MAKE AN ANIMATION FOR A MOVING VEHICLE

Get revved up with Oscar Juárez as he details how you can create a realistic animation with help from a 3ds Max plugin

- Oscar Juárez

Creating in 3D becomes more and more friendly every passing day with new tools being released. These are incredibly helpful for working on various objects and most aid us in one important aspect: creating the most in less time.

I do the majority of my work in 3ds Max, and one thing I love is that animations can be quickly modified as many times as we need, allowing us to speed up our process and add complexity.

This time I'll be using a plugin called MadCar. Back in issue 310, I showed you how to animate a car wheel using 3ds Max's built-in tools, and at the end we had a vehicle with fully animated tyres that moved in a straight line. Here we'll rig the car in a much more fun and interactive way.

The idea here is to create the animation in real-time, which means actually driving the car in the scene just like you would in a video game. We'll add dummies and use some of the other tools the plugin brings, including the car's suspension.

01 SPLIT THE WHEELS FROM THE CAR

The first step is to select the right model to work with. We can have an amazing sports car with the wheels attached, but it will mean extra work splitting away the wheels and other components. Most of the time I select a model with the wheels separate from the chassis to avoid wasting the time. Once you get the full workflow down, you can use any car model and also place it in your model library.

02 SET THE MAIN WHEEL DUMMY