Animated Objects and Possible Blender-Railworks Conflicts

[JerryC]

I've asked this question over at the Blender Artists forum. They have not been able to help because the advice they have given has been limited to building and rendering within Blender itself. Their concepts of exporting to external programs and games seems to be stunted. So, i'll ask here and see if any of you that have used / are using Blender for TS have ran into this particular problem.

I have an articulated (animated) part. In Blender, the part works fine. When I export it to TS2015 though, the animation works perfectly, but the parts move far out of position when the animation is activated. See the screenies below to see what i'm talking about.

As for fixes, i've tried the following:

- Unlinking the objects after they have been sculpted or copied from another part.
- Un-parenting the part, resetting the origin, and parenting again.
- Alt-A - resetting the objects rotation and scale.
- Delta Transform setting to move the animations back into place. DT seems to be left out of the Export process, and therefore has no impact on positioning.

It should be noted that when the objects are un-parented, they work fine, with no movement from their expected location. However, they must be children objects because they are part of the bogie and must turn and work inside of it.

brakecap1.JPG

[Alatreus]

I think you did a problem with that part.

[wacampbell]

Post your .blend and I don't mind taking a look at it. But my guess would be that you didn't clear origins ( Alt O ) before animating the parts. If so, the only fix now is to clear your animations ( Object -> Animations -> Clear Keyframes ) , then clear origins ( Alt O ), reposition your parts, and reanimate them.

[JerryC]

I think you did a problem with that part.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. That assesment will go a long way towards helping to fix this problem.

Post your .blend and I don't mind taking a look at it. But my guess would be that you didn't clear origins ( Alt O ) before animating the parts. If so, the only fix now is to clear your animations ( Object -> Animations -> Clear Keyframes ) , then clear origins ( Alt O ), reposition your parts, and reanimate them.

Clearing the Origin does seem to make sense. This experience, plus a previous one, points to a problem with the origin points. It seems that the program is giving the animated child parts the same original origin points as the parent part. For example, the Bogie frame was built in another location and moved to it's final position. Child parts that aren't animated are fine with this. However, when the part is animated, it is thrown out to the parent part's original position.

In the mean time, I did find a workaround before I came back to follow up on this post. I placed the 3DCursor on the exact origin point of the Bogie and created a new Box shape (Shift-A) there. Then I parented the brake parts to the new box, then parented the box to the Bogie. This placed the parent/child coordinates in the exact position, with no move-history to deal with. I did not have to re-animate, and it also allowed me to get past the 24 - child limit by putting the brakes in their own grouping. It is crude, but for now it is working.