Hello all, I am looking to edit a mod for personal use, specifically Holzs FS Case Ih 7150 Rice combine's cab ladder animation, and frankly I am having no luck. I am still very new to this.
With this combine mod, anytime I enter the combine, the cab ladder automatically folds forward, and cannot be folded back out during use. This is a small detail, but one that would make the mod work for me if it stayed out. This only happens with tire configurations, as the track configurations the ladder stays out. I have scoured the xml files, and attempted to make adjustments in the startup animations, as well as the access ladder animations, but that did not solve the issue. I cannot seem to find where this is. The mod does have IC support, but only for the rear access ladder, handrail, door and steering wheel.
I respect Holzs FS work, and again this is just for my own personal preference.
How would I go about editing this to suit my playstyle? Around home we run our combines ladders out.
Hi!
Since you are looking for a specific part (the ladder), the way I would approach this would be to first open the i3d file of the combine (its either in the mod zip or if it uses a basegame model, its located in you FS installation folder under data/vehicles) in the giants editor and locate the ladder. Select the ladder and take note of its index path (Displayed at the top of the Attributes panel). Then you can go into the xml and search that index path in the i3dMappings section. Note that the index path in the xml might be for a transform group that contains the ladder rather than the ladder itself.
When you have located the correct entry in the i3dMappings section, look at the name that it is assigned and search for this name in the rest of the xml. You will find it somewhere in an animation or movingPart. That is the part of the animation that moves the ladder. You can then either adjust the values for start and end rotation/location or, if you want to get rid of the ladder animation entirely, delete the entire line/entry.
Note: When you open the i3d in Giants Editor and then select something or move the camera around, when you want to close the Editor again, it might ask you to save changes. Especially when the file you opened is a basegame file, it is important that you DO NOT save the file. Just click on 'No' when it asks you if you want to save before closing the Editor.
Another Note: When you have edited a mod it will always show up as needing an update in the ingame dowloadable content menu. If you click on update, it will download the newest version of the mod from modhub if the mod is available there and overwrite your edited version. Therefore all edits you may have made will get lost by doing this. It just shows as being able to update, because the game does not actually check the version number against modhub, but generates a checksum of the mod file/folder and compares that against the latest version on modhub. It shows a mod as being able to update whenever these checksums dont match, which will also be the case if you just did any edits at all to the mod...
Das Universum ist unvorstellbar groß und wir sind im Vergleich dazu winzig.
Daher kann mir jemand der unter uns Winzlingen Unterschiede in Hautfarbe oder Herkunft sucht, nur Leid tun, weil seine Sichtweise so begrenzt ist!
XPModder wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2023 10:42 am
Hi!
Since you are looking for a specific part (the ladder), the way I would approach this would be to first open the i3d file of the combine (its either in the mod zip or if it uses a basegame model, its located in you FS installation folder under data/vehicles) in the giants editor and locate the ladder. Select the ladder and take note of its index path (Displayed at the top of the Attributes panel). Then you can go into the xml and search that index path in the i3dMappings section. Note that the index path in the xml might be for a transform group that contains the ladder rather than the ladder itself.
When you have located the correct entry in the i3dMappings section, look at the name that it is assigned and search for this name in the rest of the xml. You will find it somewhere in an animation or movingPart. That is the part of the animation that moves the ladder. You can then either adjust the values for start and end rotation/location or, if you want to get rid of the ladder animation entirely, delete the entire line/entry.
Note: When you open the i3d in Giants Editor and then select something or move the camera around, when you want to close the Editor again, it might ask you to save changes. Especially when the file you opened is a basegame file, it is important that you DO NOT save the file. Just click on 'No' when it asks you if you want to save before closing the Editor.
Another Note: When you have edited a mod it will always show up as needing an update in the ingame dowloadable content menu. If you click on update, it will download the newest version of the mod from modhub if the mod is available there and overwrite your edited version. Therefore all edits you may have made will get lost by doing this. It just shows as being able to update, because the game does not actually check the version number against modhub, but generates a checksum of the mod file/folder and compares that against the latest version on modhub. It shows a mod as being able to update whenever these checksums dont match, which will also be the case if you just did any edits at all to the mod...
I want to say thankyou and express my gratitude, I just followed your instruction to the letter, found the correct index path, edited the values, and voila, the ladder stays out. I had scoured the xmls till late last night trying to find the right line to no avail. There are many lines of moving parts with this mod, so this was a needle in a haystack for me. I followed your advice and I was sure to do this edit on a copy of the original mod and save so the original is always there to reference. This is my first time using GE and using the index paths, so though this was daunting for me as a newbie, you got me right where I needed to be. Thankyou so much. This forum and the people in it are incredible.
