Trying to make wheels on a car spin

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I'm using 3DS Max 2017 on a Windows 10 PC laptop.

I have a model of a Jeep Cherokee, and all the parts in it are grouped.

I've grabbed the wheel, attempted to rotate it, both by making my own keys and by using auto key.   It creates the keys, I can see them in the timeline.

But when I scrub back and forth on the timeline, the wheel does not spin.

I'm sure there's probably more complicated ways to do this with rigging and all, but this is a very simple project and doesn't require a high degree of accuracy, so simply rotating the tires a number of times as the car moves along would be just fine.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give.  

[RobH2]

Again, please don't take this wrong but you said that the "professional lecturing" had no value. It actually has tremendous value. I was not lecturing you, I was trying to help you. The problem with forums is that there is no way to convey "tone of voice." I'm not scolding or yelling at you (lecturing)... I'm using a calm and helpful tone of voice. Please take it that way. 

Until you dig in and begin to understand the basics of Max, you are not going to be able to make any progress. The problems you are having are a result of not understanding the at the most basic level what the keyframes do and how to diagnose them in the curve editor. This is not lecturing, this is an attempt to have you read the user manual or do a bunch of tutorials. It's the only way you'll learn. I hope you can view this as positive criticism. It's not lecturing. If me or someone else goes in and "just fixes" your file for you, they what have you gained? Sure, your file works and for the short term, all is well. But the next time you need to move something, say a bicycle from point "A" to point "B", you'll be back here trying to get help again because you haven't learned about the basics of keyframes. The greatest gift one person can give another is the gift of knowledge. If we do it for you, you don't gain that knowledge. If we can help you learn it, then you can take that forward, grow upon it and start to become a Max expert. That's the goal. It's not lecturing, it's helping. Ok, enough said about that, right?

Having said that, I've attached a few images. 

'car1.jpg' shows the car and the keyframes associated with the 'ZPosition' or height of the car in relation to the ground. You can see that at 268 it starts to go down and at 1105 it's down below where it was at 268. That's why it dives into the ground. Because, there's a key on the 'ZPosition' telling it to move from .381 at frame 268 to .079 at frame 1105. The blue line is there so you can see what it's doing. Independent of values, you can just look at the curves and "see" what it's doing. 

'car2.jpg' This shows it diving. The double vertical yellow line is the position of the play head. 

'car3.jpg' Change the value of key 1105 to the same value as the key at 268 and it won't dive into the ground. Or, just delete the key on 1105 and you'll have a straight horizontal line all the way across and the car won't dive. 

'car4.jpg' Likewise, the 'XPosition' (forward movement) of the car is driven by the keyframe on 1104. Its value as you have it is 158.421. Change that to something like 10.0 and the car will move a lot farther. Adjust that until the car is in the right place. Depending on how far you want it to go it could be any number that's less than 158.421 and might even be a negative number. After you do that, the wheels will not be spinning at the right speed. You'll then have to go tweak the speed of the wheels rotation by moving the keyframe for that up or down. 

There are many precise ways to have the wheels turn at the correct speed. What I describe above is a bit of a trial-and-error method. You just keep adjusting back and forth until it looks right. I would encourage you to go online and search for "3ds max tire rotation tutorials" and do a few of them. They will expose you to some advanced methods that work really well and you'll learn a lot along the way. 

Lastly, 'http://scriptspot.com' is a valuable place to find scripts and tools to help you do 1000's of things in Max. Bookmark it and use it. For example, here is a script for rigging a car. I haven't used it but it looks like something you could use. 

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/crc-car-rig-creator

[RobH2]

Here's the 4th image. I could only add 3 per post. 

[Anonymous]

---

@RobH2 wrote:

Again, please don't take this wrong but you said that the "professional lecturing" had no value. It actually has tremendous value. I was not lecturing you, I was trying to help you. The problem with forums is that there is no way to convey "tone of voice." I'm not scolding or yelling at you (lecturing)... I'm using a calm and helpful tone of voice. Please take it that way. 

Until you dig in and begin to understand the basics of Max, you are not going to be able to make any progress. The problems you are having are a result of not understanding the at the most basic level what the keyframes do and how to diagnose them in the curve editor. This is not lecturing, this is an attempt to have you read the user manual or do a bunch of tutorials. It's the only way you'll learn. I hope you can view this as positive criticism. It's not lecturing. If me or someone else goes in and "just fixes" your file for you, they what have you gained? Sure, your file works and for the short term, all is well. But the next time you need to move something, say a bicycle from point "A" to point "B", you'll be back here trying to get help again because you haven't learned about the basics of keyframes. The greatest gift one person can give another is the gift of knowledge. If we do it for you, you don't gain that knowledge. If we can help you learn it, then you can take that forward, grow upon it and start to become a Max expert. That's the goal. It's not lecturing, it's helping. Ok, enough said about that, right?

---

Professorial, not professional.  

And again, also please don't take this the wrong way, but no, it has no value, tremendous or otherwise.  It's perfectly normal to lecture professorially  in a calm voice, but that doesn't make it helpful.  

As I previously stated, I learned the basics of Max over the course of a two year associate's degree, graduating in 2010.  I am rusty in some areas, and need some guidance to reinvigorate old muscles that haven't been used in a while.

There's not much sense in coming to a forum, only to be told to read the manual.  I can read the manual all on my own without coming to the forums at all.  And ultimately, I am mostly a visual learner, I learn best through video tutorials and demonstrations so reading a manual has limited value for me.  

Additionally, all the comments about what you think I was thinking or feeling or doing, just weren't accurate, and thus didn't have any relevance to what I was actually doing or experiencing.  So reading that kind of material was a complete waste of time.

The whole point of an interactive forum, is to have a discussion, and field Q & A.  If all I get to my Q is the answer, "figure it out yourself," then there isn't any value in the exchange.  I can go figure it out myself all by myself, without someone telling me to go figure it out myself.  The discussion forum is for users of all backgrounds and expertise levels to exchange information and help solve problems in support of each other.  

One of the amazing things about Max is its versatility, and how it allows multiple different solutions to solve any given problem.  There's many ways to skin a cat as it were, in Max.  Additionally, because Max is so vast in its scope, a person can be very fluent in one area, and not so much in another.  This is expressed in the professional world, by having professions that are strictly modelers, or strictly animators, or strictly texture artists, or strictly lighting experts, or even having teams working exclusively on clothing or hair, and so on.

So the lecturing becomes a kind of speed bump in the thread; it's material that I have to sift through in order to get to the real information, especially when re-reading threads while giving a particular issue several tries until I get it right.  And now I just wasted time having to type all of these paragraphs out over nothingness.  

I'm not asking anyone to do anything for me.  Rather, what I am asking for instead, is what step A, B, C, etc. are, and what crucial steps I might be missing.  Once I have those steps, I'll remember them as long as I perform them semi-routinely.  But as I said, Max is so vast, and the nature of projects vary so greatly, that it's rare to do absolutely everything Max offers on a routine basis.  So yes, if I don't perform the procedure for a good amount of time, I may very well be here again. But by that time, Max 2028 will likely be around, and the procedure will have likely changed a bit anyway.  The days of learning a skill, especially a software program like Max, and being an expert in it indefinitely ended before the turn of the Century.  Today, a constant never ending continuing education is necessary in order to keep up with things.  

But also again, outside of the lecturing, the actual information you've posted has been tremendously helpful, and I do thank you.

I'll have to give the additional information you've posted a go tomorrow, as it's getting a bit late here.  Thanks again.

[RobH2]

I think it's time for me to gracefully exit this one. I think you are on your way to figuring it out. Good luck with it and good luck with your Max mastery as time goes on. 

Regards,

Rob 

[Anonymous]

I figured it out.  Thanks again.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I wanted to follow up here to see how you did.  Did you end up with any problems leftover?  I would be happy to point you toward resources that can explain some of these things in more detail if needed.  Thank you!

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

I just wanted to follow up here, are you all set?  Did you totally resolve all the issues?  Thanks for the update.  

Best Regards,