animating car for architectural animation

[chow choppe]

Hi

 

I am trying to animate a car in for architectural walkthru

The only thing i know about animation in max is things like drawing a path and animating over that path using path constarint.

 

But i am trying something else now to have more control over the car.

what is want to know is

 

1.) how to animate the wheels of the car to loop the rotation and secondly if the car speed decreases the roattion shud decrease. I m trying to park the car in front of a house so i want to animate the acr so that its travelling at some speed and when it approached the side of the road it takes a little turn while reducing the speed and finally comes to a halt similar to if u r trying to park ur car behind a car in reality.

2.) I know i can use the wire parameters to control the wheel steer.

3.) if i use path constraint what i am doing is making the speed uniform by having 2 keyframes. how can i have more control of the car speed so that where i want it to decrease it shud decrease and then again starts increasing and then decrease a little at the turn along and also the wheel roattion speed. Right now in some frames my car gets out of the camera view and then again comes back. How can i make it visible in the view always?

 

please lemme know ur inputs on this.if u think these things are more complicated then i wud be happy just knowing about looped roatation of wheel, car speed control and then coming to halt

 

thanks

[BrianKitts]

easiest way is with a car rig. Here's a free one that works pretty well.... check out the demo video, there's no audio but it shows how to set it up.

 

http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/ezcarrig-UK.html

[Claudio Branch]

http://craftanimation.com/

[chow choppe]

easiest way is with a car rig. Here's a free one that works pretty well.... check out the demo video, there's no audio but it shows how to set it up.

 

http://laurent.renaud.free.fr/ezcarrig-UK.html

 

Brian thats just awesome, but it still leaves me unaware of using animation tools and methods inside 3dsmax which i was trying to learn because i might need them in my some other project where its not the car but something else which needs the looped rotation etc

 

Thanks

[BrianKitts]

Well the basic breakdown would be to create each of your wheels and then link them to the car body. You assign the car body to follow a spline using a path constraint (you'll need to change the following axis, and select the "follow" option in the motion panel so that the car turns with the path.

 

For the wheels you then assign an expression to the rotation of the object.

 

image1

- select your wheel

- open the motion panel

- select Y rotation

- select "assign controller"

 

image2

- select "float expression"

 

image3

- enter the equation 360*sin(S*3)

 

that's it. you can adjust the equation to the distance your car is traveling. The equation is setup such that 360 equals one full rotation, S = seconds, and the "3" can be changed for the number of rotations you want per second.

 

So for a faster rotation you might enter the equation 360*sin(S*5.6)

 

Or to spin the wheels backwards you could negate the rotation 360*sin(S*-3)

Edited November 26, 2008 by BrianKitts

[chow choppe]

Well the basic breakdown would be to create each of your wheels and then link them to the car body. You assign the car body to follow a spline using a path constraint (you'll need to change the following axis, and select the "follow" option in the motion panel so that the car turns with the path.

 

For the wheels you then assign an expression to the rotation of the object.

 

image1

- select your wheel

- open the motion panel

- select Y rotation

- select "assign controller"

 

image2

- select "float expression"

 

image3

- enter the equation 360*sin(S*3)

 

that's it. you can adjust the equation to the distance your car is traveling. The equation is setup such that 360 equals one full rotation, S = seconds, and the "3" can be changed for the number of rotations you want per second.

 

So for a faster rotation you might enter the equation 360*sin(S*5.6)

 

Or to spin the wheels backwards you could negate the rotation 360*sin(S*-3)

 

Thanks Brian for that. I really appreciate the effort .

now i just want to know how can i make the car to come to a halt by gradually decreasing acceleration and so is the wheel rotation getting slower as its coming to a halt .

[BrianKitts]

Thanks Brian for that. I really appreciate the effort .

now i just want to know how can i make the car to come to a halt by gradually decreasing acceleration and so is the wheel rotation getting slower as its coming to a halt .

 

refer to previous answer...

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/33638-animating-car-architectural-animation.html#post233268