Flash Drive animation WIP
 

Alright so I'm planning on doing something I've never done, animating. This is what I have planned. I'm modeling a flash drive, I'm also taking video of my computer desk, once I'm finished modeling and rigging up the flash drive I'm going to attempt putting the modeled flash drive in the video. I will be sitting in my chair then get up and walk off the scene, the flash drive will have arms and legs that pop out, it'll get up and jump off the desk, maybe do something to the desk to, but I'll have to model a few more objects for something like that.

Thats my plan anyway, wish me luck!

Here is a picture of the flash drive I'm modeling:
http://www.syberscream.com/commerce/...200-1102-a.jpg

And here is the modeling I have done

Non-smoothed:
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/7...ip01vd8.th.jpghttp://img232.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

Smoothed:
http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/3...ip02on8.th.jpghttp://img224.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

Non-smoothed Wireframe:
http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/4...ip03dg2.th.jpghttp://img235.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif


What I was thinking was having set driven keys to make the arms and legs pop out but my only question is how would I rig the arms and legs with joints if they're in a more condensed form inside the flash drive?

Had a look at the mesh and thought "That won't smooth correctly"... then looked at the smoothed one, and no it didn't...

You can't have all those edges running through the circle, it doesn't smooth to a circle then...

thanks, I've been trying to work on that, I needed all those lines to shape the form of the light down at the bottom better. So I don't really know how I'm going to get rid of them and keep the light section shaped smoothly without having a bunch of tris
And trying to smooth out the sides of the flash drive is being a bit tricky to

To get it right, let the circle has 8 or 16 edges. Every vertex in the circle should only connect ONCE to another. And you can probably stop those edges in the middle so they doesn't get all the way to the circle. You will get n-sided polygons, but it wont matter on a flat surface.

I am working on deleting some edges like you suggested, my only question to you is what is an n-sided poly? Thanks for your help I appreciate it, and hopefully you and everyone else can help me with any problems along my way with this

here is the wireframe non-smoothed:
http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/474...ip04yc4.th.jpghttp://img90.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

no wireframe smoothed:
http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/9...ip05bs8.th.jpghttp://img375.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif


Seems to look better and cleaner and I didn't even end up with the tris at the bottom like I thought I'd get. Thanks again for the help DJ

i take it you aren't much into algebra? :p

the n in n-sided poly refers to the number of sides the polygon has
if n is 3 you have a triangle, if n is 4 you have a 4-sided polygon etc

Oh ok I thought that might be what it was but I wasn't sure. Math was never my good subject, then again I wasn't the best student attitude wise either. And I haven't gone to college yet so my math skills are only getting worse as time goes on, not that I had much to begin with. Thanks for giving me the answer though I appreciate it :beer:

Haven't done much but I made the hatches for the arms to come out of, they extend out, all the pieces fit in eachother and tuck nicely inside the flash drive.
Going to work on the hand. I wanted it to be more of a robotic looking arm but I can't think of how it would come out and assemble into the arm and hand.
If anyone has any ideas I'd be willing to give it a shot. But this is the best/easiest thing I could come up with.
Going to make the hand shoot out at the end there and the fingers shoot out of the hand. And basically the same concept for the feet.
Still not completely sure how I'm going to rig this if it needs to be all condensed at the start and expand with set driven keys. Is there another way to do this other than this?


http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/7...ip06ve9.th.jpghttp://img224.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

Alright so I scrapped the previous arm, it looked too cheesy, but when I was making it I had watched a lot of twilight zone before that haha.

But anyway this is the new arm, no hand made yet, just about to work on it. This arm will pop out the side in a transformers kind of way with parts of the flash drive plastic on the arms almost like little shields. Sorry no art work to show the idea but it's here in my head. If I could draw on paper I would to make the idea easier to show.

the arm:
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4...ip07no5.th.jpghttp://img231.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif


Anyone with any ideas or thoughts of what I should do with the flash drive body itself before I move on, please let me know. I do want this to look realistic in my video, but there wont be any super close ups of it in action.

Here is the arm with the hand

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/945...ip08sf5.th.jpghttp://img88.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

and both arms just near it, not in place yet

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/3...ip09mn0.th.jpghttp://img293.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

The fingers need bending mechanisms sort of like the arms have.

what would you suggest they look like? like the upper arm with the gas strut bars going along the top of the fingers? or in between the fingers little balls that they move on or something like where the elbow is? I've been looking around for reference images of robot arms like what I'm making and I didn't really find much of anything.
I was thinking it needed something other than just fingers.

what were you looking for when you searched? you probably wont find the arms you're wanting so easily, and what you have so far is cool

the hands you can use these for inspiration, but i would think you'd like to keep to a similar style to your arms

http://ken-cheong.com/wp-content/Pic...2/rx78ca09.jpg

http://www.mahq.net/MECHA/GUNDAM/cca...dlaunchers.jpg

http://www.androidworld.com/joerush_hand.jpeg

thanks I will use those as ideas towards what I am doing... there will be pieces of the outside plastic from the flash drive attached to the upper arm, forearm, and hand and fingers, so I have to think of that possibly getting in the way of what I'm putting on the fingers.

In the next couple of days I will hopefully reach the point of attaching those pieces to the hand and getting it all in place for the transformation. Then you can see what I'm talking about better.

Keep looking and keep throwing ideas to make this better, I will do what I can to make this work and to make it look as good as I possibly can

like this?

(yellow things are the outside of the flash drive)

it should work :)

yeah thats what I'm going for so the gas struts on the fingers or moving mechanism shouldn't be needed with that on the arms and fingers

Ok I've started working on the shield type covering on the arm still more work to do but a few questions

Below is a picture with one part circled in read, that part will be the piece on the side that will hide the arm inside
The part in yellow is what it will look like once the arm is out of the flash drive and in action (still not done placing the items.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/874...ip10md0.th.jpghttp://img91.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

roughly where the arm will be placed inside:
http://img359.imageshack.us/img359/7...ip11jt9.th.jpghttp://img359.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif


Now the couple questions
The part circled in red will not be the part that is actually attached to the arm because of the way the arm sits in there it wont work right being attached to the arm. But as the arm is pushed out in the animation as a piece starts showing that's attached to the arm I want to make the outside piece actually just disappear, almost like it is attached to the arm. How do I make the pieces of that vanish as the pieces attached to the arm in yellow start showing when the arm is popping out of the side? Is there a way to do this? Should I still be thinking of using Set Driven Keys for the arm coming out? Can I use set driven keys to make the pieces disappear from the outside?
Or maybe with the set driven keys the part from the outside will move into place as the arm is moving out and I shouldn't have the part in yellow pre-placed?

Any help with this and I would greatly appreciate it.

If you need to to clarify any of this any better just ask and I will do my best.

Sorry to ramble like that. Just trying to get it all out in one post without having to make 5 posts just to ask the one question

Thanks for all the help so far to

it looks like your arm is able to compress itself right?
you should be able to get away with actually making the shell part of the arm itself
if you reshape/reposition the arm so it fits perfectly to the actual shell then all you have to do is animate it popping out and then extending the arm to show the gaps in the shell that you have showing in the yellow circle

otherwise if you stick with what you have you'll have to key the visibility and get the timing just right or it'll look funny

i dont know if you can put visibility into a setdriven key but i assume you can

I think I have another idea of how to do this


One more quick question, can you mirror set driven keys to the other side or will I have to do all this again on the other side to?

taking a short break from the champy model I was doing to do a little bit more of this. All I did was some set driven keys (thanks to Perfectos tutorial on youtube) to open the arm and leg doors and then set driven keys to bring out the arms and legs.

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/6485/flashwip12.jpg

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/3922/flashwip13.jpg

the hands and feet will be moved into position by joints along with the rest of the legs and arms for movement.

i like the idea however im not a fan of how you have approached it. The arms and legs dont look like they could even support itself.

If i were going to tackel this project i would think more transformers... have it so the flash drive is like a shell that folds appart to reveal the lil robot guy.

you can still use the same assets just slightly differently then you could also beef them up a little.

Some food for thought.

T

thanks for the comment I appreciate it, I do have a little more work to do on the legs and arms.
And it is just a shell of a flash drive and the arms and legs come out of the inside. Going all transformers on it would be too much for me skill level at the moment. But I will definitely keep what you've said in mind.

alright I've come back to this project, I've scrapped the idea of the arms and legs and am starting off fresh with just the empty shell of a flash drive. I want to make it transform, have arms and legs and a head.

I've spent about a week now just looking at it and I'm totally stumped where to begin. I'm taking any and all ideas that you want to give to help me get this transformer started. The top part (the usb connector) is separate from the shell, along with the bottom piece that the lanyard connects to. I know I'm going to need to cut this into pieces and I know I'm going to need to relearn set driven keys to get it to work. But how and where things are going to pop out and so on is really stumping me pretty good right now. I don't know if I need to watch more transformers movies, or if I need to buy some transformers toys to get ideas.

I did come across this http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/p...27&mode=retail which is pretty cool and all but the flash drive doesn't look like a normal flash drive, like I want mine to. I also would like to make it a two legged creature instead a 4 legged one like Ravage, although if that's the best idea then I wont shut it down.

So any help, ideas, or anything would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

dude.... i wants that usb flash drive!! :D

one thing you could do is block out the case of the usb drive then take the cut faces tool and go crazy chopping it up and seeing what can be used for limbs

also you could take a usb flash drive and try transforming that as if you were transforming a toy (may sound crazy but i did it with an imaginary alarm clock while on the train and sure, things popped out where they wouldn't normally be able to fit but that's where the blocking out side of things makes it easier to see if its going to work)

say like the bottom of it where the handle thing is that the string/rope thingy ties into, from that to where the circle is you can split that into legs and above the circle you can split taht up into arms
or the other way around (although given the placement of the circular piece it's probably best to make the bottom part into arms and the top part as the legs)
want me to show you what i mean or do you get the idea?

yes please show me, like I said I'm having a hard time coming up with how to do this and so on that any ideas even visual ideas would be great.

And also I will most likely not be using those arms and legs for this guy but I am saving them so I can use them at a later date with a different character.

ok took slightly longer than anticipated, but 32 minutes later and here we go

i managed to kind of replicate your flash drive

i've colour coded the shell bits (the orange bits are the robot parts that get hidden inside the flash drive when in flash drive mode)

the legs are pretty simple, they just pull down and undo a few times to give articulation to the joints
the feet (which i didn't properly block out now that i think about it) are made from the bit that inserts into the computer

unlike the feet the arms don't follow a linear path for transforming... well... they can if you want but it will seem funny i think
they just curve down to where they are (that probably doesn't make sense but you should be able to figure out what i mean from the picture i think)
the handle bits just came down because i thought it would be able to bring it's arms up into a t-pose properly if they aren't in the way

the forearms just fold out, however i think in this current state it would actually conflict with the shoulders but that can always change when you go into detail

the head is tiny compared to the body because it came out from the circle thing
i think to make it look in proportion to the body you'd make it fold out and expand, unless you say it's a morphing head in which case you can always scale it up in it's transformation. but more non-morphing transforming you'd want to make it expand like how the all spark in the first micheal baye movie un-expanded down from a big cube to a small one

hope this will give you a good idea on how you could do it.

wow that visual was really helpful thank you very much, of course I was having trouble, it makes more sense to have it transform that way instead of the way I was trying to get it to.

Now my next question, don't know if you'll know or not. How am I going to get to modeling those parts for this guy? Am I going to have to split him apart and build all these parts and then try to fit it all back together, or am I going to build all these parts and place them inside my flash drive then work on the set driven keys to make him transform?

Sorry if the question is confusing, but thank you very much for the visual idea! Should prove to be extremely helpful.

it might be me but it sounded like you listed the same option twice!

what i did with my alarm clock was i split the shell up, then i arranged it how i thought it would go when in robot mode and put in blocks for the actual robot limbs

originally what i was going to do was set up set driven keys on parent constraints and modify the pieces after it was rigged

but i found by doing that i couldn't do things like mirroring or combining and all such things that make modelling easy because then i'd lose the set driven keys and constraints

so i duplicated the entire robot without the shell, moved it over and just started detailing on that and i would bring it back to the original to see if it was still the correct size. (but then the shell can always change size to adjust for larger limbs..)

...but i dont think that answers your question, eh...?

kind of answered my question, I'm still a bit confused on how to model all these parts, I'll give it a shot and see if I can get anywhere with this.

thanks to Chirone I got the idea, I moved all the pieces into transformed position, I haven't modeled any of the pieces that will hold it in place but this is the basic Idea, wanted to see what I had to work with and all that

Thanks again for the help made this whole idea easier to wrap my head around and a lot less frustrating than I thought it would be.

So this is before and after, with wireframes. Basic idea of how it will look when it's done.

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/7...merconcept.jpg

should I be using 3 to smooth or should I build it with enough topography to make it smooth without having to hit 3?

i'm under the impression that hitting 3 will increase your render time (since its a render time smoothing) but actually smoothing will slow down your computer when working in the scene since the polycount quadruples for each subdivision.

so i just hit 3...

alright thanks

I'm getting kind of stuck on how to make these pieces actually move to these positions (specifically the arms) without just floating to them.

Never posted this shot so I will now
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/7...seethrough.jpg

you shrunk its shins down?

hmm, not sure what you mean by 'floating to them'

is it what sort of joints you want to model? the things that connect the arms to the body?