I am trying to complete the chain gun animation tutorial found here:

https://tutorialscentral.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=2

However, I get to page three and the author starts to take a lot of short cuts like opening the expression editor without explaining what is selected, how he named the parts, etc. So the result is I get to this part and I am totally stumped.

I try to type in the mel for the expression and a get an error about missing $ on the variable blah blah blah. If I look at the screen shot for Object his says Gun. But I have no objects named Gun and no where in the freaking tutorial does he say name anything Gun, and the last thing you have selected is locator1. gah! I guess this is to be expected from a free tutorial, just hours of wasted time.

It is NOT a tutorial if you have to already KNOW exactly how to do what you are hoping to LEARN from the tutorial LOL!

Dont despair, its only missing some extra descriptions

Gun - looks to be the group that contains all the barrel elements. Make sure you have the group selected (or create a group for it) and rename it to 'Gun'
Locator - appears to be named 'Aim_Locator' so make sure it is named that

The expression needs to be assigned to the gun group so make sure that is selected when you open the expression editor. It should be listed in the left column so you can select the rotateY attribute in the right column and then copy and paste the code in and create the expression.

I've attached an example maya file with it broken down into this area. In it there is the aim locator with the Firing attribute keyframed to 5 on frame 0 and keyframed to 0 on frame 100. There is a barrel with two instances in a group called Gun. If you rewind and run the animation then the Gun group barrels start spinning immediately as the Firing attribute is 5 and it gradually slows down and stops on frame 100 as the firing attribute is set to 0.
Play about with keying the Firing attribute in the locator and you will be able to change when the gun barrels rotate etc.
Hope this helps

Si

p.s, the file is saved as a Maya 7 file so if you have an earlier version and it doesnt open, simply open it in notepad and change the 7.0 bits to whatever your version is

Attached Files

gun_rotate.ma (61.9 KB, 328 views)

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Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
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Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
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If you follow the pics closely you can see what is going on, admittedly its not the most detailed of tutorials but stick
with it and read wat errors, if any, the script editor gives you and try and find the fixes, they shouldn't be too hard to sort out due to the fairly simple commandds its trying to show.

I would give the tut a go myself if I had access to Maya at the moment.

Just keep trying I guess lol.

Chris

I figured out the expression stuff thanks to your replies!


But now the tutorial must have left another really important step out because when I render the muzzle flashes do not look anything like the one pictured in the tutorial.

I created a ramp texture just as he does in the tutorial and apply it to the nuzzlesGroup and this is what I get...

Attached Thumbnails

well, at least it looks amazing

at a guess id say you need to ramp up the glow.

was wondering if you were still around.., i still havent found that tut you suggested.., nearly had my hands on it once.., but it slipped through.., now i forget its name.., it was about anatomy.

your good with tuts.., seem to have your finger on the pulse there :bandit:

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take it easy and life will be easy

Also, I don't like the idea of barrels.rotateZ increasing infinately so I changed the code from:

if (aim_locator.Firing>0){
barrels.rotateZ += barrels.rotateZ*aim_locator.Firing*10;
};

to this:

if (aim_locator.Firing>0){
barrels.rotateZ = (barrels.rotateZ+aim_locator.Firing*10)%360;
};

This way the rotateZ value of the barrels is always in the range of 0-359.

I am not sure this really matters, but I don't know what maya does if the repeated addition of the value 10*aim_locater to the rotation value exceeds the limit of what maya can store.

It all seems to work if I can figure out how to get the flashes to look like the photo in the demo page I would be very happy.

Merik03, I am working on my phd and I tinker with Maya as a way to relieve stress. So I have a tendency to disappear for long stretches of time when the school work load gets heavy.

If I was younger, I would ditch everything and retrain as a 3d artist, but at 46 I am afraid by the time I really got good at it I will have been dead for 20 years.

you have to be the most modest guy ive ever 'seen' or the most unconfident. half the people here would kill for your skill.., i mean the andriod tut over a pizza was not a bad look.

i find it hard you dont know the answers to the questions you asked. whatever, hope all is well.

you might know.., im at uni, 50 going on 22, doing honours (the phd can wait) and because I am in the film world.., i occasionaly get called on to do thngs with maya.., flies, germs, aliens, stuff like that.

anyway, i digress., here in 5 min.., a nurb shpere with a blinn with the glow pushed all the way to the right (a ramp shader node too)

take care, dont let the stress get to you if poss.., if it is uni stress.., well then you have no choice but to live with it as we all do.., if its some other.., well, maybe you do have a choice

whatever take care

Attached Thumbnails

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take it easy and life will be easy

i blundered through it.., heres the.., err, 'wire'. .. ???

Attached Images

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take it easy and life will be easy

Thanks for the info mirek, I'll give it a try before I go to bed tonight. I have not really done any texturing, animation, or mel scripting. That is why I am kind of scratching my head on this tutorial. I have not played with glow effects and such.

I'll post some shots and try to through a short animation together.

Cheers,
Rick

Thanks Mirek, glow did the trick. It's looking closer to the tutorial image now.

I'll try to animate it next. The way the expression that randomly rotates each muzzle flash is tide to the aim_locator.Firing attribute I am guessing I have to set it to 0 every odd frame and some number between 1 and 10 every even frame. That should rotate the barrels and randomly rotate each barrels muzzle flash every other frame.

Should be interesting...

Attached Thumbnails

T1ck,

Thanks for the .ma file I am going to study it to figure out the keyframing stuff.

no probs - like you say the tutorial is lacking in clarity in some areas so I thought the .ma file might help make it a little clearer

Looking good so far btw, dont forget to post a vid up when its done

Si

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

it'll look great in a intergalatic dog fight

id bump up the incandesence too

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take it easy and life will be easy

I have a couple new questions.

As I said I am pretty green at animating stuff. I created a 100 frame animation just to test things out. I tried to select .avi as the output format and the animation was all pixelated and was pretty terrible looking.

So I made another render, but this time I selected individual .iff files. I then looked at the animation using fcheck and it looked much better. But now I don't know how to create an avi file from the individual frames?

In fcheck there is an option to "save animation" but all the formats it lists are for single images ie tiff, jpeg, bmp, etc. I cannot see anything that would be a video format. In fact there is also an option to save a single frame and it has exactly the same file formats. It is like there is a bug in fcheck and "save animation" just brings up the same "save image" dialog box.

So I can look at an animation within fcheck of the 100 individual .iff files but I don't know how to convert them into any kind of video file format like .avi.