Body's and Frames

What my idea is.
What if we could say. Put a different body on a frame. I like using beamng as derby game. I noticed the roamer has a extremely good frame. It bends upwards and is very sturdy. What if we could put like a moonhawk body on it. So when me and my friends derby. The car looks normal but has a frame that bends perfect. Also another Thing is. Why can we not have different bumpers? In real life i drive real derby cars. We put big old steel bumpers on our luminas and camris. but on here we are stuck with stock bumpers or bumper skins..

 

make a mod. the frame part would be pretty difficult, especially considering most vehicles use a unibody design, but the bumpers would be pretty easy to make. simple design leads to easy modeling, and learning how to make a jbeam for something like that shouldn't be difficult. in fact, it's a great place to start.

 

Where would i start. How could i make say the bumper from the roamer be able to go onto any car?

 

modeling--->

1. download blender
2. import .dae file of the car of your choice into layer 1
3. import .dae file of roamer into layer 2
4. delete everything off the roamer you don't need, or hide it. (select what you do need, ctrl+i to invert selection, h for hide and x for delete)
5. move the bumper into position to match the new car
6. ctrl+alt+shift+c to move origin to 3D cursor
7. rename to something like "pessima_bumper_f_roamer" or something that makes sense
8. once it's in position, make sure it's on layer 1 and delete EVERYTHING else in all layers. then go file>export>collada(.dae) and name it something that makes sense

jbeaming--->

1. make a new folder, with a "vehicles" folder in it
2. inside the "vehicles" folder, create another folder with your car of choice in it
3. put the .dae file of your bumper into it
4. copy/paste the bumper .jbeam from your car into the new folder
5. in the jbeam file, change the "flexbodies" section so that the "mesh" used is the name of your object in blender ("pessima_bumper_f_roamer"
6. (optional but strongly recommended) change the values of the "nodes", "beams", and "triangles" section of your new bumper to match some from the roamer. this will give you the physical strength and geometry of the roamer bumper, not just the visual of it.
7. rename your new bumper inside the .jbeam (both the technical name, and the name that shows in the game)
8. also rename the .jbeam file
9. grab whatever textures for the roamer bumper, from it's folder
10. put them in the folder you made of your car
11. you'll need to ask someone else for help with setting up the textures to show up in the game, it's hit or miss when i do it
12. send your "vehicles" folder to a zip file, and name it what you want your mod to be named
13. put it in your "mods" folder

i probably missed something, and it sounds pretty complicated, but it's really hard to explain without showing a video. play around with it and learn your way around jbeaming, and it'll become natural. also, remember that the positions of the nodes in the file correlate to the 3D space in your blender file.

modeling is fun but tedious and frustrating at times. try some tutorials on youtube, and learn some helpful hotkeys

 

you dont need a jbeam. #meshslap for the win!

 

lmao, on smaller projects i agree, but he's asking for how to make a stronger bumper

 

I wish life worked that easy XD

 

Since he said he wanted a moonhawk body on a pickup frame, pretty sure neither of those are unibody xD

 

Moonhawk with Roamer jbeam?

 

The moonhawk on the pickup frame
https://www.beamng.com/resources/the-offroad-moonhawk-pickup.1968/

 

But it would be kinda cool to have universal frame and all sorts of different bodies that would go on that one frame.

I think that GM had such crazy plan once, where they would build a base frame and put all sorts of different bodies on it, idea was to save costs and make manufacturing simpler.

 

Every car on one frame or every car of a certain kind on one frame?

 

i've heard of that. lots of GM vehicles share frames and drivetrain, but i can't seem to find exactly what i remember reading once.

 

It was some futuristic design, I'm not sure but maybe around time first EV vehicle was binned, but can't remember much more, I think in that documentary they did tell about that first EV which they binned even people wanted it and I'm not sure if it had something about Volt too or if it was another documentary.

I think that plan was on some level of prototype/concept stages and did involve hybrid/electric car design.

Anyway if I don't remember wrong, one part of plan was that you could buy a coupe, then as family grows, you could get body replaced and have family car on same base, I think it was supposed to be electric vehicle of some sort, or maybe hydrogen, kinda wild idea which car makers sometimes do to seek new inventions etc.

 

Oh cool! This helps me a lot as well.