Mech 1 (first rig animation)

this is my first attempt at animating a rig, thanks to revolt_randy for the rigging. I’ve been studying it quite a bit and have actually started doing some simple rigging now. this is still a wip of course but I thought since it’s my first rig animation I’d post.

more to come on this thread of this animation.

*looks less choppy when veiwed straight from youtube.

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yeah i agree with the head movement, I’m gonna run particles for weapons fire so I’ll have to redo the animation anyways. I think the antennas moving a bit will look pretty cool as well.

something that moved that slowly on the battlefield would be a sitting duck. It comes to a complete stop with each step. Think of the Mech’s use in battle: is it a one man machine designed for a quick, mobile attack? Or is it a stealthy night fighter that sneaks up on the enemy? By thinking of the character of your model, you will get a better idea of how it should move.

Good luck, you are off to a really good start!

Thanks for the input. gotta say though, with my being in field artillery during my stint in the army, the cannons were slow but when I pointed that 8 inch barrel and shot that 200lb projectile everything moved, whether they planned to or not LOL!!

LOL! Point taken!!

for what it’s worth I think that if I would have given some reference to it’s size somewhere in the clip you would see that it’s a larger mech.

Haha! I bet they moved, alright!
I think it’s a great start. The movement is very clean.
I wanted to ask you about the projectile fire (which I think is a good choice. You might want to put particles, but I’d keep those two rounds in there too. Nothing wrong with them.)
How did you do that? Did you just keyframe them, just be here on this frame, then be way over here on this one?
Or did you do something more extreme, like physics engine?
I like how they seem to carry the movement of the head. That’s very real. The second actually has some curve on it! :slight_smile: Are they parented to the head?
Btw, I love the shape of the head. I looks like you got that at the Starfleet Army/Navy store, a converted work pod from Star Trek: The Motion Picture!
Good stuff.

Remember the weight of the mech. This machine probably weighs nearly a ton and when animating keep in mind this weight as it steps and distribute the weight from leg to leg. You’ll see the change in pressure to each side. Take a video of yourself walking and attempt to imitate the weight and basic movement. Use the video as a reference. And I agree with adding more secondary motion.

Youtube is also an excellent resource for references:


Another good secondary motion would be the subtle jarring of the camera during steps, but that would be up to personal preference.

I need to change the set up on it a bit to do that it seems, as for the camera motion goes, the mech isn’t the only thing that is going to be in the scene, I was saving camera jitters for explosions. but I will try a version with it as well. I still have a lot to do with it.

Thanks for all the comments guys.

I just parented the projo’s with the head, I have been thinking for the larger scene to use particles, but last time I did something like that I had problems, I just created some particle points for the guns as well, I should be putting out some progress in the next few days.

Actually, it has to wobble a lot more. Its feet are not very wide compared to its stance. Consider 0:29, a position with its left leg raised. How is that in balance? It has to lean in over its right foot in order to have its center of mass above its support.

made some adjustments, while I like the gate of the walk now, I’m not liking the “step and pull” I wasn’t sure if it would look good or not so I tried it anyways, I got a slow missle also. when it panns in it looks like the mech is sliding but it really isn’t. back to board I guess.

I want to echo some of the earlier comments. It needs some up/down motion to give it a sense of mass and it needs some side to side motion to keep the center of mass over the foot that is planted on the ground. I made a similar video that demonstrates this…

Steve S

Holy crap! You know, Steve, this is going to sound like total sacrilege to plenty of Star Wars fans, but that clip looks as good as the same clips in Jedi! In fact, I had to watch it twice to know for sure that it wasn’t just a Jedi clip!
Great job. And it shows how far we’ve come with free animation programs on a guy’s desktop that can do the sort of work done 25 years ago by armies of stop-motion animators working on a budget somewhere in the stratosphere!

Thanks. I studied the video of Jedi to get the timing and motion down. I agree it’s wonderful that we can do this on our computers. I was 13 when Star Wars first came out. My friend and I made some crude stop motion animations that were pretty bad. It’s pretty amazing how far we’ve come.

I should point out that I didn’t model the AT-ST. I got it from www.scifi3d.com

Steve S

Well, I think you did very well with it. You nailed the chicken walk and that bobby side to side goofball movement they had. (You couldn’t have paid me enough to spend my Stormtroopin’ days in one of those logmagnets, especially with a bunch of deranged teddy bears cackling and screaming their barbaric KIKIKIKEEEEE! in the forrest!)

I love that you did stopmotion stuff like this as a kid. I tried doing similar things with my first video cam when I was a kid. The results were probably laughable, but the AT-ST walker I got for Christmas was the pride and joy of this poor kid, and that and the little story I came up with went a long way toward balancing out the firecracker special effects and limitations of VHS. I wish I still had that tape!

This was in the age of Super 8 film. We’d shoot a roll, then wait a couple of weeks to see how bad it was. Then we’d reshoot trying to improve the things we messed up. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I no longer have any of the film.

Steve S

You know, maybe it’s a good thing that kids like us never had a PC and Blender back then. We would never have left our bedrooms. Sort of like now…