Help! Can't make a rotating earth in my level

manos40 · Post by **manos40** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:17 pm

I want to make an actor file of the earth to rotate along its axis. It sounds simple but I' m having trouble. The steps I follow are:
1. Add a cube and make it a model
2. Set the origin point at the center of the model
3. Animate the model rotating it 360 degrees using keys every 45 degrees (rotation from the top view)
4. Add a moving platform, set it to move the model
5. Animation runs ok
6. Add a static mesh (the earth’s actor file), position it so that the model is at the center of the earth and attach it to the model
7. Animation runs ok for 45 degrees and then the earth flips upside down and rotates at the opposite direction of the model!!! (The model’s animation is still ok)

Tried different actors (i.e. virgil), different orientations, different positions of the model and the actor, same result. Tried setting just 2 keys (every 180 degrees); actor rotates right for 180 degrees and upside down for the rest 180 degrees. Tried door entity, same results. Tried a sphere template, RF crashes if I set more than 32 vertical or horizontal stripes.

Am I doing something wrong or RF can’t control rotations of actors?
(see also my previous post a couple of weeks ago, still unanswered)

Please help

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:53 pm

I'm sorry about your other post not being answered! You might want to try using scripting to rotate the actor instead of an animation.

Veleran · Post by **Veleran** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:05 am

Last year it happened to me also,when i attached a staticmesh door to an invisible "clip" brush rotating world model.
The staticmesh fliped-you re right.
You want it to be staticmesh for the per face collision?

You can also animate with two bones(by rotating the root bone)
,export it,
build the actor with the rotating motion
and add it to the level as a static entity proxy
then use for the default action of the staticentity,the name of the rotating motion.
It will work with box colision,and wont distort its polys as staticentities ussualy do,
as long as the poly triangles are small(all three vertices of a poly must be on screen otherwise its chopped).
Faces dont have to be too small-but not too big.

Tip:use LOD and make a low-poly "Earth_LOD2" version so the framerate wont take a hit.

I had posted this rotation flipping at the bug reports long ago and it went unnoticed.
Maybe this bug will be looked after now thats is uncovered.

manos40 · Post by **manos40** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 5:33 am

The whole idea is not to use scripts (don’t have the slightest idea what the commands might be) or bone animation. I want to keep things as simple as possible. If anyone can post a simple animated sphere that can be textured with a picture of the earth (I’ m using milkshape) or write a script for rotating an actor file I would be grateful.

[Edit]
I did the animation in Milkshape, everything works ok, but how can you control the animation speed?

jonas · Post by **jonas** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:23 am

You could set up a rotation speed in a script(i know you prolly don't want to)

Code: Select all

RotateToPoint(STAND, YAWSPEED, false, ""); // go to point if any specified

viewtopic.php?t=906
I would look through a script like ^ that has actor rotation in it.

animatrix · Post by **animatrix** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:28 am

In your animation with milkshape just do several anims at dif amounts
of frames per keypoint, a slow rotate, a med rotate and a fast rotate, export it as a bdy and the mot and build it in RFs actor builder, then in game you can use a generic script to call each anim, or trigger it as a normal actor.

manos40 · Post by **manos40** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:19 am

Thanks everybody.
Did the animation in Milkshape and everything worked out right. But it still puzzles me the animation problem in RF. Its not just the rotation, but curved paths in general. If only path points could be rotated things would be much easier.