Vehicle - terrain collision design

Questions & Answers
1

I am starting to play with vehicle design. I want to have vehicles that characters can get into and then operate (not a vehicle-only situation like the car tutorial). I am starting with a simple rowboat (it is not using gravity, but has a rigidbody to apply throttle and steering).

Because mesh colliders do not collide, the vehicle does not collide with the terrain and moves right through slopes. I cannot make the mesh collider on the vehicle convex, because then the vehicle would be “solid” and my character cannot get into it.

So I am wondering if this is a level design problem (e.g. I need to design my scenes so there are always simple colliders wherever a vehicle may collide with the terrain) or a vehicle design problem (e.g. I need to add a bunch of simple collider “bumpers” around the vehicle)? How have others solved this problem?

2

Sorry, didn’t intend to answer my own question, but after further consideration, I realize other vehicle design issues will decide this one. Once I create better-quality vehicle assets, I won’t be able to use a mesh collider for performance reasons, so I will need to add primitive colliders to allow the characters to interact with the vehicle. Those colliders will also provide collision with the terrain.