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Im making a car animation in blender, and animating it around turns by hand is a real pain. I am wondering if there is a way to make it automatically point in the direction that it is moving?

For example: If I made it turn a corner, then it's front would rotate to continue pointing forward relative to the motion of the car.

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You could try using the Follow Path constraint.

  1. Add a path (ShiftA> Curve > Path)

  2. Select the object you wish to animate along the path and add a Follow Path constraint. Select the curve path as the target:

    enter image description here

  3. You can quickly setup the path animation by pressing Animate Path

  4. Enable Follow Curve to make the object face the direction it is moving in:

    enter image description here

For more precise animation of the speed along the path, keyframe the Evaluation time in Curve > Path Animation:

enter image description here

Note that if you have animated the path by pressing Animate Path, you will have to remove the generated F-modifier in the Graph Editor to be able to keyframe it.

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I'd use simple BezierCurve as a path with Follow Path constraint (with Follow Curve turned on). Then use Offset value to control position along the path.

Follow Path constraint with Follow Curve ticked

Also if you'd like to make it look like a high speed cornering with a little drift, you might use an Empty as a target for your car, with a little different Offset (car would rotate just a little bit before the turn) and Track To constraint targeted to the empty leading the way.

enter image description here

Not an ideal solution, neither physically accurate but might give some ideas how to start off maybe.

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