Fixing Damaged Sheetmetal

Yesterday I got the idea to use the nodegrabber, use the floor nodes to "Attach" to the ground (keep the car still) and used the node grabber to pull the sheetmetal back into shape. It actually was quite entertaining, after watching that russian guy on YouTube do all those body repairs on totally smashed cars. Arthur, I think his name is? Anyway, I got pretty close to fixing some pretty badly bent up cars, will post a video or some screenshots of repaired cars. It was especially cool securing the cars and "pulling" back the rear quarter panels, watching the surrounding metal move back into place. Ill go into the body jbeam files and strengthen up the hinges and latches of the doors, etc, so when I pull those parts back, they dont just rip right off. Figured I'd share my experience yesterday, it was kind of addicting lol I smashed the rear of a legran at around 50 mph with a Pessima and managed to get the car back into shape, even fixing the trunk lid lol

 

I'm going to try that.

 

You can couple nodes, that way you can attach loose door for example

 

while possible in theory, it would be really hard to do that with the "picky" nodegrabber as is, between awkwardly clicking the MMB and moving the mouse intricately (at least on my mouse) would be difficult to do accurately and with any sort of smoothness. I feel the nodegrabber needs somewhat of an overhaul.

 

CTRL+ mouse scroll adjust strength, 0% is good when coupling nodes
ALT + mouse scroll adjust camera speed, makes life easier, I had it quite too fast there

With other than 0% strength node grabber is bit too fast.

Also I wonderfully managed to miss one click on that video, also I found out doors be quite well attached, they won't come off without serious force

Anyway it is not hard at all to attach the door, but need to set node grabber strength to 0% before coupling nodes.

 

I did finally found something to get keys shown up on video, not very good or pretty, but maybe useful to know what keys I use when attaching the door:

 

yea I was having some fun with it yesterday, rear ending a sunburst and repairing the trunk lid and quarter panel damage was quite interesting, I managed to get everything lined up like original, besides the broken taillight textures. quite entertaining as long as you have patience. I find it easiest to secure the car to the ground with the node grabber set to 100%, that way I can yank and tug at the sheetmetal without the car moving all over the place. pretty cool, adds a bit of "something else to do" to the game lol