Have you ever wanted to make an epic car chase scene like in the famous films, “The French Connection” or “The Transporter”? In this video, we are going to cover how to create a dynamic car rig. We will demonstrate setting up proxy colliders and then constrain them to our higher resolution mesh. Next, we'll practice some tricks like donuts and jumping. And finally we'll put together an entire street scene to simulate a complete VFX shot. Everyone will enjoy this video for its ability to demonstrate serious VFX power on your computer desktop.Chapter Descriptions
Dynamic Car Rigging
In the first chapter, we make a collider proxy that matches the shape of our car mesh and add rigid body tags to them. Then, we connect the wheels to the body with the wheel suspension connectors and create a plane for the ground with a collider tag. We will then make a few adjustments in the rigid body tags and wheel suspension while we get the weight and bounce of realistic car properly in view. After we get the motor set up we are ready to burn rubber! We will set up some key frames to steer and accelerate, then add a displace deformer on the ground plane to watch all the jiggles and bumps of driving off road.
Interacting With Objects
Now we're ready to get a bit more elaborate by making the folks at the old Duke’s of Hazzard TV show proud! By adjusting our acceleration and ground friction, we will make a realistic car jump. After that, we rely on the Moggraph Module to make a row of rigid body cylinders to knock over. Following with two cars, we try a variety of relative distances and angle to get different accident scenarios. When you get the results you like bake the simulation to key frames to be used in any other app of your choice. It wouldn't be much of a crash without any dents, so we learn how to set up the collision deformer on our car and obstacles to create interactive surface damage.
Dynamic Street Scene
Finally, we are ready to put a entire shot together. We have a whole street scene created from assets in the content browser. The ground and buildings get collider tags, as well as the stationary street props. (Fire Hydrants, Parking Meters, etc) Also, we will add rigid body tags to the dynamic props. (Dumpster, Garbage Cans, etc) Add a parked car, and we are ready to start. Key frame your acceleration and steering to fine tune your epic crash.
About The Instructor
After studying film and sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute, Greg Kulz began working full-time as an artist in the SF Bay Area. Always interested in experimenting with new techniques and methods, Greg turned to 3D motion graphics as his new medium in 2001. Since that time, he has worked on such projects as the Team America and WWE video games, Ironman, various short films and a number of product modeling contracts for corporate clients including Sony, Panasonic and Frito-Lay. Greg's first love remains character creation, but he also enjoys working with motion graphics, texturing, and modeling.
Project Contents
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