Walking with the Robots:)..help

[dwkim]

It sounds like you're looking for an AI solution...I haven't checked it out, but you might want to check out Alias Wavefront's video on MELBots.

You can find some info on it at AW's website.

Either way it sounds like you are looking for the utopia of character rigging, which might be near impossible if you have to ask how to do it. :)

[kpalazov]

hi dwkim
thank you very much for the reply. This was my first assesment of the project but I decided to get a sesoncd opinion for the project by proffessionals such as your self.This is actually a piece of research I am doing for a friend. I think he will be dissapointed with this answer....ALthouhh I did here of a user who has done something with spiders here?

THanks for the info on the melbot wars I will pass that on to him.

thanks once again for your reply.

take care

Kiril

[webster]

Hi,

Maybe try on http://www.kolve.com the plugin called brainbugz.
Perhaps the developer, Karsten Kolve, could tell you more about it. I saw him frequently in the list,:wavey: .



http://www.kolve.com/mp_brainbugz/brainbugz.htm

[artifish]

hi. looks like you want to automate the animation process of the actual character that is moving as much as possible. much like a video game character, running around your environment and jumping if you want him to while correctly reacting to the environment. right? - brainbugz is only a behavioural animation plugin for particles, it won't help you much with that task.
neither will help you melbots, while they are fun and you can learn alot about rigid body dynamics with them, they are (in my opinion) not suitable for your task - to unpredictable, to computational intensive, to difficult to setup.

i can give you a quick overview on how i created the spider anim on my homepage, as the spiders are (apart from the motion path) completely procedural animated, not a single keyframe was used:
- created an interesting particle motion using brainbugz
- converted particle paths into nurbsCurves using a script also available on my site
- attached spiders to these motion paths that are driven by an expression based walking system that moves the feet and keeps the main body above the terrain

guess, this expression based walking system is what you are looking after - i can give a brief description of how it works:

spider legs are attached through joints to the main body, there is an ikHandle at every end of every leg.
the basic idea is that the walk cycle is driven by the translation of the spider on the path. say if the spider walked 4 cm on the path, one walk cycle is completed. used a arcLengthDimension node connected to the motionPaths uValue to get the current translation on the path. you can define normalized animation starting positions and animation durations for the individual legs (so they are not dependant on the actual length of the walkCycle translation on the path). each leg is moved by a simple hermite function (check out the mel command). the start and end points of the function are obtained this way: the start point ist the last world position the leg has, the end point is the point on the surface nearest to a user definable position relative to the main body. i move a test locator connected to a nearestPointOnSurface node to that position to get this position. the main body of the spider is constrained by a geometry constraint to the surface (moved the pivot under the body, so it is above the surface). a normal constraint aligns the body to the surface (exclude the angel that is driven by the motionPath). random functions give the body a little more natural motion.
i know, this maybe a little rough but may give you some ideas about how to achieve such automatic animation.

cheers, carsten

[kpalazov]

hi artifish,
My sincere thanks for your efforts . I was only recently able to read your post, so in the next couple of day I will do some testing . The information is indeed very helpful becuase it eliminates the lengthy and much harder aspect of abstracting the problem.

I must say a big thanks once again for you time and experties.

take care

Kiril

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