Rigacar to generate rig for cars

add-ons
rigging
vehicles
(davidg) #21

As I replied to janmatys, rigacar v2 is almost released… and I tried to take this into account in this version.

V2 is stable (only documentation is missing) :

https://github.com/digicreatures/rigacar/archive/v2.zip

The generated rig has 3 layers :

  • a deformation layer to animate the model
  • a mechanical layer to make the link between the deformation layer and the animation layer
  • an animation layer for the bones available to the animators

If you generate a rig with version 2, you can make visible the 15th layer of the armature. This layer contains the main mechanical bones : one for the body (MCH-Body), one for each wheel (by the way v2 supports more than 4 wheels) and one for each disk brakes (new in version 2).

You can use these bones to parent your own extension over the base armature.
For instance, if you want to add bones to control a steering wheel, you can parent the hierarchy of bones to MCH-Body.

(mmehari) #22

Can you also make a video presentation, if you have the time? That will be a great addition to the addon.

(davidg) #23

you’re right. It’s on my todo list… hope I will have time in may or june for that

(calebM) #25

Hey I was working on my car and it looks and the rig looks and feels great in the viewport but when I render with motion blur the wheels flop around instead of just turning??? How can I fix this? and yes the rig is set up properly.

(davidg) #26

Hi calebmorr

if I understand well, everything works fine until you activate motion blur. It seems weird and I really don’t understand how motion blur can affect your animation.
I made some tests and it works fine. It’s difficult for me to help you without any visual feeback. Can you post / share a preview of your animation ?

(calebM) #27

I rendered a bit and I think it’s just how motion blur works in blender. For some reason the motion blur makes the car look like ti’s floating when the tires and rotating and looking at the camera.motion2

(AnupamKris) #28

Well, I have a request that, can u just make an automatic suspension. because i am not able to prfectly animate the suspension

Sincerely Anupam

(davidg) #29

I am not sure I am able to create automatic suspension. Rigacar is designed for animation. What you suggest is more related to simulation.

If someone has good ideas to create simulation based on my rig (or others), it could be implemented into the add-on.

(davidg) #30

Rigacar v2.0 is available!

https://github.com/digicreatures/rigacar/releases/download/v2.0/rigacar.zip

Caution : v2.0 is not backward compatible. If you have already generated armatures with v1.0, you should delete them, install this new version and generate the armatures again.

There are many updates in this version. Please refer to the documentation and the release note.

Major updates are:

  • a new widget for the drift bone
  • fix and improvement of the baking for wheels animation
  • many improvements in the generated rig (for instance you can now automatically rigged vehicles with more than 4 wheels like trucks and also trailers)

Sorry, I haven’t started any video tutorial yet. But you can download a sample blend file to test the rig.

Enjoy

(theApe) #31

Nice!

Can´t wait to play around with this :slight_smile:

(AnupamKris) #32

For some cars the wheels dont rotate correctly when following a path only when moving in y axis it rotates…Hope you reply

(davidg) #33

Need more info to be able to understand your problem (screenshots or even better a blend file).
I usually use the following steps to animate a car along a path:

  1. Add the curve to define the path
  2. Add the follow path constraint to the root bone (not the armature object) and activate Follow Curve and choose the appropriate forward axis which is usually -Y
  3. Adjust the delta transform on the Y axis to be sure the following point is located at the center of the back axle of the armature.
  4. Animate the path or add keyframes on the offset property of the Follow Path constraint.
  5. Click on bake steering and bake wheels rotation and make sure start frame and end frame numbers are set correctly.

It should work for any kind of models.

(Blendyboy) #34

Quick question, but do you plan on releasing that video tutorial any time soon? I tried following the documentation, but I can’t seem to get the rig to parent to a car properly.

(davidg) #35

I have good news for you :

  • I plan to record video tutorials this week (or next week )
  • I will also release rigacar v3 at the same time

thank you for your patience…

(davidg) #36

Hello everyone,

I have finally started my series of videotutorials about Rigacar. Thank you for your patience.
Part 1 and part 2 are now available… more parts to come.

(mkbreuer) #37

Great Work! Do you also plan a similar addon for bikes? I found non for that kind of vehicle!

(davidg) #38

thanks.
No, add-on for bikes is not on my todo list… but it would be cool! Actually, rigacar came from a project for which I need to rig cars and trucks. So I had the opportunity to test on a real project the generated armatures to see their advantages but also their limitations. So I improved many things before sharing it.
If you create scenes and animate bikes and you could share your rigs, maybe I could use them as a base to write some code for some kind of rig generator.

(mkbreuer) #39

No, i haven`t! I just wondering why no one made one.

(Tosky) #40

Have you thought about features for less usual veichles? Your addon show a solid foundation to create a bike with a sidecar, or even a tank’s tracks system…

(davidg) #41

For bike and sidecar, same answer as to @mkbreuer. I haven’t rig bike but I suppose it is slightly different than car and especially for the suspension.
As for tank (not very fond of tank), maybe you should try with the existing rig by defining half the wheels as the front wheels and half the wheels as the back wheels. As for animating the track, I would try to create a track from an array of a mesh and a curve modifier to give the correct shape. Then animate the track to match the animation of the wheels. For sure there is extra work to accomplish this but I am pretty sure it will work. Maybe I should make a videotutorial to show this as an example of how to extend a generated mesh.