Asset: v.1 Self-Generating Car (The AutoAuto) (Patreon)
Content
Okay so- I'm calling this version 1. I had bigger plans for it, but all of them ended up being complex, and this would have turned into a bigger project than I meant for right now (the sound team has the first episode, but I'm still jumping around updating a bunch of stuff!) And as it's still fairly useful for a lot of applications, I'd rather just release this as-is in the meantime!
To use:
Run the python script, and the "AutoAuto" object will generate new cars!
If you use it in a different scene, you have to append both "AutoAuto" and the python script from the Text folder (I go over it in the video)
As I say in the video, it's mostly designed as a background asset (up close it's... fine.)
If you want to give the car a bit more functionality, I recommend parenting it to a rig from Blendswap or blender market or somesuch- lots of folks have made way better ones than I could :D. Hopefully I'll have a bit more of that figured out for v.2, though.
Oh and definitely consider checking out crowdsim3d.com! They've been working on this Blender addon for years, and I think it's pretty cool; I honestly didn't know stuff like that was possible with Blender. Looks like the free version is limited to 25 vehicles, but that's still a lot!
Things I'd love to include in the next version-
Turning wheels!
Drivers/Passengers!
Faster Shader Build Times!
RIGHT CLICK, SAVE LINK:
AutoAutoAsset.blend
And again- huge thanks to Curtis Holt for helping me figure out the python stuff. His intro-to-python-for-blender is one of the few videos that really made me believe that I could wrap my head around it :D
Very curious to hear any thoughts anyone has in terms of improvement, or feedback on how it runs on their machine! From what I can tell, it takes a while to compile the shader, but after that is pretty speedy, no matter how many cars you have going.