Documentation

Vehicle Physics Pro

Vehicle Physics Pro turns a car model into a vehicle you drive with the keyboard right in Blender's 3D Viewport, and that dents, crumples and loses parts when it crashes. Everything runs inside Blender: no game engine, no export, no external program. Your original model is never changed: the simulation works on temporary copies, and Esc puts the scene back exactly as it was.

Version 0.4.3 · Blender 4.2 or newer · tested on 4.5 LTS and 5.2 LTS · pure Python, no compiled code · tested on Windows

InstallationDrive in 30 secondsVehicle LibraryControlsCameras and HUDRecording and renderingYour own carsCollidersPhysics settingsPerformanceStop and resetTroubleshootingLimitationsWhat's new

Installation

Vehicle Physics Pro is a Blender extension. It uses only what ships with Blender (Python, numpy, mathutils, bmesh, gpu, blf): no internet access, no extra packages.

1. Download vehicle_physics_pro-0.4.3.zip. Do not unzip it.
2. In Blender open Edit › Preferences › Get Extensions.
3. Click the drop-down arrow (˅) in the top right corner, choose Install from Disk… and select the zip. Dragging the zip into the Blender window works too.
4. Vehicle Physics Pro appears in the list and is enabled.
5. In the 3D Viewport press N to open the sidebar and click the Vehicle Physics Pro tab.

Drive in 30 seconds

Three ways to start. Move the mouse over the 3D Viewport before you click Start Simulation, drive with W A S D, and press Esc to stop.

The crash arena is a floating asphalt slab with a marked test lane, a hatched crash zone before a concrete wall, hazard-striped pillars and a pole, ramps, a one-side kicker ramp for rollovers, a 3 t ball and a row of blocks to push, a bump field, light bars and soft studio lights.

Vehicle Library

Sixteen vehicles are set up and ready to drive. All were made from CC0 (public domain) models and come at real-world size.

The vehicle is added at the 3D cursor with its front toward −Y. Auto Setup runs on its own and the matching physics preset (mass, engine, brakes, suspension) is applied. It is a normal object in your scene: move it, recolor it, change its settings and save the file. Model authors and sources are listed under each vehicle in the panel and in presets/vehicles/CREDITS.txt.

Controls

• Keys work while the Blender window has focus and the mouse is over it. W brakes while reversing; steering centers when released.
• Shortcuts that would change your data while driving (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+S, X, Delete, Tab…) are blocked. Left click only opens and closes parts; it does not select objects.
• Some keyboards cannot register three or four letter keys at once (for example W + A + Space). If that happens, use the arrow keys.

Driving assists

Assisted mode is the default. Set Driving Assists to Realistic in the Vehicle Setup panel to turn them all off.

Cameras and HUD

Press C to switch cameras. When you stop, the view returns to where it was before the drive.

HUD and Live Stats. The heads-up display at the bottom left shows speed, gear, RPM, throttle, brake and steering, camera mode, frame rate, physics time per frame, real-time factor (1.00 = real time; below that the simulation runs in slow motion), node and beam counts, deformed and broken beams, absorbed energy in kJ, the largest deformation, per-wheel contact, suspension travel, tire pressure and load, and the state of every part. Live Stats in the sidebar shows the same. Camera Distance and Camera Height are set for a 4.5 m car.

Recording and rendering

A recording is ordinary Blender animation, so it renders with EEVEE or Cycles like anything else.

1. While driving, press V (or click Record in the sidebar). A red ● REC appears in the HUD.
2. Drive. Press V again to stop and save, up to 90 s. Stopping the simulation while recording also saves.
3. The drive is saved in the Vehicle Physics Pro Replay collection: keyframes for every part, shape keys for the dents.
4. The view you saw is saved as a real camera, Vehicle Physics Pro Replay Camera, with its focal length, and becomes the scene camera. Render › Render Animation renders the drive exactly as you saw it.

Your own cars

Select the car's body (or any part of the car) and click Auto Setup Car in the Auto Setup panel. Vehicle Physics Pro finds the body, wheels, tires, doors, hood, trunk, bumpers, glass, lights and mirrors, works out the front, the wheel centers and the suspension, builds the physics cage and applies a physics preset. The result is listed under Detected Parts with a confidence for each object. Then click Start Simulation.

Manual setup

Changes take effect at the next Start.

Colliders

Ground Plane is an endless flat ground at Ground Height (on by default). With Scene Collides (on by default) every visible mesh that is not part of the car is a collider, so you do not need to mark anything. Objects the car starts inside, parts of the car that are not in the setup, and the original of a drivable copy are left out automatically.

To choose a type yourself, select objects and click Mark Selected:

Friction is set per object (1 = dry asphalt).

Physics settings

Every vehicle starts from a preset. These are the settings worth knowing.

Optional damage (off by default)

Performance

Fast Driving (on by default): while nothing touches the car, the body moves as one rigid piece and only the suspension and tires are solved. Where something touches it (that door, hood or bumper and 60 cm around it) the body switches to the soft-body solve and dents; a hard crash above 6 g softens the whole car. About 1–2 s later it is rigid again. The HUD's Body line shows rigid, partly soft or soft.

Stop, reset and your original model

Opening or saving a file, undo, or disabling the add-on while driving stops the simulation safely. If a Blender crash leaves temporary objects in the file, a Clean Up Leftovers button appears.

Troubleshooting

Limitations

• A node-and-beam soft-body model in the spirit of BeamNG, written in Python for Blender; it is not BeamNG. Tires use a pressure model, not deformable node-beam tires.
• One car is driven at a time; recorded replays of several cars can be played together.
• Parts collide with the body, but the body does not collide with itself. Dents follow the cage cells (no fine creases).
• Nodes, beams (points at most 18 cm apart along them) and tire cylinders touch the world, so posts and poles cannot slip into the car; rods thinner than about 15 cm still can, and Dynamic objects meet the nodes only.
• Glass and lights shatter into pieces that do not hit the car.
• Trucks with more than three axle positions are not supported yet.

What's new