I did some updates on my Tank Track Rigging Tutorials for anyone interested in seeing them they are here…
These tutorials have moved…
This is strange looks like this Thread posted twice
I just wanted to pop in and really say I loved your tutorials there!
It was a bit odd though, in part 4 your tank bogeys were moving on Z rotation even before you had set up the drivers for it. That kinda confused me for a bit. It didn’t work for me until after I had set up all the Null Drivers stuff.
Hummm you kind of lost me… you said my Bogey wheels in the tutorial were moving around the ‘Z’ axis…?
I’m Pretty sure they are rotation on the X axis… But I’m most likely not understanding what your saying however… do you mean responding to the ‘Z’ Rotation of the Hull? … understand that the main purpose of video 4 is to build a way for the Tracks and Wheels to Properly Respond when ever the Hull makes a Turn… note that whever Tracked Vehiecles do this one Set of Tracks always turns the opposite direction to the the other set of Tracks on the other side… Please don’t Hesitate to keep asking me questions here or on the Youtube site… (even though I’ve had a small bit of problem on youtube responding to my own videos for some reason… lol!)
Yeah, I didn’t do a very good job at being specific and explaining. Sorry.
Z rotation of the “Hull” Object, resulting in the Bogey’s rotating. Yes.
(at the ~3min53sec mark in the video)
It looks like your Bogeys were rotating (when the hull is Z rotated), even before you had set up the (z-rotation) driver for it. Which didn’t happen for me.
Maybe I left it in “World Space”? But looking back at the file I see that the front bogey drivers are set to “Y-location in Local Space”. Hmm…
It’s not really much of an issue, once I added the nulls everything worked fine. Just a “Huh?” moment for me.
So you did get it to working then?
Just wanted to add that I updated this series again to address the issue of the tank links deforming in the pit of the bezier curvs… go see the new updated tutorial here if you have any interest in Tank Track Riggs…
these tutorials have moved…
Thanks Norvman - very informative video and a good/simple solution to a tricky problem.
I had to do something similar in Maya earlier in the year. I found though, that there’s one tough nut still to crack, and that’s the fact that the links are attached to each other front and back - like a chain, and the links (trackpins) between them still break when the track goes around the drive sprocket.
I haven’t yet tried that in blender, but I suspect that that particular issue won’t be fixed without some pretty hefty chain type physics solver.
It’s not such an issue yet for me because I’m working primarily with WW1 British tanks, which had a crawler style track with a very low profile.
EDIT: If you create your tank treads so that the front/back pivots of each link have their centres directly at the ends of the tank belt sections, that might do it.
I’m thinking that one way to lessen the effect… (not totally eliminate it) is to use the belt technque… and Use Dupli’s on the faces of the belt for the body of the tank link… but then place the tank link pins as Dupliverts on the belts vertcies… that way they never pull apart…
Well … let me mess with it some and get back too while I have some free time to do so… I might make another video tutorial if a figure something out that works decent… I have about 5 guys already who are interested in this…
Thanks for these videos… I’ve enjoyed them. I posted on your newest video that I had some questions and you suggested that I find you here. In your tutorial where you show the rig reacting to a log/object. Does the array on the links bunch up/overlap? I haven’t tried this portion because my little tank didn’t need it… yet. 
I am using your rig on this:
In your tutorial where you show the rig reacting to a log/object. Does the array on the links bunch up/overlap?
Yep… it does… there was a discussion about countering that however by using drivers to counter-adjust the size of your curv object everytime a boogie moves… (can’t seem to find the disccussion right now) but here is a file I uploaded for it…
Tension suspension_NorvMod_WithDrivers_001.blend (915 KB)
if you look at a real tank track in motion… that’s what happens… when one boogie hits a bump a ‘tention’ boogie some place else moves to counter that motion so the track doesn’t get thrown…
see here…
note around… 2:21 they talk about the ‘compensator wheel’…
and DiggOn those old Tanker Head Gear… LOL!
Wow… Nice tank by the way…
Thanks… that video was rather interesting!! I will look at the blend as well.
just wanted to bump this thread to inform everyone I"m moving my Tank Track tutorials over to Vimeo…
check them out when you have time…
New Tutorials on my site for anyone needing help Rigging Tank Tracks…