Using Aircraft Animator MANUAL EDITING
| Aircraft Animator is not only simple to use, it's very powerful.
When you choose Manual Editing, Aircraft Animator builds a 3D wire frame model of your aircraft directly from the aircraft's *.mdl file. Neither the AF99 nor Flight Shop files are required to manually edit the defined parts.
The example to the right depicts an F11F jet fighter. Notice that the screen is divided into two:
Click on the + next to Flaps. AA has determined that the flaps of this aircraft is composed of four parts: #11, #12, #19 and #20. These numbers are arbitrarily chosen by AA and have no further significance.
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| INTERACTIVE CURSOR | ||
Click on one of the parts e.g. #19. Immediately, the corresponding flap in the wireframe appears highlighted in white. The Interactive Cursor is used to make manual adjustments to the animated control surfaces. We'll see how it works shortly. |
|  By leaving the Interactive Cursor in the default position (illustrated to the left), the animated flaps appear as the above. Of course we won't want to have "droopy flaps", so we'll have to adjust this manually. Read on. |
| A CLOSER LOOK
From the illustration to the right you can see that the Interactive Cursor is a solid line with three handles. The line itself represents the axis of rotation and should be position so as to pass through the edge of the "hinged" control surface.
The center handle lets you move the Interactive Cursor without changing its orientation. The two outer handles (top and bottom) let you change the orientation. The arrows show the rotation direction. The visual "length" of the line has no effect on the animation. For convenience, you may lengthen the line slightly longer than the animated part so that the arrows and handles do not obscure it.
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| MAKING THE ADJUSTMENTS
To fix the "droopy flaps" of the F11F, grab the center handle of the Interactive Cursor and drag it to the center of the flap "hinge area".
Next, grab one of the outer handles (top or bottom) and change the orientation of the Interactive Cursor. Align it along the edge of the hinge area.
Repeat this procedure for all of the parts which make up the Flaps i.e. #11, #12 and #20.
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| CHECKING THE RESULTS
Now you can check your work interactively! You'll want to change to a Front view (F4 key or View | Front from menu) so that you can more easily see the animation.
Then simply press the F12 key to see the flaps in action. If you notice that the part doesn't move quite right, make the corrections and press F12 again.
You'll see that Aircraft Animator's visual feedback saves you a tremendous amount of time.
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| SAVE YOUR ANIMATION
When you're all done, choose File | Save and then exit AA.
Now start Flight Simulator (or Combat Flight Simulator) and choose the F11F aircraft to see the actual results of your work. Here's a snapshot of the Tiger with the flaps down. We've cured the "droopy flaps". Looks pretty good, doesn't it?
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| GET READY, GET SET, ANIMATE......
This is only a quick lesson in using Aircraft Animator.
We've found that the best way to learn to use Aircraft Animator, is by using it. And since Trial Mode is FREE, what have you got to lose? Download and Install it now and start animating!
To find out more, read the Aircraft Animator User's Guide - hold the Shift-key while clicking on the red link. If you don't already have Acrobat Reader (required to view the User's Guide), you can download a free copy from the Adobe website
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