Well I have started to create a space ship but I have a few problems, (Site admin I hope this is the right place, if not please put where it needs to be, Thanks.).
I have some exterior hatches that need to slide back to the left. Another set of hatches are much larger (hanger bay, landing bay), they need to split across the middle (right to left) and the top slides up and the bottom slides down.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
what exactly is your problem?
modeling, animating, both?
For simplicity, you can just slide the doors “inside” the hull, violating physical metal but the audience never notices.
@waylow - I have the modeling done. Animating is where I am having a problem. I can see it being done but I don’t know as I described. But I don’t know how to make it happen.
@PapaSmurf - This is kinda the idea I had. But how?
well, separate the doors as a different object, and and parent them to the spaceship, so that when you move the ship, the doors move with it and stay in the same relative position.
Then there is the easy way and the re-useable Action way. For the easy way, at the frame you want the doors to start opening, insert an Ipo with them in the closed position. Up arrow three times to advance 30 frames, and move them to the open position, and ipo them there. Now they open smoothly on their own.
I like to work with keys, and copy them in the IPO Editor window, to put stuff back exactly where it started out from. In this example, if the closed was at frame 1 and the open was at frame 31, and you wanted them to stay open for 5 seconds and then close, you would copy the key from frame 31 to frame 181, and the key from frame 1 to frame 211. See the user manual on IPO and action editing.