tire idea

[zimluura]

so, for a while now i've had this idea for a general purpose tire model. one that could be used on all cars and modified in code. to fit the bill for any tire from a tricycle to a monster-truck.

been working on a little concept model for it.
http://picasaweb.google.com/zimluura/VDr...6677463890

so this one is 448 faces. 32 segments around and 7 segments inside to out. the walls of it are unwrapped so the texture can be written on with regular straight-line text and the skin mapping handles all the text-warping.

as for geometric deformations. ideally it'll look sorta strange in blender. basically i'd have each ring be a set distance from the hub (ring 1 is 1 unit, ring 2 is 2 units, etc.). and have each ring's in/out set at 1 or negative 1. then when the game loads the tire model for the first time it could calculate distances from the center. and then cache a little list to for which vertex numbers belong to what ring.

after all of that you have a tire that should be easily deformed (scaled and translated) with parameters in code. couple that with a custom texture (which is easy to make with the skin mapping how it is. and you should be able to get nearly any tire.