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Easy Robot Rigging Project
Hi there guys
This is most likely an extremely easy job. I have a .C4D model of an industrial robot with 7 degrees of freedom that I need to get fully manoeuvrable ASAP.
I have sectioned off each limb into different groups.
What I am having trouble with is rigging though.
You’ll see that there are 5 ‘Elbow’ segments. These each need to be rotatable yet connected at their ‘Ring’ bases. The simple default form of the robot should make the way it moves quickly apparent.
The ‘Base’ must remain grounded and static.
The head can swivel around in it’s socket freely (but obviously the ‘Tool Mount’ would collide with the socket if rotated too far).
Ideally, I would like the robot’s motion to be controlled by sliders much like that of a model in Poser, whilst also maintaining constraints & collisions.
Here is the scene file…
8005_lwr.c4d.zip
Here is a reference image…
8006_lwr.jpg.zip
It would be great if somebody could show me what I need to be doing!Thanks!
Hayden
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6 Replies
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for starters each piece has it’s origin down at the base, it can’t be that way each piece has to have it’s origin where you want it to rotate around. The next step is probably to simplify the pieces so they are easier to put in a hierarchy – for example the ring/elbow/detail can all go in one piece rather than three.
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Thanks Brian!
I’m struggling with setting the coordinates of the origins…
Would I generate some kind of plane for them?
Connecting them all together is easy but making sure they rotate correctly is a tricky one…
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Brian
I’ve just tried ‘Closing Polygon Hole’ on each ‘ring’ rotation point… I’ve then separated the polygon generated from the close and tried using that as a parent for the rotation, rather than the anchor point just being in the center of each segment.
Weirdly the children of the newly created rotation planes are not moving with it…
I thought that would solve the problem you were talking about regarding the origin… Seems like I was wrong.
How do I go about what your suggesting?
Cheers!
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Hi Brian
Thanks for getting back to me
I have just simplified the model’s elements
I could not figure out how to alter the origin, so I have created planes instead and set them as invisible parents of each element…
Will this work?
Where do I go from here?
Cheers
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moving the origin point of an object is easy. You can do it by hand by enabling the axis tool (called Enable Axis on the left side – shortcut is ‘L’) and there are axis entering tools under Mesh/Axis Center.
If you choose one of the rings (from the original scene) and run ‘Mesh/Axis Center/Center Axis to ‘ the axis will jump from the floor to the center of all the point of the ring — what you get is the same axis position you see in Model mode being in the same place as the axis you see in polygon (or point) mode with all the polys/points of an object selected. And its the Modelling mode axis that rotations are going to happen around. —
That doesn’t work too well for the elbow parts since the center of all the points is not where you want the elbow to rotate from but you can move that axis by hand with the Axis Tool or, if you are simplifying the objects by connecting them in the Object Manager, if you connect two objects using Connect Objects + Delete (for example) the object that is on top in the OM (or is the parent) is the object that provides the origin point in Model mode. So if you center a Rings axis using ‘Mesh/Axis Center/Center Axis to ‘ then put the ring higher in the OM the axis used is the rings (which is exactly the rotation point you want).-Ring (with axis already centered)
-Elbow
-Detail (if applicable)
Select them all and Connect Objects + Delete and you get one object with the axis where the rings axis was. -
Thanks so much Brian
I did some much needed GreyScaleGorilla tutorials and fixed my problem!
Your advice was definitely useful too though and guided my research.
Here is the final scene file…
8007_lwr.c4d.zip
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