Ah thanks great idea about the shadows! I hadn't given one minute though about lighting until you mentioned it actually.
I've completed a few more items including fully rigging the dump rams, steering wheel, and started on the window wiper. I have also started experimenting with conveyor belts, just need to work on angled belts that can raise or lower material instead of just translate it sideways.
Keep in mind the original model has no animation or separated parts to start with. I used blender to chop up the model into the wheels, the main vehicle, the dump bed, the hydraulic ram "bodies" attached to the left and right of the vehicle, and the "eyelets" that attach to the dumper.
The dump bed has 9 boxes that make up the collision shape. I have very tightly tuned the shapes and positions for very realistic collisions with all parts of the dump bed.
The model has no actual "ram" part however (the metal rod that extends) so I had to manually rig "fake" ones by simply placing a non-physics object in the right spot and adjusting to the right length and angle.
The steering wheel is also manually rigged (the rotation of the object is based on the difference in angle between the wheel and the vehicle body), so the wheel turns based on the real wheel position, at realistic ratio.
The window wiper still needs work! It's a double hinged setup in real life that may be more work than it's worth to replicate with physics. So far I am manually sweeping it back and forth. Gear shift is still fixed in place but I will make it swing back and forth for forward and reverse.
Collision shapes for rocks changed to convex hulls - much tighter stacking and more realistic collisions now, although you can see at the end of the video I need to tweak their friction down a little!
Many camera modes added including "dump-cam" mounted on the dumper! Num pad 0-9 changes cameras.
Dump rams:
Dump bed collision:
Camera modes & Conveyors
