Cineversity

Hey,

Currently my project requires me to rig a dynamic hoverboard, and I’m a bit stuck. An example of the rideable device can be seen in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyRnnN_sOag - if you haven’t seen these rolling around your city yet.

I began my attempt at rigging this by breaking the model up into left and right hulls and wheel groups. From there I figured I’d start by trying out the traditional method of using connectors and motors to drive the wheels like a typical dynamic car. I then set up a hinge connector to attache the left and right hulls at the center.  At this point I have the wheels driving but can’t get the hull to stay upright, or the path to drive straight.

Additionally, when I set the left and right motor torques in opposite directions in an attempt to make it spin in a circle, the hoverboard stops complete of a full turn and reverses direction for some reason.

My goal is to drive the motor speed based on the angle of the riding characters feet relative to the floor on either side. What would you recommend is the best way to accomplish this without the hull being dynamic, but have the hoverboard still follow the wheels?

Is it possible to do this with dynamics, or would I be better off creating some type of complicated xpresso script?

I was also hoping to build an additional seated Chassey rig to attach to the hoverboard once I have the first part of the rig sorted out, which I imagine will help with balancing the hull upright.

Hi spacemanvisuals,

Here is a small setup, not a Hoverboard. But it has some parts that might point in the right direction.
Example
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zir5xal2agp7n1g/CV3_S26_drs_22_DYtf_01.c4d.zip?dl=0
Yes, the board would use two independent wheels (rotation-wise)

It also shows the limitation of Dynamics compared to the “mechanics” that allow the natural thing to work, which is a complex evaluation of many parameters. I do not see that this can be replicated in Dynamics fully.

As I have written from time to time, I see Cinema 4D as a target DCC app, i.e., the rendered image/footage is the key. How to get there is often a decision that can make or break a project.

What you have is pretty much to wheels. Any movement of these wheels creates a distance, which can be defined with Position and Previous Position. It might be even easier to use the Tracer for that and measure the Length of the Spline that one can harvest (c key).

Both wheels look at each other, so there is a connection that can’t be broken. With each wheel’s rotation and movement, you already get a lot of information. It is exploration if that can be used to tilt the left or right board to indicate which direction was chosen. Not that the tilt is the initial information here.

The core idea of animation is to produce something believable, which doesn’t require to have the action-reaction order established. We can flip that.

All the best