Hi everybody
My first submission on this forum, think it's a good one
After long thinking on how to solve the circular parenting question ( it has a name but it slips my mind right now ).
I finally found the solution > just don't use parenting !
The chain in this movie isn't parented to anything ( the chain itself is 1 part, treated like a cloth ! )
Altough it's not that easy & requires some tricks to & serious tweaking to "hack" cloth dynamics.
But once you know the "system", it's quite easy to setup - less than 1/2 hour -
To give you an idea on how much time I spend figuring out how to do it
Modelling tracks
+ vehicle < 2 h
scene surface < 5 min. ( procedural displacement )
texturing < less then 10 min, quickly threw my favorite rusty textures on the model, rusty because then it's easier to follow the wheel movements
motion capturing < 2 min. (realtime, but that's another story )
tread system < 3h to get a working tread ( flat surface only Z-axis )
some exotic expressions & IK
& an additional 35 ! h to make the treads work in a "real world" environment ( sharp corners, quick acceleration etc.... )
( jeez though work :bored: until..... I found the trick .. )
So I guess i'll have to write a fancy tutorial on this one
I'm about to finish this movie with - smoke, dust & trails -
still have to write a custom Lscript, could use some help on that one
- I need a script that accumulates the result of an expression, something like > B=expression, A=A+B, A goes to channel, A=0 on frame 0
Don't know if it's even possible in Lscript - certainly not as an expression, or am I wrong ?
so stay tuned and Enjoy
O did I mention I didn't use any 3rd party plugins ?
you can download the movie >
http://3d.uk.to/content/movies/tanktrack_d_divx.avi