Rigacar v7.1 (fix for Blender 3.1)

Download: rigacar.v7.1.zip

This release is a fix release for Blender 3.1.
This version is backward compatible with Blender 2.83, 2.9x and 3.0

Changelog:

• issue #63 fixing baking steering and wheels rotation

Known issues:

• Reference objects (body, wheels, brake) should not be parented when the deformation rig is added.

Enjoy

v7.0 for Blender 3.0 (but also 2.83 and 2.9x)

Download: rigacar.v7.0.zip

This release is an upgrade for Blender 3.0.
This version is backward compatible with Blender 2.83 and 2.9x
Sorry, no new feature.

Changelog:

• fixing creation of custom properties to be forward compatible with Blender 3.x

Known issues:

• Reference objects (body, wheels, brake) should not be parented when the deformation rig is added.

Enjoy

Rigacar v6.0 for Blender 2.83

Download: rigacar.v6.0.zip

New release for Blender 2.83. This release does not provide any new features: it's all about bug fixes and improving existing features.

Rigacar v6.0 is 100% backward compatible with previous releases of this addon. If you have already generated armatures with a previous version, you can upgrade to version 6.0.

Changelog:

• steering bake animation algorithm is completely revamped and is much much more efficient.
• Naming convention improvement: name matching is case insensitive and you can use dot, space, underscore or dash as separators. For instance, all these names are correct: car.Wheel.Ft.L, car_wheel ft l, car wheel-FT-L, CAR_WHEEL_FT_L
• The origin point of the generated rig is moved automatically. Especially useful if you want to animate your model using a follow path constraint. No need to tweak the default position of the armature to match the front or back axle. This is optional (can be unchecked in the operator attributes panel at generation time).
• Fixing issues coming from multi-editing
• Fix error when using only empty objects to define the model
• keyframe tolerance is set by default to 0.01

Known issues:

• Reference objects (body, wheels, brake) should not be parented when the deformation rig is added.

Enjoy

Rigacar v5.0 for Blender 2.80

Rigacar v5.0 is only for Blender 2.80.
Download: rigacar.v5.0.zip

For Blender 2.7x, you have to use Rigacar v4.0.

Changelog

• Adding specific error message when adding a new armature to a hidden collection
• Deactivating setting the origin for the armature. Unfortunately there is a bug in Blender 2.80 when you want to set the origin of an armature. I opened a bug (https://developer.blender.org/T67507) about this topic. Bug is fixed but the fix is not shipped with Blender 2.80. Wait for future Blender release to enable this feature again.
• Using final action baking operator from Blender 2.80

Known issues:

• Reference objects (body, wheels, brake) should not be parented when the
  deformation rig is added.

Rigacar v4.1 only for Blender 2.80

Blender 2.7x: download rigacar-4.0.zip
Blender 2.80 beta: download rigacar-b2.80v4.1.zip

Rigacar v4.1 is only for Blender 2.80. Please update Blender 2.80 to the latest build.
For Blender 2.7x, you have to use 4.0.

Please remember Blender 2.80 is still in beta. Rigacar needs Blender's animation baker to generate animation. This feature is constantly broken and fixed by developers. So you could get unexpected errors when generating animation for wheels and steering depending on which Blender 2.80 build you are using.

Changelog

• FIX: Python API modification. Fix broken animation baking
• Renaming classes for operators and panels according to Blender naming convention.

Known issues:

• Reference objects (body, wheels, brake) should not be parented when the
  deformation rig is added.

Known issues for Blender 2.80:

• Adding or generating a rig in a hidden collection will fail or may even crash Blender.

Rigacar v4.0 now on Blender 2.7x and Blender 2.80 beta

Blender 2.7x: download rigacar-4.0.zip
Blender 2.80 beta: download rigacar-b2.80v4.0.zip

Rigacar v4 is fully backward compatible with Rigacar v3. Nevertheless, if you can,
I strongly recommend you to remove previous generated rigs and recreate them because
I fixed several issues for the newly generated rigs.

Changes from videotutorials

If you have already watched or if you have planned to watch my series of videotutorials
about Rigacar, please be aware these videos were made for Rigacar v3. Below is
a list of topics explained in the videos which are no more relevant:

• Part 1: I explained you need to adjust the length of the body bone when you
  add the armature to indicate the length of your model. This is no longer necessary.
  Rigacar computes bounding boxes of each reference object and their children
  to discover the dimension of your model
• Part 2: Adjusting the widget could still be necessary but the default locations
  are now much more accurate
• Part 3: No need to tweak the delta position of the rig to use the follow path
  constraint. Now, when you generate the animation rig, the origin point of the
  rig is moved to the correct position. Just make sure to reset the position
  of the rig at the center of the scene with ALT+G
• Part 4: brakes have their own animation widgets now.

Changelog

• new operator to clean generated animation keyframes for wheels and steering
• animation widgets are located based on bounding boxes of reference objects
  for wheels, body and brakes and their children.
  Manual adjustment for animation widgets is almost unecessary.
• removing "body length delta" when adding deformation rig. No need to indicate
  the length of the body as Rigacar now computes the bounding boxes for each
  reference objet.
• origin point of the generated armature is modified to be placed at the same
  location as the root widget.
• BUGFIX: steering widget could move by itself for extreme rotation of the root
  widget
• ENHANCEMENT: Each wheel has its own wheel widget for rotation
• ENHANCEMENT: Brake wheel is now a separate animation widget
• New operator "Add missing brake wheel bones" to add additional brake wheel
  widget if necessary
• ENHANCEMENT: moving up ground_sensor and put distance to shrinkwrap constraint
  to improve ground detection around wheels and axles
• Animation baking parameters: keyframe tolerance is 0.05 by default and rotation
  factor is 1.5
• Support for Blender 2.80 beta

Known issues:

• Reference objects (body, wheels, brake) should not be parented when the
  deformation rig is added.

Known issues for Blender 2.80:

• Adding or generating a rig in a hidden collection will fail.

Rigacar is backported to Blender 2.76

This minor release does not contain any new feature.
It is a backport for Blender 2.76.
This version is compatible with Blender 2.76, 2.77, 2.78 and 2.79.

Known limitation for Blender 2.76 and 2.77: you cannot bake wheels animation in tweak mode in the NLA editor. This is not a limitation of Rigacar but of the baking operator in Blender 2.76 and 2.77.

Rigacar v3.0 is here!

Major updates:

• default shrinkwrap modifier for ground sensors has type set to 'nearest surface point'
• limiting ground sensors z axis also for manual transform
• changing object center for suspension widget
• adding ground sensors for front axle and rear axle
• all mechanical bones for back wheels are affected by the drift bone
• bake steering wheel animation: smoothing animation curve
• layer 14 of the armature now displays shape bones (easier to tweak the position of the widgets)

Rigacar v2.0 is out

Rigacar v2.0 is available.

Caution : v2.0 is not back compatible. If you have already generated armatures with v1.0, you should delete them, install this new version and generate the armatures again.

Major updates:

• New widget for draft bone
• Improved rig generation: support for 0, 2, 4, 6... front/back wheels (for trucks and trailers)
• Improved rig generation: support for wheel breakers (part of the wheel which does not rotate)
• Rearrange armature layers (layer 15 contains main mechanical bones to easily extend the rig)
• Bake for steering bone is now usable (many bug fixes)... but not quite perfect
• Improvement for baking wheels rotation (each wheel is baked independently for more accuracy)
• Widget for wheels can be scaled to break (this info is used by the baking process)
• Shortcut properties to assign ground object

rigacar: a blender addon to rig... a car

v1.0

release 1.0