Forum - Craft Animations - 3d animation tools

is it possible to create a car that moves according to real data? I'd like to apply the actual physical data to my physically accurate car model.

such as, for my car; FWD, a weight of 1159 kg, a BHP of 180, 137mph top speed, a 7.4 second 0-60 mph time, 5 gears, with a redline of 7300RPM, with a torque of 205.00 Nm at 4750 RPM. turning circle of 10m....

etc etc etc!!!


As a car enthusiast, I'm surprised there isn't an obvious option to make things actually realistic at a set scale!

Maxxeh wrote:is it possible to create a car that moves according to real data? I'd like to apply the actual physical data to my physically accurate car model.

such as, for my car; FWD, a weight of 1159 kg, a BHP of 180, 137mph top speed, a 7.4 second 0-60 mph time, 5 gears, with a redline of 7300RPM, with a torque of 205.00 Nm at 4750 RPM. turning circle of 10m....

etc etc etc!!!


As a car enthusiast, I'm surprised there isn't an obvious option to make things actually realistic at a set scale!

Hi Maxxeh and welcome to the forum,
Unfortunetly it is today not possible to use the real actual physical data. The 4-Wheeler Extended is not bulilt in that way, it is a visual simulation and not a simulator. We have recived this type of request from couple of people and we are looking in to it.
//Patrik

Oh ok, that's a shame! It's great that you're looking into it though!
Im surprised you didn't take this route to begin with, although I'm guessing it's not quite
so easy!
To have true to life physics models based on real cars would surely attract more enthusiasts and companies! I'm willing to bet the cgcars and smcars forums would absolutely love it!

I know cars isn't all your tools are for however, and I commend you on such a varied and useful toolset! It's just a shame the cars aren't more lifelike!

Thankyou for your reply. Best of luck for future builds! I hope it doesn't take too long! Haha!

There are several car simulation programs available on the market today, but none of them are even near a realtime solution. To make a perfect simulation of the movement of a car you would require several days of calculating before you can even see a result.
There is always a tradeoff you have to do - of course you can choose to set the border closer to the simulation, but our software has been recognized as a really good tradeoff between realism and realtime. Frankly, when was the last time you noticed that the car in the movie was moving in an unrealistic velocity? In most cases, such detail is not necessary and there our border is set fine.

Of course, there are other scenarios where you wish to have better detail - Forensics visualisations are one great example. This is what we are looking into, making CDS more functional for this particular purpose. But we do not aim at making a fully realistic solution, that would simply be overkill.

I have been reading through several posts and I am interested in achieving something similar. Our company creates forensic accident reconstructions for a wide variety of scenarios. Our engineers derive accurate motion data using a program called PC Crash. It is most definitely not something that the casual user would be interested in working with to make a quick vehicle animation. We use it to create accurate simulations of accidents that can be shown in court.

I have been playing with the CDS 4wheelerFree tools in Maya 2012. What I would like know is if there is a way to use the 4wheelerExtended rigs in conjunction with the motion data that we derive from PC Crash. We already get accurate simulation data for the position and rotation of the vehicles. What I would like to use the CDS rigs for is the secondary animation. Specifically the tire and wheel rotation and suspension reaction to the terrain changes.

I understand that the 4wheelerExtended rig has the capability to follow a spline. We get our motion data into Maya in the form of a .mov (Move) file. Do you know if this data will be able to drive the CDS rig?

I also have some ideas for potentially converting the motion data keyframes into a spline... However before I get into that Id be interested to know if there is a more direct solution.