Cart or Rover tutorials?

[ThePyrateCaptain]

Does anyone know of any good "How to build a" CART or ROVER tutorials? I am working on a model and I need to figure out how to make and use wheels and steering and suspensions for it to work.

Thx

[Pulstar]

Rovers are pretty easy in general. I recommend building them in the Spaceplane Hangar as the symmetry mode there is better for surface vehicles.

You want to have wheels symmetrically places on the sides of a main axis or body and all at the same height. Mind you you can have a front pair of wheels higher or lower than the back one but having them equal makes it a bit more stable.

You also want to have the rover's center of mass be as low as possible so it doesn't flip as much during sharp turns, also I recommend making it a bit wide so it doesn't start rolling. Personally I place batteries under the body of rover to lower the center of mass, placing RTGs there (if you know they won't hit the ground during driving) is another good idea.

The biggest problem is landing the rover. If you're landing somewhere with a sufficient amount of atmosphere you can just put parachutes on it somewhere, dcouple it from the carrier rocket after putting it on a descent trajectory. But if you need engines for a powered descent, well then you have two options.

One is placing the tanks and engines below the rover, the problem with this is that you need to drive off the descent stage without wrecking the rover. It's doable but requires clever thinking so the decoupler below the rover doesn't hold you in place even after decoupled.

The second one is placing them above the rover, this one is far easier because you just need to space out the engines above so they don't burn the rover. Sometimes people place them hanging on the bottom side of landers dropping them below so they drive out easily. Others build skycranes on top of them and detach them after they land so the rover can drive around without excess weigh on top of it (which is bad as you want your center of mass low on a rover).

A good idea is to design the rover in the SPH first and then copy the file to the VAB and there add a carrier rocket and the lander/descent stage which gets it safely down to the surface. Because the VAB is better for building rockets (obviously).

Edited June 3, 2013 by Pulstar

[Sᴄɪɴᴛɪʟʟᴀᴛᴏʀ]

As Pulstar said its important to keep the centre of mass low. I also find that designs that feature 6 or more wheels are much more stable compared to 4 wheeled rovers which have a tendency to flip at higher speeds.

[ThePyrateCaptain]

Well I think I should have clarified. I require help in unity. As in making a rover wheel, like bobcats generic cart, all assembled in a DAE or rather an obj file, then compiled into the game as a whole.

[Sᴄɪɴᴛɪʟʟᴀᴛᴏʀ]

I assumed you meant designing an actual rover in-game, my mistake. You should look on the wiki for a basic guide to modeling for unity.

This video might help:

[ThePyrateCaptain]

Thanks. Yeah I'm too keen on the subject yet.