Setting up the rigging for the car.

Setting up the rigging for the car allows you to have easier control over the car when making the animation, by linking the parts in a way that they work together. This is the tutorial I followed to achieve the rig. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnzsrJGezsc&feature=related

The image below shows all the rigged features that controll the steering, drifting, wheel rotation, and suspension.

The first step was to attach all of the parts of the car to the main body and the wheels tires to the alloys using the attach function. Then on a new layer I created point helpers that would control the front steering and wheel rotation.The helpers were aligned to the central pivot of the wheel and then the select and link tool was used to link the helper to the wheel.

In the hierarchy for the smaller box helper the scale was locked and the rotate was locked on the X and Y axis so that the steering could only move left and right. The same process was carried out on the larger pivot helper but with the Y axis being the only free pivot to rotate. This was repeated for all 4 wheels.

(it is important to name each helper with regar to which wheel it is for)

To operate the steering more easily a circle spline was created and aligned to the centre axis of the front wheels. Using select and link the helpers were attached to the circle spline this meant that when the circle spline was rotated the wheels followed. Using this technique I made the drift control, steering and suspension.

Every controller was linked to the main body controller (so that moving the main body moved the whole car and its controllers).

To make the suspension work a controller was made above the car out of three circle splines. This was then linked to the body and its wire parameter were adjusted. allowing for the rotation over the desired axis. To adjust the amount that the car rotates. *.08 was added to the expression.

Using the same method the wheel rotate pivot helper was linked to the main car control. Its rotation was adjusted under the wire parameters to "DegToRad" this turns the wheel according to its size and radius.