Rigging high poly/detail robot

[BackLash122]

Hey all... I'm with Destroy then Seek and we're both making robots to put into a video. I've finished my actual modeling stage... and i'm ready to start animating... the problem is i have no clue how to rig this badboy... cylenders, joints and wires... help!

[BackLash122]

Btw, i'm using 3ds max 6...

[Piescinski]

Hey, you ask me how rigid model to the bip in Character Studio.

the problem is i have no clue how to rig this badboy... cylenders, joints and wires...

You made basic mistake - firstly you did model, and now you thinking "how to animate this...". Wrong! You should think about this before modeling - think over joints, consider all poses of character animation etc.
Look at my model (B.O.O.T 2). Maby the joints of hips looks weird but you can manipulate legs in 3 dimentions, even twist it. You can load any animation of human body as bip file to his skeleton and all joints works correctly. Is this will be possible in your model ? Can I animate a side kick or move his arm up? Thats the point.
.
Whatever, if you want to animate your robot using Bip from Character Studio its really simple but on condition that you designed correctly all knuckles. Most of job is in modelling :-) In robots (for exemple in my model) all body parts are separated objects. Upper arm, forearm, hand etc. The joints (I mean knuckles) must works "mechanical", if you know what I mean In this case what you need to do is build a Bip skeleton (its really simple, check the tutorials for Character Studio by Discreet) and just link (yep, use just "Link" tool ) each part to its bone.
That's all! :-)
But remember, in this technic (I mean each part as separate objects) most importing thing is modelling, especially joints (knuckles). You need think about a future animation.

[BackLash122]

aye. he is made of different parts. i also have a problem connecting the cylenders. that and he has 2 hip joints. and 2 shoulder joints. does CS allow that?

thanks.

[Piescinski]

I dont understand what you exactly mean ... what "cylenders" ?

"that and he has 2 hip joints. and 2 shoulder joints. does CS allow that"

Hmmm ... Two hip's joints ? You can use one bone of hip and the lower bone of spine, like I did. But I'm not sure that this robot will be available to animate by Character Studio. This is not human construction, especially legs.
Create a simple Bip skeleton and check is this compatible with your robot.

[BackLash122]

thank you so much Piescinski, i'll try to animate this one... and if it won't work i'll make a new one (this time with planning) then use what i learned and try to animate this one again.

thank you a ton.

[JanJaap]

http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tutorials/...licpistons.asp

This tutorial is very handy on the subject of rigging pistons.

I don't know wether this will work together with the biped but some else might.

I do know that max 6 might have the sliding joints mentioned in the tutorial and this is the way to get them:

http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/s...ghlight=piston

that's all,

Jan-Jaap

[Freespace-3DT]

The leg style can be animated with biped, all you do is tweak the structure of the bones a little... First of all, add another Leg Link, so that you have 4.
Here's something from an older project, similar to what you would need. The character in the image is actually the biped bones for a mech mesh I made last year.

[Piescinski]

The leg style can be animated with biped,

Indeed

[Freespace-3DT]

Isn't it great when things just turn out right? I hope you can put this to use, Backlash122... master of all rookies

[BackLash122]

hahaha, yes, indeed...

well, i'll work on it... i'm still stuck on the hips and shoulders... cuz the hips have horizontal joints connected to a midpiece that has a vertical joint that is connected to the upper leg. same thing in the arms....