Forum - Craft Animations - 3d animation tools

Hi, I was just trying out this wonderful plugin, and I was making a couple "firepower"; one for the bullets coming out of the gun and one for the shells. After I got the settings just right and simulated, I rotated the gun a bit. The bullets then follow the rotation of the gun. How could I prevent this from happening so that the shells continue on their original trajectory? Namely without having to manually edit the keys?

A speedy response would be helpful, as my trial is nearly over.

Thanks.

Camaro wrote:Hi, I was just trying out this wonderful plugin, and I was making a couple "firepower"; one for the bullets coming out of the gun and one for the shells. After I got the settings just right and simulated, I rotated the gun a bit. The bullets then follow the rotation of the gun. How could I prevent this from happening so that the shells continue on their original trajectory? Namely without having to manually edit the keys?

A speedy response would be helpful, as my trial is nearly over.

Thanks.

Can you post a screenshot of how you've rigged the gun? I'm talking about the hierarchy. I did a quick test and I'm not getting the problem (unless I misunderstood something). Please watch the attached preview.avi.

Hello Camaro!

I tried manually keyframing the gun and I got the same errors as you did. This is a bug, that we will fix as soon as possible. A temporary workaround can be to parent the gun to a dummy object and rotate the dummy object instead. Hope this helps!

Henrik Hansson wrote:Hello Camaro!

I tried manually keyframing the gun and I got the same errors as you did. This is a bug, that we will fix as soon as possible. A temporary workaround can be to parent the gun to a dummy object and rotate the dummy object instead. Hope this helps!

This explains why I didn't catch the bug, I had Firepower linked to DirectInputLink.

Camaro, please contact either sales@craftanimations.com or support@craftanimations.com if you want an extended trial period.

I tried linking to a dummy via wire parameters and got the same issue.

I will try the DirectInputLink if I can get my trial extended. Hope you guys can resolve the bug. Thanks for your time.

Hi Camaro.

From my understanding you animate the turret/gun that the firepower is linked/parented to after you have fired off bullets with the firepower?
The problem you experience is that the the bullets are parented to the gun and therefore if you move the firepower after it has been used all bullets inherit this movement.
If this is the case you simply need to move the timeslider to just before your first manual keyframe is inserted then hit resimulate.

When you explain this problem I see that the bullets should actually live in world space because it is of course very often that you actually want to do some animation right after the bullets have been shot, eg you mount the gun on a character and then the director comes and wants you to animate the character throwing the gun over his shoulder....
The problem here is that if the bullets are not parented to the gun they will not reside inside the gun before they are fired off.

I'll ticket the issue and I am sure we will incorporate a solution as soon as there is a functionality for it in our animation system (eg we are integrating the ability to animate visibility from within the tools whereby the bullets can be hidden until actually being shot), but meanwhile you will need to do the resimulation for every post animation.
Thanks for notifying us on it!

Btw, congrats on figuring out that firepower can also be used to push out synchronized shells (:

Thank you very much. I'm glad to know that I've contributed to this wonderful plugin. And yes indeed, the shell ejections were quite exciting to make (waaaaay easier than using reactor or PFlow).