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bluereaper · 10th September 2011

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This is a tutorial to teach everyone how to make balanced spindleless suspensions for omni-vehicles (anything that runs on balls), wheel2, motorcycles, or three-wheelers (like robin reliants). Omnivehicles can't use spindleless normally without drawbacks, due to the A-arm placement, and wheel2 doesn't seem to like it either. Motorcycles require either a spindle or will steer unevenly otherwise. This tutorial might seem difficult or confusing at first, but it's easy to master, and makes nice steering for even regularly wheeled vehicles.
If you don't know what an omnitank is, it's a tank with balls.

First off, we're going to start out by positioning our props. The wheel prop should be positioned by your base prop wherever it would be when fully extended; like any suspension with compression limiters, you will need either a thick base prop or a suspension anchor point. I recommend a thick base prop, because it's a lot less physical props and it's more durable and less prone to fucking up.

Next, we will use precision alignment, and we want to use the top setting at the right--"Point - Hitpos"--and click then shift-click the bottom of the base prop on the left and right sides.

We should have two pluses on the body, labeled one and two.

Now, we're going to use the setting "Point - Coordinate Center". You can also use "Point - Mass Center".

We'll then shift-click the middle of our wheel. In my case, it's a sphere. It should be labeled 3.

With these done, we're going to open the constraint menu on PA (press R), and go to constraints-->rope. Select rigid, select at top-left the point 1 and bottom 3, choose your width and model of the rope. Make sure that "add length" is 0. Then press "Make Constraint". Now, select in the left point 2 and 3, and repeat. You should now have a basic A-Arm from point 1 to the middle of your wheel to point 3. This A arm will make a pivot in the dead center of your wheel.

With the A-Arm in place, we're going to use "Point - Hitpos", and select the top of our base prop over our wheel with shift-click, then the bottom of it by the wheel (you may need to use fading door or nudge your base prop with easyp, then nudge it back), which should make points 4 and 5. Use easy-P to nudge the base prop up; the amount up should be HALF of the total wheel travel you want, but should NOT be 50% or more of the base prop's thickness (you'll see why later). 30% is a good figure usually. We should now have 5 points, like so.

All of the points laid out without constraints.

Now we use reload, and from point 3 to point 5, we put a non-rigid rope. From point 4 to point 5, we move over to elastic, select its constant/damping/width, and connect.

Congratulations, you should now have an A-arm with a sphere/wheel/wheel2/black man/bouncyball on the end of it, with an elastic, and a rope that will not only keep it from drooping but keep it from ever being pushed up too high and breaking. You can use adv ballsocket with basic wheel settings (if facing north/south, -180/180,-0.01/0.01,-0.01/0.01) to the steering master for a steered wheel, to the body if a non-steered wheel, or even to nothing for omnivehicles.

C&C, advice, feedback, etc, is welcome. I might make a youtube video of this, but since Source Recorder doesn't want to record the PA markers, I don't know. As it is, half my pics didn't come out right, and it's late here. Oh well.