TSO flag animation

Discussion in 'Track Modding' started by Jka, Jul 22, 2012.

  1. Jka

    Jka Member Staff Member

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    I was wondering how the track side flag (flags on flag poles) animations are done?

    When looking on ISI's flag textures, there are about 60 independent normal maps for a flag. I'm not quite sure, why there is so many of them and what are their exact function on flag animation, as flag gmt's appears to be animated.

    Is it possible to make flagpole with flag, assign cloth, gravity and wind (with necessary parameters) and make animation from it?

    Or are there ISI flag poles just "rolling gmt" animation (one gmt per frame)?

    If it is, how you can assign group of gmt's to be shown in sequence in same coords?

    Cheers!
     
  2. ethone

    ethone Registered

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    I was under the impression that they were 3d animated. You could of course use several normal maps for each stage so as to have a lighting effect of the moving cloth as well. I would really, really think that would require too much of an awful lot of video memory though.

    MonSum animated the trackside flags in the 3d manner with a .anm file (like the marshalls) without using so many special map stages for Sebring so as soon as that's out you'll be able to see how that looks.

    I had gone for simple animated texture maps, particularly the large American flag at Topeka. I'd still call it a viable option but if you can animate it that will probably be the slightly better way.
     
  3. Radar

    Radar Registered

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    Looking forward to see MonSum flag animation.. Something I haven't even looked at yet, hopefully they will either do a guide, or happy to release the 3dmax file to help us with these little things..
     
  4. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    Well, as long as there's no dynamic wind in rF2, animations will do...

    ...but when we get wind working properly, our demands may raise a bit ;)

    I assume ISI will provide some shader for flags sometime after they introduce wind. Seems obvious as they will probably want it for their flags aswell. But it could be way down on their TODO list.
     
  5. Jka

    Jka Member Staff Member

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    Absolutely! This is something which I miss from ...hmm... very old (non-ISI) sim product...

    Cheers!
     

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