[JTang]

eolesen, on 12 August 2015 - 10:01 AM, said:

I also don't see this as workable either within the current bounds of the shapefile. Animations have a starting point, and an ending point. Stopping halfway in between isn't feasible. You'd need to have a different animation model that has stops at pre-defined wire heights, and then you'd need some form of definition within the route and/or track section that says which ending stop is used for pans up/poles up.

What some shape creators have done is have different shapes for different wire heights. That seems to be the better bad choice.

It is highly possible if we can compute the highest point from a shape file.

[markus_GE]

Personally, I would think, the calculations of where any part is at any time during lifting and lowering of the pantograph, is already computed (or at least pre-computed), because if the values did not exist somehow (wither computed "life" or when exporting the S file), the pantograph could not be shown in say it´s 60%-up position, even if only for a frame or two.

Assuming that as given, the problem would rather be to determine when to stop the animation.

Important: I´m not a developer. I have minimalist coding knowledge only, and just use logical thinking. But as we all know, logic doesn´t always correspond to reality ;)

Cheers, Markus

[copperpen]

disc, on 12 August 2015 - 10:22 AM, said:

Animations can be stopped/reversed anytime, if it's implemented in the "player". Cab control animations work like that. If parts of a pantograph visible fall apart during the animation, then the animation is simply isn't good enough.

Cab control animations are not the same as an animated pantograph. Cab controls work from a series of small pictures of the control in different positions.

I do not think that it is a case of the animation will "fall apart", more of a case that the animation is made for a set wire height and the parts are made to fit that size. The animation positions and part positions are controlled by the matrix within the shape file. To have a 7.2 metre panto match a 5.2 metre wire height would require some form of manipulation of the shape file on the fly during loading.

[disc]

copperpen, on 12 August 2015 - 12:16 PM, said:

Cab control animations are not the same as an animated pantograph. Cab controls work from a series of small pictures of the control in different positions.

I do not think that it is a case of the animation will "fall apart", more of a case that the animation is made for a set wire height and the parts are made to fit that size. The animation positions and part positions are controlled by the matrix within the shape file. To have a 7.2 metre panto match a 5.2 metre wire height would require some form of manipulation of the shape file on the fly during loading.

3D cab animations are simple shape animations. usually with one start and and ending keyframe, in every game. But actually the wheel animations are the same, those animations are played with variable speed, stopped, reversed according to the movement of the vehicle.
If the animator makes a pantograph animation to 7.2m, the animation just need to be stopped at certain animation time, where the pantograph is at 5.2m, no need for any shape manipulation, just some named marker that indicates the position of the top of the pantograph, a dummy object maybe "PANTO~1 CONTACT" that is placed at the top of the pantograph, and linked with the shape object itself. The next thing is to calculate the animation time where that named object is at the desired height, and play the animation to that time.

Or just a multi keyframe pantograph animation, where the second keyframe is the lowest possible wire height, and the third keyframe is the highest possible. Then all you need is a percentage of the required position between these.

[Kazareh]

eolesen, on 12 August 2015 - 10:01 AM, said:

I also don't see this as workable either within the current bounds of the shapefile. Animations have a starting point, and an ending point. Stopping halfway in between isn't feasible. You'd need to have a different animation model that has stops at pre-defined wire heights, and then you'd need some form of definition within the route and/or track section that says which ending stop is used for pans up/poles up.

What some shape creators have done is have different shapes for different wire heights. That seems to be the better bad choice.

Not true, actually. Do this. Go to any electric locomotive with a panto, and open it in ORTS. Press P to raise the panto/lower it, then midcycle of the anim, press it again. It stops what it's doing and from that point reverses what it did. That alone shows we have more capabilities over the panto animation than we think. If what you said was the case, it would cycle all the way back up/down before doing it in reverse for the next press of the P key.

[vince]

Kazareh, on 12 August 2015 - 06:20 PM, said:

Not true, actually. Do this. Go to any electric locomotive with a panto, and open it in ORTS. Press P to raise the panto/lower it, then midcycle of the anim, press it again. It stops what it's doing and from that point reverses what it did. That alone shows we have more capabilities over the panto animation than we think. If what you said was the case, it would cycle all the way back up/down before doing it in reverse for the next press of the P key.

Yes but from what I understand all panto animations are not equal as Rob Roeterdink indicated in his post today. A possible problem, yes? Well . . . a visual problem at the least. I'd love to see something like this working someday but I'm not pushing for it. Eye candy gets a low priority in my world.
That's the neat thing about Open Rails . . . all it takes is somebody to get interested in panto animation write some code. :clapping:
regards,
vince

[Kazareh]

vince, on 12 August 2015 - 09:25 PM, said:

Yes but from what I understand all panto animations are not equal as Rob Roeterdink indicated in his post today. A possible problem, yes? Well . . . a visual problem at the least. I'd love to see something like this working someday but I'm not pushing for it. Eye candy gets a low priority in my world.
That's the neat thing about Open Rails . . . all it takes is somebody to get interested in panto animation write some code. :clapping:
regards,
vince

Oh indeed, love that about ORTS too! :D And yeah, not all panto anims are equal in height, which goes back to my initial mention of this. Defining a part somehow of the panto itself as the top of the panto, and when that defined part reaches the wire-height to 'pause' panto anim. *Shrug* I'm no programmer, but it makes sense to me at least that should be at the least feasible.

[Buttercup]

With some models it is possible to change the raised height of a pantagraph. I did a little work changing the height of and adding animation to the second pantagraphs of some Mountain Elec stock awhile ago (see attachment). I used a tutorial on the Steam4me site (http://msts.steam4me...s/pants_up.html) to accomplish this.

Attached File(s)

•  Modifying pantographs-mtemot.zip.rtf (79.2K)
  Number of downloads: 176

[BenDragon1337]

Buttercup, on 13 August 2015 - 08:35 AM, said:

With some models it is possible to change the raised height of a pantagraph. I did a little work changing the height of and adding animation to the second pantagraphs of some Mountain Elec stock awhile ago (see attachment). I used a tutorial on the Steam4me site (http://msts.steam4me...s/pants_up.html) to accomplish this.

That's quite a complicated method to do it, not to mention entirely manual for a process which happens automatically in reality.

Here's a video clip that demonstrates how this is entirely automatic in real life: https://youtu.be/pvYWaTtkkOM?t=117

[Luis]

Hello everyone

ORTSCZSK did something really cool with the panto animations: https://msts-rw.cz/ from Vectron.

Can the original OR version be achieved? In general, ORTSCZSK has developed cool things, can't they be developed together? Would it be great or not?

what do you think?