The Tiger Tank
A project focused on the challenge of recreating a german WW2-era heavy tank, the Panzerkampfwagen VI "Tiger" in UE4, with custom models, textures, physics and logic.
Projects
First off, a quick note on projects. Projects will be a special kind of post that references all other posts tagged with that specific project. So when new posts are added to this project, they will be shown down below.
The Tiger
Because this project is still ongoing, this first post will be quite brief and primarily just an introduction to the initial goals and current state of the Tiger project. Other posts will come along discussing specific topics on a per post basis.
This project goes way back to a time many years ago when I knew even less about the inner workings of realtime technology, when suddenly one day I figured I could make a tank in UE4.13, because they’re pretty simple vehicles. However, that was not the case at all, and the devestating defeat sparked an interest in realtime physics programming that I haven’t been able to shake.
The result of my few initial attempts showing how completely unprepared I was for the challenge at hand. Yes that is just a bunch of cylinders with motors on them.
I went through a couple of iterations and realized eventually that this was going to take some proper research. A lot of papers have been written on the physics of realtime wheeled vehicles, but such papers are not so readily available for tracked vehicles. I also managed to squeeze through the Norwegian school system with as little math and physics possible, so I knew I would have a lot to read up on.
I’ll be sharing the sources I used in my research for each post where I find them relevant.
The current state
In the Tigers current state, most of the visual aspects are close to finished, and the bulk of the remaining work is related to further improving the physics, tracks and engine / drive train internals.
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Asset pipeline 90%
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Model 90%
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Texture 80%
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In Engine Rig 90%
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Sound 0%
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Engine logic 60%
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Physics logic 70%
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Track logic 50%
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Ballistics logic 0%
Some specific goals for the project
- Simulated track links
- Proper internal engine simulation with power and torque
- Proper track to ground friction simulation
Most of this is already work in progress, just either not feature complete or just not working correctly at the moment.
Modeling is mostly done in Maya, with texturing done in Substance Painter and I use Houdini as my main asset hub. A lot of the functional code is also done in blueprint at the moment, and I plan to move as much of that over to C++ over time. I hope to be sharing milestone improvements here on the site, as well as writing up a couple posts about the work already done in the next few weeks.
One of the latest iterations of the tank logic from early last summer, before the visual update seen in the main post image.