How to Rig a Tank in Maya | Tank Rig in Maya | Part 2 Wheels

[@caelanchicas7663]

Hey Simon, love the tutorial, I just have a question about different sized wheels... I saw you explain that if you have different sized wheels, you need to connect the 'standard' wheels, to the 'different' wheels through a multiply/divide node, but I don't think I'm doing it correctly.. Could you go into more detail about how to make the drive control work with different sized wheels? THANK YOU!!! Love your work!

[@late_fate0770]

Dude I had the same problem

[@matybon1]

DUDE, I've wanted to ask the exact same thing but I'm worried Simon wouldn't reply. So happy that someone has reached out. A bit more detail would help me by a mile. Keep up the great work Millsy! :)

[@havvehogan955]

@SimonMills Hiya! I'm having the same issue and I just wanted to clarify... In the node editor, plug in the drive_ctrl's drive attribute to the smaller wheel's rotate X, then the smaller wheel's rotate X into a multiply/divide node (i assume into any input) and then plug that into the primary wheel's rotate X? I'm obviously doing it wrong haha, just would like a more in-depth explaination THANK YOU!!!!

[@gabrielvamenta8934]

I got the same issue man

[@SuzieSabbagh]

what a coincidence!!!! im legit having the same issue vro... would love to see a response so i can fix this!!!!!! need my tank rigged asap?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!1

[@dylanmercergo7853]

Hallo again!! So, I decided to study the rig on your Maya file, seems to go well! I just want to know all the basics of each tutorial so I can at least sink all the info in my tiny, tiny brain. Like explain why parent that to that group, why that works, and why that node. Something like that. I'm so sorry for giving you a headache (maybe) by asking so many question, as I'm still learning so much about Maya.

[@SimonMills]

No headaches, hopefully your rigging skills improved. Well done for sticking with it!

[@jasonwhyttes1679]

I was going crazy trying to work this out for the last few days. I got close, with pythagorean and stuff. This rig is amazing, thank you for showing how to do it :) There are not many people making videos this good about tank tracks, most don't work once rotated. Its a real shame its so hidden in youtube :/

[@SimonMills]

Thanks!

[@mikebrooks7426]

This is super informative and exactly what i was looking for. The only thing I would like to see more of would be a more in depth discussion of why you connect certain node attributes to others. I personally I felt a little bit lost on why certain things had to be connected to certain attributes. I'm fairly inexperienced when it comes to messing with the node editor so more elaboration on that would be very helpful. Thanks for the amazing tutorial!

[@SimonMills]

Thanks Mike, you make a good point. I will keep it in mind for future tutorials.

[@swapnilkevat153]

Most awaited tutorial I have been waiting on youtube...M gonna download this whole series...Thanks Mahn...Keep rocking

[@SimonMills]

Thanks for that! ( Motivation to do more + 1 )

[@swapnilkevat153]

I Thought you were gonna cover that hull part also...its freaking awesome....when i showed your rigging video to my friends at reliance everyone spit out awwwwwwwwww mahn...when that hull rotation part came...

[@SimonMills]

Thanks! Next video I am hoping to get uploaded by the end of the day.. this one covers the hull setup, 4th vid covers the turret and fire recoil. Stay tuned!

[@WoodysFx]

I would personally be interested in seeing your thoughts on something like vehicle suspension rigging as well as you gun rig :) Learning through your tutorials are absolutely fantastic.

[@SimonMills]

I will jot them down on the "to-do" list. Thanks for the ideas/comments.

[@Andrew_Mulligan]

Wish i could give you more than one like. Super clear and helpful tutorial!

[@annalee4957]

thank you, the lesson is very detailed and easy to understand.

[@SimonMills]

Glad it worked out!

[@RandomCurves]

Hi there Thanks for this amazing tutorial I learned a lot even understood the mathematics behind it only 2 points if you can explain or mention the laws behind it and I will search the Wheel.roationX = drive + (revs * DriverCtrl.rotationY) so the rotaion is calculated when both the tank moves forward or spin around it's self ,Right ? what is the relation between Revs and Rotation Y ( probably the circumference of the whole tank) also revs relation with the thread length that we multiplied by 360 and dived the average node Sorry if I it's long and Thank you again for this amazing tutorial

[@WeeMono93]

Hi Simon, if I were to use this rig on a more detailed model of a tank. How would I go about setting up the wheels if the gears where bigger than the wheels on the ground and if there where smaller wheels on the top for the tread to run along. Thanks

[@anniekate2]

Great video! Can you explain how you set up the radius and drive attributes on the drive_ctrl?

[@dschermo5962]

Hello Simon thanks for your tutorial. This tutorial really helped me a lot throughout my current project i just love it. I have one Question i have multiple variations in the size of my wheels ( one is big the other is the same but smaller) do i have to change something in the Expression except the code name of the smaller Attribute? I created a "Radius" and a "Radius_small" as attributes for my drive_ctrl. Perhahps you can help me with this one what to do if the wheels a different in size?

[@SimonMills]

Pick a wheel as your primary size. Now connect the rotation of each wheel that differs in size to the primary wheel using a multiply divide node. Now you can work out the radius difference between each and your primary and use that value in your multiply/divide node.

[@dschermo5962]

@@SimonMills thanks i'll try it :)

[@caelanchicas7663]

@@SimonMills Hiya! I'm having the same issue and I just wanted to clarify... In the node editor, plug in the drive_ctrl's drive attribute to the smaller wheel's rotate X, then the smaller wheel's rotate X into a multiply/divide node (i assume into any input) and then plug that into the primary wheel's rotate X? I'm obviously doing it wrong haha, just would like a more in-depth explaination THANK YOU!!!! Love your tutorials simon, they're a GODSEND!!

[@havvehogan955]

@@SimonMills I'd LOVE a more in-depth explaination too pls! I'm fairly new to node editor-rigging and the different-sized wheels is stumping me! THANKS SIMON LOVE YOU!!

[@gabrielvamenta8934]

@@caelanchicas7663 i'm also having the exact same issue

[@Doc77713]

increbile hermano esto estaba buscando te quiero

[@telekinesticman]

Hey man, thank you for the amazing tutorial! Only issue I'm currently troubleshooting is trying to have two different wheels of different sizes. I've easily set up two different controllers for one big wheel and one small wheel. The problem is that I can't find a way to have these attached to one controller that moves both at the same time, factoring in the different radius of both wheels. Every time I set up a parent constraint, or use the connection editor, I can only affect one wheel at a time, never both. The translate values on *both wheels* are changing, but only one drive value is. I figure it may be to do with the script but I am not good with programming/scripting whatsoever. Anyway, I'm still working on it now and hopefully I'll find a fix, but wanted to ask anyway. Thank you!

[@SimonMills]

find the difference in size between the wheels and just use a multiply/divide node to connect to your main wheel. You wont need 2 controllers.

[@telekinesticman]

@@SimonMills Thank you! Yeah I was just trying that and I think I've almost got it, just not very familiar with these nodes but I should figure it out eventually. Thanks again!

[@MrGersel]

Hi, love your tutorial, but i have a problem with the expression.If i move the Drive ctrl in x , and set it back to 0, the drive attribute doesn’t set back to 0.Can you help me? Thank you

[@SimonMills]

You could add an if/else statement to the expression. If drive ctrl tranforms are all 0 then set the hidden drive attr to 0. It should not matter on final result though. When looking at an object rotated 0 it looks the same as 360, 720, 1080, 1440 etc.

[@heartofsaucage7536]

​@@SimonMills Thank you!

[@방모르]

Thanks for the great tutorial! But I have a little problem. when I put the motion chain on the curve, the object is applied far away from the curve. Even if I move the rigging bone and adjust the position, it will return to that position when I adjust the cycle. May I know what the problem is?

[@SimonMills]

This is very odd.

[@trajchemarkov1149]

Hello, great video. I have a question. How do you calculate the spin of the wheels when the tank is rotating? In here you just take the number of revolutions of the wheel for the track and multiply it with the rotation of the Y-axis of the drive_ctrl. I ask because in the car tutorial you calculate the arc length that they make when u rotate them around something and then add that up to the overall distance that they make, which seems the correct way to go. Thanks

[@SimonMills]

Excellent question. The distance traveled when rotating could be setup just like the car but because the center point the tank rotates from the center of its mass the distance expression does nice job of spinning the wheels/tread correctly. The car had the same thing but also used the additional arc length for the steering distance traveled when the wheel rotates around the steering pivot. This value is added or subtracted from the total distance to give the wheels the correct spin.

[@x2spooky4me]

Great tutorial! I'm still quite new to rigging and have a small question. When I have everything rigged, is it possible to select everything and scale it up or down to adjust the size of my tank or would that mess with the radius and stuff?

[@SimonMills]

yes it is possible to do that. Shoot me an email and I can send you a few images to explain how. [e-mail]

[@bakaunko247]

hi i am working through this tutorial and have some trouble after bringing the treads back in and parent the joints to the root and the controllers and locators to the drive ctrl. when i grab the arrow, the wheels move when rotating but not when translating. i'm not sure if it has to do with the nodes, but when i made the whole thing, there was no input1D1 after connecting to input1d0 so my nodes look different from yours. any idea where i messed up?

[@SimonMills]

The wheels move only when rotating the drive ctrl.. hmmm - Are the treads moving correctly?

[@bakaunko247]

@@SimonMills i actually figured it out. when i connected the nodes to input1D(0), since i'm on a later version of maya it didn't show input1D(1) so i just connected it to input 1D(0). this broke the other connection and messed things up. i figured out later that i had to use the hamburger icon to make the node show all functions and do it that way to get input1D(1).

[@sohamp28]

Hi, Great tutorial! It’s helping.. I just wanted to ask that is there any way to avoid expression? Thanks in advance...

[@SimonMills]

Great question Soham. Yes it is possible to rebuild the expression out of utility nodes, it would be pretty crazy to look at I imagine. You would also need to store variables as values on custom attributes. Should work just fine, worth a shot!

[@AndrewHereytb]

Hey there. I can't seem to get input 1D[1] for some reason. I tried adding it manually but I don't know how. On the other side I can do it just fine with 2D and 3D. Thanks.

[@AndrewHereytb]

So I found a mel command that gets "input 1D[1] " to appear but I'm not sure yet if it works properly. "setAttr plusMinusAverage1.input1D[1] 1;" - Just paste this into the mel tab and hit enter.

[@AndrewHereytb]

I can confirm that it works. Make sure you change "plusMinusAverage" to the name that you assigned to yours.

[@SimonMills]

Nice Job!

[@chairarms]

my hero. no idea why this bit of the node was missing. I get so irritated when I follow everything and something out of my power doesn't even line up

[@mathias4824]

In case anyone else has the same issue even after following this advice; - Add the command like AndrewHere suggested. - Open the Node Editor and click on the Edit tab on the top. - Click on "Connected Mode". - Now there should be a litte + symbol next to Input1D. Click it. Both should be there now :)

[@omranfahed5834]

great job man. i have question about expression, is there any way to achieve that rig without expression?

[@SimonMills]

yes, I recently figured it out on my latest car rig. It is possible to build it from utility nodes.

[@omranfahed5834]

@@SimonMills can you give me video link

[@SimonMills]

@@omranfahed5834 There is no tutorial video for that yet but this is the product: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d2eseZuuj7mYq5o

[@QuestionMarkKick360]

Hi, I've run into a problem with the drive control rotation. The wheels rotate in the wrong direction when I rotate the drive ctrl but work perfectly when I translate it. Thanks. Edit: I got it to work by making the revolution number negative. Will that cause any major issue later on?

[@SimonMills]

Nice job fixing the issue. It should be fine.

[@QuestionMarkKick360]

@@SimonMills Thanks man.

[@steffenbk1]

I had the same issue, thanks :D

[@amoghkarkera794]

Hi Simon I been working on this rig for 3 days. The expression works on the model you provided but doesn’t work properly on my own product even after calculating the radius the diameter properly. When I move it in Z-axis it rotates both ways positive and negative direction and it’s too fast. I did all the steps as you mentioned in this video still doesn’t work properly. Please can you address this issue.

[@SimonMills]

That seems very odd. Send me the scene and I will take a look. [e-mail]

[@amoghkarkera794]

@@SimonMills I made a mistake while written the expression. I’m sorry on my behalf. Thank You it works now

[@LucasSantos-cn4wb]

Hi. I've followed along with your tutorial and was successful in getting the treads to work with the expression. It seems inconsistent though, sometimes the treads won't move, however the "Drive" attr is updating. And on render, the treads seem to rotate along the axis randomly, even as the tank is still. Wasn't sure if you've had this issue before.

[@SimonMills]

Sometimes viewport 2.0 fails to update, try restarting Maya before a playblast or render.

[@LucasSantos-cn4wb]

@@SimonMills Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I'm using a render farm so that complicates it a bit. I've even added a conditional to the beginning of the expression, making it check to see if the current frame is above 0. Just so it will constantly update but no luck.

[@SimonMills]

@@LucasSantos-cn4wb does it happen in playblasts?

[@SimonMills]

Ideally you should bake your animations b4 rendering your final, especially if you are using a farm.

[@LucasSantos-cn4wb]

@@SimonMills Didn't see your question before. yeah it happens in playblast. Baking the animation is a good idea, I think that can definitely fix it.

[@SadPanda449]

Hi, Simon! I'm following along with this tank series of yours still. It's been quite helpful. Question, though: I've gotten about 12 and a half minutes in or so, where all the wheels and sprockets/gears are set up to drive and rotate in opposition to each other when turning, but my tank has rollers on the top section of the treads that are much smaller than the rest of the wheels/sprockets. I don't have much experience using multiply/divide nodes, and I've read some similar questions in the comments, but how would I ensure these rollers roll with the correct amount of revolutions relative to the rest of the wheels in the node editor? I've already measured their radius and printed the revolution value as well. I'm just kinda stuck on how/where to use and plug those values in in the node editor so that it all works correctly. All help is appreciated. Thanks again for all your content!

[@julmar9153]

Hi, i haven't tested this but, have you tried adding an second attribute Radius ("Alt_Radius" or smth) in the drive_ctrl then simply modifying the expression "drive_ctrl.Radius" to "drive_ctrl.Alt_Radius" (near the end) and apply the expression for your set of smaller wells ?

[@yarugatyger1603]

Heya. I have a problem, the wheels seem to work fine when moving forward and turning, yet if I move backwards all wheels move forward still. Been over the setup a couple of times now and I cant find the issue. (Edit) Problem solved, got a programming colleague to check the expression and in the if poschange section exchanged z with x and -1 with 1 and vise versa and now it works. I had my rig oriented a little different facing x because of the way I laid out the tracks. Although the wheels still turn when moving the tank left or right, as if drifting, not sure if thats considered within the expression or not.

[@SimonMills]

Glad it worked out! The drifting is part of the expression. It ensures the wheels are moving when the tank is pointing in all other directions.

[@jasonwhyttes1679]

Did you ever get any jumping in your track drive value after setting keyframes?

[@jasonwhyttes1679]

It was actually just mayas timeline cache, maybe it wasn't updating correctly when the expression did its thing. Either way, I think its working fine when the cache is disabled.

[@SimonMills]

Never saw the issue, but I did have one other person mention something similar. Glad you got it worked out.

[@mollysmoshingtankcrew9441]

is all this only contained within maya? can i take this into unity and it will just work the same way?

[@SimonMills]

@mollysmoshingtankcrew9441 you could animate it in maya and bake down animations to import to unity, but that is all

[@mollysmoshingtankcrew9441]

@@SimonMills sorry for the dumb question. I'm fairly new to game dev. so all the cool hull movements are only contained in Maya to get that same effect in say unity or unreal engine you would have to do all of this within the that specific game engine.

[@SimonMills]

@@mollysmoshingtankcrew9441 that is correct. The only way is to bake down animations from Maya with the hull movements in the animation. You could save out turret/hull position pose animations and have them linked to your turret movement in engine so the poses blend to your horizontal aim rotation angle.

[@andrewanderson9300]

Hi Simon, Amazing Tutorial but i am having issues with the drive expression crashing maya 2022.1 on mac. I had it working fine a few years ago in an older version of maya I have found the old working file and tried deleting the expression and re-creating it and it crashes

[@SimonMills]

Thanks for letting me know, I will look into it.

[@Sewsi]

Hey , i know this is a few years old but , i'm trying to use it to make mine. The thing is , my tank chain as 4 differente size wheel. When i work them on differente ctrl it work but when they are on one , the Translate attribut is not pass to the X rotation of the other wheel ( the first wheel work ) and the rotation work. Any idea ?

[@SimonMills]

Connect the other wheels to the working wheel with a multiply divide node. Then you can set values per wheel to account for the size change.

[@Sewsi]

@@SimonMills Hey ! Thank you for your answer ! That exactly what i did in the end , i got the idea during the night ^^

[@morin6661]

Hi, I am using your expression to drive the wheel. When I animate it from frame 1 to 120. I get popping between frame 1 to 2. I noticed that drive gets -ve value on frame 1 and 2. DO you know what may be causing this?

[@SimonMills]

Hi Utkarsh, sorry I missed this comment. Are you still having this issue?

[@morin6661]

@@SimonMills I will try it one more time and then I will inform if I am still facing the issue :)

[@QuestionMarkKick360]

When I move the drive control after connecting the multiply divide node to the locator, the treads but not the wheels move extremely fast and not at all in proportion with the drive controller. What might the problem be?

[@SimonMills]

make sure you set the multiply/divide node to the correct mode. You may be multiplying when you should be dividing for example.

[@QuestionMarkKick360]

@@SimonMills Thanks. It worked.

[@QuestionMarkKick360]

@@SimonMills My wheels and gears have different radii. Rotation works correctly after creating separate multiply nodes for the gears but translation still rotates the gears at the same rate as the wheels. How would do I fix this?

[@SimonMills]

calculate how much bigger/smaller the other wheels are and just connect the rotation of your main wheels to drive them with the appropriate multiply/divide value.

[@ananthyaswanth]

Hi Simon Mills Tank tutorial is awesome & a nice explanation. I followed the same step by step but I'm getting unexcepted things in treads. Treads seem to rotate along the axis randomly, even as the tank is still. Can u help on this. My animation frame start with 1001.

[@SimonMills]

restart Maya, this may be a viewport refresh issue

[@ananthyaswanth]

@@SimonMills Thanks for the quick reply & I tried but it won't work my bad time. I have changed viewport 2.0 to legacy default viewport.

[@SimonMills]

@@ananthyaswanth so same issue even with legacy?

[@ananthyaswanth]

@@SimonMills yes

[@SimonMills]

@@ananthyaswanth can you send me a video of the issue? or better yet the scene file? send to [e-mail]

[@evantalley9648]

its a long shot as how old this video, but ive been trying to troubleshoot the gears, my gears are much bigger than my wheels and i was able to set up a seprate controller for the gears but when used all together with the drive control it does not work properly. any suggestions for what to do for a setup with bigger gears than the wheels?

[@SimonMills]

Setup your normal wheels, then link the large gears to them with a multiply/divide node. The value will be relative to their circumference difference.

[@evantalley9648]

@@SimonMills Thank you so much for the reply! just to make sure im understanding you correctly, am I linking the actual joints together with the multiply/divide or am I setting up the gears own multiply/divide and plusMinusAverage chain? sorry for my confusion this is first time working with these kinds of nodes

[@SimonMills]

@@evantalley9648 Yes, link the joints directly with a multiply divide node. Have your correctly setup regular sized wheels or gears drive the large gears.

[@evantalley9648]

@@SimonMills Awesome, thank you so much!

[@sandunperera8078]

Hi, I Have question.When entered the Python script after that Arclen result is not showing. i am using Maya 2022

[@SimonMills]

try using the mel tab

[@sandunperera8078]

@@SimonMills ok. thanks

[@kaidkyoung4298]

what should i do if I want one side of tread and wheels rotated faster when traversing??

[@SimonMills]

add in a multiply node with your desired value

[@starrynight5425]

not sure if anyone knows to answer this, but my wheels for some reason only move when I rotate and not when I try to make it go forwards. Even went back to redo everything to make sure I'm following correctly, but same issue seems to happen. Not sure what I can do here. Edit: maya puts out an error and says "error: line 26: division by zero" from the provided script, which I think is where the problem is. But idk much about scripts to know what to do

[@SimonMills]

Sounds like a missing connection somewhere. Send me your scene file and I will take a look. [e-mail]

[@nikhilb1502]

hey simon at 3:02 your wheels are the same size, but my 2 out of 4 wheels are not the same size.. what should i do there?

[@SimonMills]

Pick one size to be the default, then just connect the other by using a multiply divide node. Example: If one wheel is half the size of the other, multiply the drive value by 2 so it spins twice as fast.

[@nikhilb1502]

​@@SimonMills yes thanks , i got that done but now at 14:36 I have three PlusminusAverage BCS i have 3 wheel sizes in the treadWheels, what shall I do here? BCS if adding any random d/c * 360 results in tread going out of sync/ fast/ slower than the wheels corresponding to it

[@SimonMills]

send me a screenshot/video. [e-mail]

[@nikhilb1502]

@@SimonMills sending

[@nikhilb1502]

@@SimonMills sent the maya file as well because i am bad at explaining, but the main issue is still that the wheel still spins at normal value and not taking in the second multpydeivde i added and the second problem is the which wheel to calculate the degree so it stays in sync with treads, Thanks

[@maanunoo]

Does your script detect the difference between the tank moving up a slope and just dragging the tank up in the Y-axis? The wheels shouldn't rotate on the latter.

[@SimonMills]

Agreed, and a great point to bring up, Thanks! This version does not have any relationship to the Y-axis at all. On very steep terrain u should notice inaccuracy in the tread/wheel cycle.

[@penguintoez5436]

Awesome tutorials! I'm following along with my own tank, and I'm having an issue getting the treads to rotate correctly. When I connected the appropriate nodes my treads, instead, rotate the opposite direction that they're intended to. I've been fighting with it for a while, I'm not sure where I went wrong. Any insight on this?

[@SimonMills]

Thanks for checking it out! Watch this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5bQcpSNaL6bopIm15s It mentions reversing curves if you need to. This should fix your issue.

[@penguintoez5436]

You Sir, are a Godsend. Thank you very much, I'll give this a shot and post an update if you're interested. Thanks for the EXTREMELY quick reply too man, very much appreciated.

[@penguintoez5436]

That worked amazingly my friend, although now one of my treads are flipping once it reaches a certain point on the track rotation, not sure how to fix that lol.

[@SimonMills]

not sure of the top of my head, but you could try playing with the curve shape, cv overlap and spacing can cause that

[@penguintoez5436]

yea I figured out a work around for it, I had to move the actual geometry around, I think something was clipping with the joints/rig causing it to flip. I've now run into another issue unfortunately, my rotations are off. When I rotate, the wheels rotate correctly for steering, but the treads are rotating backwards now

[@AkashSingh-b9i7e]

how can we reset the drive value once we set up the expression my drive value goes infinity but it doesn"t get reset while i move back my controller to its original position any idea how it can be solved

[@SimonMills]

Expressions can get a bit wonky for sure. The Drive value can be set to 0 if you add something like this to the expression: if ( ( drive_ctrl.translateX == 0 ) && ( drive_ctrl.translateY == 0 ) && ( drive_ctrl.translateZ == 0 ) ){ drive_ctrl.Drive = 0; }

[@AkashSingh-b9i7e]

@@SimonMills thank you 😊

[@SimonMills]

@@AkashSingh-b9i7e Very welcome!

[@Miguelus]

hi, i have issues whit "Attribute not found or variable missing '$'" tnx

[@vanesieg7097]

Hello, I was able to get here but when I copy the variables this appears, and I have the same controller name :( // Error: Attribute not found or variable missing '$': drive_ctrl.Drive

[@SimonMills]

are you using a namespace?

[@vanesieg7097]

@@SimonMills the driver has the same name, drive_ctrl

[@vanesieg7097]

@SimonMills this variable has worked for me before but without using the node editor for the rims lefth_wheel_1.rotateX = ((tank_ctr.translateZ / (2 * 3.14 * 0.36)) + (tank_ctr.rotateY / (2 * 3.14 * -7.2))) * 360; but putting the name of each joint at the beginning, what I don't know is if it works for me when merging the movement with the treads

[@SimonMills]

Send me the scene file and I will take a look - [e-mail]

[@vanesieg7097]

I already managed to do it with the variable that was used previously and it worked for me with the treads, I thank you for taking the time to respond and wanting to help me, I will continue with video 3 :)@@SimonMills

[@NuovaStarGaming]

hey simon dude im having some issues in this part when i parent my curves and locator to the drive control whn i rotate them my wheels dosent stay in the treads or the other way around u know so i was hoping tht if u know the solution maybe u could help me out please?

[@NuovaStarGaming]

i can send u the pic of it n show wht i mean by it

[@SimonMills]

Sure thing, email me a pic of your outliner with the curve and locator in focus and I will help you fix the issue. [e-mail]

[@NuovaStarGaming]

hey thnx for replying but i found out a solution i just grouped my tred joints thn i parented them and now they are place thnx for replying though i love ur tutorials hope to see more in other parts of maya as well :) and if i come across any other solution i'll email u thnx! keep it up :D

[@SimonMills]

Nice job!

[@RANDPLAYER]

I have one issue I cannot get past. Once I paste and create the expression, my rig gets all jagged. and the Drive attribute gets a really high value that doesn't match yours. Have I missed a step?

[@SimonMills]

Sounds like it could be a scene scale issue. Are you using the scene file from my website or your own model?

[@RANDPLAYER]

I'm using my own model to follow along with a project I'm working on.

[@SimonMills]

Grab the scene from my site and check the scale of the tank with your own. A significant scale difference could be the issue.

[@RANDPLAYER]

I made another scene with a close match to your scaling and even followed along with your scene. The movement is still jagged. But keyframing a motion shows that it's all working.

[@SimonMills]

This could be a system performance thing. Expressions are can be quite heavy on system resources. Glad it is all working out!

[@NinjaFlibble]

my tread geometry is getting double transformations...(turning its "inherit transform" off doesn't work, however turning it off in its joints does.) Assuming having "inherit transform" on is absolutely essential for the rig to work, what's wrong with it? Geometry is all in its own group that is not parented to anything joint hierarchy is base (your "root")->root->tread joints/wheels/cannon/body and my treads aren't reversing direction when I move my root control backwards

[@SimonMills]

May not be a joint hierarchy issue. Make sure your curve clusters are relative, also pay attention to how the curve is connected to everything else in the hierarchy. 90% of the issues I had when coming up with this rig were curve related. If you still have no luck, email me your scene and I will take a look.

[@NinjaFlibble]

it won't let me, my email says it's over the 25MB size limit -_- even as an MB (for some reason, Maya won't let me save anything out as MA anyway unless it started that way. Something about "preserving unknown nodes or data") I do know that if you turn off visibility on the joints (with the panel's "show" list, anyway) it doesn't look like there's anything wrong with the scene

[@SimonMills]

ahh, its just the double root joint setup. It is odd looking in the viewport. You have done it correctly.

[@NinjaFlibble]

ok, *phew*...thought I'd have to do something that might require me to redo all those treads...again...

[@SimonMills]

Not sure if you saw this, but it will set up the treads for you: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5bQcpSNaL6bopI

[@notusingmyname4791]

so... how would we get the wheels/treads to auto-rotate when going up or down a steep hill?

[@SimonMills]

Just include the Y axis in the expression.

[@akashbhatt7718]

Attribute not found or variable missing '$' i got error message please help me

[@SimonMills]

Did you copy the expression in full to a clean python Tab?

[@akashbhatt7718]

yes, please help me bro

[@SimonMills]

Are you using the tutorial scene file?

[@adimarkusich3018]

Hi, this tutorial is great! i have two questions about the expression, maybe you can help me out. first, i don´t understand why/how it works with the global vector variable $vPos to get the value at the end from the code to be piped in again. doesn´t it read the value 0 && $angle $posOld.x) $direction*=1; else $direction *=-1; } if(($angle>180 && $angle $posOld.x) $direction*=-1; else $direction *=1; } it seams to work too , but i would like to now if i miss something and there is a mistake in my version? Thanks

[@maikymadnesskreation8646]

Is a shame that I can use this set up exactly in a game engine because the utility node are exclusive for maya

[@SimonMills]

You could export forward, backward, turn and fire animations as fbx. But Interactive terrain stuff would have to be setup in engine.