I’ll make this one fairly brief, this is to be read in conjunction with Tutorial-1, the basic car rig, and shows how you can use the same rig to mimic “tail-sliding”, “drifting”, or “Hangin’ yer Ass Out” – whatever you want to call it, an image to start with:

Here we see the care in the corner with the rear wheels definitely not in line with the road, yet the front wheels still are, as is the case in a “drift”.

To do this we simply move the root bone over to the outside of the curve and keyframe the start point (bone’s local Z axis) at 0 and the drift at a suitable value some frames into the drift. I used keyframes 19 apart for the entry and an offset of 1.5. You also need to angle the root bone back into the corner. I used an angle of -25 degrees at the start of the drift and increased this to -32 in the centre = ass hung out further at the mid point.

Finally, I keyframed these offsets 24 frames before the end of the drift and then all back to 0 at the end of the drift. The important thing to remember is that the root bone should point behind the front target plane, or your steering will not be turned correctly as shown below:

This driver is sliding, out of control, towards the on-comming bus, truck or maybe brick wall on the outside of the curve, any way you look at it this will end in tears, unless you get the front wheels following the road curve again.

So, get the ass-end out far enough, get the car turned enough to line up the front wheels and all will be well, then just keyframe the various offsets on the corner. You might like to add some black lines on the road and a couple of smoke systems around the back wheels to complete the look.

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Yep, another finished page here 😛

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