Robot arms
 

Hi,

I want to animate a simple robot type figure. I did some tutorials and animate some flesh like characters. But a robot is obviously diffrent because the parts don't tend to bend like flesh and skin does. So maybe using bones is not the best way to go? I used spheres as joints and they are all lose parts. For the hands i wil be using bones because they may flex. But the upper and lower arm are to remain stiff.

What is the best way to go at this or is there a tutorial out there that covers robot rigging?


http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/5143/armstop.png
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/1337/armsfront.png
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/8280/armtop.png

I did something similar like this a while back as a test rig and its quiet easy actually. It relies on the same principle.

Instead of binding the skin to the bones, open your outliner and drag and drop your objects you have made onto the section of bones allocated.

Just to clarify what marlonjohn is saying, you're parenting the geometry to the bones, instead of skinning. The other way of doing this if you don't want to change the hierarchy is to use a parent constraint, which simulates parenting.

This week i got some time to spare see how far i get.

Thanks guys.

if you need an example there is a tutorial that comes with maya to do with rigging a robot arm

hmmm....

Somehow i can't connect to the tutorial page via the Help -> Tutorials button. I have maya 2010 64bit. Is there an other way of getting this tutorial?

Does the rest of your help work? The tutorials are in the documentation. Did you install it?

The rest of the help is not working either. This probaly means I didn't install it. I will search the disc for it. Thanks for the help so far guys.

Thanks for the feedback. I used bones but instead of bindingskin I parented the joints to the objects. So far so good.

Cheers

I am going apesh*t here. :headbang:

I have my character completly rigged and ready for animation.
http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/9809/rigged.png

But as soon as I touch the time slider to go to another frame the some parts of the model pop out. In this case the Index and pinky finger move way up and the head drops down a little.
http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/1470/riggedffff.jpg

Does anyone have any idear what I did wrong?

Edit:

I figured out the fingers. During the rigging I think I set some sort of key on the index en pinky.
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/4429/fingers.png
I used break connection on the translate and scale. I did nothing to the Rotates because i got a setdriven key on it for a fingercurl. But normaly it is not yellow but orange. But at least now it stays put. I still cant figure out why the skull drops down.

Have you tried freezing transformation and delete history before you start rigging, I notice you have locators are these used for constaints...............dave

I tried to be consistant with the freeze transformation and delete history with the model. But i might have been a little bit sloppy with the bones.

The locators are for the hand controls.

I had to learn the hard way. Never ever ever forget to clean up your model. I forgot to freeze transform on the head and it had a long list of history on it. I fixed it and now I am ready for animation. Thanks guys.

Screens
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/4...edandready.jpg

Arrgggh
http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/6...ranimation.jpg

haha, it's angry like you :D
good to see you resolved your issues