Sentinel

[Arrghman]

Hi all :)

After seeing The Matrix Reloaded in IMAX a month back, it was kinda hard to resist making this!

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/31.jpg

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/32.jpg

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/33.jpg

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/34.jpg

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/35.jpg

And some animation tests:

The arms: http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/arm_test3b.avi

The feelers:
http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/finger_test4.avi

A tentacle: http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/tent_test6.avi

Any and all comments welcome and appreciated :)

[rsdemon]

THis is faboulous! What tool/technqiue did you use to do the texturing?

[ran205]

how did you get the tentacle to move so fluidly? did you use any plugins or did you just use bones? if bones ... how many.:confused:

[Arrghman]

As of now, the surfaces are all just comprised of procedurals... lots of 'em :)

As for the tentacles, there's 42 bones in it... every 8th bone is a 'control' bone, and the 7 bones on either side use channel follower to follow the rotation of the corosponding control bone. You can do some neat effects with this setup, but it's kinda hard to make the tentacle line up to an exact position.

[rsdemon]

Hmm..interesting, exactly which set of proceedurals do you use?

[fabmedia]

how did you set up the "control bone". I'm wanting to do this with a character of mine who has antenea. I know that expressions are used (I think) but I'm not sure how to do it.

GREAT stuff!
Arlen

[fabmedia]

It just occured to me that you might be using IK right? Or are you using a root controller bone/null?

A

[Arrghman]

Expressions could be used to get the same effect.. although to be perfectly honest, I hadn't really looked at expressions much at the time when I setup the bones, so I just used the channel follower motion modifier. Although expressions would probably have been easier ;)

I took this image to illustrate: http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/follower.jpg

The so called Control bone is keyframed, and its the curve with the greatest amplitude (about -9 to 9 degrees)

Bones 7 and 8, the ones before and after the control follow the rotation of the control scaled to 85%, so if I had done this with expressions it would have been .85*[tent7.Control (1).Rotation.P] if I'm remembering expression syntax correctly!

Bones 6 and 9 follow the control by 70 %, bones 5 and 10 by 55% and so on, etc etc :)

Since I used channel follower, I had to apply this to 37 bones on three channels including overlaps. I'm really delving deeply into LW's animation controls for the first time, so there's still a lot I'm not sure how to use.. so I wouldn't be suprised if there was an easier way of setting this up. If so, I'd love to hear about it! ;)

Also, here's a shot of the whole thing assembled... although I found out afterwords that I should have 4 more tentacles! D'oh!

http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/37.jpg

[fabmedia]

So I tried this with a null, 4 bones, a null, and 4 more bones. so the 2 nulls are the control points and everything follows the control points. BUT I'm getting lost with everything stopping at the second control point. It just breaks. I must be missing something...

A

[fabmedia]

Ahhhhh! I'm pulling out my hair. Do you have a sample scene that I can take a peak at? I am so dense sometimes trying to figure this stuff out.

A

[Arrghman]

Sure fabmedia, I have a bunch of test scenes I made a few days ago, I'll upload one as soon as I get the chance later tonight :)

In the meantime, here's the latest render I did last night... aside from some tweaks and the laser on the bottom, it's (hopefully!) done.

http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/wip/2003/07/03-244516_tn.jpg (http://www.firedragon.com/~lwg3d/wip/2003/07/03-244516.jpg)

[fabmedia]

That is SO cool. Here's what it is that I'm need in the techinique for. His little antenea.

A

[Arrghman]

Scene and object file are here: http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~arrghman/sentinel/example.zip

Hope this helps! :)

[fabmedia]

Thanks. I'll let you know how I do with it.

Cheers mate!
Arlen

[Kuzey]

Oooooh My....mighty fine work!!

How long did it take to model?

Kuzey

[fabmedia]

Ahhh, now I see how you did it. I was using Follower. Not what was under the Graph Editor. Interesting. That must have taken you forever to figure out. I never would have thought of doing that.

Cudos to you! Great stuff I must add again!

A

[Arrghman]

Kuzey: I've been working on it on and off for about a month... not sure how much of that I was actually working on it though :)

fabmedia: It actually kinda just came to me when I was stopped at a red light last week. Took a long time to implement it though! :o Glad I could help!