Category: Project 1.2-Robotic arm

Final animation&VFX

Cause I really, really love this rigging course by Nick. Usually, I also like to learn about robots and different rigging methods, so this blog will summarize the 3 ways of rigging the robotic arm I learned this semester.
Summarize the three rigging methods.

1:Use Joint+IK+Curve & pole vector +point+orient constrain for rigging

Create Joints – create IK handle – create locator – control knee joint with Twist – connect locator and IK handle with pole vector – create curve – use curve and IK handle to constrain displacement with point – curve lies in the joint of the forearm to establish orient constraint to control rotation -Finish
Use loc to control the joint direction, use curve to control the upper arm and forearm, hand.

2:Use hierarchical relationships and parent constraints

1:clean hierarchical relationships

2:control the group point

3:set curve

4:set parent constrain -to every group

5:set curve group-to control every poly modeling

3:Use node to establish constraints

use the node editor to control the y-axis of the curve and to control the rotation details by adjusting the object’s rotation angle and
inputting and outputting the maximum and minimum values

Green screen

We made a video shooting this week. Because I have green gloves and cameras myself, I did not apply for volunteers last week. I like to use PR to make the special effects of the arm, add super keys to the video, and get two greens. This method is very efficient.

Final video

Process

Prepare a blank scene for synthesis

Finish

Animation-Screen Recording

Feedback

This week I shared with nick the link to my sync. I made an animated clip of the minor arm. Nick suggested I pay attention to the blend part. In fact, I was thinking about where to design the bent position as I wanted to make him look more unique. I then needed to finish the whole arm and the mapping and textures. He gave a lot of reference videos for the surfaces, which was very much appreciated. In the meantime, I need to catch up as soon as possible, as we’re going to start shooting some footage next week to composite the arm.

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/YTI1NGUyMDQ4/

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV13v411k7Vw/?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=2a996b2cb50a554f996da5993892aea9

This week we continued to study the binding section. Nick showed us the simple rigging section in class, and I added some designs to my model about the mechanical joints of the binding. I hope he will make an animation of the robotic arm after the modelling. It might be fun to composite it on my arm through ae.

Rigging test

Debug shading

通过约束绑定小机关

制作思路：先把控制器与管道通过目标约束建立方向控制，然后把两个添加点约束联系来做出管道之间的抽送，再把圆形手柄父子约束控制在控制器上

For the rendering test

I tried to add some metallic materials to this model.I made the inner and outer shells of the robot arm because I wanted to animate the transformation later on and layering the model in advance would help me to rigging the model next week.

reference videos

I tried to find some reference videos as I felt I still had a lot to learn about mechanical design and construction, I also got some inspiration from steampunk style robotic arms that other people had made in reality, and I found some mathematical modelling that I thought would be very interesting to incorporate the principles into the arm

This week I started working on the palm section and thinking about how to make the individual joints and how to design some small loop animations and subsequent joint bindings. One very interesting point I noticed in this class was that the way Nick used to make the round holes was different to the way I normally use bridge and muti-cut after repairing the holes, I asked my classmates and they had different ways of repairing the holes or Merge vertices, this was very good way and I learnt about the three ways of repairing the holes from the others in the class.

Reference video

http://xhslink.com/MGlcgn