Moving a vehicle

[alexfrancisva]

Hii.. i created a craft 4wheeler ext in Maya 8.5... then animated Frame 1 to 500. After that i need to re-use the vehicle (Frame 1500 to 2000) in another location in the same project... i moved the vehicle to the position and press record(Frame 1500). Then it start from the previous location where i stop at frame 500. Is there any way to reuse the vehicle??

[Carl Buhre]

I'll paste my e-mail response to you here in case anyone else also have this problem:

This problem is probably related to a known issue we have found with Craft 4-Wheeler Extended (http://forum.craftanimations.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3). So what you need to do when you move the vehicle, is to move the GravityDirectionMesh (the red arrow under the vehicle) as well.

[alexfrancisva]

Thank you.. that replay help me a lot....

[Carl Buhre]

Ah, great. If you have any other questions I'll be happy to answer them.

[viki164]

hi guys I m very new to this tool. I m very much impressed by the outputs of this but I see very less support for maya users.
I cum across a problem with 4 wheeler Ext. first when i load this tool in my viewport it appears 300 times bigger than my viewport grid size & when I scale it down to normal units like 5 or 1 & when I hit record button the car seems to be going backward & not responding to my input keys like steering & going forward...I m using keyboard arrow keys as input for my car. M i doing sumthing wrong or its a scaling issue..? plz help!
luking forward for maya tuts also!
I m abt to wrk on Nascar Stereo Project. If this thing wrks well thn I Think this a very gud exposure for all of us to implement this tool.

[Carl Buhre]

hi guys I m very new to this tool. I m very much impressed by the outputs of this but I see very less support for maya users.
I cum across a problem with 4 wheeler Ext. first when i load this tool in my viewport it appears 300 times bigger than my viewport grid size & when I scale it down to normal units like 5 or 1 & when I hit record button the car seems to be going backward & not responding to my input keys like steering & going forward...I m using keyboard arrow keys as input for my car. M i doing sumthing wrong or its a scaling issue..? plz help!
luking forward for maya tuts also!
I m abt to wrk on Nascar Stereo Project. If this thing wrks well thn I Think this a very gud exposure for all of us to implement this tool.

Hello viki164 and welcome to our forum. The scale of our tools when you create them are determined by your Working units scale in Maya.
I'm not sure why your car goes backwards when you press Record though. If you create a brand new Craft 4-Wheeler Extended and press record after it has been created, does that one go backwards too?

Try loading a different configuration profile and also make sure that your inputs are correctly configured.

[viki164]

hi!
My wrking units in maya is in cenitmeters still when I press 4 wheeler ext I get the car in 350 units!
& the strange problem of car goin backward is solved by reinstalling the application...I wish if we culd get little more time in demo to learn this tool coz 24 hr is very less.
Anway do u recommmend grouping body mesh & target mesh into one then scale it accordingly with respect to my scene scale?
Is it good 2 grup things & move its position..?
plz help!
Thnxs

Eager Yung Minds!

[Carl Buhre]

hi!
My wrking units in maya is in cenitmeters still when I press 4 wheeler ext I get the car in 350 units!
& the strange problem of car goin backward is solved by reinstalling the application...I wish if we culd get little more time in demo to learn this tool coz 24 hr is very less.
Anway do u recommmend grouping body mesh & target mesh into one then scale it accordingly with respect to my scene scale?
Is it good 2 grup things & move its position..?
plz help!
Thnxs

Eager Yung Minds!

You can contact me via e-mail and I'm sure I can set up an extended trial license for you. Also, please check out the Craft 4-Wheeler Extended video tutorial here: http://www.craftanimations.com/index.cf ... F735792452

You don't need to group Craft 4-Wheeler Extended body and target mesh. Craft 4-Wheeler Extended's TargetMesh's scale has not effect so you can just leave it as it is. And if you don't intend to use Autonomous Mode you can ignore it all together.

[alexfrancisva]

Hi Carl... im using 4wheeler ext in Maya2008. im trying to drive the car from one polygonal plane to another. It's actually 2 objects. How can i parent the gravity mesh to the two surfaces. I am trying to drive my car from a bridge to the ground plane. The Bridge & Ground are two objects. How can i solve this.

[Carl Buhre]

Hi Carl... im using 4wheeler ext in Maya2008. im trying to drive the car from one polygonal plane to another. It's actually 2 objects. How can i parent the gravity mesh to the two surfaces. I am trying to drive my car from a bridge to the ground plane. The Bridge & Ground are two objects. How can i solve this.

Hello Alex. You're going to have to combine your two objects in order for this to work.

Select both of your objects and select Combine in Maya. Then parent WheelerExt_01_GravityDirectionMesh to it.

[alexfrancisva]

Thanks.. It works..

[alexfrancisva]

Hiii. i am using Maya2008 64bit & Craft Director Tools 8.1.7. I done some work in 4wheeler Ext and added about 8 4wheeler vehicles. Recorded some scenes successfully. But now, when im trying to take "configure settings" of all 4wheelerExt vehicles that i recorded successfully before, it shows nothing and suddenly a msg "Empty Dialog" apears in the taskbar then Maya Closes unexpectedly. I format my HDD and reinstalled Win X64. But the problem remains. Is there any way to fix this.

[Carl Buhre]

Hiii. i am using Maya2008 64bit & Craft Director Tools 8.1.7. I done some work in 4wheeler Ext and added about 8 4wheeler vehicles. Recorded some scenes successfully. But now, when im trying to take "configure settings" of all 4wheelerExt vehicles that i recorded successfully before, it shows nothing and suddenly a msg "Empty Dialog" apears in the taskbar then Maya Closes unexpectedly. I format my HDD and reinstalled Win X64. But the problem remains. Is there any way to fix this.

Alex, can you mail me your scene so we can take a closer look at the problem? If the scenes contains any sensitive assets, feel free to strip the scene of them before sending it.

[alexfrancisva]

The scene is about 530 MB. I think the problem is due to 32,64 bit systems. i started my project in maya 2008 32bit. its working fine in it. But i changed to Maya 2008 64bit, two weeks ago. Everything in my project except Craft Direction Tools, working fine in 64bit Maya. Is there a problem for changing from 32bit to 64bit?.

[Luigi Tramontana]

Carl is out of the office until monday. But until then it seems to me that your file is corrupt since the "Empty Dialog" appears when the saved data is unavailable. There is no problem going from 64 to 32, so that should not be the issue.
If you saved it as an .ma file (not .mb) we could take a look at it to see what happened. since your file is so large I understand that you do not want to e-mail it, so send carl an e-mail (carl.buhre@craftanimations.com) and he will open an ftp account for you as soon as he's back.

Otherwise my alternative advice must be to go back to the previously saved scene and redo the animation (save often! If you use maya you should add the "incremental save" script to your shelf (se the "Useful Scripts for SpeedAnimation" forum thread)).

[alexfrancisva]

ok.. Thanks...

[Carl Buhre]

Hiii. i am using Maya2008 64bit & Craft Director Tools 8.1.7. I done some work in 4wheeler Ext and added about 8 4wheeler vehicles. Recorded some scenes successfully. But now, when im trying to take "configure settings" of all 4wheelerExt vehicles that i recorded successfully before, it shows nothing and suddenly a msg "Empty Dialog" apears in the taskbar then Maya Closes unexpectedly. I format my HDD and reinstalled Win X64. But the problem remains. Is there any way to fix this.

Maybe you've approaching the memory limit? Check the task manager to see how much memory Maya is using. If your scene contains a lot of key frames and you use Resimulate/Record a lot you will fill up your memory pretty quick with just the Undo data.

I've had Maya start act strangely on a 32-bit machine when it was using 1.7GB of the RAM (out of a total 3.25GB) and when I tried to save that scene Maya finally crashed (out of memory). Check and see if you're using a lot of memory and report back.

[alexfrancisva]

Hii.. Carl.. I solved my problem by change back to Maya 2008 32bit. Luigi told me that there's no problem with changing from 32bit maya to 64bit. But in my case that "Empty Dialog" problem occurs. I started my project in Maya 2008 32bit, then i changed to Maya2008 64bit before 3 weak. From there the problem found. Now its Working fine . Thanks for the reply.