HVA Animating

[Nmenth 291]

Like many modders, I use the Hind in mods. That's great and all but when it stops moving, the rotors stop spinning. That's okay if it's a transport but if it's an attack heli, it looks weird in midair with still rotors.

 

If you add these tags to your helicopter:

IsSimpleDeployer=no

UnloadingClass=dummy

DeployFire=no

DeployToLand=yes

 

the rotors will continue to spin even when it's not moving.

 

Please note, you need all four tags even though 2 are set to no.

 

This requires Yuri's Revenge as the [YR] tag states. You do not have the DeployToLand tag in standard Red Alert 2.

Hmm, am I missing the obvious? How do you get the blades spinning in the first place?

[Doctor Destiny 41]

You're not modding hard enough.

[Nmenth 291]

Well I looked for any codes on the other helicopters (Nighthawk, Siege) in both rules and art, then I also attached the Rotors=yes and CustomRotor=yes flags variably in the art, but that didn't do anything. I looked at the voxels of the Hind and Shad and noticed a lack of rotor frames on Hind, but I don't know what that implies. I tried to find "Hind" and "rotors" on ModEnc, but it was no help. I considered making a spinning turret, but I'm not sure how well that would work, or if it'd even look good. I added your codes posted here too, but obviously they aren't going to be doing anything until the rotors are spinning in the first place. I'm not sure what else I can try...

 

Do I have to edit the voxel itself, or is this just a matter of code?

[Doctor Destiny 41]

The Hind in the game needs an animated HVA, something which it lacks. All helicopters, and any animated voxel for that matter, has an animated HVA. You'll need a fixed Hind graphic or one from the web (Lefthand's Neohind is pretty good), or you animate the HVA yourself.

 

Rotating turrets for blades is a dodgy hack for RA2, something you don't need for YR. And it screws with your FLH settings, which is bad.

 

Rotors and CustomRotors are residual from Red Alert and have absolutely no effect in RA2.

[Nmenth 291]

You'll need a fixed Hind graphic or one from the web (Lefthand's Neohind is pretty good), or you animate the HVA yourself.

Well that's annoying. I don't use other people's work and I'm not into editing HVA/voxels yet.

[Doctor Destiny 41]

http://editing-source.net/pages/tutorials/...vaanimation101/

Should help. MadHQ is always good at this kind of thing.

[Nmenth 291]

It says to use HVA Editor, I downloaded HVA Builder from PPM (a while back), but apparently Editor ≠ Builder as the instructions do not match. Where do I get the HVA Editor that the tutorial uses?

[Nmenth 291]

Despite having a program that doesn't match the instructions, I was able to figure out how to duplicate the steps. Now my new Hind appears in the game... except although everything worked fine in the editor preview, the rotor is missing in the game and the helicopter body spins instead. I didn't even touch the body while animating the voxel! I have no idea what I did wrong, as in the editor, everything looks correct and it's hard to fix something that isn't broken...

[Doctor Destiny 41]

You must have edited the wrong section then.

[Nmenth 291]

Frame 1 and frame 2:

 

I see nothing wrong here.

[Doctor Destiny 41]

It can still right in the Builder but be wrong in-game.

[Nmenth 291]

Then how do I rectify that?

[Doctor Destiny 41]

I have no idea. I'm not a graphics man. Does the voxel have sections?

[Nmenth 291]

Yes, the body and rotor are separate sections.

 

Creating voxels seems rather simple from what I've seen, if I could just figure out the basics here, I think I could start rolling out new units.

 

Update:

I made a new voxel, which is also a helicopter, but it works fine! I don't get it... I did almost nothing differently. Maybe almost isn't good enough... I will have to redo the Hind and see if the very tiny differences are what mattered...

[Doctor Destiny 41]

I know Blade fixed it a long time ago without any issues. Really sounds like you accidentally did the wrong section. Then again, the Hind is a piece of **** anyway.

[Nmenth 291]

Then again, the Hind is a piece of **** anyway.

After redesigning the Apache, I really noticed how ugly the Hind was. It also doesn't look bulky enough for a transport helicopter. I'll probably just start over from the beginning and remodel the thing like I did with the Apache (which works).

 

 

Now I am more confused, I extracted the Nighthawk and Siege Chopper to see how they worked, and saw that they have no animations... so how do their rotors turn?

(Edit: never mind, I forgot to extract the HVAs too...)

[Nmenth 291]

This is getting to be quite annoying... I made a new unit and animated the exact same way as my functioning Apache, and it does the spinning thing again.

 

Their Art codes are identical, I tested them both using the Nighthawk with swapped image, and I used the same method to animate the rotors in the HVA Builder.

 

Apache always works, other helicopters don't...

 

There is nothing left I can think of that is different between the two objects except for the voxels' appearances themselves.

 

I'm not a graphics man.

Who might be an active voxel pro in the community that would understand this stuff?