How to Rig a Tank in Maya | Tank Rig in Maya | Part 4 Turret

[@lucadavidson3936]

I've downloaded and backed up these tutorials on two hard drives, so if ever there's an apocalypse I'll still be able to watch and keep these brilliant tank rigging tutorials. That's how good they are.

[@SimonMills]

Wow, thanks for that amazing comment. Glad you enjoy them!

[@Ricekrispy10]

Hey man, I just wanted to say thank you for making these tutorials. It worked perfectly for the Wall-E inspired robot I modeled and now rigged. Toward the end it wasn't step by step for obvious reasons, but I gained enough rigging knowledge throughout that I was able to rig the parts of the model that aren't covered in these tutorials by myself and still ended up with what I needed. It seriously means a lot that you made these tutorials, and I hope they continue to stay relevant for as long as 3D exists. Thank you again, and God bless 🙏

[@SimonMills]

Thanks for checking it out, glad it helped!

[@sakalyd1975]

I come from China, English general general, in careful look, but this tutorial gives me the dawn!Understand some place, but still have some not quite understand, especially wheel and track, the principle of node connection, I want to see a few times!Thank you very much for the tutorial, thank you very much!Good luck in the New Year!

[@SimonMills]

Thank you!

[@beyazpiyonable]

This series was amazing, rigged a tank at job this week and it turned out pretty good. Your python tool is also very handy, thanks a lot!

[@SimonMills]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@estelle6132]

Thank you so much for theses tutorials, so useful and great !!

[@hilbertjohncastro7262]

The tutorial is pretty good and pretty thorough. It helps very much! Thank you

[@SimonMills]

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

[@lazy_dragon8900]

Thank you so much for these!! Its so awesome!

[@tomlepp2955]

Really well done! Thanks for this.

[@SimonMills]

Really glad you enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to make.

[@marcelodeniz3932]

awesome

[@denisehartman1059]

First off , Awesome tutorial , I do have one question. And perhaps I missed it, but is there a global control both for moving the tank to different locations and for scaling the asset ?

[@SimonMills]

Not in this tutorial but it can be added with some tricky adjustments. For those who have purchased the complete rig, this feature has just been added. 1. move the parent constraint on base_jt to root_jt instead. 2. create a top_ctrl and add a global scale attribute to it. Parent drive_ctl to top_ctrl. 3. remove parent constraints from tread_up_object + clusters groups. 4. connect global scale attribute to the XY&Z scale for turret_aim_grp + root_jt 5. turn off scale compensate for all joints. 6. remove constraints from all clusters. 7. direct connect the Y axis of each wheel cluster to their corresponding wheel ctrl. 8. create a locator, call it “hull_cluster_pt” and parent to clusters group. 9. direct connect the “hull_cluster_pt” rotation to the hull_jt. 10. parent constrain (Translate Y+Z and Rotate X+Y Only) the l_ & r_hull cluster to “hull_cluster_pt”. Thanks for great request, -Simon

[@valentinaarcelloni1520]

Hi and thanks for the tutorial, is very clear and useful to me!!! Everything works just fine, I only got one problem: when I use the recoil value, the trails stay where they are, like there's no effect on them. I don't know if it's a cluster problem (I thought I had to do a double constraint on the hull clusters too and it seems to work, but not perfectly... I get some slight interpenetration) or else, with the hull_ctrl the trails move and "deform" like they're suppose to... Can you help me please? Thanks and great tutorial!

[@SimonMills]

Hey Valentina, you only need 1 double constraint. That is the hull_jt being orient constrained to both the hull_ctrl and the hull_recoil_pt. The hull cluster needs to be constrained to the hull_jt, not the hull_ctrl. The hull_jt accepts both ctrl and recoil, so this is the one to use.

[@valentinaarcelloni1520]

there it is! thank you so much!

[@mattiasvandensaffele7703]

everything works perfect! ,really clear tutorial ,did it on a tank of my own and it works just fine, but i was wondering if it's normal that the root joint stays at (0.0.0) even when i drive the tank, i see in your video that it is the same but am new to rigging and dont know if this is a problem or not? anyway great job thanks!

[@SimonMills]

Yep. The root joint stays in the center. When exporting to a game engine this allows for baked in distance.

[@ShaiderGo]

I know this vid is old but how do rig with modeled suspension, like the arms connected to the wheels. Thank. Btw, are the rigs and tracks dependent on the collision shape? Just making sure 😊.

[@SimonMills]

Suspension can be added after. And the steps in this tutorial can be applied to any shape, not just the collision shape

[@Dezember456]

Awesome tutorial Simon! I modelled a little robot with this rig and Im having a problem.. I move the robot with the drive ctrl on a motion path. Then I change the speed with the keyframes of the motion path. Worked like a charm but sometimes when the robot stands still on the motion path the wheels, and tracks, move while standing still. I assume that the drive value gets input while the robot is standing still.. Maybe you know a solution? The weird thing is that it worked before and suddenly the wheels and treads move while the whole model doesnt.

[@SimonMills]

Send me a video or scene file and I will take a look.

[@Dezember456]

@@SimonMills We may have solved the issue. We are not 100% sure but for now it works again. Turned out that there were some old versions of the robot in the scene. Also we discovered that the scene needs to match the unit (in our case we changed to meter) of the referenced RIG scene, otherwise the treads will move way too fast.

[@MickehPuppeh]

Thanks for the amazing tutorial! I was able to finish my tank, and it looks great! I have one issue, though; when I have more than one of these tanks in a scene, moving one tank causes all the other tanks' treads and wheels to move as well. Did I do something wrong? Is there a way to get around it?

[@MickehPuppeh]

So I figured it out, for anyone else having this issue; it's in the expression. The universal value $vPos is declared in there, which affects all tanks in the scene (stacks up with the more copies of the tank you have as well). What you have to do is rename them to something else ($vPos_2, for example) and that fixes it.

[@SimonMills]

Yep, a quick search replace of the $ to make the variables unique for each tank.

[@stefanstoicescu7165]

First time using maya, but managed to complete it :D..after erasing and rewinding for many many times. Very nice tutorial, thank you so much for taking the time to share this knowledge! I am used with 3ds, but I wouldn't be able to simulate the comportment this tank has regarding the bumps on a road, only..well, very difficult and I would have to animate and animate for each kind of terrain I would use. Altogether, regarding rigging, is maya seen as the best software? Thanks again, cheers!

[@SimonMills]

For rigging + animation, Maya is one of the best options in my opinion.

[@stefanstoicescu7165]

@@SimonMills Hi Simon, if u d like to see what became of u r tank :D : kzbin.info/www/bejne/f3fMfqB7hLCIo5I actually, the most important part is towards the end, and the tank appears at 1:40 or so, but maybe u d like to watch it from the beginning :). It s my final project, tried to make few characters, had trouble with the car and it is not finished. Anyway, I would have not done the tank movement without u r tutorial and thank you again for this. it took like 20 +animation layers in unity, and no more of 4h of sleep per night, but got it in time :)...and seal units can t even take it for a week! :p

[@dschermo5962]

Hey Simon i have another Question. At my curent state i have done every step of the first and second tutorial, because that was the minimum i needed for my own rig. My Problem is that if i try to animate the whole thing, first my wheels an treads move super fast and second they dont stop moving as i stop the movement The treads move slowly forwards and the wheels start rotating in the opposite direction idk how to fix this? The whole rig works fine when i move my drive ctrl in the viewport.

[@SimonMills]

Try a maya restart. Viewport 2.0 can be twitchy.

[@atulshakya8910]

First of all, thanks for the tutorial, it was really helpful. Second, I wanted to know how to create a global scale and translate function for the tank. I tried creating a controller and putting everything inside the controller for translating, rotating and scaling the tank but I am having problems with the treads. I turned off the inherit transform box but the treads still acts like it has double transformations. The curves controlling the treads are in place but the geometry and joints aren't. Any suggestions?

[@SimonMills]

Hey Atul, for a move/rotate you could just create a top control and parent the drive control to it, that should work fine, however it will not scale. To add a global scale it is quite a complicated and significant mod to the way this rig is setup. It requires using individual multiply divide nodes on each tread joint so they scale correctly and not explode with the double transforms. Best done by writing a tool to automate each tread connection.

[@kristopherpeterson3315]

Super cool.

[@SimonMills]

Thanks Kris!

[@sakalyd1975]

Use 7~8day , The binding is complete! but it runs on undulating ground, and when stopped, the tread roll back and forth.It's like skidding. I don't know what's wrong with my operation. thank you help!

[@vanesieg7097]

Greetings, I have managed to get this far, but when I give geometric constraints the treads do bounce against the ground plane but the tires do not, do you know why this is? Sorry for the inconvenience

[@XanderZ0ne]

Bro, this is the best tutorial for tanks or any vehicle with tracks. I have one problem though, when I import or reference the tank I built the expressions stop working giving me the error message (An execution error occured in the expression *expression name*) Is there a fix for this?

[@SimonMills]

I have not seen this issue. Importing multiple tanks causes an issue that can be resolved by opening each tanks expression and giving unique names to the variables. Search for "$" and replace with "$tank1_" for tank 1 and "$tank2_" for tank 2 and so on.

[@XanderZ0ne]

@@SimonMills Hey man sorry for super late reply, Which part of the expressions should I change? I can't find anything to change without breaking it. The script works for one tank but as soon as I import another both breaks, If I get rid of the 2nd tank it will start to work again.

[@SimonMills]

Each Tank has it's own expression. They just need a unique name for their variables. Search for "$" and replace with "$tank1_" for tank 1 and "$tank2_" for tank 2 and so on. If not you will have their values overwriting and causing issues.

[@lDKWhatlAmDoingWithMyLife]

@@SimonMillsHi bro, amazing tutorial, I had the same issue. I tried replacing all "$" with "$tank1_" for tank 1 like you said but it gives me "Expression invalid after edit" if possible may I see a screenshot of what you mean by replacing variables?

[@SimonMills]

Just a do simple search and replace in any text editor. The $ indicates a variable and the variables need a unique name per vehicle in the scene so they do not overwrite one another. A simple example would be x = vehicle1 distance. ( x would be the variable ) If you have 2 vehicles in the scene then we also have a duplicate variable x = vehicle2 distance. So in order to stop them messing with one another we would just name the second one y or something that is not x. X would store the vehicle 1 distance and y would now store the vehicle 2 distance.

[@WoodysFx]

Your tutorials are fantastic, do you think you will be continuing to make these?

[@SimonMills]

Hey Marc, Yes there will be more for sure.

[@WoodysFx]

Simon Mills that sounds fantastic, your insight into rigging is amazing.

[@annalee4957]

You are amazing, I learned and succeeded, you helped me a lot so I wrote your name on every tanks that I made. Do you intend to teach us about rigging the machine gun ?, I will be very thankful to you. Best wish for you.

[@SimonMills]

Yes, this week I should get that tutorial out. Glad you are enjoying them!

[@annalee4957]

thank you, you are my angel

[@SimonMills]

Machine gun tutorial is ready, I am in the process of updating my website before I upload it because of the scene file download stuff. Should be up this week, sorry for the delay.

[@annalee4957]

it's ok, thanks you for tutorial ^_^

[@swapnilkevat153]

Thanks mahn.

[@adedarkstone983]

Hi ! First of all, thank you for those tutos, I was desperate to be enable to rig my high poly tank model and you saved my project. But I'm stuck at the step where you orient constraint the hull_jt to the hull_recoil. There is already an orient constraint between the hull_ctrl and the hull_jt so I can't create this new constraint. Any idea on how to bypass it ? Or maybe I missed a step, it's quite difficult for me because I have to apply you tutos to my model and maybe I did something wrong. Hope you will be able to help me !

[@SimonMills]

Hi Ade, Glad this tutorial helped you out. You have not made a mistake, just keep watching. You can have multiple constraints on same object. In this case we orient constrain the hull_jt to both the hull_control and also the hull_recoil. We then setup a switch to blend between which is activated when gun fires.

[@adedarkstone983]

Oh yes I see. That’s because I used a parent constraint between the hull_ctrl and the hull_jt, I wanted to be able to elevate or lower the hull on the Y axis, just as the real tank I modeled. So I just replaced the second orient by a parent but only effective on the rotations. Thank you for your answer, keep up the tutorials, they are amazing and easy to understand !

[@SimonMills]

Nice fix!

[@adedarkstone983]

Hi again ! The rig is working perfectly so thank you very much for those 4 videos. However I have a question. Is it possible to make the barrel stay aimed to the turret_ctrl will firing ? Like the hull and the turret take the recoil and the gun follow up but stay pointed to the turret_ctrl.

[@SimonMills]

Glad to hear it worked out! For the recoil thing, you just need to add in something to counter that barrel motion. So parent in a new locator that moves the barrel however you need it to that is also keyed when the gun fires. I had a tank setup that way once before but it looked odd with the whole tank moving back and the barrel held, perfectly aimed.

[@MickehPuppeh]

Welp, I'm afraid I have to bother you again. I've got everything working the way it should - however, when I constrain the wheel controllers to geometry, they progressively "derail" further and further (worsens with bumpiness), until they're just way off, making that feature unusable. Point constraining the controllers to the tank seems to help, but it's still not perfect - there's some wobbliness in there. I basically want to make it so the controllers are only free to move on the Y axis, no matter what other constraints are on there. Thank you again for the tutorial!

[@SimonMills]

send me a screenshot/video if you could, thanks.

[@Dezember456]

I solved this by constraining the wheels to locators and parenting the locators to the wheel controls. So the controls stay and the geometry constrain does work. But I just tested this on a very basic plane as I didnt need that feature yet.

[@jecmwot3659]

HI can u do a tutorial or tell how to import this to Unity? i want to move the tank with the rig

[@SimonMills]

The rig only functions within Maya, however, the animations you create with the rig can be baked to skeleton, exported to FBX and then imported to another software/engine. The end of the last video shows how to bake animations and prepare them for an FBX export.

[@vghhfgg7490]

nice is this final part ? or gonna be part5 ?

[@SimonMills]

Final part for this series yes. I have a few more tutorials in mind that relate to it: "Advanced Treads" and "Machine Gun" but I have to wait until I finish a current project before I can work on those.

[@YoutubeCancerCure]

Not all heroes wear capes. Thanks man this saved my behind although the model I rigged is not a tank but a bulldozer haha but one question though, I followed the rig through and through everything is working as intended and I had no problems whatsoever. But when I started an animation, I made my bulldozer move forward and it seems fine but when the animation of the bulldozer stops (the whole shot is longer than the bulldozer animation), how come the tracks do quick slight snapping and jerking and sliding movements and don't stay still?

[@SimonMills]

A few others had this issue, it turned out to be a display issue with viewport 2.0. Restarting Maya fixed it.

[@YoutubeCancerCure]

@@SimonMills At first I did assume it was the viewport but when I restarted Maya and rendered the shot. The jerking showed up in the renders. Now I feel the need to fix it in an unorthodox manner when my animation stops lmao

[@AndrewHereytb]

Hello. My problem is that in the view-port when I move the tank the tracks move accordingly, but as soon as I add key-frames they start spinning really fast and they never stop. Do you know what might be causing this?

[@SimonMills]

Not without seeing it. I did some tests just now and the only issue I found was at certain speeds the low-poly wheels did look like they were spinning too fast but if I skinned a cube to the outer rim of a wheel and watched that spin instead of the wireframe the speed looked fine. So basically the spinning wireframe plays tricks on the eyes. That could be happening in your case also.

[@AndrewHereytb]

I will make a video and pm it to you. I don't think it's the wireframe, I did a quick render to test this in arnold and the render output is the same. I also have to say I did this on two tanks and i got the same result.

[@SimonMills]

send it to [e-mail]

[@AndrewHereytb]

Sent you an email, thank you.

[@SimonMills]

Ok I found a solution to the problem you were having. Let me know if you have an issue viewing the video I emailed you.

[@Boba3d]

Hi Simon! Thanks a lot for amazing tutorial. Everything works great, the only problem is part on 12:51. When I would like to use my graph editor as controller for set driven key it becomes buggy. Even if I success to set animation properly, later when I animate Fire attribute Maya crashes. Any idea why it happen?

[@SimonMills]

Hey Boba, no idea of the top of my head. Send me a scene file saved as .ma and I will take a look. [e-mail]

[@maharishi4196]

hey simon, i followed this video tutorial but i am stuck with a problem at a step...after that recoil setup both the tread and gear should be adjusted according to the rotation of hull joint but in my case only gears are adjusting not treads how to fix that..??? i think i may have missed some of the connection between the hull joint and the tread please tell me what that connection is and how to join that...??

[@SimonMills]

Hey Shubham, try going back to this point: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rl7Mq3ejjLR8btEm50s If you still have issues email me the scene file or a screen shot of your node editor. ( [e-mail] )

[@bakaunko247]

i have found a problem and went over it a few times before deciding to ask here. when i do the recoil nodes in the node editor (10:00), it breaks my rig. after i complete it and try to use the recoil, the treads no longer conform to the gears. i know they work before i do the recoil bit, but have no idea why it happens.

[@SimonMills]

constrain the clusters to the hull joint, not the drive control.

[@bakaunko247]

@@SimonMills that doesn't seem to fix the problem. when i finish with the recoil stuff now, this happens: imgur.com/gallery/TiQncwq

[@SimonMills]

@@bakaunko247 wow, I haven't seen that before. It looks like your aim setup might be the issue. The hull should not flip like that.

[@bakaunko247]

@@SimonMills i'll check it out and get back to you. the turret aim correct?

[@SimonMills]

@@bakaunko247 yep

[@kaidkyoung4298]

when i rotate the hull_ht the treads_jt are moving, do you think where went wrong??? @9:15

[@AkashSingh-b9i7e]

how to setup the global control for it

[@AkashSingh-b9i7e]

My tanks chains are not moving when i slide the value on recoil i followed every step though

[@SimonMills]

Is it moving correctly for everything else?

[@AkashSingh-b9i7e]

@@SimonMills yes it is moving correctly for everything else but when i parent the cluster grp to the joint recoil works but while using drive the tank chain seems to be mess up ?

[@SimonMills]

@@AkashSingh-b9i7e are you clusters set to relative?

[@AkashSingh-b9i7e]

@@SimonMills No

[@NinjaFlibble]

I do the geometry constraint and it works fine, however when I move the tank over any terrain deformations, the wheel controls move. Any idea why? Or is it just a problem with the geometry constraint? The control curves' pivots are all on the same level as a, well, level ground plane...even with X and Z translates locked -_-'

[@SimonMills]

Yes, it's a limitation with geometry constraints. Resetting the transforms on the wheel controls will fix it if it gets a little crazy. I find resetting before playback works best and bake these controls down for your final animation.

[@NinjaFlibble]

ok, at least I can work around it XD

[@QuestionMarkKick360]

Is there any way to resize the tank after rigging it?

[@SimonMills]

Not easily no.

[@QuestionMarkKick360]

@@SimonMills Thanks for replying and making these videos.

[@simpleyork1]

I got to the forth video, it says that the wheels should move up with the wheel ctrls but only my treads do

[@SimonMills]

Awesome.. thanks Chris.. you are right. I missed that step entirely in the tutorial.. forgive me, there was a lot to get through:) The Wheels need to be point constrained to their respective wheel controls exactly the same way as the wheel clusters are, so Y axis only and maintain the offset.

[@simpleyork1]

thank you so much

[@NuovaStarGaming]

hey simon i got a quextion when we complete the whole rig and ready to animate it but how do we scale it? cus whn i try to scale the tank group which has all of the other groups parented to it my tread mesh kinda blows apart any idea how i can fix this issue? please reply i need to complete this for my thesis

[@SimonMills]

This was meant as a joint based rig to use in games. Bone scaling in complex rigs can cause issues in some engines. Generally you should have your mesh scale realized before you rig it. It is possible at this point but it requires quite a bit of rework to the rig.

[@SimonMills]

Use these steps and you will get what you need: Create a new control, we will call it Top_control and parent it to the tank group. Parent the drive_ctrl, rig group and root joint to the Top_control. Delete the parent constraints from the curves group and the tread_up_object group. Parent the tread_up_object group to the curves group and then parent the curves group to the tank group. Select each of your clusters and enable relative. Connect the Drive control translation and rotation to the curves group translation and rotation directly. Now scaling the Top_control will scale the entire tank correctly. Good luck on your thesis.

[@NuovaStarGaming]

on the cluster part where do i find the enable relative option? ^^;;;

[@SimonMills]

Attribute Editor. A checkbox at the top.

[@NuovaStarGaming]

nvm found tht but for the connection i should use the node editor right? soorryy for being a noob :P

[@nitishmishra191]

This method is too much difficult Is there any easy way to rig

[@SimonMills]

This will speed you up: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5bQcpSNaL6bopI or you can grab the finished rig from my site.

[@AbdulAzis-nk3ym]

how to texture

[@Dreamjourneyvfx]

awesome