Propellers

Both turbo-prop aircraft and jet aircraft will have propellers that need animating. On jets these are the "fins" of the turbine inside the reactor, and on turbo-props these are the external propellers. Regardless of the engine type, these are all animated in the same way and have the same general components: a nose and blades (see the Notes On Blur Meshes section for additional information).

 

To animate the propeller, we need to use one helper for all the different parts of the propeller. So, we create a new helper, then name it something like Prop1, and then link it to the HIPS helper and place it in front of the plane, in the middle of the Nose mesh (which should be the center of rotation).

 

To this helper, you would then link everything related to the propeller: nose cone, blades, blurred nose, blurred blades, etc...

 

The animation of the propeller is done using 5 frames (0 to 4):

 

Frame	Angle
0	0° (Neutral Position)
1	90°
2	180°
3	270°
4	360°

 

Reactors

On jet aircraft you have a reactor, usually on each wing, and in that you have not only the "propeller" - the turbine inside the main reactor housing - but you also have an additional part to animate for when the throttle is in reverse.

 

This is a simple animation that requires two keyframes that simply translate the relevant part of the reactor housing:

 

Key Frame	Angle
0	Neutral Position
1	Throttle pulled, reverse speed