I have uploaded an early version here. It is almost fully jbeamed and has all tris setup, so you can crash cars into it, spawn it above cars and crush them, and even sit cars on top of it. Hello everyone. I wanted to see what would happen if I dropped a battlemech from the series Battletech onto a car, so I made a prop Madcat and was surprised to find that it could stand on its own without any additional nodes to support it. Since it was stable, I decided to make it drivable. So far, I have been able to make it crouch and stand straight up without falling over as well as twist the upper torso in 4 axes(up, down, left, right). I am currently working on lua to make the walking automatic since it is incredibly complex, but that will take some time. I plan on releasing this here once it gets to a semi-stable state. Here are a couple videos I took while creating the "vehicle" (at the time of this post, it is still processing):
Absolutely. I am currently controlling the legs with hydros, but I am trying to learn rotators so I can better simulate the joints.
Torsion hydros could also be an option instead of rotators, but this also depends if you want full 360 degrees rotation with no real rest zone or something closer to a hinge. Rotators would also allow you to simulate the usage of electric motors for walking, and you can do a similar thing with the engine powered hydraulics like the T-Series dump bed. Maybe in the future there will be a torsion equivalent of those too. There are many options.
Torsion hydros are something I haven't heard of. By the sound of it, they will work similarly to torsion bars, but have the angle of the arms controlled instead of passive? Found the documentation on them. I see why I never learned those. They did not apply to my use case before, but they should be really useful here.
i thought this isn't possible, but then i realized there are some smart people in the forums i absolutely love it! i would totally use this to make some shitpost photos with it
A bit of a status update: I was informed about servos, but it appears that either I do not understand how to set up rotators(most likely imo), or they just aren't able to handle the weight of the mech. The work on walking will be pushed back quite a bit while I try to work out a stable way to get that working. I am not too well versed in robotics or inverse kinematics, so it will take some studying before I can properly animate the legs for walking. There is a lot to consider even with something as naturally stable as this when getting it to walk. For example, starting to walk from a stop will require a minor tilting towards the leg moving towards the rear, possibly by using the toe of the forward-moving leg to prop it up slightly, otherwise, it will fall over to the side with the lifted leg. For now, I plan on finishing up the arms, the collision triangles, and making the torso movements stable, then uploading the version that can crouch and twist the torso for now. I also hope to be able to get it to properly jump, although landings will be a bit hit or miss. When I say jump, I mean thruster-assisted jumping. In Battletech, battlemechs can be fitted with jump jets, which are essentially high-pressure heat vents that use extra heat from their reactors to give them thrust. The madcat generally has these installed in its legs, so there will be a little bit of control when using them. The control scheme for the legs as of right now is: Delete: crouch End: stand up Page up/down: torso lift Steering: torso twist I will be adding a few more controls for the jatos in the legs as well as for mechanical jumping. I do not know how long it will take to complete, but the collision triangles will probably be the longest part. Just the left foot took an hour to complete, so it will probably be a while.
This was (for me) a long delayed project. It is still pretty barebones as far as movement goes, but it is stable. I have uploaded the first version of the mod in the op. Here are some exciting activities you can take part in with this mech: Crash cars into it Step on cars Park on top of it Fly to the moon
