"Faking" sustain pedal

For various reasons, I’ve switched from one timpani VST to another. The old one did sustain in the normal way - eg, it just reacted to the pedal, so I could vary between short or held notes, and on pedal up, it would cut off any sound. The new VST I’m using has short and long hits as different articulations on different midi notes, as well as a 3rd note to damp the sound. Ideally, I’d like to mimic a typical sustain setup. Using bindings I’ve managed to get the pedal to send the midi note to damp, but I now need it to change the transmitted midi note - I’m thinking that on press it could transpose up 2 octaves or something and I can map accordingly in the VST. Annoyingly, my pedal currently sends the damp on pedal down, rather than up, but I can live with that for now. Any suggestions?