Question Animated attachment points?

[Saturn V]

Hey all-

I've been working on this most of today (resetting animations, height correction, astronaut meshes etc...) and I think my brain has turned to mush.

If anyone is familiar enough with spacecraft3 animation and the ATTACHMENT feature, could you tell me...

1.) If I set an attachment point on the hook (RED BOX), which will be part of an animation, will the attachment point move with the animation?

2.) If so, and I create attachment points on the astronauts (GREEN BOXES), then in theory I should be able to connect the two via the ATTACHMENT function in a spacecraft3 ini.

3.) If that's true, then when I retract the cable (DIRECTION OF TRAVEL INDICATED BY YELLOW DOTTED LINE), will it in fact lift the astronaut out of the spacecraft?

Or would the astronauts "jump" into the helicopter from the spacecraft?

Would this not work at all?

Sorry for the basic question, but I've completely scrambled my brain for one day and thought I'd ask before I tried it (and maybe screw the whole thing up!) tomorrow.

If anybody knows off the top of their head if I'm on the right track, I'd appreciate any enlightenment.

Thanks...

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Perhaps you could define your animation as a robotic arm. It only has to be a single joint that extends and retracts. When the point/end of the arm is near the astronaut, attach and retract.

 

[Saturn V]

Could you be a little more specific as to how exactly I'd do that with the cable, hook and astronaut groups?

I've read and re-read the spacecraft3 docs regarding the ROBOTIC ARM feature and it's still "greek" to me.

I think I've reached "sensory overload". I've processed a good bit of information today and the explaination in the docs just isn't sinking in. To wit:

For the grapple of the robotic arm, you must define an animation component without
reference to mesh groups. The transformation will be applied to a triangle. You must defined
the 3 points coordinates by using :​

• ​

​

​

​

TIP_1=(-2.26,1.71,-6.5) : first point coordinates​

• ​

​

​

​

TIP_2=(-2.26,1.71,-7.5) : second point coordinates​

• ​

​

​

​

TIP_3=(-2.26,2.71,-6.5) : third point coordinates
These coordinates will be used to move dynamically the attachment position associated with
the grapple in accordance with the robotic arm motion. Except for the GROUPS parameter
that is replaced by TIP_1, TIP_2 and TIP_3, all other parameters of the animation component
must be specified.​

Composition of movements :​

the animation components are now managed with reference to parent components (fully
compliant with the Orbiter definition). This reference to parent is specially useful if you want​

to use the robotic arm feature.

WHAT?!!?:rofl: