Launch Control // Auto car Rig

Animating Cars should be Fun!

Launch Control strives to make vehicle animation accessible by eliminating the typical problems traditional workflows have.

New Real-Time Physics

- and Multi-Car Madness

Launch Control 1.5 finally hit the streets with a revamped core that improves the experience for all LC users!

Simulate Jumps, Bumpy Roads, Loops and Spins with the new Physics Engine.
LC is now fully charged to hit the 'TrackMania Asphalt' or the rough 'Rally Trails' through the forest. Check out more details on the Documentation page. You can also join our Discord Server. Here you will get the latest infos.

Lazy Rigging

- one-click setup!

Using tags, LC detects the wheels, body, brakes and wheel covers of 4-wheeled vehicles and sets up everything. Helpful pop-ups will guide you through the tagging process if needed.
LC plays well with pipelines thanks to the "custom tag" options.

Animate like a BOSS

- with neat presets!

Jumps, drifts, donuts, off road, loops or all of the above?
The presets give you a head start no matter what you want your vehicle to do.

Make it your own!

Building on top of presets or creating your own path is easy.
Draw or add control points using inside a Bezier or Nurbs curve object to change the animation.
The “Update Driving Path” button will resolve any animation offsets.

Real-Time Physics

- Easy and Art Directable!

Take advantage of physics presets or dial in the exact response you are looking for.
Use simulated gravity or opt-out to be even more hands-on with the motion.

Fast iteration with PostFX!

Sometimes you just want more body roll, less bounciness and a tad more pitch. In that case, PostFX are your friend. No more guesswork - but full artistic control.

What The Artists say:

David Schäfer, CEO Mondlicht Studios

"This is the best rigging solution I have ever worked with.
It gives you full control over all aspects you want to be able to control,
which makes it an artist's and creative's dream for animating cars."

Sven Giera, Artist at Mondlicht Studios

"Launch Control is in my opinion one of the best tools for car animations I have ever used.
It has all features you need in a compact format and an easy-to-use interface,
giving artists full control over every aspect of their project."

And lots of extra Goodies!

Quick Export to Unreal Engine 5

- and other epic DCCs

With the quick export menu you can painlessly export to Unreal Engine 5, Nvidia Omniverse, Cinema 4D and more. LC takes care of the translation of the data so it reads correctly when imported.

Ackermann Steering Geometry

- you might not know it, but you need it in your life!

You probably tried other rigs where everything looks great... - until the car is going through a curve. How hard can it be to make a car turn in CG?! - Quite hard, I figured...

Until I discovered the Ackermann Steering Geometry. It's fully built into the core of the rig and saves you a bunch of fiddling with messed-up steering.

Automated Ground Detection

- optimizing detection on the fly

When you have built out your stage, drop all the objects that will affect the movement of the car into the "groundDetection" collection. High poly, low poly, messy - doesn't matter, just throw it in there.
A grid is wrapped over this collection, removing any unused areas to save performance. You can preview the grid and increase/decease the quality in the "Manual Gearbox".

Automatic Camber and Caster

- the small details that makes it all pop!

Maybe you have heard about camber and caster angles? Well, I hadn't...

But! Because of the advanced suspension geometry in cars today, wheels do not just turn around the Z-axis like most of us imagine. No, no, camber and caster tilts the rotation axis in 2 unique ways and even though the rig does not physically do this, it takes care of visually copying this behaviour for you. And with the UI slider above the car, you can control the amount of camber/caster to your liking.

Speed-o-meter

- helps you animate for realism

Photo-realism is often a pain to get right. And one of the things that often feels off in car animations is the speed. - So that's why LC has a speed-o-meter that shows you the speed of the car in real-time for you to ground your animation in reality (I mean, if you want - I don't judge if you want some TrackMania-type craziness.)

HDR Headlight Texture Presets 

- well.. They are headlights

6 included headlight presets can be applied to make your night renders look even more real. Both high and low beam spot lights are set-up in the rig and will be automatically rigged if headlights are detected in the car mesh.


Jump generator

- with projectile Physics!

It turns out that it's quite difficult to make a car jump look real - So I thought... Why not simulate it with projective physics? And well.. See result above.