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**geodav** · 01-31-2013, 07:00 PM

oh come on smokey13 i know you've been to my youtube channel, now get over there and check the blender->udk

most udk vehicles will have 1 material comprising of a diffuse map (colour) specular (shinyness) normal (for small details)

**smokey13** · 02-01-2013, 12:28 PM

Originally posted by geodav View Post

oh come on smokey13 i know you've been to my youtube channel, now get over there and check the blender->udk

i know, i know, im going................

searching/ watching...........

and im back, ha

"AUSOME"as always, i cant believe it did'nt occur to me to check your channel (i suppose it's because when i went there before i was only interested in tutorials relating to static meshes and must have missed the car rig tutorial).

so i watched yor vehicle rig tutorial(and downloaded it to my hard drive) and had a few questions.

1. will my car work as i want if i rig it in a similar way? (see bellow for better explaination of what i mean)

2. will the bone position you explain work for exporting to .FBX format? (if i wanted to)

3. you say i should have the wheels bellow the pivot point but my suspension is slightly more complicated and i just want to know if i should move my suspension to a lower position as well as the wheel or just the wheel? (you will see why i ask in the better explanation)

4. have you/are you going to make a tutorial about creating vertex groups and ataching them to bones, a tutorial about bone properties and constraints?(also at the end of your car rig tutorial you said you were going to do one about animating your car but i did'nt see it on your channel, i found the one for vehicle weapons but what i reall need is one for suspension and steering)

ok so onto the better explanation of what i am trying to do, here we go

this is obviously the rear of my car, now i want my car to be fully functional (witch is why i made it anatomicly accurate). as you can see from the pic i colour coded it to help with this explanation. the wheel/ brake disc/ wheel hub/ and the outside end of the driveshaft all need to move up and down with each other as well as rotate (except the wheel hub), both wish bones and middle section of the drive shaft need to move in sync (up and down), and the suspension well both ends need to move towards and away from each other as well as compress the spring whilst staying aligned, also all three parts of the drive shaft and the wheel need to rotate in sync. now onto the front

the suspension and wish bone needs to work the same but the rest is slightly more complicated. so now onto the hard part, obviously the wheel and brake disc need to rotate together but also have to pivot with the wheel hub, for the steeringif you look at the pic i want the steering wheel and rod to rotate witch then moves the middle part of the steering rack left and right witch then moves both ends of the steering rack turning the wheels. and that concludes the explanation.(i know im probably trying to do to much for my first skeletal mesh but im always up for a challenge).

any advice on bone positions or whatever would be much aprecciated.

one last question about the driver (this is just for future reference, at the moment a car with no driver actualy sound like fun). so i was thinking about making him/her as a seperate model in the sitting position. now i know i would have to use a socket to attach the driver to the car in UDk and just want to know if i have got the basic idea. so on my car i would add 3 extra bones 1 on lets say the seat and the 2 on the steering wheel (where the hands go), then for the driver i would have a root bone and bones in the arms so i could have a turn left and right action, but also have a bone in his/her back to attach to the seat and 2 bones in the hands to attach to the ones ot the steering wheel, then i would blend the anim sets in UDK (or something like that). so have i got the basic idea or have i gat it completely wrong?

most udk vehicles will have 1 material comprising of a diffuse map (colour) specular (shinyness) normal (for small details)

i thought it was something like that but as you know im only a low level modeler and the only reason i ask is that i was'nt sure if materials on skeletal meshes acted the same as stitic meshes, i mean i know that diffuse is for colour, normal maps are for detail (i usually use GIMP's normal plug-in and just convert the diffuse texture to create my normal's), emmesive is for glowing bits, but never knew specular controlled shinyness (i assume it uses some form of colour/shade gradient to determine shinyness/gloss, but im usualy pretty good with gimp so a quick google search on specular maps and that should be easy enough)

thanks for the help

much appreciated.

**geodav** · 02-01-2013, 07:17 PM

are you some sort of vehicle mechanic, your the first person to use the correct terms for the parts of the suspension

and i should know

ok lets start at the top

1, yes it will work just yours needs to be a lot more complex
2, yes fbx will work as well BUT you'll need to edit the fbx exporter ply file to stop it adding an extra bone to the root of the armature.
3, just lower the wheel bones for export, leave all other as they are.
4, for vertex groups you might want to watch the weapon videos, i don't touch bone properties or constraints in blender we do all that in UDK.
the anim was for the vehicle weapon which spins when fired

tips,
1, parent ALL the bones to the base(root) bone
2, bone placement at the anchor points of the parts, try to think how they move, wheel and brake disc on 1 bone
3, your going to be using the skelcontrollers in the animtree for most of the work (lookat) , take a good look at the scorpian vehicle, even better if you grab a copy of UT3 and check those vehicles as some are quite complex.
4, adding the driver would round it of, can't help much there as it will involve code at which i'm hopeless

don't panic this has got my interest and i'd like to see it (this vehicle) in game

**smokey13** · 02-01-2013, 08:35 PM

Originally posted by geodav View Post

are you some sort of vehicle mechanic, your the first person to use the correct terms for the parts of the suspension

and i should know

self trained myself when i was 10 (between 10 and 18 years old i owned 16 motor bikes and 7 cars, and you cant take that many things apart without learning a thing or two). how did you know?

, and more interestingly why should you?

1, yes it will work just yours needs to be a lot more complex

l thought so, just wanted to check because of all the angles of the various parts on m y model where as the one you use in your tutorial looks to be mostly at right angles.

2, yes fbx will work as well BUT you'll need to edit the fbx exporter ply file to stop it adding an extra bone to the root of the armature.

how would i go about doing that and will modifying the ply file mess up exporting my static meshes or will it have no effect on static meshes?

3, just lower the wheel bones for export, leave all other as they are.

from that i take it you mean just lower the wheel mesh and bone, no suspension parts or other bones.

4, for vertex groups you might want to watch the weapon videos, i don't touch bone properties or constraints in blender we do all that in UDK.the anim was for the vehicle weapon which spins when fired

i did watch the weapon rigging tutorial and if thats the one that you mean will doing the same on my car work?
i only asked about bone properties and constraints is because i did'nt know if it was relavent to UDK or not.
and i asked about your car animating tut's because at some point i will need to do it to my buggy.

tips,
1, parent ALL the bones to the base(root) bone

just like your tutorial says to, "got it".

2, bone placement at the anchor points of the parts, try to think how they move, wheel and brake disc on 1 bone

thats what i figured from your tutorial, place bones at the anchor/pivot points of single or multiple parts(like your example^)

3, your going to be using the skelcontrollers in the animtree for most of the work (lookat) , take a good look at the scorpian vehicle, even better if you grab a copy of UT3 and check those vehicles as some are quite complex.

i will google skeletal controllers and take a look at UDN.
not sure what you mean by grab a copy of UT3, i have a copy for my xbox but i dont think thats what you mean.

4, adding the driver would round it of, can't help much there as it will involve code at which i'm hopeless

yeah it would roud it off nicley, i just wanted to know if i had the right general idea about attaching the driver to my car using sockets. i'll worry about the coding later(probably check out TEGLEG's vehicle coding tut's and i also have a copy of "unreal development kit game programming with unreal script"by rachel cordone).

don't panic this has got my interest and i'd like to see it (this vehicle) in game

not panicing yet, and i also want to see it in game (i was thinking of releasing it as a free asset when it's fineshed so that anyone can just drop it in a level and take it for a spin).
also remember (this vehicle) as you put it is just my first attempt at not only a skeletal mesh but also my first attempt to model a car (it's not perfect but not to bad considering i started with just a cube in the middle of the screen and had no plan as to what i was making till it was finished about 12 hours later),and just think of how complex my next one will be and how awsome the potential possibilites could be for both of them.(especially if i texture them just right)

thanks again

-EDIT-

forgot to ask you, any advice on how to do the suspension, i know i will need a bone at each end but i have no idea about how to get the spring to compress.

**geodav** · 02-01-2013, 09:50 PM

ok lets take it one step at a time
your wheels and tyres look quite high poly, you want the whole vehicle to be around 15k triangles, once you get it down to that ammount you need to uvw map it.
now to the bones, the main thing is the alignment eg X=forward Z=up this is a problem in blender as it makes the rig look strange, the bones all point out to the side.
i think we can get the spring to compress but i'll have to do a little research on that.

as to why i should know the terms of vehicle parts, it comes from spending 2 years at Arborfield and another year in total at Bordon, less said about that place the better, though i think you might have heard about it

**smokey13** · 02-01-2013, 10:18 PM

ok, lowering the polycount of the wheels and front tyres shuold be easy enough(the front tyres actualy have 100 faces around the edges alone (was 50 before i triagulated)times by 16 edges of each front tyre witch =1600 tris just for the part of the tyre that touches the road), the rear tyre will be more difficult due to the tread. also i was thinking of using flat shading on the frame witch means i can get rid of a few tris there, and i can also ditch a few of the asthetic body mounts witch will help. as for the bones you explain about blender's alignment issues very well in your tutorial so i think i will be able to align the bones to the correct orientation as long as i follow your tutorial taking each step nice and slow. as for compressing the spring i too believe we can get it working.

**Spoof** · 02-02-2013, 09:21 AM

I'm guessing most of your polys are in the springs. You could minimise that by making the spring use a simple triangular profile, smoothing should fool the eye into seeing a tube.

However, a more optimal trick is to make the whole spring section a simple tube and fake it with a double sided alpha texture. You'll still get the flexing animation when the tube bends

It all depends how realistic you want it, how close the viewer will get, how big your overall poly budget is.

**Spoof** · 02-02-2013, 09:25 AM

Also, with this kind of hard surface modelling, your vertex count is likely to increase quite a bit on import (unless many of those elements are already separated from the surface). I would definitely try importing it straight away just to get an idea of the actual numbers.

Edit: just looked at the pics again. You need to at least set the tyres to smooth, otherwise every single quad will generate 4 vertices on import.

**smokey13** · 02-02-2013, 05:08 PM

hi spoof, i was planning to smooth shade most of it (just leave a few flat shaded surfaces like the edge of the wheels). i imported as a stitac mesh as you suggested and here's a pic of the results

the one on the left is all flat shaded, on the right smooth.

as this is my first try im not going for proper realistic, just learning how to do it. im not sure how close you wil see it because im going to release this first car as a free asset when it's finished (with scripts and everything) so anyone can just drop it in a level and start driving, although i did have a really good idea for a racing game and if i can figure all this out i will use what i learn building this car (and in racing games you get very close to the other cars so need to learn to do suspension). i am also going to try and stick to GEODAV's budget of 15k tris.

as for current polycount
the springs have 1744 faces per spring ,they have an octogan profile and 12 sections per coil. i am currently modeling there replacements, i amgoing to have a square profile at a 45 degree angle and only 6 sections per coil, im also making them thicker so i wont need as many coils (this should cut the number of faces by roughly 65%).

and the rear wheels have the highest polycount with 2380 faces per wheel and the front wheels have 1330 faces but im making a whole new set of wheels with a simpler tread and a much simpler rim design witch should cut the polycount even further.

not sure what you mean by (unless many of those elemnets are already seperated from the surface)

i did not know UDK makes more verts than what i put in the model in blender (seems crazy to me that UDK would add so many verts, "RANDOM") any way thanks for the heads up

**Spoof** · 02-02-2013, 06:02 PM

Originally posted by smokey13 View Post

not sure what you mean by (unless many of those elemnets are already seperated from the surface)

i did not know UDK makes more verts than what i put in the model in blender (seems crazy to me that UDK would add so many verts, "RANDOM") any way thanks for the heads up

Those pics give a good illustration of what happens. 76k versus 13k vertices

The two questions are related, and not random at all. Smoothing groups, UV seams, separate materials and physically separate parts of the mesh all generate additional vertices due to the way vertex normals and uv coords are handled.

Say you have two quads connected together at one edge, but bent at a 90 degree angle. If the quads are flat shaded then the four vertices of each face have their normals pointing 'straight out' from the face. If they're smooth shaded then the vertices that make up the shared edge have normals pointing at an angle that 'bends' between the two directions.

When lighting is calculated for these faces it uses the vertex normals to create the shading, either completely flat for each face, or smoothly interpolating between the normals.

Now, in Blender or any other modelling package, this setup appears to share the vertices (6 verts for two joined quads, because 2 verts are shared). However, because of the way these tools handle their data internally, the shared vertices of the flat shaded model actually require two sets of normals. This is hidden from the user to simplify the modelling environment.

In a game engine this setup is too complicated and inefficient for realtime rendering on a GPU. It's much more efficient to keep things simple and have 4 vertices with their own normal instead of two verts with two sets of normals.

This same principle applies to the UV coordinates, so a vertex that appears along the seam of separate UV islands will actually generate two vertices in the same position, but with different UV values.

So, a cube with 8 vertices in Blender/Maya/Max will import into UDK as 24 vertices if all 6 faces use flat shading, or form separate UV islands, or have separate materials applied to each face. If they are part of a single smoothing group (all faces use smooth shading) then they should import as 8 vertices (but lighting will look very odd for such a low-poly mesh using smoothing).

**Spoof** · 02-02-2013, 06:04 PM

Btw, for the large door panels, bonnet and sides you can afford to use flat shading. Or add a few edge loops to flatten the panel and retain a smooth trim.

Edit: I'll hand you back to Geodav 'cos I know nothing about cars

**geodav** · 02-02-2013, 06:33 PM

thanks Spoof for the extreme technical side of poly/vertex counts, never even knew about that

.

i say stick to a 15k count as this is a happy medium for a game like UT3 with quite a lot of vehicles, now if its a racing game with just a few vehicles then of course you could bump the count up, but lets stick with 15k because then later you'll need the extras for the driver

**smokey13** · 02-02-2013, 09:41 PM

Thanks SPOOF for the technical explanation and for using basic terminology so i could understand it easily

(very well written).

GEODAV i am still aiming for 15k tris, i did try to just lower the tri count for certain parts (wheels/suspension ect...) but i only managed to get rid af 5000 tris so decided to make new wheels and suspension. now i havnt finished the wheels yet but heres a small update on the suspension.

old suspension
per corner
VERTS:1130
TRIS:2244
TOTAL TRIS(whole car)=8976

new suspesion
per corner
VERTS:314
TRIS:612
TOTAL TRIS(whole car)=2448

an instant drop of 6528 tris (witch isnt bad)

**geodav** · 02-02-2013, 11:03 PM

great going your doing a fine job

Announcement

[WALK-THROUGH] Fully Functional Vehicle (my first car).

[WALK-THROUGH] Fully Functional Vehicle (my first car).

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