Newbie questions.
 

Hi there,

I'm real new in all this 3D world, i've worked in 2D for a few years now (Photoshop,Freehand, Flash,...) though.

I started working in Lightwave a month ago and, obviously, been reading/watching all the free tutorials i find interesting, but some doubts still remain...

Most of the tutorials focus in "flesh" characters, i have yet to find one good tutorial on mechanical stuff...

Well, i plan on animating a few mech-arms for a site i'm doing (a little like Ripley's "mech carrier" in the end of Aliens, when she fights the queen). My questions are:

- The arms are gonna have some moving parts. Do i put them in different layers (arm in one layer, forearm in another, hand in another,...)?
-What's the best way the do the joints between these elements? Suggestions please...
-How do Lightwave and Flash behave together? Do the scenes have to pass by Swift 3D?

I'll probably post some more questions as the work moves along, hope you be patiente with me... :bow:

Thanks!

Hi and welcome!

To use Lightwave with flash you need a third party plug-in like Swift 3D, (Its a good plug-in from what I hear).

Have you seen the Mech Tutorial?

http://www.simplylightwave.com/movie...tml?tut_id=539

The Phone and the Stratocaster tutorials are very good for modeling mechanical hard very detailed objects.

http://www.simplylightwave.com/movie...tml?tut_id=538

http://www.simplylightwave.com/movie...mhtml?tut_id=7

Even though will be animating the Mech you would benefit a great deal by doing the Caveman Rigging and Animation tutorials. Animating a caveman and animating a Mech are much the same even though one is not mechanical modeling you will still be using bones for animating both.

http://www.simplylightwave.com/movie...tml?tut_id=548

http://www.simplylightwave.com/movie...tml?tut_id=549

Like Johhny said, Hi and welcome!

The best way to animate a rigid model is still under discussion. The bottom line is it's a matter of preference.

One way is to cut your model up and paste different parts in different layers, then adjust the Pivot point of each layer so it coincides with the pivot point (or joint ) of that part of the robot. After all the cutting is done, all you have to do is create a hierarchy in Modeler by opening the Layer stats and double clicking each layer to asign a parent. It's a good idea to also asign an easily recognizable name at this point.

If your model has a lot of parts and you don't want to waste your time with lots and lots of layers you can create a skeleton for your robot. Yeah, I know... sound fleshy but it works very nicely for complex robots.


All you have to do is create a skelegon skeleton for your robot, placing the skelegons so that one skelegon can control one moving part of the robot. It's the same as bone-ing fleshy-s. The part that separates the process comes next.
Now select all the polygons or points (the process is the same ) that form a rigid part of your robot (like forearm, jaw, femur, finger falangs ) that are going to be controlled by a skelegon and hit Create weight map and under value give it 100% and a suggestive name.

Now asign a weight map to each (or almost each) skelegon and you're ready to anymate, no deformations, no hundreads of layers, just pure and simple bones.

Cheers!

Thanks for all the input...

I understand this questions may be boring for you "gurus" but i've been bombarded with loads of information in this last month... maps, uv, ik, skelegones, splines, morphs,... :headbang:
It's an whole new world out there, and it's not an easy one...;)

Thanks again!:beer:

We love answering questions, keep them coming. Pretty soon you will be down on all the lingo.