CGCookie - Blender - Rigging Vehicles with Automatic Suspension

Rigging vehicles is no easy task. It?s technical, it?s complex, and there?s nearly always more than one right answer to the same problem.

In this course we?ll teach you what it takes to rig vehicles by walking you through the process of rigging a vehicle that automatically follows the terrain it?s driving on. Specifically, we?ll rig an off-road suspension vehicle with constraints so that everything from the suspensions to the wheels to steering all move correctly and give us very good control while animating. This is a project-based course, covering the complete rigging process.

Creating a Dynamic Vehicle Rig

To accomplish this task we?ll be making heavy use of various constraints, including Locked Track, Track To, Transformation, Shrinkwrap, and others. All in all you will learn:

How to keep the wheel assembly together, making all struts follow correctly  

How to compress and lengthen the suspension spring with maximum and minimum ranges  

How to make the wheels automatically rotate while moving the vehicle  

How to create a dynamic suspension that follows and reacts to the ground below  

How to setup a steering mechanism  

This course is broken up into three lessons: Rigging the Control Arms, Rigging the Shock Absorber and Spring, and Setting up the Ground Detection and Steering.