Movement Control

Finally I had to create an overall movement control to move the car as a whole unit while also moving the controls. This was done by rather having a point or orient constraint I used a parent constraint and put the it above all the other constraints in the grouping hierarchy to make sure it would overrule the other constraints. For this constraint the pivot point was placed in the middle of the car.

Body Suspension

The body suspension was by far the hardest thing to rig as it needed a expression in order to change the movement of the controller into the rotation that would happen on the vehicle. I first had to group the whole vehicle into two groups called the front and back suspension.

I then positioned the pivot point to correlate with the group, for the front suspension the pivot point went onto the front axle and vice versa for the back.

After this I created the controllers for each of the groups, then on the rotateX attribute I put an expression to convert the movement of the controller into the rotation on the car.

Finally I limited the rotation so that the suspension wouldn't be over exaggerated and very lifelike.

Bonnet

The bonnet was done very quickly as it was very similar to the boot to rig, I had to group the geometry together and create a controller to go with it, then positioned the pivot point correctly at the front of the car as that is how it is in real life. I have also limited the rotation so that you can't move the bonnet further than it would actually go.

Boot

 At this point most of the other areas were fairly simple to rig, I again had to group together the proper geometry as at first I forget to add the mercedes badge into the group and then I made a controller to an orient constrain against the boot. I moved the pivot point into the correct position which would mirror a real car, at first I had it in the middle of the boot which when rotated made the corners go inside the boot which wouldn't be lifelike.

Doors

After getting the wheels to properly spin, turn and have their suspension working I turned my attention to getting the doors to work. First I went through the geometry and grouped up the door geometry. When I had got it all together I made another controller and put it into the right position ready for the constraint.

I then positioned the pivot point into the correct place which would be at the front area of the door where it connects to the car which would be where the hinges are on a real car. After this I constrained the controller onto the door onto the Y axis and then limited it so that it would only open to a certain way to mimic a real car. In addition to this I also limited the doors so that you wouldn't be able to rotate the doors into the car.

Wheel Suspension

To correctly rig the suspension on the wheels I had to use a different constraint as they will be translating not rotating on a specific axis. To do this I just used a point constrain rather than an orient constant and then again set limits so that the wheels could only go to a specific point rather than have the wheels go above or below the car. As well as this I set the pivot point to the bottom of the wheel as it would be where the point of contact would be against the floor to show the suspension properly working.

Turning of the Wheels

After making the wheels turn I then went onto making the front wheels turn. This was done in a similar way to the previous way of making the wheels spin. I first made the arrow using the curve tool however this time I made it double sided, then used the non linear bend again to put curvature into the arrow. After this I selected the arrow and clicked the group which had the wheel in and put an orient constraint onto the Y axis.

The image here shows where the pivot point is on the wheel for it to turn, it has to be on the inside so that it will correctly turn. I have also put a limit on the extent that the wheel can actually turn from left to right just like it would in a normal car.

Spinning the wheels

To get the wheels spinning properly I had to make sure the pivot point is in the right position at the center of the wheel so that It will spin on the correct axis.

After this I then made a orient constraint against the X axis in order to make the wheel properly rotate. I then did this for the other wheels to get the rest of the wheels spinning properly as well as this I limited the information so that the control would only rotate or translate the correct way. I made the control into the right shape by first creating an arrow shape from the curve tool and then putting a non-linear bend deformer onto the arrow and changing the curvature to properly bend the arrow, then I deleted the history of the control to get rid of the line however keeping the curvature in the arrow.

Wheels

To get the wheels moving correctly I had to do a number of different things to the car. First of all I put the wheels in a certain order of hierarchy to make sure that they would still continue to for example turn and spin at the same time. For each wheel I grouped them up being the first group as the suspension, second is the turning group and the final group is the spin group. This hierarchy enables each wheel to keep spinning while turning and also do both these while the suspension is moving.