looks like NGE from waist down. Upper body looks ZOE, then head looks Gundam..

Freaky. Might want to clean up some of the wire in the legs. They are very stiff.

Yeah, I have a bit to do to sort the legs out.

Well spotted on the Gundam influence as it has been probably the strongest influence in designing this "Mangabot".

This is my first (ever) attempt at rigging and animating, so your crits will be VERY WELCOME!!!!

163Kb Quicktime format video attached to this post as a ZIP. Switch on "loop" in the Movie menu for a continuous loop of the cycle.

(If anyone knows how to export a looping quicktime/avi movie from After Effects, please let me know! :rolleyes: )

Hes semi mechish right? Even if he isnt. that stiff area in the crotch, the armor plating area moves too much when he runs, it deforms and all.

Also his arms move in stages, first upper part, then the elbow, so on. It would be more realistic if they all move at once.

The head could use a little more movement and the back bend more, and tuck the elbows in a little. But its good for your first rigging.

Yep, that deforming groin thing is very annoying. Ideally, I'd like to keep the light areas fairly stiff. I suspect that I dont have enough bones in the lower body area unlike the upper body which I rigged fairly stiff with a rib-cage. This seems to help keep the deformations under control.

The animation is only 31 frames which I suspect is the cause of the nasty arm movement... I will play around in graph editor first before I extend the timeline as I dont really want to lose the pacing.

I am also beginning to see that having long lower-legs and short calfs produce a rather unnatural leg movement... this proportioning was heavily inspired from my reference images but in future I will have to think a little more anatomically.

You could still do it but you will have to make allowences. Normally the lower legs are as long or longer(including foot) than the upper portion of leg. If its shorter you could make the upper body kick the legs out more, showing the speed. Think of a soldier who has his lower legs blwon off and trying to run. Or of someone running while trying to do a straigh kick. It should work. It does in my head.

And for the skeleton on the lower half, you should be able to rigid bind the groin to the skeleton there and that will cause no deformations. Thats how it works on my model.

I'm working on a completely new rig right now... much more rigid but it is requiring a few tweaks to the model.

btw twisted... what is your avatar all about?

Looks like your getting there Huxley. If your new rig is still using soft skinning you could just paint the weights all solid for just the joint that plat belongs to. Know what I meen ?

huxley, its a little concept image i did and decided ill use it as my avatar.

http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...&threadid=9940
thats the link to it in the Finished forum.

I have no experience in painting weights... so i cant help you, but can you do rigid and soft binds on the same object?

Huxley with that being machanical and you really probably don't intend for the mesh to deform. for the parts that are sapret objects I think it would be faster and eazyer for you to get good results just buy parinting them to the joints, in the outliner. it doesn't deform the geo but if thats what you want its the way to go I think.

I was looking at your mesh and I think its seprat poly shells right ?

Pony: my new set-up on the character is exactly that. Rather than binding the skin to the skeleton, I am parenting everything. I've also done a fair bit of work on the mesh to improve the lower body and legs. I'll render some animation this weekend when I have a little time... I'm much happier with this approach.

OK, so I'm spending quite some time on the animation side of things so, while I sort that out, I thought I'd post my first texturing efforts. It's far from complete but I'm beginning to work on a look:

I'm finding the back ground a little distracting.. like the mettle look though.

Looking really good Huxley, altho I agree with Pony the background is detracting from the image a bit. Could do with being a big more of a contrast to help hi-light the model more.