Quick Tip: Wheel Rotation In 3d Studio Max Using Parameter Wiring

Quick Tip: Wheel Rotation In 3d Studio Max Using Parameter Wiring

on Oct 24th 2011 with 16 comments
Tutorial Details

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

In this Quick Tip author Chandan Kumar will show us how to set up a wheel rotation in 3d Studio Max using parameter wiring. The advantage to this is that we can achieve a fully automated wheel rotation by simply moving the control object (in this case the cart’s handle), and the wheels will rotate correctly without the need for any manual keyframing or input.

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Chandan Kumar is chandank13 on 3docean
 
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My name is Chandan Kumar and I am a CG and VFX artist/trainer from India.  

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  • Mike-bryan

    This was just the thing i wondered about yesterday, your the man! thank you for this

  • Cg

    Hey Chandan ! Nyc quick tip but m having a problm when i connect Y Rotation axis of the wheel to the X axix of the Handle my wheel object turns in diffrent direction how can i change the Y rotation of the wheel after wiring ?

    • http://www.vfxrider.com Chandan Kumar

      Hi Cg, thanks to like the tut. I think you must have “local” reference co-ordinate system. You should check it to “view”. You can find this option beneath the menus and beside “move”, “scale” and “rotate” shortcut. I hope it will help you. If not then do let me know.

      • Cg

        thanks chandan for your quick reply and yeah i was playing with reference co-ordinate system after chnging it to “view” my cart wheels is now spin’n in the right direction.:D great little hlpfull tut.

  • Rickles13

    Great tip, I learned something new today…thanks again

  • Isaac Nordlund

    Great tip! I was thinking to connect the wheel rotation to the ground you could use the radius (more precisely the circumference) of the wheel. So I used generic units and set up a test, I created a cylinder with a radius of 10 which gives a circumference (3.14*2)*radius or 62.8. I then used the parameter collector to find out what the Z rotation was when I moved my controller cube along the X-axis, at 62.8 my Z rotation was 3598.175. This was close enough to 3600 to account for rounding off pi and to arrive at an easy number for the formula for rotation. I wanted 1 rotation (360 degrees) per X movement equal to the circumference, so I ended up with -X_Position/10 also the –X_Position was because the wheel was moving backwards for me so I inverted the X to get the desired result but that didn’t seem to be a problem in the tutorial. Anyways thanks for the tip it was definitely fun learning about this stuff!

  • Hooper

    Kumar is a GREAT teacher!!!

  • Bhanu

    Great Idea sir ..!! thanx for sharing ….

  • http://www.alkabeergrafix.com/index.html Asim

    Thanks a lot for this sharing Good Luck !

  • Adil

    OH MY GOD! YOU ARE A LEGEND. I have been looking for something like this for almost 6 months. Autodesk has a tutorial on wire parameters and wheels but they just tell you what to do but you explain things clearly. Thanks a lot.

    P.S also from India :)

    • http://www.vfxrider.com Chandan Kumar

      Hi Adil, thanks for your encouraging and nice comment!
      :)

  • adnan

    I need help, its a great tutorial and it works, but i did fail some place.

    Instead of wiring it directly i added 3 gizmoes, 1 where it was linked to the handed and each wheel.
    I did the wire stuff and it worked.
    I added 2 more gizmoes and added another 2 more wires 1 each, Reason ? because i want to rotate the wagon and the wheels should rotate too the right directions. Works fine.

    Where i failed, is that when i rotate the wagon 180 degrees and then use the move, the wheels rotates backwards instead of forward.

    Complicated explanation ?

    With other words, if you rotate the full wagon AFTER its been wired up 180 degrees and move it to test the wheels, you will see that the wheels are going backwards.

    How do i solv that ?

    With other wor

    Its okay to mail me if you got the solution.

  • ARYAN

    Well said bro….. I’ve been looking fwd to dis tutorial like ‘adil’ did…. YOU R THE MAN!!!!!! Good job & THANKS ALOT…:)

  • sreeju

    thanks a lot brother…….

  • faliq

    hey man thanks for the tutorial but do u know how can i wire parameter multiple objects? i cant seem to rotate my wheels that has multiple object on it

  • Stresstank

    Very usefull!

    I’d
    been looking for a quicker, easier way to control wheels turning on our
    cars. The method we’d been using up till now involved complex
    expression constraint’s which required us to animate cars traveling on
    preset paths.

    This method, once set up, will speed things.

    Thanks Chandan