Vehicle suspension using dynamics
 

Hi guys,

I was wondering if anyone has some suggestions on rigging the suspension of a vehicle so that it reacts dynamically (i.e. working shock absorbers, etc). Any ideas are most welcome!

Eliot

A friend of mine rigged one up, if you are still interested I will see if he will send me some info. he used pins and constraints as I recall.

If you haven't seen the maya 6 presentation, someone of the alias guys build such a rig for a viper. He used dynamic curves for that... looked cool and the behavior was not bad.
The problem when using things like springs is, that they are really hard to get under control. When ILM they worked on the pod racer in star wars episode 1 they used maya dynamics, someone who has done this told me that with the next revision they had a bug in it and it didn't work since this release...
If you wanna use custom code, on one of the game developer (I think it was www.gamasutra.com) someone wrote an article about rigging and simulating cars.
-Klaus

Writing some springs in Mel also works.

http://www.gignews.com/kappmarch02.htm

:ninja:

Alan