Master Rigging Vehicles in Blender

An overview of the conventions that I utilise throughout the course. Heeding these will make your rigging and animating projects easier and pain free as you go.

A quick video that shows how bone and armature orientations differentiate. It is important to distinguish between the two.

A video showing how Custom Bone Shapes are setup.

We go over how bone layers work in this lecture.

Similarly to the armature and bone orientations, it's important to distinguish between bone and object level constraints.

A summary of how the damped track constraint works (with a demonstration.)

An introduction to what a driver is and what it does.

An overview of the different parts of the driver editor window.

An overview of what the driver modifiers do and how they work.

A lecture that goes over how to build a driver from sratch!

An overview of the IF statement that we'll be utilising throughout the course.

Because we'll be working with prebuilt models, it's important to understand how they're built. This lecture goes over how the object shrinkwrap modifier works and how we'll be working around it throughout the course.

A guide for understanding radians and how Blender interprets them.

A checklist that should be adhered to before rigging anything within Blender.

A universal rig: we'll be building a hinge in this video to get us started creating rigs and using it in the future.

The first part for rigging the modifiers will be covered in this lecture.

We'll be creating a rig for an individual wheel in this lecture and then adjusting and building upon it in vehicle rigs down the line.

A starting point for rigging the road-lamps; as with the modifiers this is split into two halves and will be extended and built upon in the vehicle lectures.

A summary of the car! Gives an overview of the model, shows what the rig will entail and general information about the upcoming set of lectures.

We are installing the universal rig: modifiers. Ensure you've watched the previous lecture, "Rigging the Modifiers"

We are installing the universal rig: modifiers. Ensure you've watched the previous lecture, "Rigging the Road Lights"

We are installing the universal rig: modifiers. Ensure you've watched the previous lecture, "Rigging a wheel"

Takes the 'universal rig: road lights' lecture and enhances both the rig itself and its usability. This includes setting up automatic stripped lights, fixing clicking the indicators, and optionally resizing the control panel.

We will simply be creating the front axle in this lecture.

We will be setting up a basic ground detection system such that the vehicle will adjust automatically based on terrain height.

We'll be setting up a suspension system that utilises cloth simulator physics in this video.

This video will specifically deal with creating a drift controller which can be used when a vehicle is skidding. Most useful for chase scenes, racing or icy/wet roads!

We're simply creating controller bones in this lecture for the windows.

This is the cleanup lecture! We put together all the individual parts to create the final animatable rig.

A summary of the bus! Gives an overview of the model, shows what the rig will entail and general information about the upcoming set of lectures.

This video will deal strictly with setting up the wheels using the universal rig ~ wheels. You need to have completed the lecture 'Rigging a Wheel'

We will be installing the hinges we created in the universal rigs section in this video.

We will be installing a rig for the service door in this video. There are two individual doors and we'll be rigging them one at a time.

We'll be rigging both interior and exterior lights in this tutorial using custom properties assigned to a new and specific bone.

This is a quick lecture to recreate the front axle of the vehicle and to build the custom shapes for the relevant bones.

We'll be concentrating on setting up a suspension switch in this video. We'll be creating a controller bone above the bus that will also control the suspension itself.

We'll be creating a second custom properties bone next to the light one and assigning all peripherals to it.

This is the cleanup! We're ready to put everything together to make a final, working rig.

A summary of the HGV! Gives an overview of the model, shows what the rig will entail and general information about the upcoming set of lectures.

This video will go over how to setup the wheels using the univeral wheels rig to the HGV.

This lecture will setup the lights ~ instead of using emission materials, we'll be using light objects instead and using custom properties assigned to a dedicated bone (similar  to the bus.)

We will be building the suspension for three seperate parts in this lecture; the HGV wheels, trailer wheels, and the cabin itself.

We'll be creating a new armature with a specific bone with stepped custom properties for moving the tail-lift in and out of position.

We are going to be finishing off the smaller parts; rigging the trailer door, the standing legs for the trailer and the windows.

We're fixing various overlooked parts of the rig, changing and removing unecessary bones, parenting the objects to the rig, and polishing the blend file overall.

We are going to be concentrating on fixing the vehicles onto a path curve that an animator is able to control and manipulate.

A summary of the airplane! Gives an overview of the model, shows what the rig will entail and general information about the upcoming set of lectures.

We are going to be starting off with the flight controls (the flaps, ailerons, rudder and elevators.)

We are going to be dealing with the flaps and airbreaks (spoilers) in this lecture.  These will be installed using custom properties on a dedicated bone which the animator can then use.

We are going to be covering the various lights in this video, including both the functional and safety lights.

We are going to be concentrating on the trims on the airplane. These are found in three specific places; the ailerons, rudder and elevators.

We are going to be concentrating on the engines in this video. Specifically, we're rigging the turbines and the reverse thruster.

We are going to be concentrating on the rear landing gear. When a plane is landing, the rear landing gear is what touches the ground first.

We're going to be rigging the front landing gear; functionally it's going to be practically the same as the rear with some minor differences.

We're creating a switcher that changes the pivot point from the center of gravity to the (equivalent of) rear axles.

We are at the cleanup stage of the airplane! We are going to be creating minor problems and parenting bones and objects to the correct places.

A summary of the HGV! Gives an overview of the model, shows what the rig will entail and general information about the upcoming set of lectures.

We are going to be starting the tank by rigging the wheels themselves.

We're going to be setting up a suspension system that utilises both ground detection bones and cloth simulators.

We are going to be rigging the tracks themselves in this video.

We are going to be concentrating on the turret in this lecture. We will be creating a controller bone that the turret will track to. We'll also be creating a recoil switch to animate when the gun fires.

We're going to be concentrating on the peripherals; these include the hatches, the side doors, the minigun attached to the hull, and the front lights. These will all be controlled by the usual custom property by the tank.

We are at the final stage of the tank! We are cleaning up the rig so that the ground detection all works correctly, the body and turrets are parented, and adding a few finishing touches to our rig.

An overview of the 'Debug Section' and how it was designed. When creating rigs that get fairly complicated, it's very easy to overlook problems that don't show themselves until the late rigging / animation stages of a pipeline. All videos in this section have minor issues that need remedying.

We are going to be working on fixing the jittering problem that happens when the tank has moved too far from the origin point in the scene.

As the tank moves up and down through the scene (due to the suspension), sometimes one of the panels does not catch correctly which makes it look like it's glitching. 

You may have a cycle dependency on the bus rig. These are buggy and should be eliminated.

The HGV works okay if the vehicle remains on flat, smooth surfaces. The trailer runs into problems however if the vehicle is on an incline.