A few questions about Beam and Node

I have been reading about BeamNG for a while now.
Finally decided I would hit up the forums and see what its really all about.

Anyway, to start off I have some questions about how it all works.
From my understanding, reading through the forums ect. There are beams, which are like rods that make up all the parts of the vehicles or objects in the game. Then you have all of the those beams connected together with nodes? I am guessing that the "soft-body" physics comes from the ability of the beams to flex and bend? I have only minor experience playing around in RoR, I am more of a car mechanic and enthusiast and not much of a programmer so this is a bit hard to grasp completely.

I was curious that if this is the case, is it possible to have beams had differing thicknesses and strengths depending on what parts of the car they are attached? Does this engine already do this, or no?

Ill leave it at that for know and ask some more once these are answered lol. It can be Rogue's "What the FAQ?" thread

 

Ah ok, thanks Gabester. The reason I ask is because it leads to my other questions.
During your simulation videos I observed certain things about the flexibility, and elasticity of certain components.

I was wondering if you can change the stiffness, strength, and deformation individually? Saying that the beams representing the Frame, and the beams representing the individual parts of the suspension can have different elasticity and and stiffness?

I know that you guys are striving toward realism, and if you could make impacts affect suspension, frame, and body components according to their strengths and weaknesses it may help you better accomplish that.

 

Yes, just as it was in rigs of rods every single beam on a vehicle can be adjusted in all the ways mentioned. Beams and nodes can be grouped under a name such as door; trunk; etc. This allows you too change every thing until its realistic.

For now at least, this beamng shares a lot in common with the way rigs of rods works (in terms of the n/b structures) they are still pretty much the same idea, beamng may have more simple file structures and you may be able to name different nodes and beams individually but as I'm not a developer I only find out about the specifics when somebody posts info on it.

 

Awesome, thanks a lot for the info VayronEB.
I was just actually playing RoR again for the first time in forever to kind of get the idea of what Hutch and Gabe were mentioning.

It seems to be a very surprisingly simple system.

In RoR when you press "K" to bring up the mesh, is that actually showing you all the beams locations, and the colors are representing the stress on those beams? Also I noticed some of the actually drive line and suspension pieces, specifically on the S-10 off-road, are always black. Like the front control arms, rear leaf springs, the drive shaft, and rear diff. What does this mean for that part?

Also I noticed the rest of the suspension bits are not really shown in action. Like there aren't specific sets of beams that act as a strut or, specific ones that represent the outer tie rods, inner tie rods, and steering rack. it seems that there is more of just a whole bunch of beams controlling the A-Arms that make it act like those parts, without the actual part being represented. Sorry if that doesn't make any sense. I was finding it hard to describe in words lol.

 

I think black means that they are defined as an axle. You can (kind of) see the suspension working but it is difficult to see and you have to know what to look for, if you press "e" in rigs of rods you can toggle the rendering between textured wireframe and just vertices, if you change it to vertices or wireframe you can see the nb much more clearly.

This should answer a lot of your questions: http://www.rigsofrods.com/wiki/pages/Step_by_Step_Truck_Construction

The suspension bit in specific is very good and you will probably find it helpful: http://www.rigsofrods.com/wiki/pages/RoRBook/Suspension

 

In ror you can make beams any color you want.

 

Due to how NB is you cannot always 1:1 represent each and every small part like that but you have to 'dumb' it down, basically, to make the NB more efficient by using less NB in general and to make it work better by altering something here or there.

 

Really cool to see someone pick up the concept of n/b's so easily I'm pretty sure if you understand the concept so easily, you can really get somewhere in making cars for RoR/BeamNG yourself

In RoR, there are beams that act as tierods(namely hydros) and shocks, though in-game with the n/b showing, they all look the same. However, in RoR you can un-hide the beams and then the hydros and shocks are chrome beams, and the normal beams are usually brown(but like Dkutch said, you can make un-hidden beams any color you want).

And yeah, the color of the beams when you enable 'k' is the stress I haven't noticed the black bits though? Basically, there's the wireframe of the visual model and the n/b behind it. I assume the wireframe of the drivetrain meshes are black since, well, those components are painted black in real life too, usually. The n/b of those parts should be green, yellow, or red though, and I think blue as well, but it's been a while since I played RoR.


And you can actually get 1:1 with drivetrain components, but in RoR that usually makes the game lag. I've done it before with my Lotus and Range Rover though, so it's definitely possible.

 

Haha, so much help!
Thanks guys!

Luckily I am a really fast learner. Great in math and physics and that sort of thing.

Thats what I really hope of getting into. I'd love to make some content in the future.
I just need to start up some tutorials on using Blender.

Does anyone know if Solidworks is capable of compiling into .DPE?
I actually have some experience with Solidworks so that might be easier for me.

Also from what I am understanding from the tutorials and stuff above, the creator of the vehicle has complete control over strength, handling, suspension design, ect. right? So as a content creator your only really limited by what the engine, and your computer are capable of?

 

Correct.
Although while creating it all you will have to keep it as less NB as you can while still making the vehicle function correctly & keeping the quality, visually.
True, basically you are limited to just what the engine & your computer are capable of, while keeping in mind the above point, so that many others (particularly ones with slow PCs) would be able to use your wonderful vehicle without any slowdown.

It's basically a balance between quality & playability. But you could make 2 versions (as many did in RoR) one normal (quality) & the other FPS-friendly (slight dumed down quality in favor of performance).

 

As long as you can export to a collada (.dae) you are set. If you can export to any format that blender can import then you are also OK, but you will have an extra hoop to jump through.
collada is a pretty common format so the chances that you can export to that or find a plugin that does it for you is quite high.

Here you go, i think at least. I have never used solid works. But the reviews dont look good for this plugin: http://labs.solidworks.com/products/product.aspx?name=colladaexport

 

I see, that's too bad about solidworks. It a pretty awesome design suite. Oh well, learning blender is probably a good idea anyway. I have heard nothing but great things about it reading through here.

 

It's a brilliant program. Might be hard to get the hang of it at first, but it gets easier and a lot more fun as you get better There are many helpful people here, and I have a fair array of tips and tricks too, so if you need help with anything be sure to holler.

 

Clearly! Never expected my questions to be answered so quickly.

Also one other question I thought of. In every presentation I have seen, as well as playing RoR I have noticed the same problem of clipping.

Now I looked up ways engines are solving the problem and it seems like that is the biggest performance problem for this type of physics. My question is if there is any progress being made to improve collision detection and there for cleaning up all the clipping isssues?

 

You can really only solve the clipping issues by using more beams, or that was the case in Rigs of Rods at least.
I think you can also try 3ds Max, might feel a little more familiar compared to SolidWorks. I always found the UI in Blender a bit... confusing, but might just be me

 

I can see how adding more beams might help the situation but thats a less then desirable result as thats just an even bigger hit on performance then what ever the means of collision detection currently is. From what I am reading collision detection is completely engine side, and current means seem really in efficient according to this article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_body_dynamics#Collision_detection_for_deformable_objects.

I was actually curious if there was anyone working on a better solution then what is being used for collision detection elsewhere?
If we found a new way that was more efficient then the current system then not only would you see less clipping but you would probably see less of a performance impact allowing more detailed and better simulated models.

 

I think in RoR there was self-collision on nodes and submeshes(the collidable mesh made out of triangles between nodes, which you need to enter in a text editor manually). It usually worked alright, but with an n/b engine like this it's usually much easier on performance to simply add a few beams to stop the bumpers from clipping. In the end, you still gotta attach fenders and doors to your body anyway, so it won't affect performance *that* much. If you do that properly, parts shouldn't really clip much. And in most of the videos, there's not that much clipping(though there is, compared to other games, because those don't use 100% dynamic real time damage, mostly procedural).

Since it's all real-time and 100% dynamic here, if you abuse the cars enough, it'll definitely clip at some point. I think there's no way to avoid that, though yes, it would be nice if we could find a way to avoid clipping even more.

In RoR I always found that even like 200 extra beams really barely affected performance, and I think BeamNG is way better optimized, so it should matter even less in that.