There's a couple of different uses.

The one that causes the most contention around here is as you stated, to take advantage of another element's R/S. That is the bandaid I was referring to.



But there's a couple of other important use that get almost no attention.

In the case of the landing gear wheel wells on the underside of the wing or fuselage these needs to be one element showing the wheel well open and one showing it closed. We apply an action code to the two elements, one for the landing gear down and one for the landing gear retracted.

Actually it usually involves more than one element, sometimes as many as four different elements.

Then the builder maps the "closed" elements to a position on the texture file that is drawn with the wheel well closed and the "open" elements to a different position on the texture with the wheel well drawn in the open position.

Now when the action code is activated you will see the open wheel well on the underside of the wing when the landing gear is extended and vice versa.

On many older models this is either missing or poorly done so when upgrading the easiest thing to do is to get the closed elements shaped as accurately as possible and mapped to the correct position on the texture file.

Then it's a simple matter to make a piggyback of the element and map the piggyback to a different position on the texture file.




Another use is when making a four bladed prop from a three bladed prop.

In that case you move the two blades that are at 120 degrees and 240 degrees into new positions at 90 and 270 degrees. The you make a piggyback of the vertical blade at 0 degrees and change the height numbers from positive to negative. The blade makes a mirror image 180 degrees from the original. Then all you have to do is reverse the nodes so that the blade faces front, apply the correct action code and you're finished.

heres something else about piggybacks, since am probably the next biggest offender of recycling pre-exsisting 3dz work because quite simply i don't have the time and easier to use whatever original 3dz has to offer as a viable base. So if i can reshape it in short order with the expected rendering issues! then thats close enough for me and will deal with the time consuming process of remapping and piggyback after the fact and in exactly that order...

but depending on the text lenght of each piggybacked element there is one exception which i discovered with Tumas work! if you can manipulate the last element to finish exactly when notepad is maxxed out with it ending with the last node you can rap that elements text to a second line and cheat that 13-15 max element line from crashing or in some cases multiple rap arounds, i have some elements going up to 30+ piggybacks long, no crashing. Just better have your mapping correctly done prior because that becomes the real pain in-the-ask!

my hatchet tip for the day - cheers

thx Rotton50 and FlyRight! I do now understand the way of piggybacks and I'm quite sure I'll not implement it into my exporter .. simply bc it's incredibly difficult to find a representation of this in 3ds max.. it's simply not build for something like that.. and on the other hand it's very easy to deal with this even by hand in the txt-file itself..


Ok but now going on.. since I've solved the RS-Problem I'm now leaving the rs-calculation treat
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2874456/Rendering_Sequence_Tree_calcul.html#Post2874456
and continuing here.

One question I have atm is .. what's this about the flt-files ?

is there some editor that can handle this stuff ?

As far as I understand it the muzzle flashes are not added by hardpoints but in the flt file.. is this right?!

Hi rolin.

Yes, the flight files control where the gun flashes appear. Mr. Jelly, has an editor for these data files, just I'm not sure where it's posted. Ray should have a copy.

thx gibbon! I'll see if i can find it


something else:

is the _f value of a hardpoint ALWAYS -32768 ?

Hi rolin.

If the original element is correctly rendered, and has correct normals, then the Hard point will also show correctly with the _f value at 0, but if it does flicker, then the good old -32768 normally fixes it.

but a hardpoint can never ever be connected to any INSERT part (except the root) ?!

Correct rolin.

That's why the _f must be 0, or -32768, so it shows at all angles. If the _f value is 1,2,3...... then it's linked to the insert codes.

ok all main goals are reached..

model was build in 3dsmax and exported with my tool.. I've just used the txt-to-3dz converter



now some bugfixing, implementing exception handling and polishing some stuff
edit: and I have to write a tutorial for sure..

thx all for your help!!


btw .. this is the wrong texture for the model.. that's why it looks so strange (me so lazy)

Well rolin, that is a milestone in the history of EAW for sure.