Robot drone, help wanted

[wintzell]

Hi, I'm quite new at 3ds max and I need some help.

I've started to make a little robot and realized that it would be cool to be able to animate it. I have some very basic knowledge of bones but I was wondering if there's any function you could use to make "mechanic" bones. And by mechanic I mean like cylinders and stuff..

And anyone who has an idea of what to do with the "arms" ? Claws or some silly weapon?

[wintzell]

Maybe sould be under "Animation" or "Help".. well tell me then

[Sande®]

Nice robot you made there!
I'm afraid i haven't enough knowlege to answer you question about animating cilinders (i'm a student myself..)
But I had a suggestion for some kind of hands: you could make some kind of grabclaw for the hands..that's in the style of the whole robot.

succes with animating!!

Greetings Sander

[ThinkTank]

Well from what I can see you dont have much modeled work there (most of them are very well put together primatvies, so that means you dont have to make bones, I'd probably just animat them by using the move/scale and rotate tool for primatives...looks good tho ;)

[Moxley]

Hi, robots looking good. With the animating part we did sorta the same thing at school and used a FK chain so u can move them together or indiviually and it will affect the objects below it. Its time comsuming but it does give a pretty good result for a mechanical animation, basically its what the other guys said using the move, rotation tools:D but just link the objects together.

[wintzell]

Thanks for the answers.

Is there a tut on the FK chain so I can be shure I do it right the first time I use it?

Sande®: Should I do some sort of claw with 3 parts almost like the "foot"? Or a claw with just 2 parts?

[Chokin Hazard™]

just link the objects together then rotate them to make it move

[Sande®]

I think that if you would make the "claw" the same way you did make the "feet" it would get confusing..'cause you don't have a head or anything like that (yet). It would be a question if he robot is walking on his hands or it's feet :roll:
So If I was you I would think of another way to moddel a claw that can be used as an "hand"

I'm sure you'll find a way..;)

Greetings,
Sander

[Trappist Funk]

You could always attach or group parts together, so that you have one 'upper leg' section, one 'lower leg' section, and so on. Then you make sure that the pivot point of each group is at the correct point.

For example, if you have a long cylinder for the thigh, then another at the top (but at 90 degrees to it) for the hip, and have them grouped together, you need to ensure that the pivot point of this 'upper leg' is in the right place for it to rotate smoothly.

Next, link the sections together, so that you have a nice heirachical chain. Foot to lower leg, lower leg to upper leg, upper leg to body. It might actually be more complex than this (ie; foot to ankle to lower leg to knee to upper leg to body, but it shouldn't matter). Select the upper leg and then click on 'HI Solver' in the animation menu. Select the foot (I think) and you should get a blue cross at the ankle. If not, undo and keep changing the second thing you click on until the cross appears in the right place. Pulling this cross around will move the leg.

You also need to give it something to look at, so create a rectangle near the knee and select the solver cross. There's something in the sidebar that you click on then select the rectangle so that the solver triangle (you'll know what I mean when you see it) always points at it (allowing you to control leg rotation). I forget exactly what it's called.

Anyway, all of this is explained in the character rigging tutorial. You could always use the help file to learn about rigging with normal bones. Animating chains of objects is exactly the same principle.

[wintzell]

Thanks for all the answers

Sande®: I'm gonna find out something for the claws. Thanks for the opinions. And I will add some microcameras too.. Feels geeky and wonderful.

Trappist Funk: Thanks for the tut you made here for me =). I'll try to follow it and we'll see what will happend next. It will take some time though. But sometime I'll have an animation...

[Trappist Funk]

Once you know how to do it all it's actually very easy - setting up the heirarchy is obvious and then to get the Solver working you only need to make a couple of clicks!

Good luck!

[day-glow]

instead of hands you can give him a broom and dustpan, or a giant tv camera, or a ping pong paddle. just tossin out ideas.

[Sinbad]

Nice one i thought you said you were new to max.. :) :) :) :)

Looking good so far..

Canwe have some more updates,
low poly clay etc. so we can see your hard work. ;)

Happy Modelin

And thanks for the Visit New updates HERE (http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22128&perpage=15&pagenumber=5)

Sinbad

[inspired]

nice model. love the 'feet'. cant really help u on the animation tho, my knowledge on animation is almost nihil :P but nice one!

[wintzell]

I updated the model a few days ago.. a 20 min update..

And made the faces to 1/3 of what it was before.

Added some small cameras..

Not with the wonderful skylight.. had no time for that.. it take like 20 min to render or so =)..

[wintzell]

The wire.. not so interesting in this case, it's basicly basic primitives... Some part are still way to complex than they need to be..

[Sinbad]

Hi wintzell
I have read some of your previous posts, am I right in thinking you will want to animate at some stage?

If so just a small crit..

If you take a look at some of the androids in star wars and other Sci Fi movies..
the arms and legs or indeed anything that is required to have motion, will need some sort of mechanical leverage to be believable ..wires/electric motors push pull rods etc...
You have all the hinge and pivot points but no mechanics to move them..

This is just a thought..

Sinbad

[wintzell]

Sinbad

I started with the idea to make the cylinders that would move the claw-parts. But later on I found out that it would be to much work to make all the parts moving realistic since I have so much other thins to do! It's to bad actually.. but thanks again for the crit =)

[day-glow]

the pistons are not necessary. internal servos!

[Mr. Bluesummers-3DT]

A slick and adorable model. I Tried using heirarchies in my bots, and it turned out alright- just make sure to keep track of what's going where. If you get confused, unlink and start over, or your geometry (and you) will go insane.

One problem I ran into, that you might hit also, is this: When you rotate or move a joint (that subsequently moves the stuff underneith it [Elbow to forearm, fingers, and so on]), sometimes the geometry will go askew. Something will shift and everything will get slanted and hideous. It's because the pivot point of the HIGHEST AFFECTED OBJECT has a major discrepancy between it's center of volume and center of pivot (or so I gather). What you must do is unlink that object from everything, reset it's pivot location and orientation using center to object, and re link it up again.

This is of course within reason. If you reset the pivot point of an elbow joint, for instance, while it is in pose, it will may never bend on the correct axis again because it will now be reset to a new orientation.

But I digress- you may not even encounter this problem. But if you do, what I've typed here will be gold.

Good luck to you, I like your model. = )

--BlueSummers