Armadillo Robot- Advice Wanted
polycounter lvl 6
I've always loved armadillos and pangolins, so I bring polycount this concept. I am going to model a robot that will be able to curl into a ball and roll around.
This is my first project where I really want to stick to a conceptual workflow and adhere to the concept from start to finish.
Forgive my drawing skills, though I think the concept sketch is suitable. I am going to try to stay pretty zoologically faithful to nature's concept in terms of the rolling:
Concept art below, expect this to be revised frequently.
Obviously, the challenge is going to be modeling and rigging the plated armor system to be able to curl into a ball shape, with the head and tail wrapping around without any damnable mesh overlap. Since I am a beginner, I'd greatly appreciate any advice on how to go about this modeling. Here is what I have so far in Max:
Already I have a ton of technical problems and questions, but it shouldn't be too difficult. The armor plates share the same pivot, but I am unsure of how I am going to model the body underneath or how it will bend under the armor plates. Any advice would be appreciated.
This is my first project where I really want to stick to a conceptual workflow and adhere to the concept from start to finish.
Forgive my drawing skills, though I think the concept sketch is suitable. I am going to try to stay pretty zoologically faithful to nature's concept in terms of the rolling:
Concept art below, expect this to be revised frequently.
Obviously, the challenge is going to be modeling and rigging the plated armor system to be able to curl into a ball shape, with the head and tail wrapping around without any damnable mesh overlap. Since I am a beginner, I'd greatly appreciate any advice on how to go about this modeling. Here is what I have so far in Max:
Already I have a ton of technical problems and questions, but it shouldn't be too difficult. The armor plates share the same pivot, but I am unsure of how I am going to model the body underneath or how it will bend under the armor plates. Any advice would be appreciated.
Replies
Also study the form of the animal you are trying to capture in this. In your concept, you have him setup in a crescent or half circle, but the actual animal is not like that when he's unfolded (rounded rectangle? oval?), yet your reference material is the actual animal. This is going to cause design flaws immediately in your work flow. Depending on what you want to do, they should not share the same pivot essentially
but, rather than try and explain what I meant in the first paragraph, I'm going to model something real quick and post some renders...give me 5-10 minutes and ill reply back :P
In my concept art, I was aiming for a quasi bipedal sort of stance. However, you have a point in that it would probably be more troublesome down the road to model it that way. All fours should be a lot easier. I will revise the concept art if that is what you mean. I have zero prejudice and sentimental attachment towards this project and will change basically anything again and again if need be.
The bottom line is, I just HAVE to model and rig a character that can roll into a ball. It's such a fun challenge and I can't just model him without this ability.
Looking forward to your next post, Three9.
[ame]
Anyway here we go, a nice little (and i do mean little!) video for you for reference. As you can see I was a bit wrong with how I went about each section as to what I previously told you, but meh. I did discover something important for you though
in my version, I gave him a total of 5 plated sections to develop his ball form. 1 for his upper torso, 1 for his lower torso, and 3 for his mid section. The 3 at his midsection are basically folded up into each other when he's sprawled out. When he goes to transform though, the 3 middle sections do share the same pivot location. The other two sections have their own independant ones though. Basically the upper torso needs to be affected by the rotation of the front most plate section...while it's moving with that, it's also rotating to expand down even further. It is also the exact same for the lower part
Do note though that if you do make a rig for your guy, you probably should have a middle section that remains still when he turns into a ball, which the next section out is a child of that one, and the next section out is a child of the previous one, etc etc, that way each part will be affected by the one it relies on.
You could also have the upper torso one that is the parent of all of it, and as it goes back so does the hierarchy, but it's whatever way you see best
hope this helps!
PS: Also model your plates better than I did, look at that awful mesh penetration! my eyes!
glad i could help though!
Doesn't look like much, but I'm confident the final result will be pretty cool. The shell plates pivot more or less the way I want to. The only problem is fitting the head, tail, arms and legs in, giving them enough space as well as enough room to be able to model more detail and figuring out how to model the body/torso itself.
Right now I have the body as sort of a curved shift+extrusion of the inner faces of the middle shells. I've given up trying to match it exactly to the mid plates and nobody will see the back of the torso anyway, so why bother? As always, suggestions are appreciated.