Vehicle Penetration = Ground and Wheel Wells

[trimvein]

Hello,

So I used the general 4-wheeler ext setup for a lowered 56 ford truck. The basics are working very good but I am getting pretty severe penetrations on the ground plane and around the wheel well areas.

I setup the 4-wheeler vehicle to have the same body distance as my 'lowered" vehicle. However, when i use the turbo booster or even skid brake it seems to go through the ground plane "which is flat" and the body of the vehicle goes through the front and rear tires.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to setup the damping or the shock stability? Maybe I need to adjust the height of my vehicle when I actually setup the simulation or the animation?

When I double click the 4-wheeler ext i can set the profile to truck...but whenever I adjust the setting it doesn't seem to completely adjust correctly.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks

JT

[Patrik Martin]

Hi JT,

My suggestion is that you do not use the setup for a truck since this is aimed for heavier vehicles. If you like to have a stiffer suspension just raise the "Front/Back Stiffness" and "Front/Back Damping".

One way to prevent the wheels from penetrating upp trough the chassis is to edit the "Maximum Forward Tilt Angle".

If you feel that the wheels are penetrating the ground you should test to just raise your scenes fps and/or changes the values in the "Ray Cast Properties"-group. This is what calculates the detection of the ground and how well it is done. Test for example to turn on/off the "Use Fast Ray Cast"-option.

Hope this gets you a bit closer to what you are aiming for.

[trimvein]

I realize that I didn't mention that this is a lowered truck. It is only 2-3 inches off the ground. So I lowered the 4 wheeler ext to the same body heights and then raised the wheels to match the 56 ford truck.

[Patrik Martin]

I realize that I didn't mention that this is a lowered truck. It is only 2-3 inches off the ground. So I lowered the 4 wheeler ext to the same body heights and then raised the wheels to match the 56 ford truck.

The answer would still be the same actually.

[trimvein]

Thank you very very much Patrick... that helped tremendously and I can drive it with controlling my roll and yaw of the vehicle.

I got another issue with the autonomous mode when following a spline. I made a spline and converted it to a nurbs cv curve. Then used path constraint to attach 4WheelerExt_01_TargetMesh to the path and then turn on the autonomous check box.

For some reason the vehicle goes it some random direction and backs up all slow and deliberate:0 Crazy. How do i control the vehicle to go on the curve or path?

thanks

[Patrik Martin]

It is not possible to have it to be exactly on the path of the spline since it is always trying to catch up with the TargetMesh. It backs up if the TergetMesh is to close to it's radius or if it does not have the power to stop before the TargetMesh stops and "runs it over". You are able to control this radius by changing it in the config for autonomous mode on the 4-Wheeler Ext. It can also be affected by it's speed and acceleration and you can change this by editing the "Gas Pedal (Forw/Backw) Maximum and Response Factor in the configuration window in the group Input properties. This is also good to do if you like to have it tighter. Test also to use some of the profiles that are included.

If this does not help it would be good if you are able to send a video of the animation and it would be easier to see what needs to be fixed.

[trimvein]

how much detail do you need to see in order to figure out the problem? Here is a top view 200 frames and very simple. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Pulf8doQc
The path however is very large.
Does the length or size of path make a difference?

I can render out or provide a better preview and / or images if that helps.

thanks

[Patrik Martin]

The problem here is that the 4-Wheeler have received a initial velocity which it is not supposed to have. So in this case it starts as if it has speed and then tries to brake but is not able to brake in time and therefore it backs up.

In the config for the 4-Wheeler Ext you have in the top a "initial velocity %" change this to 0%. If that does not work just clone the 4-Wheeler in CDS. This will clone the rig you have with the same behavior but it will "reset" the rig and you will not have the initial velocity.

Another thing you can do is to have the 4-Wheeler Ext start before the intended animation just to set it up. And then you just render out the frames you are pleased with. For example instead of rendering 0-200 frames render out 50-250 and just have the first 50 the get the truck on place.