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Panzercycle


Don-key ho'tai

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hi! so i'm new to the forums and renx sdk but i do a good deal of info about udk and a bit of unrealscript. i was thinking that the panzercycle would be awesome to tear up the battlefield in renx but i was wondering how i might best go about implementing it. this is kinda a high level question more aimed toward udk in general but seeing as everyone's on ue4 with the whole blueprint thing i figured i should ask you guys. so my biggest question is how would i make the suspension work properly i want the wheels to move in an arc as if its swinging like it should instead of just linearly up and down. how would i go about this? also how do treads work? do you attach a parameter to move the material based on speed or something? if anyone could help or at least point me in the right direction it'd be much appreciated thanks!

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one of the game devs wrote this some days ago

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't had the time to make that tutorial latley. But the good news is that I finally started recording it last night, so hopefully by the end of the week it will be up for all of you guys to enjoy.

i think if u have some time to wait.. this will tell you all what you need :)

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  • Former Developers

Aw that's so cool! But yeah totally doable, but certainly not an easy one to do. I did something similar on the stealth tank treads.

11h7alv.jpg

Here is a simple diagram to explain how it can be done. The animation tree is where you will be doing most of your work to add the wheel's translation, and also add the look at constraint. There is a more accurate way of setting this up, but it will involve too many physical wheels which will end up creating nightmares in vehicle handling. The solution I am suggesting is the quickest/easiest one with the most efficient vehicle handling.

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Thanks Havoc! that helps alot. so do you think i should i make the front the only part that really moves or should i do something similar with the back wheel.I was thinking about making the bike part move independently side to side when it turns and foward and back when it accelerates. also i'm a little unsure about attaching the player. I'll try to get it done as soon as possible no telling when that'll be though its been a while since i messed with udk. as for it being public i don't see why not.

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  • Former Developers
Thanks Havoc! that helps alot. so do you think i should i make the front the only part that really moves or should i do something similar with the back wheel.I was thinking about making the bike part move independently side to side when it turns and foward and back when it accelerates. also i'm a little unsure about attaching the player. I'll try to get it done as soon as possible no telling when that'll be though its been a while since i messed with udk. as for it being public i don't see why not.

I'm a bit confused on what you're talking about for side to side. As for the back wheel, yeah you can absolutely setup a similar system to have the back wheel also create an arc effect like the front wheel does. As per getting a driver, have a look at the Apache. There is a bone for where the character mesh will be, and in the code there is an option to make the driver visible, and a variable for which animation to use for the character.

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  • 2 weeks later...

update:so I got it rigged and its good to go. its a kinda crazy setup but when I tried to link the wheel bones to the bone I'm calling front guides (the bone that has a lookat constraint to the physics wheel) I had this weird distortion so I postion-constrained dummys to the wheel bones, seems to work. I was just wondering should I have just one set of 3 physics wheels going in tandem or should i have 6 sidebyside like say nod artillery.also if i just have the one big physics wheel in the front how can i make it so the two actual wheels spin at the right speed.

ps. seen the vehicle rigging tutorials good stuff cant wait for the rest particularly anim-tree setup

pss. ever heard of ditto its a copy and paste program that can save you alot of time you can bind differnt copied numbers in a clipboard to numpad inputs very usefull

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  • Former Developers

I don't think having 6 wheels is a good idea for such a small vehicle. It might make handling very difficult, but if you can make 6 wheels work the way you want them to then it might be worth trying out.

As for how to get those 2 wheels to spin, there was a way to do have a "dummy wheel" back in ut3, but that seemed to have been removed in UDK. You might be able to use an orientation constraint to inherit the rotation of the main giant physics wheel onto the 2 small wheels. As for getting them to spin at the correct rate, well you can try using a multiply node after the orientation constraint to have it turn at a slower rate, though that may not work correctly.

If that doesn't work, you could always just set up normal physics wheels for them. That isn't an optimal solution, but its one that will work. Though it might make handling tricky as it would cause wheels to be intersecting.

I think your best bet is probably to use a SkelControlSingleBone and use a controller name on it that you can call in code, and get that controller to spin the wheel at which ever rate you want by coding it yourself. Though I'm not sure how that would be done.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi again. sorry its been such a long time since my last update my house flooded so i had to clean up all that mess and then i went on vacation for two weeks so i haven't been able to get to my computer.

i got it in game (yay!)..... sorta ( :( )

i ended up needing to use 6 wheels because the engine wasn't handling a linear setup very well and after many hours of tweaking values i've got the handling just about where i want it though i still have to work on getting the wheels just right (the physics wheels, its floating in the air for now. for some reason the values i put in don't quite match the in-game values to the ground but i figured i could move the bones to the right place once i get around to it. the wheels guiding the treads are working pretty good.).

i also got the miniguns rigged the right way and they move around in game, and fire with muzzle flash and shells ejecting but for some reason they seem to always be facing due north instead of where i am aiming, very frustrating

i looked at the Apache like you said and got it so the rider is fixed in the right place although he looks kinda funny because its taking the animation from the Apache it'd be great if i could get the viper anim from unreal but it seems you got a different rig then they have i'm still alittle ignorant about the animation system

also i ended up using a cantilever to control the bikes body i went into the animtree and gave it a 10% "control" over it and it works pretty expect for that annoying bug when it first spawns and waves side to side like crazy but not a huge deal

other than all that the last thing i need before i'd think about releasing it is the treads i watched those tutorials you put up and you vaguely mention it but i think you accidentally edited that part out unless i just overlooked something. i was able to work out making the texture move but i'm still not sure about linking it to vehicle speed.

oh and putting it the purchase terminal of course

so to recap my to-do list is

-fixing the phyics wheels so its not floating and finish tweaking values

-getting the miniguns to point in the right direction instead of north

-figuring out how to get renx charactor rig to match the viper anim from unreal

-make the treads move along with the speed of the vehicle

-making it available in the purchase terminal

-play testing it ;)

i know alot of you are probably as busy as i am or more so i really do appreciate any help you give me

i can't wait to be driving this thing around like a badass :cool:

happy gaming

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@handepsilon achually i was thinking about making this one for nod though i still have no idea how i'm going to get the tail to work yet

on a side note i downloaded the new beta 5. you said the new vehicles are in the sdk? i don't see them. is that just me? i was hoping i could check out the recon bike as a reference.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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