About vehicle skeletal meshes.

Development Character & Animation
1

Hello. I would like to make a airplane simulator for my graduation project. I have looked up the documentation about vehicles to gather some tips on how to build the plane. I come from the world of usual programmers who mainly deals with web programming, mobile programming etc. I am pretty unfamilliar and inexperience on 3D designing, animations and game engines in generals, however I have always planned to make my game one day.

I understand that some humanoid (or not) character with limbs can have skeleton, and that skeleton is similiar to a real world biological human or animal skeleton. But how can a vehicle have skeleton? First, I have to imagine a skeleton a vehicle might have. Second, I have to make it happen in a 3ds Max or any other 3d design software.

I have found a couple of tutorials in internet on how to rig a car but non of them relate to a some kind of skeleton, or do they? I don’t know. For example this playlist.

Can some point me to the right direction? What does a wheeled vehicle skeleton looks like? How can I skin my 3d vehicle asset with that skeleton?

2

This can’t be a too difficult problem. Could please somebody say something about my question?

3

go have a look here Physics | Unreal Engine Documentation
check the section on vehicle to give you an idea on how to set the content
basic rules are the Root bone MUST be at 0,0,0 and X_axis = forward /Z_axis = up

i’d advise you place the complete mesh above Z=0 to avoid any physics issues.

ps i’ve never done any aircraft in ue4 but thats where i would start

4

Thanks for stopping by. But my problem is, I don’t understand what a “bone” is in context of vehicle? Vehicles in reality doesn’t have a bone.

5

Ok think of a “bone” as a pivot point or joint where the rotation or movement of the part comes from.

the main thing to remember is that all sort of vehicles in UE4 must have a root/base bone/joint/pivot at 0,0,0 , other wise you’ll have lots of problems

6

OK thanks. I am going to make something and lets see what problems will I get.