Maya 2020 fundamentals - modelling the real world
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# 1 04-06-2008 , 12:00 AM
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 47

Surprise, im stuck on something again :)

Hey guys, surprise im building another robot... original... lol .. But...

I want to create one with some deformable facial expression, eg so i can make him smile, frown, talk (and actually look like he's speaking lol) also have eyebrows that move around.. angry face sad... blah blah.

Now ive modelled the.. skull/ head so far.. and i want it to stand out as a robot, eg i dont want to circuit board on his forhead and say... robot..

anywho, so my idea is to put some deformable skin panels on his mouth region and also on his eybrows. i was planning on driving (visually) these skin panels with some pistons pushing like.. a little bolt attached through this so called skin. ive made the channels in the head where the pistons will push the bolts around its kind of hard to explain, so i hope this is making sense.

anyway, what im wondering, is how can i go about making these deformable skinpanels, deform, as if, or appear as tho the bolts through the skin are driving the deformation...

now i could probably set up bend, stretch deformers and control them with like.. set range and a distance meter or something, but.. yeah we'll im really not sure the best approach for these skin panels. if anyone can understand at all what i was just talking about, AND can help, i would appreciate it alot..

(ps i'll chuck a picture of my last robo project up in the wip sect user added image
Also theres a pic of my robo... (He's called Robeo .. user added image so you can get a ruff picture of what im talking about.

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# 2 04-06-2008 , 12:05 AM
publicFunction's Avatar
Senior Software Developer
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Livingston, Scotland
Posts: 1,701
Try the Soft Modification Tool to deform the skin and then I would use Set Driven Keys to control the pistols and the soft mod tool.

I think it would be the most effective method.


Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
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