Well, this mech build is taking forever. I guess that’s what comes from obsessing! These are test animations to check whether things are working and looking like I intend them to. The tail is the newest addition.
Those of you who rig a lot will recognise the enormous complexity of this model. So far, I’ve used virtually every kind of rigging and automation there is in Blender!
Currently working on designing and building the wings.
This model is for use within my Ziggy project which includes the robot arm and many models seen in other test animations I’ve posted here.
Everything built by me using Blender 3.5
Rendered in cycles 2560 x 1440 @ 256 samples
HDRI and 2 textures from Poliigon
This is SO FRIGGIN COOL!
I love how you’ve engineered it all in such a functional way!
The only couple of things that stick out to me are those RODE microphones on top of the head and the flashlights above the beak - they don’t fit the scale of the rest of the model - they’re full sized models but scaled to be tiny. The rest is amazing!
Yeah, I know, but I like them. This machine will mess with sizes a lot. The beak section will have these changeable clip in tools of all kinds, sized to fit. It’s not only a combat thing, it’s also a multi tool - sort of like a swiss army knife drone.
What would reduce the shock of the Rode mics? Taking away the logo?
Bear in mind, I didn’t download things and kitbash them. Everything is custom built to size. The thing is wondering what any given thing might look like if this mech was real.
Amazing work there! one thing that throw me off in the design, is that the legs are “too thin” to support such a big body unit, and that it can’t fly! (it would have been cooler! )
You might notice from my notes that the next part of the project is the wings. It will definitely be able to fly when it is complete!
About the size, it is a tiny bit bigger than a jackdaw, raven or seagull. Small birds tend to have proportionally thinner legs than large ones. Also, the legs here don’t have the normal covering of scales that living birds do. In the same way a human skeleton’s legs are much thinner than fully muscled ones.
These were intentional design choices along the way. If it was the size of a much bigger bird it would have had much thicker legs, but it would be harder for it to remain hidden or unnoticed, and even possibly been unable to fly due to it’s weight.
Which bird would you have chosen as a design “guide” for such a project?
It think it’s mainly the foam part of the microphones that for me looks too precise a shape and fine for such a scale. At that size, it’d be more like you would see on a lav mic:
But also the rest of the body of the mic, those slits for example, and just the sharpness of everything is just very fine. I don’t know if the tooling exists to cut metal into such teeny tiny shapes with such sharpness and precision. Notice on the lav mic picture again how everything is just chunkier and more rounded. On the lights, it’s just that corrugated ring that again just seems a bit too fine to me for such a scale.
I should reiterate though, this is obviously suuuper nitpicky, and your work is OUTSTANDING.
)
