Tutorial: Rigging Cars in Blender // Launch Control [Beginner]

Check it out on BlenderMarket ► blendermarket.com/products/la...
or GumRoad ► danielvesterbaek.gumroad.com/...
In this beginner video, we go over the basics of rigging Cars in Blender and how Launch Control makes it fast and easy to get the job done.
About Launch Control (LC) ►
If you want to make realistic-looking car animations in Blender in no time, LC is the tool for you!
It's built around 3 different parts of the process:
1. Automatic Rigging (One-Click Rigging of 4-wheeled cars)
2. Animation with presets for quick results
3. Physics simulations that bake fast and can be modified in real-time
LC strives to make vehicle animation accessible and eliminates the usual problems you stumble over, when turning your action-sequence dreams into reality (a virtual reality, that is).
The simple interface packs a ton of power and in the "Manual Gearbox" you have a world of customization options to tune LC to your liking.
Check out my other platforms ►
Instagram: / daniel_vesterbaek
Website: www.danielvesterbaek.com/
Artstation: www.artstation.com/daniel_ves...

[@heveycreations4197]

Just bought this addon, it rocks !

[@FarhanKhan18]

Loved it, awesome content

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Thank you so much!! 😄

[@DjOmiBitOfficial]

Hi there bro!! Excellent tutorial an add-on. My question is if there is any possibility rigging more than 4 wheel vehicles. Thanks!!

[@NildoE]

Super nice man... may I suggest a feature ( if there's isnt of course)...would it be possible to add rigging for the steering wheel of the car? this way all we'd have to do is link the hands of the character to it and the character would be automatically animated to some extent..

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Yes! Thank you for the suggestion! Well... it was actually already in the rig - Until the file got corrupted and I had to roll back to an earlier version. It's on the list ^^

[@Claymoretrax]

Nice!

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Thanks!

[@ArthurBaum]

Hey. I'm currently struggling with other addons and thihlint about buying yours. Do you maybe plan a Tutorial on how to import the rig to unreal? What are the limitations of that workflow?

[@eztutor823]

Awesome!! Probably to soon to ask: But any idea when you're going to start working on the multiple cars in 1 scene update?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hi! Thank you for dropping a comment in here! Well, I have outlined what I need to do to add the feature. I was also thinking about how "batch editing" on multiple cars would be interesting. But... It's quite the overhaul, so I don't expect it to be ready in the next version. For now, the best thing is to rig background cars in other scenes and then copy/paste them into your "main" scene. :)

[@eztutor823]

@@DanielVesterbaek Your welcome! Thanx for the quick reply. Batch rendering would be a superb option indeed. Can't wait for that version to come out. Wish you the best of success with this plugin!

[@DanielVesterbaek]

@@eztutor823 Thanks a lot man!! Yeah, I am also looking forward to developing it further and seeing what it will eventually turn into 😄

[@navidumardaraz7163]

Go Daniel 🚗

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hahah, Thank you Navid ^^

[@crassitudes]

Great! I immediately bought this (Jean-Yan pointed to this yesterday) after seeing "easy send to UE5", unfortunately no matter what car from "transportation" I use, the tires on right side of car are "destroyed"/don't come in correctly, everything else works great! Any ideas what could cause this? Used "Animated FBX for UE5" and I'm working with UE5.0.3...

[@crassitudes]

Daniel answered: To me this looks like a flipped normal inside Unreal. When exporting the objects they will have their scale applied, which is no problem for most objects. However, if an object has a negative scale it will have its normals flipped in the "applying scale process". I have the Transportation add-on as well, so just checked this model and it does indeed seem like the right tires have negative scales. So a way to get around this issue is to manually apply the scale on these "issue meshes" with "Ctrl+A -> Scale" and then go into "edit mode" for the meshes, select all vertecies with "A" and hit "Alt+n -> Flip" to flip the normals. ALL WORKS FINE NOW!

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Thank you so much for jumping in and trying Launch Control!! ^^ And sorry for not seeing your message in here earlier. I am happy you sent it on BlenderMarket support as well!

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Thanks for sharing the solution in here!! So happy that it solved the issue :)

[@cyhunter98]

Can you add custom wheels and assemble vehicles with more than four wheels, because trucks and wheeled armored vehicles have more than four wheels.

[@richardchipstick235]

Hi, I have finally managed to rig my car, but not having used Blender much at all I found it a bit of a struggle, but nevertheless I got there in the end, but I would really like to export this to Unreal engine 5, seeing that there is an option to do so in Launch Control, i.e. Animated FBX for UE5, but I've not yet been able to successfully do this after many many attempts, would anyone be kind enough to run through a few basic steps to achieve this, I would be so very grateful, Thank you.

[@andyy79]

Hi, first of all, Thank you for creating this awesome plugin! It worked well a few times but since a few days the wheels are jumping up and down into the wheel-arch after rigging, tried it with the Cars that come with it, more complex models and with very simple lowpoly cars, Pivots are all centers and scale is right. Any idea what could cause the wheels to bounce?

[@andyy79]

No worries, was using blender 3.0, Blender 3.5 works fine!

[@Minibubulle_]

check ur origins@@andyy79

[@Althery]

Amazing addon! is there a discord group or something where I can discuss with other people who bought the plugin for better practices?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hello Leo!! Thank you so much. I am in the process of setting up a discord. My main problem is that I don't personally have the capacity to moderate it. But, I am working on finding a solution for that. Until that is up, please always feel free to shoot me an email with any questions or concerns. :)

[@brianwesonga8077]

I got wobbly wheels when rendering.. What could be the problem

[@RAin-vf1qu]

您好，如何解决此插件绑定后的转向动画会导致轮胎碰到底盘的问题

[@YungYouri]

Can it work for more than one car at a time?

[@degibocu]

AWSOME, please make a tutorial how export animation from blender to unreal using this addon.

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Thank you!! I would be happy to. Currently, playing around with an alternative method that is even faster ^^

[@degibocu]

@@DanielVesterbaek oh man ican wait to see it.

[@rayanvsdaworld]

why its sayin "please enable physics before adjusting the physics post fx" ? I cant find it anywhere

[@Dmitry2184]

I wonder how it would work with hover cars or other sci-fi stuff

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hello Dmitry! Thank you for the message!! Well, hovering cars you could probably do with "fake wheels" and then just hide the wheels after you rig the car, but the hovering car would still behave like it had wheels though ^^ Sci-Fi stuff it should be able to handle well - Just as long as it's 4-wheeled :D

[@irisortega9796]

Heyy!! I just bought your addon everything works perfectly. But I just tried to download the car of wire whell and I imported it in obj and also tried it in fbx and I dont get the textures. It just appears all white. Could you help me ?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hey man! Thank you so much for getting the add-on! Sorry I didn't see your comment earlier (feel free to shoot me a message in the Discord group or by email ([e-mail]) in the future) The reason why the textures are not there is that they are only included with the "premium" versions of the cars, which you can buy on GumRoad. :)

[@jakemartins7883]

I'm trying to rig cars from the transportation addon but it just gives errors such as 'DrivingPath' error

[@WillFalcon]

What about semi truck? With 6 -8 wheels?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Launch Control is built for rigging 4 wheeled cars and is optimized for that. :) It would be cool to add multiple rigs in there, but for now that is what we focus on.

[@LilElmer182]

i was wondering if this works with cars with camber because now in car culture there is slammed and stanced cars so would this work on them?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hey!! Thanks for the question - I am sorry for the super late reply :( I don't get to check the YT comments often. Yes, LC had sliders for adjusting the camber and toe manually after rigging the vehicle. It is required that all camber and toe is removed before trying to rig the vehicle though. :)

[@thibaultdelli-colli923]

Hello, I bought the plug in a few days ago and I have a problem. The wheels of the car models do not stop "vibrating", with any model. Do you have any solutions?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hi there!! That is awesome, thank you for trying out Launch Control :)) Well, wheels vibrating (or wobbling) is usually the cause of the wheel meshes being tilted a tiny bit. Like explained in the video at: 2:45 However, you probably already watched that part and tried those steps... If so, here are a few other things that hopefully will solve the problem: 1. A user helped me find a bug in the script that makes wheels wobble on some models. This was updated and fixed in Version 1.0.1 of the rig. Could you double-check that you are running this version of the add-on? If not you can download it from BlenderMarket or Gumroad (whereever you got the add-on) 2. There are two sliders inside the viewport that add "wheel wobble FX" and "wheel shake FX" to your rig. Can you check if these are both completely at the bottom? (you can see them on the image here) www.dropbox.com/s/vro6ydn8cw3j3uw/LC_Support_WheelShake.jpg?dl=0 3. Try checking if the tire mesh is completely round. If the tire mesh is from a scanned dataset or something like that it might not be geometrically round and then when Launch Control tries to find the center of the tire, it will miss slightly and the wheel will shake. Aaaand, if none of these things helps you further, please shoot me an email at "[e-mail]" and we can solve it by email. I would be super happy if you can send me one of the files with the issue so I can investigate and figure out what is happening. Thanks a lot! All the best, Daniel

[@arsenelupin7802]

5:35 how did you select these elements separately?

[@GoinShoots]

How do I select a slider?

[@Aryanladekar]

Hey Daniel, I Purchased your addon and followed all the steps shown in the tutorial. I did rig a custom vehicle and did all the changes needed for it and it works but I need some help with the brake calipers, it rotates with the wheel i tried unparenting it but then it stays in one place detached to the rig. I have used all the steps that are there in the tutorial and even renamed everything the same as yours. pls help me out.

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hi man! Aaarh, sorry for the delay on this question - I tend to miss comments here on KZbin :( It's better if you write directly through BlenderMarket or email - Then I see the messages faster. As long as the brakes are tagged as "brake.RR, brake.RL, brake.FR, brake.FL" LC should be able to detect them. If it doesn't find them (or find multiple objects that could be brakes) it will just ignore and not rig them. Inside "Manual Gearbox -> Rig Setup" you can set the setting "Force" for "Rig Brakes", which means that LC will not successfully rig the car if it cannot find the brakes. When this setting is set to "Force", it will guide you through the process, telling you why the brakes didn't rig properly. :) I hope that is useful and you will be able to get that to work! Let me know how it goes :)

[@gamerzheaven000]

Can I rig an Auto rickshaw with the help of this tool in blender?? Plz upload a video on this.

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hey man! Thanks a lot for the question! Well, sadly not :( The reason is that Launch Control specifically focusses on 4-wheeled vehicles and not 2 or 3. It's something we would like to look into in the future though :)

[@EdgarVenzor]

HI Daniel, I was wondering if you could help me? I got the car rigged and everything but when it starts to go the wheels start rotating around something else and end up moving through the sky and ground rather than in the wheel well. Was wondering if you could point me in the right direction to fix that. Thank you

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hello Edgar! Thanks a lot for reaching out regarding this in here! In the future, would you be able to reach out on BlenderMarket or on our Discord? I don't check KZbin comments so often, so I can easily miss critical messages in here :) This sounds like the tire mesh you are using for wheels might not have evenly distributed vertecies. If you have a Discord account, you can check out this post from someone who had a similar issue in the past: discord.com/channels/1064900074175479860/1080799192609476659/1123987099268423843 Essentially, this often happens if you are rigging tires where the rim is combined with the tire and the rim has some "non circular" geometry. It can also happen if your tire has "sidewall details" modelled into the mesh. LC will automatically calculate the center of the tire based on the density of vertecies so that is why these things can cause issues. You can either separete this geometry which is causing the "imbalance" and set that geometry as children of the wheel or simply disable "Auto Tire Pivot" in the preferences. A bit more information on that here: launch-control-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user-preferences.html#auto-tire-pivot Be aware that if you uncheck this auto pivot, LC will use the exact pivots of the tire objects as wheel pivots, so you have to make sure they are correctly set.

[@maximus9841]

How to rig mechanical parts of suspension? For example rods, knuckles, levers?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hello! Thank you for your question! :) I might miss messages in here on KZbin though, so I would recommend you to ask in the official LC discord or directly through BlenderMarket if that works for you! :) There are some bones inside the rig already for rigging suspension arms, springs and the knuckle, but they will have to be fitted manually to your vehicle model. Which version of Launch Control are you working in? The workflow is slightly different depending on the version

[@maximus9841]

@@DanielVesterbaek Unfortunately, I was never able to properly attach the suspension parts. Therefore, I used Rigacar( It’s not so convenient there, but I had to.

[@EvokAi]

Bro can you add a feature where it has jet propulsion like in FF series

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hahah, that's an epic idea xD

[@richardchipstick235]

This looks amazing, so just purchased a copy of Launch Control, I have not used blender a lot, but couldn't resist buying it and having a go, now in the package that I downloaded I have three files 1. Launch Control v1.1.1 Lite Zip. 2. Launch Control v 1.1.1 Zip. 3. Launch Control Epic Car Models. Do I have to Install and Activate Both Launch Control v1.1.1 Lite and Launch Control v1.1.1 together, or are these two different versions of the same Add-On, and you just choose one of them, probably a very obvious answer, but I thought I would just check, Thank you

[@ReaZaaa]

Lite usually means less features. Just install only the non Lite version.

[@richardchipstick235]

@@ReaZaaa Thank you Rezzi.

[@MrAltugtezer]

if we can't convey our own path and I think it won't work if we have to modify the original path instead

[@zuccedgaming220]

Can you tell me how to rig multiple cars in launch control

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Yes - Thank you for the question! You can do it right now using linked files - Meaning you have to rig 1 car per blend file and then link the "collection" into a master file. I have a quick video here on how to do that. www.dropbox.com/s/nh6iq29wtdlo5ds/Linked_Files.mp4?dl=0 I hope that helps :) Also, I would encourage you to join the discord if you have any other questions. In there there are many people who are happy to help. Here on KZbin it's easy for me to miss a question now and then

[@ThePinkOne]

I just bought this addon and it looks really great! However when I press the rig button Blender freezes for a second then crashes. I'm on version 3.4.1

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hi there!! Oh no, I am really sorry to hear that :/ Does it also crash when you use the included models? There could be a lot of different things, but it should definitely run in Blender 3.4.1. Would you be able to send me an email on "[e-mail]" or a message on BlenderMarket with the crash log from the file? That can help detecting what went wrong. We'll figure it out 😊

[@ThePinkOne]

@@DanielVesterbaek Hi! It seems to be working fine now. For some reason it will randomly crash when I rig a car, sometimes it works but other times it doesn't. I'm not sure what triggers a crash though. Either way it's a great addon!

[@DanielVesterbaek]

@@ThePinkOne Arh, man.. Sorry to read it's kinda unstable when rigging on your setup. It used to have problems if you undo right after rigging, but I never tried that the rigging button crashed blender on my system. Could it be that it simply runs out of memory? Did you have many other programs running too or so? Happy to hear you enjoy the add-on even though. I am not a developer myself, so the code is by no means perfect, which can be the reason for the crashing. However, I am teaming up with a python Dev to try to improve it overall. Maybe that will make it more stable on your system as well! 😊

[@ThePinkOne]

@@DanielVesterbaek I don't think it's a memory issue because my system has 64gb of ram. It might be because I have a lot of addons? I'm not all that bothered by crashes so I don't mind. I look forward to seeing Launch Control improve and grow! I gotta say for someone who isn't a developer you certainly have made something incredible! This is one of the best (if not *the* best) vehicle rigging addons I've ever used!

[@DanielVesterbaek]

@@ThePinkOne Nope, you are right about that. 64 GB should definitely be enough here 😊 Hmmm, okay, good to know it doesn't bother too much. It could indeed be because of another add-on interfering somehow. The rigging process is 900 lines of code with a toooon of different things that is being calculated, so odds are that something in there could break with certain addons installed. Would be interesting to try to disable all other addons and see if that solves the problem. And wow, thank you SO much for that feedback 😊 That is so nice to hear!

[@drkrm_]

how can we have camber adjustment ?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

For now3 there is a Camber Factor in the rig. The handle is in the viewport and is called "Slider_WheelCamber". I would also like to add a basic "Camber Offset" slider next to it so it's easy to adjust. If you wanna add it currently, you need to push the "CustomMass_Move" handle down until you have the desired camber and then compensate for the body being dropped lower with the "Slider_GroundClearance" inside the "Setup" mode of the rig :)

[@tacfizzvisuals2677]

Hopefully someone is able to help me fix this issue im having with rigging a car; I have imported a porsche model I have found and set it up exactly as explained in this video however, when I click "Rig Vehicle!" in the add-on, it seems to glitch out and it places the car body way out of place and nothing rotates or moves correctly, its almost as if there is an object higher in the scene that everything is tracking to but there is nothing there. Anyone able to give me some things I can do to fix this? thanks! :)

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hello!! ^^ Thank you for asking about this. To me it sounds like you might be using a version of LC which is not compatible with your version of Blender :'( You can go ahead and download the latest version of LC on BlenderMarket or GumRoad if you are using Blender 3.6+. If you are using an older version of Blender, you would need to download the version "v1.3.22"

[@tacfizzvisuals2677]

@@DanielVesterbaek thank you for the reply! I will give that a go and see if it fixes it. How do I check which version of blender I am using?

[@tacfizzvisuals2677]

Hello again! I have updated my blender to the latest version and the add-on is now working correctly!! Thank you for suggesting me to update blender. :)@@DanielVesterbaek

[@Nana_Ryda]

Can i rig multiple cars in one scene using this add on?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Thank you for the question! Right now you can rig 1 car per scene and link multiple files together to create animations with extra cars. We are working on rewriting the entire tool to fully support multi-car rigging and we are getting close to finishing it :)

[@dhrubobiswas3700]

I rig one car but I also wanted to rig 1 more car how I can do this?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Hey man! Oh, sorry I didn't get to respond earlier - I tend to miss comments here on KZbin I am afraid :( But! Good news for you, LC 1.5 just aired a few minutes ago and that version has multi-car support, so you can rig and animate as many cars as you want in there. :)

[@chinkitgaming]

material for the car ?!

[@DanielVesterbaek]

The shaders for the Mustang you can get if you get the paid version, which is available on the "wirewheels" gumroad :) wirewheelsclub.gumroad.com

[@xbboyn9977]

how to rig the car with more than 4 wheels :( like a truck or soemthing

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Aaarh, sadly, Launch Control is built for rigging 4-wheeled cars only :( Are you still able to use the tool, or do you only need it for trucks?

[@xbboyn9977]

well i did another form of rigging using an empty and manual animation through out the scene , I am currently working on it @@DanielVesterbaek

[@missionsubmission906]

Sorry a always get key error key driving path not found(

[@missionsubmission906]

Using blender 3.5

[@imsethtwo]

okay no car rigging addon I use works even after paying $50 for this one as last resort. my model has all transforms applied, origins are set to geometry, the whole thing is centered on the world origin.. I need some assistance because this is ridiculous

[@imsethtwo]

when I press rig, my wheels and car and brakes all separate with the parent lines being way above the car.

[@tacfizzvisuals2677]

I have the same issue! have you found a solution to fix this? would really appreciate it! @@imsethtwo

[@Shakrahn_is_a_creative]

Why is my car moving backwards?? any idea

[@DanielVesterbaek]

When you set up the animation, you can rotate the "spinning wheel" above the car clockwise or counter-clockwise. One way will make the car move forward, the other will make it move backwards. Could this be the problem here? :) Feel free to ping us on the Discord or on BlenderMarket in the future. - We often miss comments here on KZbin

[@Shakrahn_is_a_creative]

Thanks man..i think thats the case @@DanielVesterbaek

[@DanielVesterbaek]

@@Shakrahn_is_a_creative Great to hear!

[@crassitudes]

It really is a joy to work with this! Here is my first result: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y4bIfGuEjNB4abc

[@RomboutVersluijs]

You should tell your developer, or you, not sure you fully developed it yourself, that you can set a width to an operstor popuo dialog., @5:09 we see a popup, vut the wi dow is so wide its hardly readable. When you call wm,dialog add width in the oaramters. Look in the python reference how it can be achieved

[@toonanimationstudio]

Am i the only one having a snapping motion when the car drifts using blender 3.6

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Thanks for asking!! Well, when the car is drifting, it's often helpful to decrease the speed in that area. Since the drift handle makes the back of the car swing it would natually increase the "percieved speed" and I just found that adding keyframes to decrease the speed in those areas usually makes it look more realistic. - Does that make sense? (Or maybe this is not what you mean? :) )

[@toonanimationstudio]

@@DanielVesterbaek alright thanks already fixed it, the problem is my vehicle is too large, sometimes rare tire jump's out of the ground detection making it to snap ,i went to edit model and scaled the ground more

[@Sparkjoylearn]

rbc is better it can make physics rigs even faster

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Thanks for commenting! Well, I can say RBC is an absolutely great tool! I have been using it myself. I think RBC has strengths and LC had strengths and at the end of the day it's just about figuring out which tool works for your specific project! RBC is fully physics based, while LC is based on artistic control. Two different approaches to car animation in 3D.

[@Chodree]

Rbc is great but you don’t get complete creative control, especially when it comes to drifting scenes.

[@Claymoretrax]

You keep using hot keys but not telling the beginner what you are doing. you might have to do a different tutorial for novices because this will frustrate the person switching from cinema 4D to blender.

[@DanielVesterbaek]

I'm sorry to hear that man :( I try to say which hotkeys I am clicking, but I often forget or don't have the screencast keys enabled. I am hoping to be able to do a new video on this in the future. Is there a specific point where you get lost? Maybe I can give some quick help with that?

[@user-zd7cq8xq7y]

how to use the tacks on car wheels can wee use tracks as car wheels ? snow tracks ?

[@DanielVesterbaek]

Are you thinking of something like a snow mobile? :) For now, LC is built and works with 4-wheeled vehicles and is not built for other types of vehicles yet.

[@user-zd7cq8xq7y]

@@DanielVesterbaek yse bro i was trying to make something like cybertruck on snow tracks. i can animate the traxx by genuine way can it be collaborated with your addon. just the tyre not spin. we can make belt spin by constraint maually it will look real