Hello, this is my little droid I have been making, and right know I am trying to make the texture. Can anyone help me with making the texture? or possibly some tuts?
Oh, and another problem I have is the robotic arm, is it possible when using the array modifier to make more emptys to control different parts of the arm?
(edit) heres a picture with a normal lens:
(was the first render)
C&C appreciated
added some bolts
Maybe add some color
For the arm, instead of using the array modifier you may want to use dupli-frames on a 3D curve. This will give you much more control over the shape of the arm.
I’m working on textures, and color right now but I don’t really know how to go about it.
Lord of the rings junkie, can you please explain how to do that? it would help so much.
Update:
Here’s a simple tutorial:
A quick explanation of the four values you can change:
DupSta and DupEnd control what frames you see on the curve. The default path length of the curve is 100 frames, but you can change this by editing the path’s IPO. Be warned though, if you change the path IPO to take say, 200 frames, you must also change the path’s length to 200 in its edit buttons. This is so you can add more or less segments to your arm, depending on what you want.
DupOn says how many frames in a row you want showing. DupOff says how many frames you want to skip showing. Say you had DupOn set at 2, and DupOff set at 5. The curve would show two frames, hide the next five, then show two more frames, then hide the next five, and so on. I hope I made sense, anyway good luck!
Thanks, ill try that (right now im in school so).
In the edit buttons for the curve, right under the pathlen value click the CurveFoll button.
Thanks thats a lot better!
(edit) You can’t animate with it properly, any way to fix that?
I’ve never animated with curves before, someone else with more experience will have to answer that.:o (Although I’m pretty sure it can be done.) What do you mean you can’t animate it properly?
You could try using a few(say, 5) bones in the arm, set the last to IK, and have all of them be divided into like 5 segments(so they deform more fuidly) Instead of going with more complex animation rigs such as curves.
I liek this model, the renders have a toony look… cant quite place it…
Peace man
Drew
Yes you can animate the curve. Just parent each curve point to an empty, or use hooks, and move the empties around.
BlackBoe, what do you mean parent an empty to every point?
(edit) free_ality, whats IK?
Your already such a great modeler but you havent sed IKs yet…this somehow impresses me
-IK stands for inverse kinematics and its a way for controlling alot of bone movement acurately with one or two well planned out bones
Hooks and curves. It should solve your curve animation problem. http://www.blender.org/cms/Object_Hooks.391.0.html
EDIT: I should mention that that article was release with something like 2.3, so stuff has changes. Essentially it’s ctrl+h to add a hook, and the controls are in the modifier stack.
Thanks BlackBoe, it works awesome ill try to post a animation up soon but I have some school work first.
IK is inverse kinetics. Expoundage:
You have like 6 bones. They control the arm. FK(forward kinetics, the default) works like this: You move the top bone, and all beneath it move. You move the bone at the end, only it moves.
IK is the opposite. You can pull on the end bone, and it moves all of the others(all the way up to the top) which can be useful for a long robot arm.
Though, curves are obviously a good way to go(if you learn how to use them well)
I think i am going to make the arm with the bones, because there is another problem with the curve and animating… you can move the whole arm on the curve fine but, once you insert a key frame then the mesh don’t move at all. I think I should make a texture for my droid before animating it. Anyone good at making textures? I am horrible and need to learn (If anyone sends a tutorial then I would most like it to be for photoshop)