Ways to create an animated tank tread in 3ds Max?

NeonGold

Hey guys, 

So I'm trying to create a tank tread by using a single piece animated to follow a spline which is then duplicated. I can get it to instance easy enough via the spacing tool, and get it to animate by constraining it to the path, but doing both has me at a loss. I'll also need to be able to export the animation is a way that isn't too unwieldy for UE4. Anyone dealt with something similar and/or have some tips?  

Thanks!

jaker3278

I think this tutorial should help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBuwGbPXg8I

Mark Dygert

Splines and pathdeformation isn't going to be compatible with Unreal, at least not easily. How you do it, depends on the look you are going for.

If you're game is fairly low poly then you can animate UV's inside of unreal with a panner node. That won't actually move geometry, it will just scroll a texture, which is a pretty good way to do it for mobible and games running on low end hardware or when the treads aren't the focus of the game.

If you're looking for a higher poly solution then it gets pretty complicated, pretty quickly, with a lot of the work being done in unreal through blueprints.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCYYWorsYpQ