Well this is an animation that I made in order to learn compositing. When I was done, sketchy took it away from me and made it look pretty. It was pretty boring before. I liked it before, but sketchy would have none of that. He said it needed to be pretty, and to heck with my minimalism. So he took it away. Just like that. Then he gave it back to me looking pretty almost a month ago and has been bugging me ever since to post it here. So here, in all it’s pretty glory, is actionbot!
So I did the modeling of the robot, and the animation. sketchy modelled the boxes and added all the lights and textures and pretty stuff. Neither of us did the music. That was someone else. This is the beginning of a long line of great, soon-to-be-famous, sketchy-LGM – I mean, LGM-sketchy – team efforts!
Mrdodobird. Well the feeling is indeed mutual then, because I am constantly in a state of agitated excitement over the possibility of more artwork being produced by your esteemed self. I’m glad you liked it and are hyped. That’s inspiring.
A set up of the rig? Okay, I’ve been asked about my rigs before. They’re very simple. No magic at all except in the awesome “Ludwig foot-roll solution” which I think was shown at a blender conference under a different name. I’m giving you the rig I used for the robot (with some minor adjustments . . . I took out the bones that controlled all his extraneous equipment for simplicity’s sake). Anyway, I always use the same basic rig. Unfortunately, since this rig was made for me and my way of animating, it might not be perfectly obvious to everyone.
Only the bones you need to access during animation are on the first armature layer. The other, purely “work” bones are on armature layer two.
The arms are by default set to Foward Kinematics (FK)
You have to select armlow and set the IK influence slider up to 1 to get Inverse Kinematics (IK) on the arms. I only use this option (IK) when the robot actually touches something with his “hand/arm.”
The pelvis by default is free of the root bone.
You have to select the pelvis and set the copy location and copy rotation influence sliders up to 1. The only time I use this option is when I want the robot to fly through the air doing flips or something where he’s not touching anything (not even the floor). That way I can just move one bone and the whole armature comes along. Also, the root bone is positioned so that if you rotate it, the robot rotates around the proper point for a flip.
This “robot” rig has no toes or fingers.
I’m glad everyone likes it. I was hesitant about posting it, but sketchy said I had to, and now I’m glad I did.
Sorry for the bump, but since I worked on this I figured I ought to say something ;). This was a fun scene to do the lighting for. LGM’s animation was pretty sweet. I’m looking forward to future collaboration with him, once I get Alchemy done (yes, I’m still working on it, even though I haven’t posted on the WIP thread in over a year).
Awesome! The motion is very fluid and I loved the slow motion jump, the landing and the part where those tools end up on his back at the end of the landing.
Actually, I think the original reason for jumping across the blocks was that he thought there was an answer to the universe and the ideal location for a house on the top. When he got there and it was just the top of the boxes, he got angry and jumped off trying to commit suicide, but failed due to an in-built anti-distruction device. Pretty gnarly.
But he wouldn’t admit to all that.
Glad you all liked it so much! Thanks for taking the time to watch and say something.
