Custom joints?

Wacov · 5 May 2009, 09:43

I thought something very useful would be the ability to meld joints together; so, combine a spring, servo and motor, each with their own setings, and affecting the attached object in order, to join a wheel to a vehicle with no complicated hidden geometry. It could either work with a custom joint, which you place, and then add/remove individual joints within it, or just place joints, then select and combine them into a single, custom joint. Similar thing would be acheivable if joints could act on their own, but this might interfere with the gear system. Probably another one of my 'stupid' requests, but it really would be useful.

hobbnob · 5 May 2009, 18:59

really hard to implement though

phy · 6 May 2009, 00:21

I wouldn't think it would be to hard in spiv.

CPhillips · 6 May 2009, 05:32

I am not sure I fully understand your request. I think it comes down to being able to combine simple joints to make more complex ones. That you will be able to do in SPIV.

If you mean you want one joint that can do everything that is possible. The servo and piston are actually the same joint but with different parameters. But such a joint is hard to look at in the UI and figure out how to do what you want.

BTW. In SP3 you can group 2 or more joints together with out having a body. That said having a body adds strength.

Wacov · 6 May 2009, 08:03

Go back to my example... the joint would be inside a group with the main vehicle body. The wheel would effectively be connected to the 'motor', which would have to rotate on the 'servo', which would have to be sprung on the main body. Without any moving parts except the wheel, will it be possible to create this kind of movement?

CPhillips · 7 May 2009, 17:35

Not the way you describe it.
As I said before a single joint that is (in your example) a hinge and a spring and a servo would be a UI mess. And I would have to code for every possible permutation. What if you wanted a piston,spring,servo,hinge,motor. Ug!

Instead you will be able to take a slider and a spring and a servo and a hinge with all the settings you want and the group them into a object that is reusable. Copy and paste or even post to 3dwarehouse.

But in the specific case of a car rigging there will be a shortcut in SPIV. Something called a ray cast car is available in the new version of the physics engine. Basically you say this body is a "car" and these bodies are "wheels" and it handles connecting them with all sort of real world values like torque, breaking, steering, differential and suspension setup.

phy · 7 May 2009, 17:47

@cphillips said:

Not the way you describe it.
As I said before a single joint that is (in your example) a hinge and a spring and a servo would be a UI mess. And I would have to code for every possible permutation. What if you wanted a piston,spring,servo,hinge,motor. Ug!

Instead you will be able to take a slider and a spring and a servo and a hinge with all the settings you want and the group them into a object that is reusable. Copy and paste or even post to 3dwarehouse.

But in the specific case of a car rigging there will be a shortcut in SPIV. Something called a ray cast car is available in the new version of the physics engine. Basically you say this body is a "car" and these bodies are "wheels" and it handles connecting them with all sort of real world values like torque, breaking, steering, differential and suspension setup.

Like in stunt playground 2.0! That would be great! I made a car in stunt playground using the junk car body and the monster truck suspension and wheels, it had 7 gears and went 200mph.