Manual
Manual
Manual
User Manual:
Open the PDF directly: View PDF 
.
Page Count: 40
| Download | |
| Open PDF In Browser | View PDF |
Manual
Before You Start
Assuming you just want to open the demo scene and try the asset out
without reading through the novel below, here are the steps needed (reading
through the manual is still highly recommended):
•
•
•
•
•
Import the package from the Asset Store
Open demo scene (Island). You will get a few errors related to missing
things and inputs.
Import “Characters” and “Environment” from Standard Assets. Those
cannot be included per Asset Store policy.
Close Unity and copy the project settings files from ProjectSettings.zip
over to your ProjectSettings directory
(([your_project_name]/ProjectSettings). This will overwrite your existing
settings.
Start Unity again and you are good to go.
These steps are not needed if you are not going to use the demo scene. In
that case you will only need to set up input bindings. This is explained in
chapter Input.
Table of Contents
Setting Up a Vehicle...................................................................................................................................6
Adding Wheels......................................................................................................................................6
Adding Vehicle Controller.....................................................................................................................9
Input.........................................................................................................................................................10
Steering Wheels..............................................................................................................................11
Setting up a Tracked Vehicle....................................................................................................................12
Vehicle Controller Script..........................................................................................................................15
Script Structure....................................................................................................................................16
Sound...................................................................................................................................................17
Effects..................................................................................................................................................19
Skidmarks.......................................................................................................................................19
Lights..............................................................................................................................................19
Exhausts..........................................................................................................................................21
Steering................................................................................................................................................22
Engine..................................................................................................................................................23
Forced Induction.............................................................................................................................24
Transmission........................................................................................................................................25
Axles....................................................................................................................................................26
Brakes..................................................................................................................................................28
Driving Aids........................................................................................................................................28
Damage................................................................................................................................................29
Fuel......................................................................................................................................................30
Rigging................................................................................................................................................30
Flip Over..............................................................................................................................................30
Trailer..................................................................................................................................................31
Ground Type Detection.......................................................................................................................32
Vehicle Changer Script.............................................................................................................................33
Character Vehicle Changer.............................................................................................................33
Cameras....................................................................................................................................................34
Camera Changer Script.......................................................................................................................34
Other Scripts............................................................................................................................................35
Vehicle.................................................................................................................................................35
Center Of Mass...............................................................................................................................35
Downforce......................................................................................................................................35
GUI......................................................................................................................................................36
Dash GUI Controller.......................................................................................................................36
Analog Gauge.................................................................................................................................36
Digital Gauge..................................................................................................................................37
Dash Light......................................................................................................................................37
Compatibility With Other Assets.............................................................................................................38
CTS (Complete Terrain Shader)..........................................................................................................38
IK Driver Vehicle Controller...............................................................................................................38
FAQ..........................................................................................................................................................39
Thank you for buying NWH Vehicle Physics!
This manual will first explain how to set up your own vehicle model and then go into
more detail about each component and how it works.
What it will not do is explain each member of each class – for that check the class
reference or just open the script you are interested in. All of the public members
have both XML and Tooltip explanations.
First things first: Model rotation and pivot points
Before starting it has to be mentioned that this manual assumes that the model is
in proper Unity rotation – z-forward, x-right and y-up. Many of the models that were
not made for Unity have this rotation wrong and it will have to be fixed before
setting up a vehicle. This is because all the scripts assume that z is forward and y is
up and therefore all the physics calculations are done that way. Here is a link to
official guide on fixing the rotation of an imported model:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/HOWTO-FixZAxisIsUp.html
Same goes for pivot point. It does not matter where pivot of the vehicle itself is but
make sure that wheels have pivot in the same place their center is. You can check
that by trying to rotate the wheel around it’s X axis in the editor. This is the way that
the script will rotate it. If it rotates properly then it is all good. If it starts moving
around this means that the pivot is not in the center. Another way to check is by
simply going to the top left corner and pressing Center/Pivot button:
If the handle does not move when clicking on that button this, again, means that
pivot is where the center is. If the opposite happens you will have to use the same
method for fixing the rotation mentioned in the link above to fix the pivot on all of
the wheels. Pivoting point of other objects does not matter (except for steering
wheel, more about that later).
All the units in the scripts or in this manual are SI units (meters, newtons, etc.).
Recommended Fixed Timestep: 0.02 – mobile and arcade games, 0.015 – general
desktop games, 0.01 – simulation desktop games. Avoid using high center of mass
and short springs with fixed timestep of 0.02.
If you have just imported the asset and are getting standard asset errors
or input not set errors, check the README or the second page of this
manual first.
Setting Up a Vehicle
For this section an included car model will be used. Model can be found inside
“Models/Low Poly Car” folder.
Adding Wheels
NWH Vehicle Physics (NVP) uses included Wheel Controller 3D (WC3D) for wheel
physics, manual for which you can check out if you want a more in-depth
explanation of all the segments of the wheel physics and how to adjust them.
This is an initial hierarchy of the Car model in question (ignore the camera):
To set up a vehicle with WC3D:
1. Add rigidbody to your parent object (Car in this case) and set it’s mass to
some realistic value – e.g. 1300.
2. Add colliders to your children. At least one collider of any type needs to be
present for rigidbody to work properly. e.g. add a mesh collider to the Body
object.
3. Now that the rigidbody is all set up wheel controller objects need to be
created. These will hold the scripts and will not rotate with wheels. Do not add
wheel controller script to the objects you want to rotate (Wheel_BL,
Wheel_BR, etc.). Easiest way to create wheel controller objects is by
duplicating the wheels (right click → duplicate or Ctrl + D) and then removing
mesh filter and mesh renderer objects from the duplicates. Then, move the
duplicated objects up to a point where you want the top of your spring travel
to be. Finally, add Wheel Controller component to all duplicated objects.
Result should look like the following picture where green lines show spring
travel.
4. Check that the side the wheel is on has been detected correctly. Center wheel
will not be auto-detected. If the side is wrong, chances are that you have
wrong model rotation (check the beginning of this manual).
5. Scroll to the bottom of the Wheel Controller inspector and you will see an
empty Wheel Visual field. Drag corresponding wheel visual to this field. If your
wheel consists of multiple parts (tire, rim, disk, etc.) group them up under
single object making sure that pivot stays where it should be. Result:
6. Adjust wheel controller radius and width in the WC3D inspector until the
green lines fit the wheel.
7. Set up ignore layer. This is one of the most important steps and if skipped
wheels will detect vehicle itself as ground. Create a new layer, name it
however you want and assign it to all of the colliders on the vehicle. In this
case only the Body object has a collider and so it’s layer was set to the newly
created layer (in this case WheelControllerIgnore). You can change which
layer you want to ignore at the bottom of the WC3D inspector:
8. Press Play. Your vehicle’s suspension will now function if everything was done
right. You might get slight vibration if you center of mass is high but that will
be solved later.
Adding Vehicle Controller
Vehicle Controller has an automated default setup. If you ever want to return the
state of vehicle controller to the way it was when first added you can use Reset
option by clicking the cog to the right of the component name. Custom reset code
will set up all the default values and clips for you.
To set up a vehicle controller:
1. Go to the parent object (Car in this case) and click on Add Component →
Vehicle Controller. This will set up all the defaults for you. You can check Axles
→ Left/Right Wheel in the Vehicle Controller inspector to see if the axles have
been assigned correctly.
2. Drag “_VehicleManager” prefab from “Prefabs/Vehicles/” folder to the scene.
This prefabs contains all the vehicle changing and input handling scripts
needed.
3. Remove “Character Vehicle Changer” component from the _VehicleManager
object since we do not need it at this point.
4. Under VehicleChanger component set size of Vehicles to 1 and drag you
vehicle to the Element 0 field.
5. Press play. You can now drive your vehicle. Default values might not be
optimal for your type of vehicle so check out the rest of this manual for more
detailed explanation.
Input
Vehicles themselves do not do any input processing but rather rely on external
scripts to provide those value. Instead, vehicle controller contains only input states
that can be accessed like so:
vehicleController.input.[nameOfInput] = someValue;
Currently available inputs are: Horizontal, Vertical, ShiftUp, ShiftDown, Clutch,
Handbrake, leftBlinker, rightBlinker, lowBeamLights, fullBeamLights, hazardLights,
trailerAttachDetach and horn.
With the asset there are two input scripts provided: Desktop Input Manager and
Mobile Input Manager. Both scripts have only one function: to set the above listed
values. This is so that custom input scripts can be easily made if needed (e.g.
compatibility with 3rd party input assets).
So, what both of those managers do is in essence this:
if (Input.GetButtonDown("ShiftUp"))
vehicleController.input.ShiftUp = true;
Both provided input managers have two fields: Vehicle Changer and Vehicle
Controller. If the field Vehicle Changer is set to a valid vehicle changer component
all the input from the input manager will be rerouted to
vehicleChanger.ActiveVehicleController. If the field Vehicle Changer is left empty
input will be routed to either the set Vehicle Controller or to the Vehicle Controller
component if such is attached to the same GameObject as the input manager.
By default Desktop Input Manager uses Edit > ProjectSettings > Input (Input
Manager) button names instead of hard-coded key codes, so following the README
is suggested or else demo scene will throw errors if required buttons are not set up.
NVP uses the following axes:
•
Horizontal
•
Vertical
•
EngineStartStop
•
LeftBlinker
•
RightBlinker
•
Lights
•
FullBeamLights
•
HazardLights
•
Handbrake
•
ChangeCamera
•
TrailerAttachDetach
•
ShiftUp
•
ShiftDown
•
[Optional, for use with e.g. H-shifter] FirstGear, SecondGear, ThirdGear,
FourthGear, FifthGear, SixthGear, SeventhGear, EightGear, NinthGear, Neutral,
Reverse
•
[Manual clutch only] Clutch
•
Horn
•
[Split vertical input only] Throttle, Brake
Steering Wheels
Asset will work out of the box with most steering wheels and has been tested with
Logitech wheels. In some cases gas and brake pedals will report as separate axes. To
fix this go to “Set up USB game controllers” → Select your wheel → Properties →
Settings → tick ‘Combined’ option.
Since version 1.7 separate vertical axes option is available and can be used by
selecting “Composite” as Vertical Input Type inside Desktop Input Manager
inspector. This requires “Accelerator” and “Brake” axes to be set up inside Unity input
manager.
Setting up a Tracked Vehicle
Setting up a tracked vehicle is similar to setting up a normal vehicle from previous
chapter.
Requirements
•
Number of wheels on left and right sides has to be the same.
•
Track will only be able to move if model supports it. Skinned mesh renderer
with bones is required – one bone for each wheel.
Features That are not Supported
•
Friction curves. Since the original focus of the asset is vehicles with tires
friction curves are set up for such vehicles. Friction calculation and curves for
rubber tires are not suitable for steel tracks so WC3D does separate
calculation for tracked vehicle that is not dependent on the surface. Slip and
friction coefficients still work so that can be used if different behavior is
required.
•
Differential Types (both center and axle). Differential types have no effect on
tracked vehicles since they use their own torque splitting calculations.
•
Wheel / track slip. Tracked vehicles will never spin the wheels or tracks.
•
Camber
Steps Needed to Set up a Tracked Vehicle
•
Set up the vehicle just like you would a car (previous chapter). After setting up
press Play. Vehicle should be driveable as a normal vehicle.
•
Either copy the values from the tank in the demo or change the following
values manually (values are examplatory):
◦ Rigidbody mass – 30,000 (tanks are heavy)
◦ Engine Power – 600 (this value needs to be fairly high)
◦ Wheel Controller:
▪ Spring force: 90000 (needs to be adequate to support the heavy
rigidbody, ignore the message about it being too low as the message is
for 4-wheeled vehicles)
▪ Damper bump/rebound: 5000
▪ Slip and force coefficients can be left as they are (1). If the vehicle turns
too slowly you can adjust side force coefficient to a lower value and by
doing that reduce the drag of tracks when turning or alternatively the
engine power can be increased.
•
Set up axles. Everything under Geometry settings should be set to 0,
including steer coefficient. Power coefficient, differential strength and
differential type can be set to any value as they are not taken into account.
Other axle values work normally.
•
Go under Tracks foldout and tick Tracked Vehicle option. Other settings
under this foldout are visual only.
•
Go under Steering and check that the Tracked Steer Intensity is set to 1. This is
a starting point and you can change it later. Higher value will result in tighter
turning radius but will also slow down the vehicle more.
Animating the Tracks
It is required that the track be a single mesh with a material that uses the standard
shader and has bones for each wheel which move the track as they are dragged
around. If you model does not have such tracks it will either need to be edited in
your 3D modeling software of choice or you could possibly use the tracks provided
with the demo vehicle.
Track rotation animation is done through offsetting the texture through the offset
option on the standard shader. To assign tracks use Left and Right Track Renderer
fields. To match the speed of rotation of the track texture to the rotation of the
wheels change the Texture Offset Speed Coefficient under Tracks foldout.
Most tanks have two additional ‘wheels’ placed in the front and rear that under
normal circumstances do not touch the ground but still spin with tracks. Those
wheels do not have suspension and should not use Wheel Controller. In the
inspector those are called Left Sprockets and Right Sprockets. Any game object
attached to this list will rotate at the same speed as the wheels.
Best way to move the bones in the tracks is to assign them to Nonrotating Objects
field of respective WheelController component. This way the bone will stay in a fixed
position relative to the wheel and move the track up and down along with the
wheel.
Wheel Enlargement
Since v.1.6 Tracks > Wheel Enlargement has been added. This option, if set to value
larger than 1, will virtually increase the wheel size to make the contact surface of the
vehicle flatter and more track-like. This value is a coefficient with which the wheel
radius value will be multiplier (up to 2 → double the radius). To use wheel
enlargement just set up the tank as per the instructions above and set the
enlargement to the value you want. Everything else will be taken care of at runtime
(resizing the wheels, changing transmission ratio due to lager wheels, etc.). Just take
into account that the tops of the wheel gizmos (image below) should not stick
outside of the body colliders or else they might come into contact with some
surface when vehicle is upside-down or on it’s side which will result in jumping.
Vehicle Controller Script
VehicleController script is the main part of Vehicle Physics package. As the name
suggest it controls the vehicle and all of it’s aspects – drivetrain, sounds, effects, etc.
When making VehicleController script decision was made to keep the default
inspector. This enables you to use any field you see in the inspector from inside
some other script. E.g. if you want to set max engine power you can do it from the
inspector:
Or using code:
vehicleController.engine.maxPower;
This holds true for all the fields in the VehicleController.cs script. Check autogenerated documentation for class reference.
Each field has a Tooltip explanation. Because of this individual fields will not be
explained in detail in this manual. If you want to know what a field does just hover
the pointer over its name.a
Script Structure
Check out the diagram below to help you with understanding how the
VehicleController script is structured in general:
Engine Idle Sound
Component
Sound
Transmission Whine
Sound Component
Skid Sound
Component
…
Effects
Skidmarks
Exhausts
…
Vehicle Controller
Steering
Engine
Forced Induction
Transmission
Axles
…
Wheels
Sound
Sound section contains all of the fields related to vehicle’s sound effects. Each field
affects only the vehicle to which the script is attached. If you want to modify audio
output for all the vehicles you can use VehicleAudioMixer
(“Resources/VehicleAudioMixer.mixer”) to which all out the sound output from each
vehicle is routed.
Audio Sources are not added manually but are instead generated by the script
when scene is started.
Each sound component inherits from SoundComponent class and thus has
common fields: volume, pitch and clips. Some sound components also have
additional fields such as volume or pitch range. General explanation for those fields
is:
•
Volume – volume. In cases where there is also a volume range option volume
represents base volume to which the range will be added. Changing this
value at run time through the VehicleController inspector will not necessarily
change the volume of the AudioSource as most sound components set their
volume and pitch only when AudioSource is created (at Start). You can still
adjust the volume at the runtime through scripting or by adjusting the
AudioSource directly – just note that the value will not be kept when exiting
play mode.
•
Pitch – same as volume, just for pitch.
•
Volume Range – range which can be added to the (base) volume based on
the state of the part of the vehicle sound component represents.
•
Pitch Range – same as volume range, just for pitch.
•
Clips – A list of Audio Clips. Depending on sound component either the first
clip will be used (e.g. engine idle component) or one of the clips will be
chosen at random (e.g. gear change or crash components). In general, sounds
that are repeated or triggered accept any number of clips of which one will be
chosen at random when the sound is triggered – hover the mouse over the
component name (e.g. “Air Brake Component”) to see the tooltip explanation
and if multiple clips can be used. If you use multiple clips on a component
that supports only one, only the first one will be used. If you assign no clips
(list size is 0) sound component will be turned off.
Skid sound effects are directly affected by the Forward and Side Skid threshold at
the bottom of the inspector under the dropdown “General”.
Sound components that are wheel-specific will generate and Audio Source for each
wheel individually (skid, surface noise, etc.).
If you want to add your own sound effect check out the Sound and
SoundComponent classes.
Effects
There are three visual effects supported in v1.0, but more will be added with new
updates.
Skidmarks
Skidmarks are generated when wheel skids / slips over the hard surface. To define
when the wheel is slipping you can adjust the Forward and Side Slip Threshold at
the bottom of the VehicleController inspector under “General” dropown.
The most important field here that needs explanation beyond the tooltip is
“Persistant Skidmarks” option. Default behavior for skidmarks is to delete the oldest
skidmark (under skidmark here I am talking about a set of two triangles that
together create a rectangle which is in this context called a skidmark). This way an
effect similar to the old snake game will be achieved with the length of the whole
skidmark trail always about the same length. Length of this “trail” can be adjusted
by changing the Max Marks Per Section field – this is the maximum number of
skidmarks that will be kept IF the persistent option is disabled. If the persistent
option is enabled each time number of skidmarks reaches Max Marks Per Section
number a new skidmark object will be generated and the old section of the skid
trail will be left intact. This way old skidmarks are never deleted. With time this will
cause the number of triangles in the viewport to increase and so there is also a
Persistent Skidmark Distance option. When skidmark’s distance from the vehicle
that created it goes beyond this value skidmark will delete itself.
Lights
All lights inherit from the same class and therefore have the same fields. The only
options available here are:
•
Light Sources – can be any Unity light source, type does not matter. Main use
it to create spotlights for low and high beam lights. If a model is low poly
model with no separate light meshes point lights can also be used to create
an imitation of e.g. stop light. In the following picture a point light is used on a
single-mesh vehicle to create an imitation of a blinker:
If you want to add some realism to your low or high beam spot lights you can
add the included “Headlight Cookie” to them.
•
Light Mesh Renderers – Accepts any mesh renderer that uses standard
shader. When light is turned on Emission property of the shader will be
turned on. To set up a mesh with emission tick the emission option in the
shader options and adjust the color and intensity of the emission to your
liking. When done deactivate the emission property.
Light Mesh Renderers can be used on vehicles that have separate meshes for
lights. It can also be used as an overlay over the light of a primitive shape (bus
and semi trailer in the demo scene) when the mesh is not separate, such as in
the following example where a transparent quad with emission set up is
placed over an actual brake light which is part of a single vehicle mesh:
Exhausts
Exhausts are just regular particle emitters. Exhaust prefab can be found in the
“Effects/Particles/Prefabs” directory. You can have as many exhausts as you want on
a single vehicle. To add and exhaust drag the prefab into the scene as a child to your
vehicle and position it as you want. Then, add the object to the particle systems list.
You do not have to use the prefab and you can modify the particle system in any
way you want.
Some parts of the particle systems are adjusted through the script – things like
emission rate at idle, under load and color of the particles. All of the exhaust-related
settings can be adjusted under Effects→Exhausts dropdown in the vehicle controller
inspector. Check Tooltips for more details on each field.
Steering
Steering is also adjusted on per-vehicle basis. This is because not all types of vehicles
have same steering parameters and thus global steering adjustment would not
make sense.
NVP features changeable steering angles for better vehicle stability at higher speed.
Steering angle value is interpolated between low speed and high speed angle,
where interpolation starts at 0 and ends at crossover speed. This means that at 0
m/s steering angle will be exactly low speed angle, at crossover speed and above
exactly high speed angle, at half the crossover speed maximum steering angle will
be midpoint between low and high speed angle, etc.
Since v1.5 smoothing option has been replaced with Degrees Per Second Limit field.
Smoothing was introducing lag into the input which is always unwanted and was
not consistent. The new field states how many degrees per second the steer angle
will be able to change per second. So if the maximum steer angle is 30 degrees and
this setting is set to 90 degrees vehicle will need 1/3 of a second to achieve a full lock
starting from netural steering position. Useful for trucks, buses and other heavy
vehicles. Also works on tracked vehicles.
If you vehicle has a separate steering wheel object you can add it to the Steering
Wheel field. Steering wheel object will be rotated around it’s Y axis so make sure
that rotation and pivot point of the steering wheel are correct – check the first
section of this manual. Steering wheel turn ratio is a multiplier by which the
steering angle will be multiplied and the steering wheel object will be rotated by
the result. So if you want your steering wheel to rotate more, just increase this
number.
Tracked Steer Intensity is valid only for tracked vehicles and determines the
percentage of the braking force set in Brakes/Max Torque will be used to brake the
track on the side of the vehicle the vehicle is turning towards. Lower values will
make tracked vehicles rotate in a bigger circle.
Engine
Most of the fields in this part of the inspector are self explanatory. There are Min and
Max RPM fields which indicate idle RPM and redline RPM respectively. There is also
a Max Power field which indicates power at the top of the power curve in kW
(multiply by 1.4 to get horsepower).
Max Rpm Change field is the first one that is not obvious. It indicates maximum
RPM difference in one second, crudely imitating the weight of the flywheel an
engine has. For trucks and similar heavy duty vehicles I would suggest a value of
about 2000, for normal cars about 5000 and for race cars with light clutch 10,000+.
Power Curve is also an important field that severly alters the behavior of the vehicle.
Value on the curve should be between 0 and 1 on both axes. X axis represents RPM
percentage (0 is 0, 1 is max rpm) and Y represents power (1 is max power). There is
torque curve adjustment as the torque curve is derived from the power curve and
the engine’s RPM. Here are two typical power curves for two different engines,
simply for reference purposes (note that the power in the image is in hp while NVP
uses kW, divide hp by 1.4 to get kW):
Throttle Smoothing was introduced with v1.5 to avoid jerky starts on high power /
low gear ratio vehicles such as the truck in the demo scene. Setting tells vehicle how
many seconds it will need to reach full throttle.
Forced Induction
At the end of the Engine section there are forced induction settings. Forced
induction is entirely optional and can be used for imitating turbocharger,
supercharger or just intake or engine fan noise. For everything except for
turbocharger spool up time should be 0 as this way there will be no lag between
engine’s rpm and forced induction rpm which also affects sound effects. Max Power
Gain multiplier is amount of power (0.4 = 40%) that will be added to the Max Power
of the engine when forced induction is fully spooled up.
If you are using forced induction just for intake or engine fan noise set both spool
up time and max power gain multiplier to 0.
Transmission
NVP uses gear ratios – just like the real transmission does. If gears are not set up
properly the vehicle will not function.
To set gear ratios either Forward Gears or Reverse Gears list can be used for setting
forward and reverse gear ratios, respectively. Size of those lists can be unlimited so
vehicle can have multiple gears in both directions. First element in the list
represents first (forward or reverse) gear, second element is second gear, etc.
Gear Multipler field just multiplies current gear ratio from the Gears list to arrive at
the total gear ratio. Also called final gear ratio. So if current gear has gear ratio of 4
and final gear ratio is 2, total gear ratio will be 8.
Target Shift Up and Target Shift Down points are points at which transmission will
change gears if set to Automatic or Automatic Sequential. Transmission will shift at
exactly those RPMs if the Dynamic Shift Point option is disabled (+/- the
randomness if set by Shift Point Randomness). If enabled, script will adjust shift
points according to engine state with randomness also applied. This means that the
vehicle will shift later if under heavy acceleration or shift earlier if just rolling
downhill. Shift up RPM will never exceed max RPM and shift down RPM will never
go under min RPM.
Shift Duration determines how long shifting will take. While shifting engine will not
be connected to the wheels and the shifting sound will be played. To reduce
repetitiveness of the shifting two Randomness options have been added – shift
point and shift duration. This number represents a percentage of the
corresponding value which will be randomly added to the value. e.g. 0.1 = 10% so if
shift duration is 1s it will actually be anywhere from 0.9s to 1.1s.
Post Shift Ban is used just so vehicles do not shift too often / hunt for gears – which
can be irritating.
Since v1.1 NVP supports automatic and manual clutch operation. If set to automatic
clutch vehicle will hold RPMs of the engine at the given Target Clutch RPM until
RPMs received from the wheels catch up after which point RPMs of the engine will
continue to rise (or fall) normally. If you want to use manual clutch untick the
Automatic Clutch option and set the key / axis bindings in the input manager (Edit
> Project Settings > Input) for “Clutch”.
Axles
NVP supports any number of axles. You could have 1 or you could have 10. Axles are
stored in a list and so you can set the size of the list to set the number of axles
vehicle has. When initially setting up the vehicle or using the Reset function on the
script axles will be assigned automatically. If you are adding additional axles or
changing them after the script has been initialized you will have to assign left and
right wheel controllers manually. All axle objects are instances of the same class so
they all also have the same fields. Following geometry fields are available:
•
Ackermann Percent – set to <0 for Reverse or Anti Ackermann or >0 for
Ackermann steering. Field represents percent where 0.12 equals 12% of the
steer angle. Following image describes the effect:
•
Angle – toe angle in degrees.
•
Caster Angle – caster angle in degrees.
T
o
e
•
Camber At Top and Camber At Bottom – wheel camber angles at the top and
bottom of the spring travel. Value will be interpolated in linear fashion
between the two values. If you do not want the linear camber curve set both
values to 0 and use the inspector of WC3D where you can adjust the camber
curve. If you are using solid axle option camber settings will be overwritten
with whatever correct camber for the axle is at that frame.
•
Anti-roll bar force – prevents vehicle from rolling over. Before increasing the
anti roll bar force try to adjust center of mass to be a bit lower. Also, do not set
anti-roll bar force to a value much higher than the spring force of your vehicle.
The rest of the fields related to axles have detailed tooltip explanations and will not
be further explained here.
Brakes
Only a few strightfoward fields here:
•
Max Torque – maximum brake torque that can be applied to the wheel. Each
axle multiplies this number by handbrake coefficient or brake coefficient to
get brake torque for that specific axle.
•
Friction Torque – torque that is applied when vehicle is standing still so that
the vehicle does not roll on it’s own with no throttle applied.
•
Smoothing – time in seconds needed for brakes to reach full torque.
•
Air Brakes – does not have any effect on braking, only on sound effects.
Driving Aids
Following driving aids are available:
•
ABS – If set to 1 wheels will never slip while braking.
•
TCS – If set to 1 wheels will never slip while accelerating.
•
Stability – reduces vehicle’s tendency to spin by multiplying the current
friction curve by a linear curve originating in [0,0] and ending at [1, intensity]
which means that the friction force gets higher with slip – you can also think
of it as a dynamic lateral coefficient in the wheel controller settings. Can be
used to get more arcade-y feeling vehicles. Does not work at low speeds to
allow for doughnuts.
•
Drift Assist – calculates the angle between the vehicle’s forward direction and
it’s vector and applies corrective force based on the value of the angle,
effectively limiting the angle of the drift so that it does not turn into a spin.
Higher value will allow less drifting while a low value will allow spins.
Damage
If enabled damage module will deform the meshes on the vehicle (skinned meshes
are not supported due to performance reasons). Damage depends on deceleration
at the moment of impact meaning that the faster the vehicle goes and the faster it
stops on collision the more damage vehicle will take. Allowed damage number that
can be adjusted to adjust allowed damage before vehicle stops functioning is
actually a sum of all decelerations that were caused by crashing. 1000 damage is
therefore equal to a crash with a peak deceleration of 1000m/s 2. As the vehicle gets
damaged more and more engine power will reduce, some randomness will be
added to the engine sound and if the crash happened near the wheel (all the wheel
meshes need to be tagged as “Wheel”) wheel will start steering in a random
direction degrading the handling of the vehicle.
Mesh deformation that is the product of crashing is queue based. This means that
only limited number of meshes will be deformed per frame. You can adjust this
value by changing the Deformation Vertices Per Frame field. Higher value will
result in deformation being completed in less frames while lower value will stretch
the deformation over the higher number of frames – and will also cause less frame
dropping. It is best to adjust this value to as high as it is possible without causing
frame drop. This will depend on the device the final game will run on. Deformation
radius, strength and randomness all affect how the mesh will be deformed – how
much the vertex can be moved from the original position, how much it will be
moved for the given deceleration and how random the final result will be. Setting
randomness to 0 will cause final mesh to be smooth and setting randomness to a
high value will result in noisy looking mesh. Deceleration Threshold field is the final
field and it is simply a deceleration threshold above which crash will count as actual
crash.
Ignore Tags list has been added in v1.4 and all the objects containing a tag from this
list will not cause damage to the vehicle.
Fuel
Fuel consumption is calculated form the energy content of the fuel and the
efficiency of the engine. If used with keyboard fuel consumption might appear a bit
high and that is since engine is always under 100% throttle. If you want your vehicle
to consume less fuel simply increase the efficiency.
Capacity and Amount fields are in liters.
If you want to display fuel consumption to the player you can do so in l/100km, km/l
and US mpg. Check the Fuel.cs script for implementation details and the available
functions.
Rigging
Rigging enables you to use a rigged model together with NVP. Your model will
need to have either per-axle or per-wheel handles which will move corresponding
parts of you vehicle when dragged. You can try it out first by hand and then assign
the handle objects to the script. If solid axle is enabled and axle handle is assigned,
handle will be always moved so that it is midpoint between the wheels and looking
at both with its ends.
Flip Over
Flip over, when enabled, flips the vehicle over when the vehicle has been on it’s side
or roof for the Timeout amount of time. Except for timeout setting there is also and
Allowed Angle setting which is minimum angle between the surface normal and
vehicle transform’s up direction at which flip over will activate. Max Detection Speed
setting determines the maximum speed at which flip over will be able to activate
and Rotation Speed is speed in degrees per second with which the vehicle will be
rotated back to it’s proper rotation.
Note: Flip over function does not prevent vehicle from ending up upside-down, just
rotates the vehicle back if this happens.
Trailer
Trailer in NVP is just another vehicle. Only difference is the “Is Trailer” option. When
ticked some fields in the inspector will change.
Vehicle’s trailer settings:
Trailer’s trailer settings:
Since trailer uses the same script as all the vehicles it also has most of the
functionalities enables. Actually, only the things like transmission and engine are
disabled. It still produces effects, can be damaged, etc. and since all the input is
routed from the towing vehicle it also has functional lights, blinkers and can even
steer.
First field – Attachment Point – exists in both trailer’s and vehicle’s inspector.
Attachment Point can be any game object, and in case of trailer it will have to have
a Acceptable Trailer Tag. Let’s say you have two types of vehicles in the scene that
both can attach trailers of different types, e.g. a semi and a car. You would make two
new tags: “SemiTrailer” and “CarTrailer”. Attachment point game object on all car
trailers would have “CarTrailer” tag and attachment point on all semi trailers would
have “SemiTrailer” tag. Also, all your semis that can attach semi trailer need to have
“SemiTrailer” set as Acceptable Trailer Tag. Same for cars, just with “CarTrailer” tag.
When a vehicle with attachment point object gets near to the trailer that also has
an attachment point object, trailerInRange variable will be set to true. At this point
you can use AttachTrailer() function to attach the trailer. You can modify the
maximum distance between the two attachment points at which trailerInRange
will be set to true by changing the attach distance threshold value.
Ground Type Detection
Ground detection is a component that handles all of the surface-specific effects and
sounds, grund type detection and surface-specific friction settings.
Ground detection is an optional part of the vehicle that is not visible in the vehicle
controller’s inspector. Unlike other vehicle settings, ground detection component
adjusts settings for all the vehicles in the scene and only one ground detection
component should be present (or 0 if you do not want to use ground detection).
You can use a “_VehicleManager” prefab which already has ground component
attached to it, as well as other useful components, or you can add ground detection
component to any object in the scene. If there is no ground detection in the scene
surface effects and sounds will not work and you will get a warning. Vehicles will
find ground detection automatically and there is no need to assign it.
Ground detection component consists of two fields for dust and smoke prefabs.
Those can be found in the prefabs folder and are just game objects with particle
emmiters that will be added to the wheel objects on start. You can use any empty
object with particle emmiter you want and assign it here.
Below the two prefab fields is a ground entity list. This is a list of surfaces that
appear in the scene. Surfaces are detected by either using terrain splat map data or
by using object tags. Each surface (asphalt, gravel, sand, grass, etc.) can use any
number of splat map texture indices and/or object tags where splat map index is a
number of terrain texture in the terrain inspector:
You can use any number of ground entities, each with its own surface and skid
sounds, different dust color and friction presets which ground detection loads from
WC3D. Basic friction curve presets are already available and you can manually add
new friction curves inside the WheelController.Firction.cs file, check WC3D manual
for more info on that.
Vehicle Changer Script
Vehicle changer script does just what it says it does. Before using it you will need to
assign “ChangeVehicle” input if you are using desktop input manager script
provided with this package or assign a GUI button if you are using the mobile input
manager.
Vehicle changer will start with the first vehicle on the list and cycle through until it
reaches the last vehicle and then will go back to the first one. You can either
manually assign all the vehicles to the list or leave the list empty (size 0) and assign
the tag set under field Vehicle Tag to all of the vehicles.
Character Vehicle Changer
If you want you character to be able to enter and exit vehicles you can add
CharacterVehicleChanger component to the same object that contains the vehicle
changer script – it does not matter which object that is. For each field there is a
tooltip explanation, but some explanation about Enter Exit Points might be needed.
Any game object can be enter/exit point. You can use the vehicle itself as the point
by setting the Enter Exit Tag value to your vehicle tag, e.g. “Vehicle”. Enter Distance
will be measured from the character to the nearest enter exit point. This means that
if you use a vehicle’s center as the point you will be able to enter the vehicle from
any side as long as you are in the range. If you want your character to be able to
enter the vehicle only from e.g. driver’s side you can place an empty object near the
driver’s door and assign the value from the field Enter Exit Tag as the tag of that
object. This is the way it has been done in the demo scene:
The
character will only be able to enter when distance to the point in picture is lower
than Enter Distance. There can be multiple enter exit points. Characters will exit at
the point where they entered the vehicle.
Cameras
Three camera scripts are included in the package plus the camera changer. You can
use any camera you want with the vehicle controller – including the ones in the
standard assets. Camera changer will also work with any camera script.
Camera Changer Script
Camera changer script is quite simple. It uses a list of objects that each contain a
Camera component and cycles through them in order, starting with the value
Current Camera. Camera hierarchy should look something like this but it is not
imperative that cameras be children of the object containing Camera changer
component (“Cameras” object in this case):
If you want cameras to be detected automatically set the size of Vehicle Cameras
list 0 zero and set the value of the field Camera Tag to your cameras as a tag. Also, if
you are using automatic detection of cameras all the cameras that you want to be
detected need to be children of the object containing camera changer script or
they will not be found. It is suggested to assign cameras manually to ensure the
correct changing order.
Make sure that all the objects containing cameras are not active before starting the
scene. Script will activate the correct camera when you enter or switch to the
vehicle. If all camera objects are active at the start of the scene you will get multiple
Audio Listener warning.
Of course, you can use any camera system with vehicle controller and are not
limited to the included one.
Three cameras are included: CameraFollow, CameraMouseDrag and
CameraOnboard.
Other Scripts
Vehicle
Center Of Mass
Center of mass is a required component for vehicle controller and will be added
when you add vehicle controller to the vehicle. If you tick “Show COM” a green
sphere will be drawn at the current center of mass (requires rigidbody and colliders
to be set up). The only option center of mass script offers is Center Of Mass Offset.
This is an offset from the Unity calculated center of mass which is generally too high
as Unity calculates center of mass as a center of volume. Since cars have most of
their weight in the engine, transmission and other fairly low mounted components
this center of mass is not adequate and will need to be adjusted. This holds true for
default wheel collider (and is mentioned in Unity’s documentation) and also holds
true for Wheel Controller 3D that this package uses. By default vehicle controller will
set the value of the offset to be exact center between all the wheel controller
objects. For sports cars you can lower it a bit from that value and for other vehicles
you can leave it as-is or rise it. If you raise it too much you might induce oscillation in
case the fixed time step is too large.
Downforce
Downforce is also a fairly simple script and is optional. Any number of downforce
points can be defined with the Max Force that will be applied at the Max
Downforce Speed. Max downforce speed should be set a bit higher then what the
vehicle is capable of going – just note that the speed is m/s – multiply the value by
3.6 to get km/h or by 2.5 to get m/h. Force applied will be increased in exponential
fashion. If you set downforce value too high (value is in Newtons) your vehicle might
get hammered into the surface. Suggestion is to use up to half the spring strength
as set in the wheel controller per each axle. Check the “Race Car” in the demo scene
as it has downforce script attached and set up.
GUI
Dash GUI Controller
You can use Dash GUI Controller script to control you vehicle’s dash gauges and
dash lights – be it inside the vehicle or on the HUD (demo scene uses it for both).
Both analog and digital speed and rpm gauges can be set, along with blinker, light,
driving aids and check engine indicators. All of the fields are optional so if you want
to use only a single gauge or indicator you can.
Analog Gauge
Controls analog gauges. Check “GUI/Prefabs” folder for speed and RPM analog
gauge prefabs. Following fields are available:
•
Max Value – value at the end of needle travel, at the end angle.
•
Start Angle – angle of the needle at the lowest value. You can use lock at start
option to adjust this value while in play mode.
•
End Angle – angle of the needle at the highest value. You can use lock at end
option to adjust this value while in play mode.
•
Needle Smoothing – smooths the travel of the needle making it more inert, as
if actually had some mass and resistance.
•
Lock at Start / End – locks the needle at start or end angle while in play mode.
To adjust the needle travel you can enter play mode and the tick the one of the lock
options. While the needle is locked at start or end adjust the start or end angle until
needle is where it should be at the start position. If you are replacing background or
needle graphics or making your own analog gauge object make sure that the
needle rotates around center properly (if not you might want to adjust pivot point of
the rect) and that it is a child of the object containing analog gauge script as the
script will search for the child with the name of “Needle”.
In the picture below you can see two analog gauges added to the World Space
canvas inside the sedan demo vehicle.
Digital Gauge
Digital Gauge consists of title, readout and line (which is optional).
As with analog gauge you can find digital gauge prefab inside “GUI/Prefabs/”
directory.
Digital gauge accepts:
•
Numerical values – can be smoothed and also progress line can be shown.
•
String values – just a piece of text.
If you want to use numerical value tick “Display Numerical”.
•
Format field accepts formatting that will be used when converting number to
string, e.g. “0.0” for one decimal place or “0.000” for three.
•
Smoothing field will smooth out the numerical value so it is easier to read.
Number represents time in seconds needed to reach the set value.
•
Unit field accepts a string which will be added after string or numerical value.
•
Max Value is only required if using progress line to indicate at which value line
will be fully filled.
If you do not want to use any lines delete both Line and LineBG objects.
Dash Light
A very simple script which attaches to any canvas Image object. It will remember
the initial color of the image and then toggle between it and white color when
Active property is set to true or false.
Compatibility With Other Assets
CTS (Complete Terrain Shader)
To make CTS work properly with NVP, untick Strip Texutres option inside CTS
profile:
IK Driver Vehicle Controller
Manual for integration of IK Driver Vehicle Controller with NVP is available on the
IK’s asset page.
FAQ
1) I am using a custom mesh / Easy Roads 3D / quad for a terrain and the vehicle
keeps randomly jumping.
- To solve this disable the “Queries Hit Triggers” and “Queries Hit Backfaces”
under physics options.
2) I dragged a prefab into an empty scene and it does not react to my input.
- This is because the vehicle itself only stores the input states, but does not set
them. To make the vehicle move attach Desktop Input Manager to the
vehicle. You can leave all the fields empty. The other option is to use the
vehicle changer if you have multiple vehicles in the scene, check the
beginning of the manual for step-by-step guide about this.
3) Vehicle jumps when wheel gets hit from the side / top or something falls on it.
- Check the included Wheel Controller 3D manual and it’s FAQ section for
more info about this. In short: enable rim collider option inside WC3D
inspector.
4) I am getting errors about inputs not being set up.
- Copy the “InputManager” file from ProjectSettings inside the VehiclePhysics/
folder to your project’s ProjectSettings. Note that this will overwrite any
previously setup inputs.
5) I just imported the asset and I get a few errors about Standard Assets missing.
- Check the readme.
6) Blinkers or other emissive meshes are not working in build but they work inside
editor just fine.
- Add “Standard Shader” to Project Settings → Graphics → “Always Included
Shaders” list.
If you encounter any problems, need help setting up or would like to see
some feature in the next version you can contact us at:
nwhcoding@gmail.com
Source Exif Data:
File Type : PDF File Type Extension : pdf MIME Type : application/pdf PDF Version : 1.4 Linearized : No Page Count : 40 Language : en-US Creator : Writer Producer : LibreOffice 5.3 Create Date : 2018:06:10 12:12:00+02:00EXIF Metadata provided by EXIF.tools