Wheel modding tutorial Twitch feed 7/8/14

[lo-fi]

Hello

You may or not have seen that I did a twitch feed on wheel construction a while back. Sadly I got the audio messed up, but despite that I've had a lot of positive comments.

I liked the twitch format because it allowed people to ask questions, which enhanced the whole process. So, I'd like to have another go with a wider audience and make a better job of it for posting to YouTube for future reference.

Who's interested?

First instalment will be wheels, then advanced wheel rigging techniques and I'll take requests after that if it's something I'm able to tackle.

I'm setting the date at 19:30 BST (GMT+1) 07/08/14. Hopefully that's about right for most Europeans, sorry guys outside that zone! If you have any specific questions, please post beforehand and I'll make sure I cover if I can. All are welcome, no matter what level you are at. Even complete newbies can probably pick up enough to get themselves started, and veterans will hopefully find a few handy tips or some knowledge to squirrel away for a future project. Please bear in mind that the feed has a bit of a delay (30 seconds last run), so bear with me while I answer questions posted live.

Really looking forward to it, I thoroughly enjoyed doing the last feed, and it's great to be sharing knowledge.

Edited August 3, 2014 by lo-fi

[sirkut]

Yes to all that as long as we can view the archived streams.

[DYJ]

Tutorials are always lovely.

PM me when you have something I can sticky somewhere.

[lo-fi]

Yes to all that as long as we can view the archived streams.

Absolutely, that's why I want to YouTube after the stream.

I can set it to record locally as well as live feed, so its not difficult.

Tutorials are always lovely.

PM me when you have something I can sticky somewhere.

Done there were one or two video tutorials that really got me started, so I'd like to continue to pay it forward.

[lo-fi]

Date set. All welcome, hope you can join.

[CaptainKipard]

Would that be rover wheels or aeroplane wheels?

[nli2work]

sweet. will try to remember it this time.

[lo-fi]

Would that be rover wheels or aeroplane wheels?

Rover wheels primarily, but I know you're keen to get to grips with landing gear. I'm going to see what I can figure out during the week, so hopefully I'll have enough to get your started. Let me know if there's a specific aspect you'd like covered - I'd be happy to help. or if you've got a model you'd like rigged, send me a link and I'll use that for my experimentation! I'd only be working with a dummy model otherwise, so might as well get something useful done if I can.

sweet. will try to remember it this time.

Great, good to have you aboard

[CaptainKipard]

Thanks lo-fi. I'm still in the process of dividing up the model into its functional components. Here's a list of components that I want in my nose landing gear:

- Four separate doors (two at the front, two at the back)

- Main "leg"

- Pneumatic piston

- Pneumatic cylinder

- Steerable component

- Shock absorber

- Top Torque arm

- Bottom Torque arm

- Wheel

[lo-fi]

None of that should be a problem. Gorgeous model, btw! Shout me when you've chopped it up, looks prefect for setting up a demo

Though this looks like it ought to be a tutorial in its own right. Lots to cover rigging it up: animations, look-at constraints, suspension...

[nli2work]

I imagine once you understand rover wheels, landing gears won't be hard to figure out. they work the same pretty much. landing gears probably just need some colliders set to Wheelcollider_ignore like lander legs.

[lo-fi]

Yeah, doesn't look to hard having poked around in the stock part.cfg. I've learned you can tell almost all you need to know from the configs once you understand how they interact with the code modules. Squad have done a fine job, even if it's largely (publicly) undocumented.

[CaptainKipard]

I've asked about this before btw. There's more issues raised in this thread. I think the main gear would require the firespitter equivalent of the module(s) because it would need two wheel colliders, but that should be a separate tutorial if you're interested in making it.

Anyway the nose gear is divided up, so I can send you the blend file with the objects all colour coded for each component. I'm sure I'll be able to figure out the main gear afterwards. When you write that tutorial, could you also include my model, textures and your Unity scene?

[nli2work]

I'm assuming you mean August 7th correct?

[lo-fi]

I've manage multiple colliders just fine in lots of wheels so far, I don't see why landing gear should be much different. I'd be happy to use your model to demo and fire back a rigged unity project. Send me over a link? The swing bar suspension in your main gear is a challenge, though. That will take some serious thinking to make work.

Yes, I do mean August! The year is going far too fast... I'll update in a moment

[stephm]

hi !

@Cpt.Kipard

the front landing gear is very good nice work !!!

I'm looking you're picture this relatively easy to compile for a full functional landing gear

(In the way how it work you can directly anim the model into unity !)

so lo-fi and nli2work are already on the problem I see !

I mean do I stop my own tutorial ? here

thk

steph.

edit lo-fi I try to look you twich 19:30 BST (GMT+1) 07/08/14 , I 'm very limited by English (French native)for reading and completely

loose to listening people .

May be for you Cpt.Kipard is better if lo-fi and nli2work take the relay, I think I'm to much beginner to make tuto !!!

Edited August 3, 2014 by stephm

[CaptainKipard]

Oh NO! They found out about eachother! I've been here for over a year and in that time no one ever made a gear tutorial. Now all of a sudden three people are offering to do it.

I think it's best if you all attempt to do it because there exists a possibility that someone will eventually give up. I'll give my gear model to both of you. BTW SpannerMonkey is also doing some work on general wheel tutorials, but he makes his own models.

[stephm]

hello !

I think you can manage how to for the front gear, because he work as the same method of the small gear bay

I have read somewhere about the smallgearbay screenshot, I mean the unique real info we have, you have not enough

information with this picture !

so I think it's time to add some useful info on this picture or why not a new picture

I 'm concentrate on that first, ok, made a detailed photo on how wheelcollider work

(including axis), and how parameter drive this thing!

ok

Edited August 3, 2014 by stephm

[CaptainKipard]

Here's the link to the landing gear model.

Better than screenshots I think.

[stephm]

re !

thank I'm looking you're file tomorrow in French "de bon matin " .

and this is the revised picture :

LandingLightBase are just DUMMY (no mesh object) they serve to place the light component

StatusLight : is a renamed gameobject containing a point light, controlled by KSP (green light near y axis )

voilà it's a good start, and may be a schematic picture for the WheelColliders physics component.

steph

Edit :

I've just seen the blender file it's a "CONCORDE" type (trés réussie) , very beautifull, I'm working on

the model early tomorrow !!

as far I have seen on the model , full suspention anim (including little part), steering wheel it's a very good model.

And may be I need tuto from you in blender .

@+

Edited August 3, 2014 by stephm

[nli2work]

I don't remember ever seeing that image with the explanations. only one I saw was that landing gear with no text. a little text goes a long way. Thanks for adding that stephm!

but from building lander legs with suspension; which uses WheelColliders as well...

WheelCollider should be set to WheelCollider layer; any other colliders the WheelCollider has to pass through during animation should be set to WheelCollider_Ignore layer.

Edited August 3, 2014 by nli2work

[stephm]

@nli2work:

In fact I use this layers (WheelColliders) for my landing gear, I'm not sure if it needed, I haven't seen any error message about that !

It's funny because if you look on some stock part especially wheel in debug windows they are error, I think some stock part need some

revision.

So you think wheelcollider for landing gear need no layers ? (I have to verify that on my gear)

thank

[lo-fi]

Yeah, get the info out if you've got it! Spanner and I have been posting what we can in his wheel thread.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

The layers can be funny. I've had wheelcolliders completely refuse to function if set to the wheelColliders layer (I still don't know what it actually does). WheelCollidersIgnore is usually essential on convex colliders in the part or really strange things happen, but it depends how things are placed. For landing gear where none of the other convex colliders are intersected by the raycast you'll probably fine if you ignore the layers completely.

Edited August 3, 2014 by lo-fi

[nli2work]

stephm, truth is I don't know. That's why I'm eager to get in and see this twitch session. I'm not too worried about the constraint FX modules, I expect they will work similar to any kind of rigging in a 3d app, as long as you got the target and parent objects pointed at the right direction things would work, they are largely cosmetic. the real heart of the whole wheel thing is the wheelcollider.

as for layers, I was just going by BahamutoD's lander leg tutorial, everything worked, suspension worked, no errors. so I figured that's probably the right procedure for all cases where wheel colliders are involved.

[lo-fi]

I'll cover the constrainFX modules on Thursday, they're not hard to use. As you say, entirely cosmetic. They're useful when parenting is too simple: you want an object to inherit movement but not rotation, for example.

In the case of BahamutoD's lander leg, the layers are definitely needed. If you miss the WheelCollidersIgnore layer on a convex collider that the wheel raycast intersects you find it treats it like it's hitting the ground and the suspension bounces about all over the place. That's about all there is to it, really.