maya car rig generator mel script

***Please note: this script doesn't work in older versions then maya 2012****

The 'easyCarDriver' mel script generates a car rig in a few steps which has features such as dynamic suspension, wheel ground contact and wheel rotation. You just have to define the spline and the ground plane and the car will follow it.

After the rig has been generated, you have additional control over all the wheels and the car chassis.

You can also adjust the suspension attributes to create a more soft or more harder suspension.

A detailed Instruction is included.

Short Instruction:
1. Works only for 4 Wheeled Vehicles ----> Cars!
2. Works only in Maya 2012 and up.
3. Works best with real world scale (typical car length is between 3.7 - 5.2 meters)
4. The car's front must point in positive Z-Direction
5. The car starting point must be at world center (0,0,0) and should have no transformations.
6. Your car hierarchy should look as followed: CarChassis_group/ CarChassisSub_group/ CarChassis_geo also the wheels: WheelLeft_group/ WheelLeftSub_group/ WheelLeft_geo. Two groups is a minimum. More groups are also possible and recommended.
7. Each wheels pivot should be exactly in the center, the same applies to sub-hierarchy/groups
8. The ground Plane should have a dense Mesh so that the wheel follows smoothly
9. Adjust the wheels and chassis position, so that they align perfectly with the ground, the ground plane should be 100% even for the first meters
10. Its a good idea to begin your animation a few frames later for example at frame 50.
11. Before rendering animation, you should always create a particle cache! Go to the hidden nodes group, select the particle and go to dynamics > solver > create particle disk cache. This creates a cache for the suspension dynamics and is important for to get repeatable results during rendering process.