Exoskeleton

[DevIII]

Which effect? ;) You probably mean the machinery forming around the running dude!
I wouldn't use morphs for this. You might do some progressive morphs, but I would just build a direct linked system and hide/unhide things. The real trick is to make sure it is constrained to a master character rig.
I don't know any “special” tricks to doing these kinds of things. But, big VFX shots like this are really all about the planning. You might try to get similar results if you first model out the machinery unfolded, do it with lots of objects instead of single object modeling. Then start to adjust pivots and linking things together to build the folding behind the body or areas where it would be out of sight during the actual animation. Than test the constraints so you can animate the folding and the character separately (folding geometry follows the master character). Hide (visibility 0 not the hide command) all the folding geometry and start animating the character. Gets an active camera going to show where the folded geometry is hidden (for a sense of magic) and then move the camera and start animating the visibility back to 1 while translating the hidden geometry out, around the body. if you constrained correctly you can do any character animation while the machinery folds out around the character, but it’s a bit more realistic to have an idea of what the motion will be first and knowing the camera angles will also make life easier, so don't do any unnecessary work.

At least that’s how I would start to tackle the project.

[Wozner]

DevIII Thanks you a lot!!! Amazing answer!
But. I have next question. How to hide and unhide object in a max with ability to animate it? I found only adjusting opacity on material. But in that case with opacity i see through object and see what going on by the object. Please any suggestions?

[DevIII]

It’s funny that this simply feature has always been hidden in max.

If you right click an object, go to object properties dialog, there’s a spinner labeled visibility. And its animatable.
to-do visibility tracks I normal turn on auto key mode, set default keys to stepped (click and hold the button between set key and key filter on the bottom of the standard ui, select the 3rd from the top) go to the moment you want an objects visibility to change right click->object properties ->visibility spinner to 1 or zero click ok. This will provide instant visibility switch at that key. Materials would be best for controlled no uniform fading.

Why don't you play around for a bit? Don’t fear the standard help and show us at WIP animation forum when you got something going on. Try doing some simple test first.

[Wozner]

Thanks! I got that results i wanted! thanks!!!

[Wozner]

This is result. Not good but this is all iv`e daone for now

http://vimeo.com/1365071

[DevIII]

I think you got the idea down, but clearly this isn't the right geomitry todo it with. also think about the flow a bit more if you plan on doing it for real. you have parts flying through the body. and the parts could probably fold out in a more realistic maner.

[Wozner]

Absolutely agree with you DevIII. I made a mistake, i have 4 big parts of armor body, i need more details, and i don`t know how to adjust parts pivots to get better result. Every day i re-looking Transformers and analyzing frame by frame. Its so complicated to work with humans. Maybe you say something about pivots, how you see the transformation. Thanks

[DevIII]

Ok some quick tips on pivots. To change a pivot in max go to the hierarchy tab, under pivot, click affect pivot only, and then you can move it anywhere you want, the center to object button will place the pivot in the geometric center of the geometry. You can transform it with any tool you want. Click the affect pivot button again to turn off this mode.

Sometimes you want things to be capable of moving by their pivot and also move by something else. In which case you are going to want to make a dummy object (create tab->helpers->dummy) and link it, the link tool is on the top tool bar in the standard 3dstudio UI. If you need more specific movements you can also get into constraints.
So for your exoskeleton project I would probably just set up path constraints as I want things to move in a specific pattern. Start setting up spline paths to describe motion you need.

To setup a path constraint: select the objects you want on the path->animation drop down->constraints->path constrain->select the path. Then you will probably want to link those spline constraints to the character rig so it can all be animated.

Once you've done that, you will have notice some things. First the move tool now only moves the object along the spline. Secondly max automatically made two key frames one a 0% on frame 0 and a 100% at the end of the timeline. You can delete those. Than go to the motion tab (third from the right looks like wheel), with the object selected under the position properties will now see that the path constraint is listed on a spinner for percentage, which can be animated by the spinner or with the move tool. You might consider turn on follow (which adjust the rotation) and allow upside down, which will stop it from adjusting the object as twists. Banking is probably a bad idea for mechanical movements. There’s a lot more information on these settings in the help files.

[Wozner]

Here is the result of my work at this stage. I followed DevIII advices, and result satisfies me. thanks a lot DevIII. Can you say anything about this video, or mine errors. Thanks


http://www.sendspace.com/file/c5gil0

[DevIII]

Hey man I think your starting to get the idea down, but I would still suggest you do it with different objects. Go back and look at your example video does any part of that thing look like a pocket? You really need to get this down with something rigid that appears to be mechanical, even if that’s just altered boxes, which would be a really good way to start something like this. all right I think you good to go though (I don't think the rotating motion is working for you on long areas it might be ok around the shoulders try doing something like, rotate the shoulder pieces and then slide out the chest pieces from inside of that. once you got something blocking the line of site you can slide in larger chest pieces from the sides and they will appear to come out of the others.

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