Demo Reel Progress Report -- Advanced Robot
 

I am currently in the process of designing an advanced robotic character for what will become my demo reel. I have been working on this for the past two months and I have only finished an arm (well two if I duplicate, but I still have to rig up all the movements again)!!

Part of the reason it took me so long is deciding how I was going to move everything. I am trying very hard to make every part of the body move by some form of mechanical device (chains, hydrolics, gears, etc...) that you can clearly see in the animation. The problem is that I had to learn how to do this first... then I had to make it look good.

This little clip shows off my progress from the robots hand to what is now a fully functional arm that is very easy to animate :). I have taken a short break so I can really think about how the 4%#^ I am going to make the rest of the body and legs.

I would appriciate any quesitons of comments.


!!Updated Links!! Non-Divx Version
Download: Quicktime Version (35.5MB)

Download: Windows Media (22.5MB)

What compression did you use? I cannot play it and also there does not seem to be any reason it should be that big. Most peoples demo reels are half that size.

that is amazing, some of the best robotic modelling and animation ive seen come from maya.
you have a very creative mind to make up all thoes joints and gears, i was saying "holy shit" by the second week progress already.

great work!
post more updates when you get them up!

i also applaud the effort and work you put into the reel and putting all the video together all organized for just a progress reel.
well worth the download!

I used Divx... I am kind of new to composition and compression... I will try and change the format and compression to get the size down.

Divx can give you a good result but I would not use it sense it is not as common. I would just use sorrense 3 and mov cor a codex and avi. The quality is not as good but it is more redily available.

divx is actually fairly popular these days

It.s popular and good but if you are at work and do not have admin rights on your computer or are on someelses that you do not want to download and install stuff then you will not be able to play it. This has been my experience that if you want to most number of people to be able to see it without problems, then use something that works on Window Media player. Not the best choice for quality but you will be able to get the highest number of hits. That is all I am saying.

Yah...The only reason I used it was becasue it looked the best compaired to the other compressions I tested. The wma file was very small, but the video looked very jearky compaired to the divx version. I am in the process of making and uploading the quicktime version to my site as well as a wma version which is only around 20-30 megs.

Very sorry if you downloaded the very large divx version. I have now rendered the clips out in both quicktime and windows media format. The files are much smaller and play pretty good now that I found out that a frame rate mismatch was the cause of my jearky playback after I had rendered the clips out to one file.

So please try these movies out if you downloaded the other verison and could not get it to play.

Again, I appriciate any questions or comments.

Download: Quicktime Version (35.5MB)

Download: Windows Media (22.5MB)

wow! Amazing planning, modeling, patients, range of motion. The only crit that I can offer is that it could use a little more color. But you might not want to take my advice if you are building the rest of the machine and you don't want the arms to be the focus. Or if you want it to look industrial instead of a futuristic/comic book/import car magazine appeal. Impressive work!

Sorry I did not post earlier. Very nice work so far. I love the detail. I would drop some of the early stuff though. Only have the later finished model.

maybe having different stages is a good thing? Shows how you progress through it...

I actually dont plan on composing the final demo like this. After I make the robots body and legs I plan on making an environment and human chracter for him to interact with. My whole plan from the very beginning of this project is to make a 5-10 minute short film with the robot as the main chracter. My initial design ideas are to make the robot as a guardian robot thats standing in front of a giant vault door. I figured that might make for an easy environment to make and an interesting one as most of the audience will be wondering what he is actually guarding through the whole clip...

Hi.
I only have dial up, and not going to be downloading 30 meg.. so i was wondering if you could post a few screen shots for us dialuppers. :)
thanks

Sure...


http://rmorg.org/random/robot_pic_1.jpg
http://rmorg.org/random/robot_pic_2.jpg
http://rmorg.org/random/robot_pic_3.jpg
http://rmorg.org/random/robot_pic_4.jpg
http://rmorg.org/random/robot_pic_5.jpg