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Okay, I've been sitting here wondering what exactly what would be involved with doing wheeled vehicles, and here' what I've come up with:

1-If we can figure out exactly how to export 9pose animations, then we can do turning wheels. Look at vehicles that have a sort of 'analog' turning/pitching -- the Snowspeeder, the Fightertank & turret, etc -- If we can do that, we can create a simulated analog wheel that turns

2-Rotating wheels can probably be done in one of two ways, neither of which are very realistic. The first way is to make the part of the tire that hits the road the 'tread' texture (see the CIS snailtank odf). This would work great except for the fact that only the top of a wheel would move. There's definitely a workaround for this by UV mapping the wheels differently. If any modeler would like to hear the theory, let me know. The second option is to make a forward and reverse animation where the wheel turns completely around and the animation loops, but this would probably break the turning ability, plus the wheels would move at a set framerate and not according to the vehicle's speed.

3-Suspension can be simulated as well (for reference, see the Hailfire odf). This means we can probably simulate the bouncing of shocks.


So here's the long and the short of it. We can simulate vehicle wheels by a slightly tedious UV mapping process, and if we can figure out just how 9pose animations work and how to export them, simulating turning wheels would be very easy.


So what? Well, this means that if you're doing a mod with say, a Halo Warthog in it that we can simulate that warthog a lot like it was in Halo.

If any modelers have the time and the interest, let me know and we'll get started on this. (NOTE: This could also mean a driveable Juggernaut, even though it's extremely massive)

To do the actually animation of the wheels turning should be pretty simple. I think you can apply the same way I got unit animation working.

all_snowspeeder_9pose is just the name of the animation which we know we can export because we have unit animation exported. The key is the basepose. Mini has already set out how to export your base pose for vehicles in his flyer animation tut so all that would be required would be to have a seperate animation of something spinning, I am assumeing the 9pose is the equivalent to units Idle animation?

My question is how does the game engine read names of animations? Like "idle_to_leftfoot" in the CIS walker. Its the animation name for the walkers left foot, but how does it know that? Its that something hard coded in the engine? It's almost like there is a internal .combo file for units/vehicles.

In order to do a car right we would need the right names for the animations, because we wouldn't want the car to spin it's wheels while idle, but when it's moving. So what animation name is for when you press forward on a vehicle?

EDIT: It would be interesting to know is a geo add-on animation would be plausable?

the game reads animation through hard code, its all in the exe file and if someone were to add a truly NEW animation that didnt mimic anything thats already there then they would have to have alot of knowledge of C++ and how to recompile the .exe file. i figured that we could do what you guys are talking about and have it same as the snowspeeder, if the craft yaws left or right the wheels turn with it just like how the flaps open when you turn with the speeder. as for the wheels simulating suspension, i was thinkin of not having the whole vehicle bounce and follow the terrain like any landseeder does and gave the wheels on "full physics" like the wookie tentacles using collisions so that when it goes over a hill or something the wheels get pushed up into the craft or they bounce like the juggernauts. as for the wheels spinning that can just be a simple texture animation for the tread but im not sure about the hub. in JA we got propellers and wheel hubs to simulate spinning using animated shaders but i dont think BF2 has anything like the Q3 shader system has.

If we wrap the UV of the tire to the outside of the tire and to the center rim in addition to the part that hits the road, the texture will all animate the same. I would assume it sucks to UV like that tho.

If setting it actually like a wheeled vehicle, I would wonder how you would animate the wheels turning.

just like you would a treaded vehicle. by the texture.

A while back me and Qdin were talking about doing this same exact you guys are talking about but for the siege tower.
I also have a theory about how this might work as well but for it to work I need to know one thing:
Is there an actual animation that the game uses when the vehicles turn? To be more clerar, is there an actual animation file that corresponds to when you move your cursor to the edge of the screen and make the vehice turn?

yes, the 9pose. If you notice with the snowspeeder the flaps open wider the sharper you turn. The same process could be used on wheels.

Teancum wrote:yes, the 9pose. If you notice with the snowspeeder the flaps open wider the sharper you turn. The same process could be used on wheels.

But there is only all_snowspeeder_9pose animation for the snowspeeder and the flaps are for left and right turning? Why isn't there a left and right turn animation?

Is it written into the animation in XSI. 0_o (That sounds hard)

psych0fred was explaining to me once how the snowspeeders flaps work and it has something to do with the games physics, the flaps a rigged to a "dangling" bone and move when the craft yaws but this was a while ago and i cant remember how exactly it works, hed have to tell us or show us.

Teancum wrote:yes, the 9pose. If you notice with the snowspeeder the flaps open wider the sharper you turn. The same process could be used on wheels.

OK thats cool sothat establishes that were not doing something totally new here, we can just replace the file in the odf accordingly.
Now heres my theory: according to qdin you can use flags to make the texture turn around the polymsh. Idk if this is a problem already but making the wheels turn and rotate at the same time could be an issue later on down the line. by using flags you can eliminate one of these problems and then focus on animating the wheels to turn left and right and then replacing that animation with the snowspeeder one.
Thats my theory on how we could get this to work

So basically everything we've already been saying

lol I dint know if you guys were talking about using flags or not. And no one pointed out that there was an animation to replace in the first place. So i guess that makes it a little diff, if not just for the sake of clarification.
w/e tho im no animator, just a modeller.
but ill be watching this thread earnestly because if you guys dont figure this out were gonna have to for the HD map

Yes, and I'm hoping that you guys figure it out as well, and I too will be watching this thread(even though I don't understand half of it), because I officially started to make my first map last night. And it's in New York, and I'd really like to have cars in it, so continue on what you were talking about!

For hubs, we could split them into 8 or so triangles (the default way that cylinder ends are constructed), and just UV map them the same way that Teancum has proposed doing the wheel sidewalls. It would be pretty hard to get everything to line up, but the hub texture could be made in one piece, and then be split into the pieces.

Tean' if what Yoyam is true all of it weren't that new if I I've known it for weeks...

Nonetheless, I'm still critic about how it calls for the different animations; Fred has been explaining as much as he knows, but because he's 'no animator' he can't know for sure.

I'm especially critic about those animations because it's not written anywhere what type of vehicle uses what; there ARE differences in the animations from walker to walker!

Yeah, t551t551 has my idea of how to UV map the wheels. Then we just set that material as the 'tread' in the odf. The game's engine will take care of how fast they 'spin', then the 9pose (if you look at any 9pose, they are directly affected by analog movement) would work great for the front wheels turning.

The reality is it can very much be done. It would just take same careful UV mapping, some knowledge on how 9pose bones are rigged in XSI from psych0fred (by having him show pics from a model) then rigging the bones of any wheels that turn as 9pose bones. So if we turn the mouse slightly, the wheels turn slightly, etc.

Teancum wrote:take same careful UV mapping, some knowledge on how 9pose bones are rigged in XSI from psych0fred (by having him show pics from a model) then rigging the bones of any wheels that turn as 9pose bones. So if we turn the mouse slightly, the wheels turn slightly, etc.

That sounds perfect right there! And we know that ground vehicles also use 9pose so its not just a flyer thing in the game engine.

Hope Pysch0 Fred still has a model of it.

Fred's got a model of almost everything at least everythign in the Assets... that's what he said... lol

I'm glad we get closer to an answer

someone may have said this, but what about the hailfire droid or the tank droid? both use wheels to move.