A track I'm working on requires both normal animated cornerworkers and digital LED board flags, similar to those seen on tracks hosting F1 and endurance races. My question is how to implement this, so that the digital flag will act in tandem with the nearby cornerworker in the same instance. The other implementations of this sort of system on Singapore and Valencia street circuit have had the digital boards called CornerWorker, and the digital flag system (from what I've seen when I looked at Portugal) works in a different way to what I want it to. Currently, I have the digital boards showing yellows and such when they should be by having them in the same instance as the nearest CornerWorker, but when there is no flag out (and the cornerworkers have flags down), it continues to flash green. Is there something I can do in the animations so that it only shows green like a normal cornerworker?
Hmmm ... I wonder how your DigiFlags work when they call the CW animation files? Struggling to understand what is happening the way you've set it up. DF_FLAGDOWN.ANM is the one it should call when the CW switches to CW_FLAGDOWN.ANM ... Does the previous DF keep flashing yellow when that CW brings in the waving/flashing yellow flag?
Ah, I think the "digiflags" are calling the CW .anms because I copied over an object from Valencia as I originally put it not working down to my lack of experience in animations in 3ds. No, the digiflag before the yellow section is flashing green like normal. Is it even possible to use the DF animations for a single light being multiple flags/colours? All the ISI/3PA interpretations I've seen are one light for each flag.
The light colour sequence is simply a texture animation, just like the marshal flags. => http://wiki.rfactor.net/index.php?title=CornerWorker (article isn't quite complete at the moment)
So I've set up a new test block with just the flag material on it, with the material animation set up for digital flags as in that wiki article, and no .anm files referenced in the .scn file. However, the problem of the lights being green when they should be blank remains. Will I need to set up animations for the objects in 3ds to use the DF .anms correctly, and is there any reference material or tutorials around that help explain that?
Flag colours are texture based, and they have no OFF state. Flag animation (still, flashing, blank) is done in the .ANM file, yes, with a plane (containing the texture anim sequence) moving in front/behind the OFF state plane. Just like the CW will always display a flag ... it's the animation files that decide whether that flag is either being waved, held or put down behind the wall. DF needs similar animation files. More info on how to export animations: http://wiki.rfactor.net/index.php?title=Keyframe_Animation ... make sure you keep the Cheat Sheet PDF close at hand .
