Tutorial: Getting Started with Car Animation in Blender // Launch Control [Beginner]
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Check it out on BlenderMarket ► blendermarket....
or GumRoad ► danielvesterba...
In this beginner video, we go over the very basics of Car Animation in Blender and how Launch Control makes it fast and easy to get started.
About Launch Control (LC) ►
If you want to make realistic-looking car animations in Blender in no time, LC is the tool for you!
It's built around 3 different parts of the process:
1. Automatic Rigging (One-Click Rigging of 4-wheeled cars)
2. Animation with presets for quick results
3. Physics simulations that bake fast and can be modified in real-time
LC strives to make vehicle animation accessible and eliminates the usual problems you stumble over, when turning your action-sequence dreams into reality (a virtual reality, that is).
The simple interface packs a ton of power and in the "Manual Gearbox" you have a world of customization options to tune LC to your liking.
Check out my other platforms ►
Instagram: / daniel_vesterbaek
Website: www.danielvest...
Artstation: www.artstation...
![Tutorial: Rigging Cars in Blender // Launch Control [Beginner]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/jbRWUXyX7mI/mqdefault.jpg)
![Tutorial: Rigging Cars in Blender // Launch Control [Beginner]](/img/tr.png)
![Tutorial: Drifting Cars in Blender // Launch Control [Beginner]](/img/n.gif)
Love how you're pushing this with all the material and explanations! Thank you so much!
So happy that it is appreciated. I am the one to say thank you ^^
@@DanielVesterbaek ♥
Congrats on the launch, Daniel! I have been messing around with car rigs in the past, so I know the pain. Your tool looks super useful.
Hey! Thank you so much CG boost team :)
Was super exciting to be able to develop and launch this. Hopefully it can be a painkiller for a lot of car enthusiasts (myself included, hehe)
@@DanielVesterbaek Hey Dan, can I use vehicles from Transportation or Traffiq with Launch Control?
@@s.patterson5698 Hey Patterson! Yeah! Both Transportation and Traffic vehicles have naming and hierarchy that is compatible with Launch Control, so you can add the vehicles to your scene and rig then with LC. :)
@DanielVesterbaek Sweet. Good to know. I already got Traffiq this last weekend along with a host of other stuff. Once I recover from the bills 😃 I will pick up Launch Control and Transportation.
Just bought Launch Control. Very excited!
This looks very promising!
Thanks!! I hope it makes it easy to get started with car animation :)
Thank you so much for this amazing tool! Just bought it!
Awesome!! I am the one saying thanks ^^
Hope you'll enjoy working with it!
If you have any issues, please do let me know and I will be happy to jump in and help!
Rigacar never ceased to embarrass me anytime I use it 😅thanks for this
Sorry to hear Rigacar was letting you down, heheh - I have been there too! That's why I started building Launch Control, hehe
i will be purchasing today cant wait
Still my favorite blender add on
Awwn, thanks a lot!
Thankss❤️❤️❤️❤️ Much Love
Amazing
Thank you! :)
Nice work bro
Please we need a camera movement tutorial .
Thanks a lot!!
Man, that's a great idea 😄
I'll see how we could do something like that
am new to blender and this addon rules best car rig ever see if you can do motorcycle
👌👌👌 thx a lot
You are welcome!! ^^
This is so incredible!! I'm trying to push my company to purchase this for me but if they don't, I may have to just pull the trigger myself. One thing I noticed though, during the drifting portions, it seems as though the car is rolling in the wrong direction. Is there a way to control that? It seems as if the car is leaning towards the inside of the turn rather than towards the outside where all of the weight would naturally shift during a drift. I think it's so cool that you can adjust the amount of each portion of the physics and really start to fine tune the personality in your animations. Well done!
Love the tool! How can I animate a parking car? Can I drive backwards?
Super glad to hear that! Yeah, it is possible to do parking animations, but it's not so easy. I would recommend you to check out the FAQ on our Discord server where we have a video guide on how to do this. 😊
If you don't have Discord, I can also forward you the video directly. If you would like me to do that, please ping me by email. (Daniel.v.jensen@gmail.com)
@DanielVesterbaek I sent you a mail this morning. Thank you
This looks just amazing… as someone trying to learn Python and Blender as a hobby for now, can only imagine the vast amount of work and thought this required. The non destructive in practice three-layered approach is fantastic.
Question, and I might be totally wrong for Porsches, but in general, was the roll inverted? When a car takes a fast left corner (drifting or not) all the forces go from left to right (local to the car), making it roll clockwise. Here in this example it feels like it is doing what the driver might be trying to do (counteracting the actual car’s roll)…
Maybe desirable as an option, so letting that slider go from -100% to 100% might be useful too.
I’m buying this
EDIT: Don’t mind me as much, on Gumroad, at the physics mustang section, it’s clear that it behaves accordingly.
Thank you so much!! Such encouraging words :)
And doing Blender and Python as a hobby sounds awesome!! Both tools are so nice to work with.
Actually, I have been thinking about the same thing. With this drift animation it feels a liiiittle like the body-roll is inverted. I can't really say why, but it might be because the drift animation in "secondary" user animation and then the "third" simulated layer feels how the car is "mis-interpreting" this movement and actually does the opposite of what it should. Thinking about it now, whenever you drift the body should roll a little, so I think I should implement that as a "direct effect" of the user rotating the drift-handle. Anywho!... Good observation and food for thought for me ^^
Hey Daniel, just bought the plugin the lights dosent headlights doesn't seem to follow the cars headlight how do I link them?, should I rename the headlights before rigging?
How do you set up those headlights and textures that are projected on the ground
With the add-on there is a menu to do that. :)
It's a few different EXR textures blended together depending on the length the headlight is projected
Thank you very much for the reply! I´ll look it up!@@DanielVesterbaek
please can you teach me how to do a perfect loop of drift 01 animation in the launch control.
Hi Luke!!
Sorry for not getting back to you before now!
Yeah, I just prepared a little file with that.
You will have to remove some points on the curve and then adjust the animation so the last keyframe is the same as the first for the drift. For the "speed_rotate" handle, you can also copy the last keyframe to the start of the animation to make sure the speed is the same here and then just offset it in the x position on the f-curve graph.
Would you be able to send me an email at "daniel.v.jensen@gmail.com", then I can send you the file there
@@DanielVesterbaek thank you so much , i already send it the email
Hey, I just bought your addon (v1.5) and was wondering, why when using drift control car roll inwards instead of outwards? This can even be seen in this video at aprox 5:30. Is there a way to invert that? Thanks
nice headlights. Are these custom ies lights? Would like to see how you did them.
Thanks!! Well, it's actually something I rendered/simulated with caustics in Lux Core. Rendered a 32-bit image and blurred it. Then mixing between different blur-amounts depending on the distance to the ground gives it the "IES feeling" :D
@@DanielVesterbaek also very interesting. I believe you could fill your whole channel with cool informative videos. This are some informations I usually dont find everywhere because they can be very specific.
Thx for the explanation!
Yeah, I would love to share more about this. Right now my focus is on producing tutorials for Launch Control - Maybe after that I can do videos about stuff like this
thanks for the info on the lights! that's a great technique! @@DanielVesterbaek
Is there a way to disable the wheel rotation and use it when i need it?
Hmm, Like to "lock" the wheels?
What I do myself is to use the "custom spin handle" (you can enable it in "Manual Gearbox -> Advanced Animation -> Extra Animation Handles") to animate a "counter-spin" of the tires during the time I want them to not spin.
Would that maybe be a solution for you? :)
When you pushbthe car down, does it actually use a lattice on the tire mesh. From the cideo, it looked like the tire are simply pressed through the groune plane
Normally the tires budge outwards a bit near the ground plane. I didn't see that in the video, perhaps because the preview of the viewport is simplified
You actually also have a video about this I just saw. It's called "ch breakdown #02" from 3 years ago
Oh, yes!
We have this effect inside LC as well - In the currenct version it's disabled as we are working on a more performant system, but in the older versions you could just click a button and it will apply the lattice to your wheels :)
@@DanielVesterbaek but was I correct spotting that it now simply penetrates the ground floor?
@@DanielVesterbaekis there a more recent video about this subject or a guide?
Hello , all works fine but can i limit the wheels rotation ? i dont want the wheels to be like 90 degree when drifting , anyway of limiting the max rotation of the wheels so it doesnt clip through the chasis
Looks great but is it just me or are the body physics of that final slide at 5:39 completely wrong? (same at 8:31) Has this been fixed since the video was made? Thanks
Heheheh, thaaanks!
But yes... You are right! The physics from this video are not great. They are the old ones from LC 1.2. In LC 1.5 we have some completely new physics that are based on accelerations, which give you much better results right out of the box. :)
Thanks!!
Can you do car reverse with it along a follow path? Have been trying to achieve that in a while, would be great if you do a tutorial about it
Oh yes! That's a great suggestion! We actually have a full video FAQ on our Discord where we show how to do that. If you are interested, you can join it on the link here: discord.gg/4styJSUNW9
How to select the moving thing like above the car there's some cross arrows how to move that if i select it everything above it like the controls just gets selected
Hey!! Oh, thank you so much for the question! Sorry for the late reply in here - If you run into similar issues in the future, please ping me on BlenderMarket, email (daniel.v.jensen@gmail.com) or our Discord - I often miss comments here on youtube :'(
You need to be inside "Pose Mode" to be able to adjust the animation handles. You can go into this mode by selecting the rig/armature and then using the dropdown in the upper, left corner change to "pose mode" :)
Let me know if you can get that to work :)
This is great! Is it possible to give the wheels negative camber after the rig has been applied?
Well, it will be very easy to do in the coming update (juuuust around the corner now). It will have a Camber/Toe adjustment slider, so you can add whatever you want to the car after it has been rigged. :)
You can sort of do it already with the current version by raising the "ground clearance" and lowering the "CustomMass_Move handle" , but it's a bit clunky.
@@DanielVesterbaek I'll be waiting at the end of that corner!!
@@gtkiller Heheh, epic!! Will drop it during this weekend!
What light do you use for the headlamps?
It's spot lights inside Blender, but with some custom shader nodes :)
I'm extremely excited about this add-on and I see it's on Blender Market now. My only concern is if my modest PC can run it well enough. My viewport becomes too slow anywhere upwards of about 1 million faces in the scene. I have 12GB of ram. Will it work okay? Thanks brother, keep up the great work!
Heey Smooth_Shading!
Yes, that is a very valid concern. There are features in the add-on that hurts the performance (Auto wheel deformation mainly), but I have made sure that these "heavy" features are turned OFF by default.
I have been testing LC on my laptop (gaming laptop from 2018 with 16GB of memory) and I was surprised by how smooth it was. I couldn't feel any noticeable difference between the laptop and the high-end desktop I have.
That said, you should make sure that "Simplify" is turned on for the viewport with Subdivisions set to 0 and I would also suggest that you disable all non-essential collections while animating. The included cars should perform pretty decently, but if you import a super dense model, you might be bottlenecked by the memory - but you should definitely still be able to use Launch Control for many low to medium dense car models :)
@@DanielVesterbaek Daniel, thank you very much for the thorough reply. I appreciate your honest assessment of the performance on less powerful PC's. I look forward to testing Launch Control out. I can tell you put a lot of work into it and I think it will be very successful. I will use it in a future project with some low poly cars and see what I can produce. Keep up the great work, my friend!
hey Daniel I just started using launch control I had a problem which says the vehicle is too big to be rigged . What should I do to resolve it ??
Hello man!! Really sorry I didn't answer you earlier :(
I tend to miss messages here on UA-cam. For the future, I would recommend you ask questions in the BlenderMarket support messages, on the LC Discord or directly to be by email (daniel.v.jensen@gmail.com).
But! To answer your question...
LC is expecting the cars to be between 1-12 meters long (Blender Units). If the cars are considerably bigger, this error message will appear.
The best thing to do is to select all the meshes of the car and scale them all down until the car is around 4,5 meters long (which is a typical car length).
You can add in a "default cube" as reference. The "Default cube" is always 2x2x2 meters.
I hope this solves the issue for you!
And I am sorry again for the late reply :(
Guy can you help me how to install the add on, i import the model given but there no menu or window of launch control in blender
Hello man!!
Really sorry I didn't answer you earlier :(
I tend to miss messages here on UA-cam. For the future, I would recommend you ask questions in the BlenderMarket support messages, on the LC Discord or directly to be by email (daniel.v.jensen@gmail.com)
Hmm, did you try pressing "n" on the keyboard with the mouse hovering in the viewport? That should bring up the N-Panel where Launch Control is located.
If it's not there - could it then be that the installation failed?
If the issues is still there, please shoot me an email at "daniel.v.jensen@gmail.com" and I will try to help you with some screenshots and videos!!
Again, very sorry for the late reply :(
can you make a video of you making a scene from start to finish with the addon, lighting, compositing, tips and tricks, everything
Hello there!!
That's a really cool idea! Thank you for the suggestion.
The thing is that such a video would take a loooong time. Probably 3-4h - Would it make sense to do it as a stream, you think?
@@DanielVesterbaek yeah that could work, or you can split the video up into different parts so we don't have to sit through the entire lesson all at once
Maybe. Maybe you could start a car challenge! @@DanielVesterbaek
ok , how about car collision with other cars ? how can i add ramming other cars while driving alongside ? Cool tech btw.
Thanks a lot!!
Launch Control takes care of animating cars with physics, but not collision physics though :(
You could animate collisions manually if you wanted to, but otherwise, you can check out the "RBC add-on", which is good for stuff like that :)
Awesome tool, I just followed this video but didn't see anywhere how to control the actual speed of the vehicle. Am I missing something on these pre-made animations to control the speed or length of the animation? Thanks.
Hello Batt!!
Thank you for the question :)
Well, do you see the wheel floating above the car? - It is spinning when the car is moving.
Rotating this wheel makes the car drive, so this is where you wanna add keyframes to control the position of the car (and speed of the car).
Hope that makes sense :D
Looks great! How does this tool compare to RIGACAR?
Should quick smoke be working with lc?
Hmm, Like the "quick smoke" command in Blender? I don't think it will give you the result you are looking for, but technically yes. It should work if you use the car body as collistion
How do you simulate the smoke? Can you give a tutorial on that? It's so exciting, bro.
Hi!! Thanks for the comment!
Well, I am really not an expert in smoke sims as it's a very specialised thing. I would like to show in the future how I do it, but right now I am focussing on getting more Launch Control tutorials out there ^^
what if you want to increase the length of the track?
If you want to change the track - Which makes it longer, you just edit the Driving Path and when you are done hit "Update Driving Path" - This will make sure your animation stays the same and does not get stretched. You would probably need to change the "Speed_Rotate" animation as well to make the car continue driving for longer too
How to Rig 2 Deferent cars with launch Control addon ?
Hello!! Thanks for your question - In LC 1.5 it is possible to rig multiple cars :)
@@DanielVesterbaek thanks bro I'll try, Nice stuff on your channel bro ✨🔥
Can I install it on my work machine and home machine with 1 personal license just for personal use?
How do I stop the car?
Like in terms of emergency break?
What you can do is to animate the "speed_rotate" handle (the spinning wheel above the car) to have a quite abrupt flattening (open the graph editor in pose mode with the handle selected to see the animation curve of it.). A completely flat area of the animation curve will mean the car is still. The angle of the animation curve is the speed, so a more aggressive angle means a higher speed. Going from high speed (strong angle) to no speed (flat/0 angle) in a short amount of time, will give you the feeling of an emergency braking.
Danyll, I am from China, you said that the leap over London Bridge in the tutorial of 6 minutes 24 seconds where, please use, curve tools, add-on is how to operate, I have been unable to understand
I have problems with my tires after rigging with launch control. Befor rigging the tire movement is fine but after rigging they are wobbely and the rotation on the street is off. I tried everything and did it like the tutorial.:( Do you habe an idea?
Hey there!! Oh, sorry to hear that. Wheel wobble is often caused by the tire mesh not having evenly distributed geometry, causing LC to set the origin wrong. If you already have set the origins correctly so they are perfectly in the center of the wheels you can simply disable the "automatic pivot" inside the add-on settings. We have a few video guides on how to do these things in our discord server in the FAQ section - link should be in the video description - That is also a better place to ask support questions as we often miss messages here on UA-cam.
Let me know if you can get it working.
@@DanielVesterbaek Thanks you are right!
How to rig two or more cars in launch control please tell me in comment I will be greateful to you.
great add on, would be a very nice addition if there was a target ( empty for example ) for the car to follow, adjusting speed with curves is annoying .
Yeah! It's a good point!
We have a few ideas in mind of how we might improve the user experience when it comes to animating the speed.
Having a target might not be the way though as that would require the rig to be fully simulated, where LC is instead a spline based solution
@@DanielVesterbaek i also noticed that in a slightly tilted road, tires and body wont rotate or conform to that tilt normals, they are snapping to the ground only on the z access, i spent days trying to resolve the issue, i hope I’m missing somthing.
Awesome!!
Was waiting for quite some time to have a Car rigger that allows me to do proper jumps.
Question:
Can we work with multiple cars in 1 scene with this plugin?
Yes!! It can handle jumps which is something I always struggled to do before. The current version can only rig 1 car per file. Meaning the Add-On interface only connects with 1 car. But you can rig other cars in seperate instances of Blender and import them into your "main file". That's what I do for now. Doing a drop-down with all active cars in the scene is definitely a thing for the future and am planning how to do that soon!
hello Dear friend, I am using this version, when I want to use the physics section, the car turns to the side, thank you for your guidance.
can you make a car drift on your own custom path
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo OMG!
Thanks yooou!
where did u get the car from?
Where can I access the models?
Hello there!
Thanks for the question - If you buy Launch Control, you should be able to download a .zip file with the car models. The file is provided along with the downloadable versions of Launch Control. :)
Hi, what is the workflow if I want to use 2 rights in a single scene (like a police chace scenario)? If I try to add a second rig I can only delete first one.
How do you donyour snoke sims?
I either use the particle system I created or simulated it with Mantaflow in Blender :)
Super dope but the roll is in the wrong direction in your example animation with the porsche. It should roll in the other direction to look realistic not lean in the curve yk what I mean?
Thanks!! Heheh, yes! I also realized this after uploading the video. In the next update this will look more realistic so whenever the car drifts it adds body roll "away" from the center of the drift circle. Thanks for pointing that out.
Can the path be changed?
Yees! So you can always change the path by just editing it in Edit Mode. :)
Amazing tool! I wanted to animate a vehicle, but didn't know if blender made a tool for that until now. this is great, I'm going to be experimenting a lot with car animations. I have a question though, do you have any tutorials on how to model a vehicle and then rig it using the add-on? Thank you.
about the car roll looks like it rolls in the wrong side in the drift mod
Yees, you are absolutely right!
The Physics in this version was not taking care of body-roll during drifting well.
We are currently redoing the physics completely, so in the future, there will be a better solution for this :)
@DanielVesterbaek nice I did just got the addone and I see so many potential in this tool thank you so much for doing what you doing to help it develop
Sorry if it's not the right place but.
Can you show an example with a random car. Please.
I try with mine and it seems the wheels run with the body (it's weird to explain)
Thx
Hello!! No, no, I am happy you are asking in here.
The tutorial I am working on now is how to rig a "random" car. - Or any car. I will go over how to name and parent wheels and such. That should also make it possible to rig yours ^^
If you would like, feel free to shoot me an email at "daniel.v.jensen@gmail.com" and I will give you some help with it right away so you don't have to wait for the video.
Thanks a lot!!
HEY HOW TO CONTROL THE SPEED OF THE CAR?
Hello there!! 👋👋
Thank you for your question! Well, you can control the speed of the car using the "Spinning wheel" above the car. You need to select it and go into "Pose Mode" to be able to modify it. Then you can rotate it to change the offset (and in turn) the speed of the car. :)
丹尼尔，我来自中国，你说的那个飞跃伦敦桥教程中的 6分24秒 那里 请起用 曲线工具 附加组件是怎么操作的，我一直都看不懂
Help! why sliders are not selectible?
Hello WarpCloud!!
Oh, I am sorry I didn't get to respond earlier! I would recommend you to ask these sort of questions in the official Launch Control Discord or on BlenderMarket. Here on UA-cam, I very easily miss important questions :(
You can select and move the sliders when you select the rig armature (any of the sliders or handles) and then hit "CTRL+TAB" on your keyboard. That will get you into "Pose Mode" where you can transform and animate all the handles.
Thanks for pinging me about this!!
@Daniel Vesterbaek Already can't wait for the update. There are a few good car-rig-addons for blender out-dare. I'm actually part of the Beta-testing one (This one: ua-cam.com/video/k3lwotl0ox0/v-deo.html&ab_channel=akastudios). It can be driven with a gamepad and is simulation-based, which is awesome. But I prefer one that is spline-follow based.
This one is almost perfect: ua-cam.com/video/vSEb8j_C7es/v-deo.html&ab_channel=pictofilmo - But it uses 1 wheel model for al the wheels, and usually sports cars have a slightly bigger rear wheel.
The problem is that:
1- Simulation-based, give realistic movement but offer less overall control..say a super long drift over e long curved road.
2- Spline-based, makes it harder to animate jumps.
Yours is a perfect blend of both worlds.
Just need to be able to animate multiple cars in one scene...yeah I know I could bake it out. But being able to tweak all cars live in the same scene would be preferred.
Heeey! Thank you for the nice words - wow... Makes me so happy to read.
Rigicar indeed seems like an awesome tool too! A little different approach, but very very good. Your outline of the "problem" with the two different car rig directions is exactly what I tell everybody. Both methods can be super powerful, it depends on what you want to do. Personally I prefer having full control with a spline-based workflow since it makes iterations possible.
The biggest lack in LC right now is for sure having multiple cars being controlled by the add-on in one scene! It's the no. 1 priority to get added.
All this for just 50$ man 😍
this car model is free?
I can't find epic car model!
Oh, thanks for letting me know!
After buying Launch Control, you should be able to download a .zip file with the car models. The file is provided along with the downloadable versions of Launch Control on either GumRoad of BlenderMarket.
If you have other issues in the future, please feel free to write us on our Discord or on the BlenderMarket messages. Here on UA-cam I often miss the messages, so it sometimes takes long for me to reply :/
oh thanks i found it
i downloaded the fake one
@@BreezeCascade I appreciate your honesty. I won't be able to give support on a fake version and I would also not recommend using it. I wouldn't know what they included and did not include and if they altered the code in any way.
i search it my self
when i rig my car and animate it the wheels dont turn from the wheels origin they turn from like were the suspension is so the wheels turn into the archs if you get me... like if u was to try spin the wheel and its origin isnt in the center of the wheel it will rotate funny
Hello there!!
Thanks a lot for reaching out regarding this issue. - In the future, I would recommend to reach out through our Discord or BlenderMarket/email - Here on UA-cam I often sadly miss comments :(
BUT! To your question. Yes! Launch Control does not require the user to set the pivot point - it always resets it to a default, which should visually match the location of the Steering Knuckle. This can sometimes cause issues if the geometry of the tire mesh is not "100% circular" of the verts are not equally distributed.
In the upcoming version you will be able to disable this auto-pivot feature so it keeps whatever you set :)
For now, you can "trick it" if you want, by adding a simple mesh circle for each wheel and tag those as "wheel.FR, wheel.FL (and so on)". Parent your tire and rim mehses to the circle mesh and you are good to go. Before rigging you can just test that when you spin the circle mesh, the tire and rim spin correctly too.
I hope this can help getting you around the wobbly wheels. Otherwise let me know and I will be happy to record a video for you to explain or take a look at your file if possible. :)
All the best,
Daniel
您好，我购买了您的插件，并按照您发布的视频了解了使用此插件的原因。在我点击钻机车辆后，搅拌机退出了。
😭你能帮我解决吗
make it free please
What does this have over RBC?