Animating with Vehicle Pluggin

[S. Houtzager]

Just kicking around the new Vehicle bullet pluggin.  I got to the point where the pluggin solved the set up (can see the outlines of the wheels and chassis) but It doesn't move.  I animated the pluggin along the x axis.  

 

Can someone take a peek.  Free car model in it.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5048027/vehicle.zip

 

preciate

 

 

[fantomaz]

Hi Steve, i am doing lots of vehicle test (since the plug exists), i will have a look.

 

Alex

[fantomaz]

Steve,

 

you need to do several things for vehicle to work:

 

Make a selection set with the vehicle plug and the road/ground.

Create a bullet session (animation menu) and add the selection set to use for simulation.

Enter a value for force in the bullet session (for me 1 is mostly too small, i use often 10 or 15)

Look for the settings in the vehicle plug: forward is -x in your prj (not +x)

You have no simplified bounding boxes for simulation in your prj,

instead you told vehicle to use geometry. In my experience its much better

to use simple nulls with the correct scales (boundig box is the same in size

like the wheels and the overall chassis - like in the tutorial).

Play with the values in vehicle plug: stiffness, compress, damping, force...

 

I need to raise these values in your prj to stiffness=10000, compress and

damping = 5000, force=10000.

 

I guess, when you switch to simple bounding boxes, these values can be much lower

but i dont have experience with using geometry instead of bounding boxes.

The simulation is much faster with these nulls than using geometry.

 

Hope that helps!

 

Alex

 

vehicle tweaked

[S. Houtzager]

Ah thanks, I misread that part of the manual.  You know the vehicle pluggin and bullet make their own proxies on the fly.  In the last tab of the vehicle pluggin you can view them.

[S. Houtzager]

Getting back to this one.  I can get the vehicle to move forward a little and the suspension works.  Not bad for a minivan.  However I animated the pluggin and altered the path so it gradually curved.  Well the Vehicle pluggin, I thought, was supposed to react to it.  It does not.  Any ideas??

 

SH

[fantomaz]

Hi Steve,

 

did you go back to frame 0 and preview your simulation again?

And dont forget to click on 'Update' in the plugs UI at frame 0

after making changes on the path.

Sometimes it can be very helpful to recalculate all object frames

in the animation menu too.

Hope that helps, if there are more questions, please ask  :shy:

 

Alex

[S. Houtzager]

Hey Alex,

 

I was able to get the van to turn a bit, thanks.  I need to get the overall speed right first.

 

SH

[RichardJoly]

Just guessing here...

Check your vehicle size, I think it's WAY too big. Try reducing it to 1/10 or 1/20 of its actual size and apply Bullit again.

It will probably react faster...

[S. Houtzager]

Right, I am going to try it again with a smaller car. It is acting like it is on the moon right now.