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StoneBird
01-28-2010, 08:14 AM
When it comes to setup a mechanical robot(i.e gundam, oom-9), what method do you prefer to control its motion? Bones? Hierarchy layer + expressions? Plugins? Or some others?

I'm pretty confused. When I try to use bones, they just stretch the model. And its body parts, ankles for example, move like organics, not hard metal.


And when I try to use hierarchy layers, I find it's complicated to put every part into different layers. And, in Layout I'll have too many objects in response to every layer I create in Modeller. I can't help thinking what if I have a much more complex model, I might get killed by setting hierarchy and pivot points.

That's it, I can't figure out a better solution during my test. Maybe I just focus on these two(bones and hierarachy) too much? have no idea about that though...

Anyone?

Thank you very much!

edit: Thank you guys, setting different weight map really helps!
softdistortion
01-28-2010, 02:34 PM
If bones are stretching your parts on a whole then you probably are missing the step of adding separate weight maps for each part and assigning the bone to only that part.

Set your bones to the pivot point of the part, then select the parts the bone should move and apply a 100% weight map to them. Set your bone hierarchy and you are good to go. Also I like this method because you can set up some IK on a bunch of legs and moving them all with a null...that makes things nice for multiped robots doing jumps or etc...

The mech on our homepage at shirowproject.com was setup this way and it also was used to animate in MotionBuilder which can make use of the LW bones setup method.

I prefer doing it this way for exactly the reason you mention...I like having one layer for the mesh.
StoneBird
01-29-2010, 10:58 AM
If bones are stretching your parts on a whole then you probably are missing the step of adding separate weight maps for each part and assigning the bone to only that part.

Set your bones to the pivot point of the part, then select the parts the bone should move and apply a 100% weight map to them. Set your bone hierarchy and you are good to go. Also I like this method because you can set up some IK on a bunch of legs and moving them all with a null...that makes things nice for multiped robots doing jumps or etc...

The mech on our homepage at shirowproject.com was setup this way and it also was used to animate in MotionBuilder which can make use of the LW bones setup method.

I prefer doing it this way for exactly the reason you mention...I like having one layer for the mesh.

Thank you a ton buddy! I'll try that asap
erikals
01-29-2010, 02:17 PM
robotic movements, video links

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97659
marchermann
01-30-2010, 02:17 PM
I actually animated the robots in this video (http://www.tricklabor.com/en/portfolio/kawasaki-industrial-robots/) using Sock Monkey of all things with a bunch of hierarchical nulls and weight maps. Pretty much the same as using bones but I could give the nulls a custom appearance and did not see the need for bones.

Nowadays Sock Monkey seems to be broken and I'd use a bone setup as described above.

Marc
VirtualFM
02-11-2010, 03:30 AM
Hey marcboy!

Great stuff on your home page! Congrats!

PS: Sock Monkey? Really?! You are "tha man"!
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