crusher tank

[jojo]

hi,

im working on a tank, and im wondering, is it possible to make the simulation work to crush a car?
i could manually animate/simulate the crushing, only how do i go from there??

[Luigi Tramontana]

Hi Jojo,

We have a hotfix session going on where this feature for the crawlerTracks is included. But as of now the ground mesh for the crawlerTracks cannot be animated, but for the Craft Crawler it can.
Keep yourself posted on the beta updates that we have begun to post in the forum.
If you are willing to seriously beta test the this feature for the CrawlerTracks I could arrange a resceduling of this particular feature in the todo-list.

[jojo]

thats, great!
i'd be honored to test it out,
though i haven't tested anything before, so i would like some instructions then

also im still finishing up the model of my tank. (and have to rig it also)
could i test it for you sooner if i could get the rig that's used in the tutorial, that saves up loads of tweaking. (and makes me able to test sooner)
im now also making a Abrams M1A1 battle tank (i wanted to make a random tank, and ended up making the exact same type, coincidentally).
it has already more details than the one in the tutorial though.

here it is:
http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.ph ... post684840

also i thought a way to work around it a bit:

1. rig tank.
2. make floor mesh, and add a "bump" where the car will be
3. put car into place
4. as the tracks will meet the car, animate it being crushed (they wont be crushed to the ground because of the bump just made).
5. hide floor and render with the car being crushed.

though the real deal would always look way better

[jojo]

i just thought of some ideas: (probably you already know them, but ill do it anyways)
also i wonder, wouldn't it be possible to, eventually, make a combined version of the crawler, crawlerthread and "extrawheel" tool?
like, you first specify its details (how many tracks, wheels, turrets and guns) and then you "indentify" the right objects by pointing them out by clicking on them? ("select turret" "select gunbarrel" "select ect.")

And how about a "turret" tool, combining 2 "1D rotators" and a "Firepower" tool into one big one?
you could even add a "tracking" feature to it so that it tracks targets like a manual operated gun (or a very robotic one)
that could be very usefull (and cool) for a classic WWII aircraft battle, like Big Lancaster convoy gets attacked by a dozen of nazi fighters, with all the lancasters multiple turrets shooting at everything that moves, bullets flying all over the place.
so it would have all the placeholders to link to them like : "Turret dome" "base plate" "gun" "ammo" and options to have 2 or 3 parallel turrets in the same dome.

another (kinda obvious) "wish" would be the option to have a "crash" button for planes and heli's, that will scramble the controlls (or switch them of), that you can activate manually or is activated by bullet/missile impact. maybe it could even take the kinetic energy of a missile into account when its getting hit and is crashing to the ground!

[Luigi Tramontana]

great thoughts, they are noted.
Few answers though.
A combined tank tool would look very much like todays separate building blocks. Otherwise they would be specific for a certain type of tank, and in that case we produce PRM:s, ie pre rigged models.
Same goes for turret tool. From my point of view this is not viable for us, very few people need a turret-tool which is quite easy to build once and then reuse. Simply rig a turret, then you can either save it as a separate file, or you can save the setup per se and use it as a template. One Utility that is on the list of future developments is a positionPredictor which you use in combination with FirePower.
A crash mode is also on the list of future developments.


About the beta, it will be released under the "BETA versions" above, where we will begin to output beta versions of developments. I will also give you a notice in this thread when the CrawlerTracks has been outputted.

[jojo]

thanks ill wait for it ^_^