Direct Vehicles
Every Curve. Every Drift. Every Frame.

True Ride Rig is a C++ plugin for Unreal Engine 5.7 and 5.8 that lets you animate cinematic vehicle shots directly in Sequencer. It is built for artists creating automotive commercials, product films, cutscenes, and previs. You keyframe vehicle motion with complete creative freedom while the rig calculates believable spring suspension, real weight transfer, drift dynamics, and steering geometry underneath. Everything remains in Sequencer: 100% deterministic and repeatable across renders.

PRO includes the full cinematic vehicle and trailer rig: spring-damper suspension, weight transfer, Ackermann steering, drift with counter-steer, burnout, 21 movable parts slots, IES headlights, auto signal lights, tire tracks decals, per-wheel Niagara VFX data, MetaSounds telemetry feed, and live trailer simulation. 1 commercial seat.

STUDIO is built for production facilities: it includes 5 commercial seats, dedicated data asset caching for both car and trailer, priority support, and one-click export of baked geometry and animations to FBX, Alembic (ABC), USD, and USDZ for external pipelines like Houdini, Maya, or Blender.

Copy the TrueRideRig folder into your project Plugins/ directory, open Unreal Engine 5.7 or 5.8, enable the plugin if it is not already active, and restart the editor. Pre-compiled Win64 binaries are included: no compiler or Visual Studio setup required. Installation takes just a few seconds.

True Ride Rig v1.13 comes with dedicated, pre-compiled binaries for both Unreal Engine 5.7 and Unreal Engine 5.8 on 64-bit Windows. You receive separate packages optimized for each engine release.

Introduced in v1.13, True Ride Trailer is a dedicated cinematic trailer actor that hitches behind True Ride Actor. It supports single, double, or triple-axle layouts (2, 4, or 6 wheels), authentic hitch articulation, independent suspension heave and roll, keyframeable tailgate angles, cargo attachment slots, and automatic signal lights linked to the tow car. PRO handles live trailer simulation, while STUDIO adds dedicated trailer caching and multi-format export.

Three simple requirements: separate the wheels from the body (wheels as individual meshes, body as one mesh). Ensure wheel pivots are centered. Position the model at world origin (0,0,0) facing positive X. The plugin mirrors the right side to the left automatically, including tire treads.

Yes, any custom car model works. No bones. No constraints. No armatures. No pre-animated FBX. You bring standard static meshes (body plus four wheel meshes) and the plugin handles all hierarchy, steering angles, suspension offsets, and wheel rotations directly in Unreal.

Distance Traveled lets you keyframe exact distance along the spline in centimeters: perfect for commercials where the vehicle must hit specific storyboard marks at precise frames. Speed Based lets you keyframe target speed in km/h or mph: the plugin calculates distance over time automatically, ideal for lifestyle shots and natural road tempo. Switch between modes whenever your scene demands it.

Set VehicleWeightKg in the Body Physics category to the actual weight of your vehicle (1500 kg for an average car, 2200 kg for an SUV, 900 kg for a light sports car). The system automatically tunes spring stiffness, weight transfer forces, pitch, and roll inertia based on that weight. You can then fine-tune SuspensionStiffness and BodyTerrainSmoothing to match your creative direction.

Animate the Drift slider in the Driving Animation category (-90 to +90 degrees). Wheels turn into the slide, the body leans into the curve, and counter-steer kicks in automatically. Fine-tune the look with DriftCounterSteerMult and DriftBodyLeanMult. The system looks ahead along spline curves for authentic response, fully keyframeable and repeatable.

The headlight component accepts photometric IES light profiles or custom Texture2D projection patterns. Five bundled IES profiles ship with the plugin: Modern LED, Xenon HID, Halogen, Fog Light, and Punctual. Adjust intensity, color, cone angle, and radius with mirrored or independent control.

Movable parts cover anything that opens, tilts, slides, or rotates: doors, windows, hood, trunk, seats, backrests, and custom accessories across 21 dedicated slots. Each part features keyframeable 0-to-1 values, real-time viewport pivot gizmos, and parent-child cascading. The steering wheel synchronizes automatically with vehicle turning angles.

Yes. Any component you want to animate independently should be imported as a separate static mesh. Pivot points can be adjusted directly inside Unreal using the plugin viewport gizmos.

The plugin performs independent ray or sphere tracing per wheel every frame to detect elevation and surface type. A two-tier physics architecture decouples ground tracking from body momentum: wheels always touch the road while the body floats and leans naturally without clipping.

The plugin reads Unreal Physical Materials under each wheel (asphalt, dirt, grass, snow, gravel) and pushes that data to Niagara. A single Niagara system can branch into asphalt smoke, dirt dust, or snow roosts automatically, while also driving tire track textures.

Yes. The included AudioParameterComponent streams real-time vehicle telemetry straight to MetaSounds: RPM, EngineLoad, TireSlip, Speed, Brake, IsDrifting, and IsBurnout. Connect these parameters into your MetaSounds graph for reactive engine roars, gear shifts, and tire squeals.

The cache system guarantees 100% deterministic frame repeatability across render farms. In STUDIO, clicking Bake Cache writes all calculated physics, transforms, and tire track events into a standalone Vehicle Cache Data Asset (UVehicleCacheAsset) for both car and trailer. Enable bUseCache and Movie Render Queue plays back recorded values identically on any machine.

In STUDIO edition, pick your format, frame range, and export path. FBX exports animated transforms (ideal for Maya and 3ds Max). Alembic bakes geometry per frame (ideal for Houdini). USD and USDZ provide universal stage and AR interoperability. Material slot assignments are preserved.

Yes. Sequencer gives you live interactive scrubbing in the viewport, while Movie Render Queue handles final delivery. With STUDIO cache enabled, renders are completely identical across multiple render passes and distributed render farms.

Check three simple items: confirm wheel meshes are assigned in Import Setup, ensure Ground Trace length is sufficient for your vehicle height, and verify that your landscape or road geometry has collision enabled for raycasts.

One-time purchase via Epic Games FAB. PRO is $179, STUDIO is $549. You own the plugin permanently for the versions purchased, with free maintenance updates included. PRO includes a single-seat license, while STUDIO includes 5 seats for team workflows.