Multiple Rigging Question

[PeteA]

Greetings,

I have a vehicle that is composed of a 4WhelerExt. This is a standard car with standard car attributes. I would like to create some sort of hybrid vehicle that i can interchange functionality at a press of a button (ideally), simulating a car that can go over water (hovercraft type - some lift and yaw) or land (regular car physics). Is this possible? Can a 4WheelerExt have a child class like say a Helicopter?

I have rigged my vehicle with the Helicopter tool but i dont know how to switch between the two rigs during recording and i would rather not use two seperate rigged models if i can avoid it.

I have tried to mess around with the StateMachine tool but the help documentation is really lite, and I am not really sure how to use it.

Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks

~Pete

[Patrik Martin]

Hello Pete and welcome to our Forum.

Greetings,
I have a vehicle that is composed of a 4WhelerExt. This is a standard car with standard car attributes. I would like to create some sort of hybrid vehicle that i can interchange functionality at a press of a button (ideally), simulating a car that can go over water (hovercraft type - some lift and yaw) or land (regular car physics). Is this possible? Can a 4WheelerExt have a child class like say a Helicopter?

I have rigged my vehicle with the Helicopter tool but i dont know how to switch between the two rigs during recording and i would rather not use two seperate rigged models if i can avoid it.

Today it's not possible to have two different plug-ins with the same rig at the same time.

You are able to have different configuration settings in the same instance of one plug-in.
Here is an example on how this is done:
1. Go to the configure window and change the 4-Wheeler Extended configuration so that it has stiff suspension.
2. Start the recording and animate the desired length with this configuration.
3. Stop the recording and pull the timeline back to the frame were the "new" loose stiffness configuration should start.
4. Go in to the configuration of the same 4-Wheeler Extended and change the suspension to lose.
5. Start the recording and you will now continue the recording with the new configuration from the current position.
You now have a animation with one 4-Wheeler Extended with two different behaviors.

I have tried to mess around with the StateMachine tool but the help documentation is really lite, and I am not really sure how to use it.

I guess that you can use StateMachine to transport your high poly models to different plug-ins. I have never tried this but I guess you are able to use 5 different state machines to transport your high poly from a 4-Wheeler to a Helicopter. I am going to try this get back to you.

[Luigi Tramontana]

Yes, I think the method patrik suggested is excellent. It is important to point out that the 4wExt is a module for all sorts of vehicles that move like a "car". There is an example of a boat which has been animated with 4wExt by simply changing the suspension to a very slow and poorly damped susupension. So, as patrik suggested you use "land car" settings while on the ground, and as soon as you enter the water, change the suspension to match a hoover craft. But, what you should also do for boats, and especially hoover crafts, is to increase the skidding offset parameter (this is an input, so make sure skidding is bound to an input otherwise the offset will not work). By doing so the craft slides on the water as it should.

We are looking at an "impostor"-plugin which may be used to interpolate between different plugins trough the push of a button. It will be better suited than the statemachine for the issue, but for now i think your idea on the statemachine could work quite nicely.

Finally there is an advanced technique I would like to share which could hopefully generate some interesting ideas on usabiliy:
If you would like e.g. a tank enter a helicopter and then fly away with the helicopter together with the tank you simply do the following:
1. Clone the faces of the ground you wish to drive on AND also clone the floor and ramp of the helicopter, then combine/attach these cloned meshes to form one whole mesh (which currently is the only way to drive on multiple objects), and then link/parent the gravity direction meshes to this combined ground/helifloor mesh.
2. Important step. Before recording (or when resimulating) you must also link/parent the tank to the helicopter. What this does is to make the tank "live" in the helicopter's world (mathematically speaking *-), so when the helicopter moves the tank moves with it because it has been keyframed in helicopter space.
3. Record the tank driving into the helicopter and stop the recording.
4. Rewind the timeline to a point when the tank is fully on the helicopter ramp or floor and then start recording only the helicopter (i.e. do not simulate the tank again since it will probably slide off, but you could try recording them simultaneously, I have actually not tried that).

If confused, please just ask me more questions about it.

Over and out - lunch time