So, I’m making some Mars rovers, but I need a little help knowing how to rig the wheels/suspension. I intend on using this for animation, and while looking at the possibilities, I would like to be able to use a base object (an empty or a wireframed box) the rover can follow, and all I need to do is move the base object, while the suspension arms react to the bumps in the landscape and the rover will rotate with respect to the inclination of the land and/or any rocks it encounters. Essentially, as I move the base object, the rover and suspension arms will automatically react to the landscape.
Does anyone know of any tutorials that can deal with this? I’m considering something along the lines of this video, But I am not sure how compatible it is with my design.
Tell us more about how you intend for this model to be used. “In my movie, this model is in (what?) setting, and is able to do (what?). It’s going to be in (what?) shots.” Any reference footage?
If you are not familiar with rigging, this may be a bit more of a challenge, but ditch the ‘Empty’, stick with an armature. If your up to the task here is a link to an older rigging vids that will help you, look for ‘vehicle rigging’, the blender version is older but its still the same rigging in all versions. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4lLVkUGPtM5pnS3ZskvECg/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=1
I think this is way, way too ambitious (as would be almost any single-control rig.)
To do it, you’ll need to script (because constraints won’t be enough to get what you want); pick certain wheels to arbitrarily prioritize (because 3 points define a plane, not 6); and after all that, you’re going to find that it twitches and doesn’t really do what you want on some surfaces.
One option here would be to involve physics, but I would advise that you just resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to need to animate the body manually.
Alright. I’m sure adding constraints just for suspension will have to do. I’ll leave the rest to manual work. I guess I wasn’t aware of how ambitious this was really going to be.
Sorry I haven’t responded to your reply. I never saw the notification for it. I have made some progress just by using empties and constraints, but I hit a road block where I can’t find a way to correctly parent (example) Wheel 3 to the rotation of Arm D. Instead, it just goes straight up and down, while I have an empty that Arm D tracks to.
At this point, I have started to look towards using bones. At the moment, I just need to figure out parenting bones to other bones or making them track to them. I’ll keep you updated.
Always turn on ‘Axis’ display for objects/bones and use the ‘Empty’ with axis - makes rotational issues easier to see, but bones are the best choice. That is a screen shot of the file I did, I think I added /modified it more after that pic. There are a couple of things that were unclear to me as far as pivot points? and location/rotation. I did not check out the real thing to see its movement - but you are welcome to the file to see how I did it, let me know.
Hey, There are 3 objects in the Object folder to ‘APPEND’ to your version (2.8/2.9) - DO NOT open this file unless your on 2.7 - ‘APPEND’ the 3 objects in the Object folder. ‘Armature_Main - Master CTRL’ bone is the main control for Loc/Rot(animate) of the rover - its the only bone you can select in that armature_Main. This armature detects the ground for the body controls of the other ‘Armature(Rover) - rover body’ bone. ‘rover body’ bones axis are not locked but don’'t animate them if your using ‘Armature_Main - Master CTRL’ bone. ‘Armature(Rover) - ground detect 1/3 (CTRL)’ bones are the steering controls(Z rot) - animate, along with (X loc) to match IK trgt with owner on all 3 ‘ground detect’ bones, its a bit of work but un-avoidable due to dependency cycle stuff could not automate that this time,
When I started I did meet most all requirements but ground detect broke a couple things - hence this is what I settled on, given I have no knowledge of the real workings of it - so there is bound to be mistakes. Let me know what needs fixin… https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RhDQRJOy4oUrILdPccfXE_p87vO0ymiW/view?usp=sharing
EDIT; did check out this pic for reference - so i did a couple changes - post your Q?s back here
