using wheel colliders?

Wheel colliders aren't easy things to control, when making a bike or motor you'll have to do some tricks to make it stable (not falling) as the wheel collider is infinitely thin. Below I wrote a simple motor script (that doesn't solve the falling over problem, but set y of centerOfMass property to negative values does help).

Because the wheelcolliders shouldn't rotate with the wheels, you need to set up the motor as follows for the script, the motor has two wheel attach gameobjects (frontwheelattach and backwheelattach), you must add the wheelcolliders to these nodes (and attach these to the script properties front/backWheelCollider). The attach nodes must have the actual wheels attached, and these should be connected to the script front/backWheelTransform.

If you need a demo project to see how to setup the script I could make something quick for that as well, just let me know.

// Jaap Kreijkamp // Ctrl-J (http://ctrl-j.com.au/) // Demo motor script, do with it whatever you like...

 // see if we have contact with ground   
 if (collider.GetGroundHit(hit)) {
     // calculate the distance between current wheel position and hit point, correct
     // wheel position
     localPosition.y -= Vector3.Dot(wheelTransform.position - hit.point, transform.up) - collider.radius;
 }
 else {
     // no contact with ground, just extend wheel position with suspension distance
     localPosition = -Vector3.up * collider.suspensionDistance;
 }
 // actually update the position
 wheelTransform.localPosition = localPosition;

 // set power
 backWheelCollider.motorTorque = accel * motorPower;

 // set steering
 frontWheelCollider.steerAngle = steer;

 // calculate the rotation of the wheels
 frontWheelRotation = Mathf.Repeat(frontWheelRotation + deltaTime * frontWheelCollider.rpm * 360.0 / 60.0, 360.0);
 backWheelRotation = Mathf.Repeat(backWheelRotation + deltaTime * backWheelCollider.rpm * 360.0 / 60.0, 360.0);

 // set the rotation of the wheels
 frontWheelTransform.localRotation = Quaternion.Euler(frontWheelRotation, steer, 0.0);
 backWheelTransform.localRotation = Quaternion.Euler(backWheelRotation, 0, 0.0);

 // now some more difficult stuff: suspension, we have to manually move the wheels up and down
 // depending on the point of impact. As we have to do it twice (two wheels) we put it in a separate function
 UpdateWheelHeight(frontWheelTransform, frontWheelCollider);
 UpdateWheelHeight(backWheelTransform, backWheelCollider);

I fixed the problem by myself (I'm so proud now :D) the reason of the wheels sticking in the middle of the vehicle is that in our UpdateeWheelHeight function there is this last line of code to be replaced: wheelTransform.localPosition = localPosition; with this: wheelTransform.localPosition.y = localPosition.y;

it's just that we have to control JUST and ONLY y axis of our wheels, not all 3 of them. so when the vehicle was in the air the code was repositioning the object on all of the axis - moving the whole wheel to (0,-suspensionDistance,0) in local coordinates.

PS: I found another minor mistake here: localPosition = -Vector3.up collider.suspensionDistance; it would be a better idea to subtract a radius of wheel from suspension distance: localPosition = -Vector3.up (collider.suspensionDistance - collider.radius);

Kevin: GetGroundHit is intended to produce false when the colider is in the air. that's why we are using the if statement :).

I know its a old post but could you make a demo project that works. thanks.

hi, I used ur code but there is little bit problem with it that when bike jump from any objects that point it look little bit buggy. So i replace with this code it work fine with my car demo project but look litter bit buggy with bike my code is :::

void WheelPosition() { Vector3 _wheelPos; RaycastHit _hit; if(Physics.Raycast(_rWheelCollider.transform.position, - _rWheelCollider.transform.up, out _hit, _rWheelCollider.radius + _rWheelCollider.suspensionDistance)) { _wheelPos = _hit.point + _rWheelCollider.transform.up _rWheelCollider.radius; } else { _wheelPos = _rWheelCollider.transform.position - _rWheelCollider.transform.up _rWheelCollider.suspensionDistance; } _wheelRTrans.position = _wheelPos; if(Physics.Raycast(_fWheelCollider.transform.position, - _fWheelCollider.transform.up, out _hit, _fWheelCollider.radius + _fWheelCollider.suspensionDistance)) { _wheelPos = _hit.point + _fWheelCollider.transform.up _fWheelCollider.radius; } else {
_wheelPos = _fWheelCollider.transform.position - _fWheelCollider.transform.up _fWheelCollider.suspensionDistance; } _wheelFTrans.position = _wheelPos; }