Helicopter Setup

Helicopters have some special functions, which are covered in this section. For general information about vehicle setup, please refer to Vehicle Setup. 

Sample File

Sample File: 

• helicopter.max

 

Fading rotors

• There are two different rotors modeled to represent motion blur when the rotor is running. There is a full geometry one, also there is one which has the motion blurred texture applied to. These all are attached to one object, but with 2 different material ID. Code is blending them into each other as needed. Same technique goes for both the main and tail rotors. (The rotors have simple collision proxies as well! Rotation is coming from animation). So the rotor contains the normal, motion blurred versions, and the proxy in one object.

 

• rotor_parts.jpg:

 

• rotor_setup.jpg:

 

Ordnance

• Rocket pod firing positions can be added in the vehicle editor in Sandbox, or with helpers in Max. In the SDK sample asset, it’s placed in the editor.

 

Landing Gears and other animated elements

• Landing gears are simply animated in max, and the whole sequence is exported as .anm animation file. One file for opening sequence, one for closing. You can have different numbers of animated elements like it is represented in the SDK asset.
• For exporting the landing gear opening sequence for example, you have to select the objects involved in this sequence only, and add them to the export list. Then you can export this sequence as an .anm file.

 

• landing_gears.jpg: