This is my first post in the SLATE forums. Gavalakis suggested to start one topic here about car animation, which I asked about in the Unity forums.
These are the major points of my original question:
“I will need to use SLATE among others things to have moving cars in a cutscene…
What approach would be best with SLATE?
The models consist of a car body and separate wheels. It would be nice to have the front wheels turn according to the path of movement, and also to have wheel rotations corresponding to speed.
One aspect to note: at runtime the cutscene will need to be played similarly to a video, the user will have a play/stop/rewind/playback-speed control GUI.”
And this is Gavalakis’s response, just to have everything in one place:
“What you describe will certainly require the creation of a custom action clip, considering the fact that you want the rotation of the wheels to be procedural and automated and because the behavior of wheels is a bit of special case as well 🙂
Probably the best way to start of, would be to use a Path (“Tools/Slate/Extra/Create Bezier Path”) and then create a custom clip that utilize that path and controls/animates the wheels in the specific way you require. A good starting point on how to utilize Slate Paths, is the included action clips “Follow Path” and “Animate on Path”, which could also by themselves be used for animating the body of the car alone, or you could implement the body animation within your custom action clip as well, thus to keep everything in one place (your action clip).
I have a few ideas on how what you want can be achieved within an action clip and I’m more than glad to try it out and let you know! If you want, please start a topic on the Slate Forums and as soon as I have something, I will update you there :)”
I’d like to add here that currently all the car animations need to work on a flat surface.
So far I was experimenting with the Folow Path actionclip, and it is of course fit for the general body movement, but that’s quite far from a believeable animation yet.
Also, there are some extra cases other than simple cars, like a fuel tanker having six wheels, and also a trailer truck with several trailers,
I mean something like the truck on the attached image. What would be a first idea about this trailer truck, if not a custom clip?
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