I’m trying to use a flat tire, not only for this still, but when wheel, believe it is the best method?
It’s the method that I would use, and generally very flexible, but I think you have way too many divisions in your lattice. You can have 1 maybe 2 divisions across the width of the tire and not so many horizontal and vertical divisions and still get good results. If it works for you though, I don’t think the extra divisions will be bad at all.
And it works great for animating.
You can set up Shape Keys for the Lattice, this way you can always revert it to its starting state, and animate it.
paolo
@sourvinos, you are right. I had forgotten that when I had posed this on IRC channel someone recommended using Shape Keys in lattice. My bad memory…
Yeah, often I even forget to add shape keys before starting to modify the lattice, and I have to start again…
paolo
I put a armature/bone out from under the car like a rocker arm to be the control arm (control arm is the auto part name). I parent the wheel and lattice to this bone. Sometimes I put a single axis rotation and make a driver for this.The control bone is the driver. So when you push the car in one direction the wheels will turn. This has limitations like skidding to a stop or burning rubber/ no traction animation need adjustments. Just turn off the driver. It has some work arounds you can use.
On the lattice I use keyframes but hooks parented to bones of a armature will work fine. I make keyframes for flats, burn offs, hard turns.
The car is parented to the wheels and the wheels to the main control…I think. You can then bank the car and the wheels are in place hugging the road.
Here is a old animation. At 12 seconds in is my caricature with wheels. https://vimeo.com/34789791