Cars and Uneven Terrain

[3darchitect]

Ok, so I'll lay down my precursor again. I'm a self-taught (young) 3ds user. I'm working on a project as an intern for a small architect firm. I'm on to the site now, and I figure I might as well ask this now b/c I'm waiting for some more info before I can move ahead.

 

I believe it will be requested of me to have cars and the like on my roads for a final touch. However, I was planning on creating my roads in the manner that was described in tutorial (site tutorial found on CGarchitect). I have a relatively uneven terrain mesh.

 

So...my question is how to find a way that my cars don't fall through my terrain or have one part seeping through when its on an incline or the like. I was considering some method using physics and forces, but I'm not sure. Admitedly, I haven't had the time/opportunity to experiment with the idea yet, but I'm seeing if anyone else has any better solutions.

 

Thanks!

[Tommy L]

I would say that using collision and gravity data may be overkill. If your boss wants to see cars driving around, the first thing I would ask him to do is aprove the cameras. Then you know how much entourage is going to get rendered. Then, I would recommend using splines as paths for the animated cars to follow. Use a conform tool to adhere the paths to the topographical geometry, then the cars will align to the ground. Remember, this is an architectural project. The method you suggested could eat the lions share of the project time in learning the process. However, it would also be a great learning experience for next time and once youve set these things up once, you may well be able to transplant the animation parameter data to other scenes. I guess you have to weigh up how much time you have for the whole project.

Good luck with it either way.

Oh by the way, if you do choose to do it the forces/gravity way, the cgtalk forum may be more suitable for seeking advice.

[3darchitect]

Ok, I like the spline idea. I just need to set my pivot point on the cars so that they don't snap onto the spline right through the middle of the car right? *experiments* Time actually is very lose for this project, and I have a lot of room to experiment right now. At least, that's what the current situatuation is... I'm not very experienced w/ 3ds forces and stuff, so I'm just not entirely sure if that would work for me. I'm pretty sure I could get the spline concept to work, so I'll approach it that way from the start. Thanks for the comment!

[Tommy L]

Welltime being loose or not, get the camera tracks nailed. And let your boss know that theyre nailed. Then your job is 100x easier. You can put high poly cars close up in a couple of clips with glossy hdri reflections, DOF, the works, and your eye will be fooled into believing all the low poly cars in the background with mapped reflections look super-duper as well. Doing cars in animations is very enjoyable I think, as long as the work-flow is right.

Dont forget to spin the wheels!

[3darchitect]

Great...ok Yea I've never done this before lol so...we'll see how this turns out. Like I said, I'm very young in this - this is my second project (yey...) so I'm just floundering my way through life right now (I like the word floundering)