Animate a wheel rig with basic rotation
3DS MAX
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The possibilities for CG art are almost limitless; we can make near everything we dream of with the tools on our PCs. I’ve been in the archviz world for several years and know that it can be divided into two branches: still images and animation. On the side of still images, creating an appealing shot, whether it be for a personal study or a client, can feel amazing because it’s the summation of all our ideas, the way we set the mood, and so on.
Oscar Juárez teaches you how to get started with a key technique for vehicles and more
However, over the past few years I’ve been delving deeper into animation. Creating an image is great, but seeing it come to life has opened up an entirely new fascination in my work. We can now practically animate a whole image; the trees, the people, the furniture and vehicles, and even watch the movement of the sun across the sky.
In this tutorial I’m going to show you how I animate one vital element that so often isn’t given a second thought: wheels. It’s a touch that can be the difference between an average animation and genuine believability.
Among the lessons I’ve got lined up, I’ll outline how you can calculate the correct wheel speed over a certain distance. Why is that relevant? Because sometimes the speed of animated wheels is wrong and can lead us into the uncanny valley, throwing away all of the effort spent when creating everything else. So with that in mind, let’s begin.
01 SET UP YOUR AXES CORRECTLY
This step is going to be vital every time we start creating animation. We have to be sure about the way the axes are located, as this will save us so much time. In this case, after the car model is imported I always check the front of the car is aligned to the red axis.
For this tutorial it’s crucial to check this, as when applying modifiers, animation keys or other elements the way our vertices are set up can sometimes give us the completely wrong result. Always remember to align the red axis to the bonnet of the car.
02 SPLIT THE WHEELS FROM THE CAR
This step depends on the model you’re using as sometimes, for optimisation, they can come fully merged. In this case, the car I had was a group made up of the main body and the wheels, which I split up to make the work easier. Each wheel should have its pivot in t
