the downtime, point value, and hardness all -1, nothing happens to it and you can't destroy it.
3. If you place the town building in your terrain from the terrain editor, and change the Object Type to "Void", and give it a down time, point value of 1, and hardness of 1, then when it gets destroyed in the game, the building goes to its dead shape and the rubble pile appears, and you get the "Structure destroyed" message.
4. If you place the town building in your terrain from the terrain editor, and change the Object Type to "Structure", and give it a down time, point value of 1, and hardness of 1, then when it gets destroyed in the game, the building goes to its dead shape and the rubble pile appears, and you get the "Non-strat Structure destroyed" message.
5. If you place a vehicle or plane in the terrain and change the Object Type to "Bunk Fuel", then when it gets destroyed, the plane blows up and disappears, and the spot where it was burns.
6. If you place the town building in your terrain from the terrain editor, and change the Object Type to "Group Master", and give it a down time, point value of 1, and hardness of 1, then when it gets destroyed in the game, the building goes to both its dead and live shapes, and no rubble pile appears.
So I think somehow the game itself knows when to add a rubble pile, and how big it should be. There don't appear to be any flags in the Terrain Editor that signal when a rubble pile should or should not appear.
Also, it should be pretty easy to create a tank or vehicle object, with live and dead shapes and bitmaps, place it in the terrain, and when it gets destroyed it will both burn and go to a dead bitmap. This will be very handy in SEA and AvA terrains, for things like rail yard strafing and armored column strafing and bombing.
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Hitech, what makes the rubble pile appear?
Ruble is done the same way as all dead live stuff. It's a node tagged as dead. With rubble we typicallyhave an "External" node I.E. A node that loads another mesh/shape.
If you export the fub4 shape look at the g1 node (tagged as dead) followed by an extern node dbrs100
HiTech
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I see it! Thanks! But in the export file it shows it as "ExtObj5".
I understand now. The references to the different debris piles are tagged differently than the actual debris pile file names, but I can see how it works.