[captain_bazza]

Does OR allow that? I have not kept apace with OR developments. I use(d) the original MSTS utilities and they were anti-modeler at times. Sometimes MSTS allowed you to get away with things, other times it bit back, like a tiger shark.

Cheers Bazza.

[RTP]

Dear captain:
Excuse me but
What is MSTS?

Regards.

[BenDragon1337]

MSTS stands for Microsoft Train Simulator.

RTP, on 14 November 2017 - 04:34 PM, said:

I disagree.
For instance, the upper arm of a pantograph moves and rotates simultaneously.
In my experience, three frames animates a door with correct speed, but six allows for a panto, with some overshoot, like the real ones.

Regards.

I think what captain is referring to, is something that moves along a linear & rotational path which has a start & end position & rotation (Such as pantograph & door animations) compared to something that rotates infinitely (Such as a locomotive wheel & valve gear).

I think I should really just experiment with animations, see what I come up with, thank you.

[Csantucci]

RTP is right. No problem in rotating and translating an animation at the same time, and also the transition time for pantos and doors can be controlled.

[captain_bazza]

The pantograph components actually rotate about an axis point, but in this case it is a partial rotation of x°, not a 360° rotation, such as with driver wheels.

The limited panto' parts rotate just far enough to raise the panto' up and down. The direction of the panto' is in the same plane, but act of rotation is like a scissor lift's when it raises and lowers a platform in a "unfolding/folding" motion.

It maybe possible to add a "jiggle" to the animation at the max' height, because I've not seen anything in writing regarding the max' number of frames for the panto' type of animation sequence.

Cheers Bazza.

[RTP]

A max number of frames can be 16, but that is not sure.

Regards.

[captain_bazza]

On reflection, the "jiggle" factor might have something to do with tension on the panto' unit caused by the tensioning springs you see at the base of the four arms, more detailed on some good quality electric locos an EMU models. The springs tension the panto' crosshead pickup bar against the power cable and cantenary support structure.

The release of physical energy while raising the heavy panto' unit, and the sudden stop, would expend some energy back to the spring tensioners, hence the apparent "bounce" effect.

CB.

[Eldorado.Railroad]

RTP, on 15 November 2017 - 05:44 PM, said:

A max number of frames can be 16, but that is not sure.

A bit more than that:
Are we ready yet? Animating things independent of locomotive movement

[ErickC]

captain_bazza, on 13 November 2017 - 07:49 PM, said:

There is a method to control the speed to make the sequence playback slower by an edit in the ENG file, however, it sets the playback speed for every animated part in the ENG file.

Cheers Bazza.

Would you mind elaborating? OR has a nasty bug where the doors and wipers in the cab have to cycle through the entire number of keyframes, but the only way to get smooth brake lever animations is to use a lot of frames, which means that, if you use 100 frames, for example, a single cycle of the door or wipers takes about a minute and a half (100 seconds). If I could just specify a 100-frame cycle for doors and wipers, then speed the cycle up, that would solve the problem nicely.

[captain_bazza]

"....slower by an edit in the ENG file...."

Sorry, my mistake, I meant the S (SHAPE) file.

However, I always manually processed the .3DS (model format) file to uncompressed .S file. An uncompressed .S is in unicode text, thus can be edited in a suitable unicode capable text edit, such as conTXT Editor.

The animation section is the last section of the shape file.

An uncompressed unicode text shape file will work okay in MSTS and used to in OR (still does?). This is useful for testing in the sim.

You must be very careful when working at editing the shape file, so keep a spare original copy away from your work folder.

Another however, some exporters from program format to shape format might automatically produce a compressed binary shape file, unless there is the option to export in uncompressed format........