Vehicles: WheeledVehicle: introducing, "The uniFrame"!

This is the uniFrame, multi-purpose vehicle chassis system I have been developing for a while now. After having worked the DTS/DSQ character/playerAvatar pipeline to a fine hone with BrokeAssGames this past year; work began around this time last year on a side project, away from RUIN Online, involving multiple vehicleTypes. Vehicle physics and their corresponding animations were a bit of a mystery to me, until I got involved with the side project the BAG coding Department was working on, as a character animator and rigger. Things got more involved at the close of that phase, and I was asked to improve upon the vehicles intended for the codeBase.

The frame and suspension system pictured here is based upon the US mil vehicle M998+, commonly referred to as a 'HMMWV" or 'humvee', manufactured by AM General Independent suspension for each tire, along with all wheel drive for each wheel bearing, made this vehicle attractive to model and setup for Torque. There are at least 15 variants on the basic frame of this vehicle.

Along with the hub node for the tire mounting, the uniFrame system utilizes a few nodes in a chain to give the associated components life of their own, simulating the working suspension the vehicle. Parenting the hub node, is a tire node that represents the root of each independent system. Branching off from this root node, are three more nodes for the associated vertices of the A-frame arms,spring/piston combo, and tie-rod geometry. All of these work in conjunction to produce both the spring sequence and the steering sequence motions.



In this image, you get a closer look at the alignment system I employed to get my multiple components in sync while animated and scripted. Pictured are several differing colors of widgets I created and located at very specific locations with the geometry of the vehicle's wheel, or well; where the tire object will mount when called by the generic vehicle script. The red horizontal bar widget represents the hub node's location within the vehicle's rig and extending out past where the wheel would be. The white horizontal widget is actually part of the tire DTS file. By exporting and mounting the wheels via script, this will tell me if they are at the same plane/height/position. The small multi colored cube primitives are incremental measurements, in real world measurements applied to the geometry. Oh, btw, that steering wheel in the background; it works as well, with the steering sequence, along with the wheel components. That was fun to throw in as well....



The last little bit of 'zazz' for this bloq, is a close up from the wheels center area back into the suspension of the driver's side front tire. In the background is barely visible the last bit of detail I put to the uniframe before production of the side project got fast and furious. It's a V-8 engine model I threw together in about 15 minutes to get my interiors detailed to some kind of scale. I rigged it up and animated it to cycle thru it's 8 pistons continuously. There are 8 keyframes, one for each piston in an up while each other is in the down position. I know it's not a real engine's firing order...but hey, looked pretty dang-dawg cool when I scripted it to be running while I tooled around as KORK in the SDK...lol.

Well, here it is, my recent workings with the Vehicle class, specifically the WheeledVehicle, anyone need a used car, I know where to get a big shiny one?! ...till next big adventure in 3D game modeling. Drive Safely. Enjoy.

As a side note: CombatStarterKit is where the majority of this vehicle work went. I was asked to document the process I used to get the HGT vehicle to where it stands today and that work is included with the update to the Starter Kit. I'm usually sitting in the DreamGames, BFT, IRC chat room so any questions from license holders can be answered there. I don't mind at all; it was a great round of discovery and development and was a bunch of fun working with Dave, Ash, Kittle, James and the gang there...and a big, Thanks[& bow], to Fafhrd: the artist/coder who allowed me the privilege of working with the HGT geometry and getting it's many different parts working together, doin' some cool stuf...