HELP, plz


Someone can please tell me how can i do the rigging of this robot i made, in really new in this world and i need some help to understand.
Thanks!!!

Hello and welcome to Blenderland.

Firstly, if I were you I would follow this tutorial IN FULL:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Your_First_Animation/1.A_static_Gingerbread_Man

Then do the same with this one:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Tutorials/Your_First_Animation/2.Animation

It will probably take you less than 2 hours to complete, if you are new to things and will save you endless hours of pain and frustration.

Then work out what movements you want to achieve and the spacial relationships between the parts, as like EVE (Wall-E film) you have some “disconnected” parts. The first answer to your question will be - “with an armature and various bones, constraints and parented relationships” but beyond that, you have to do the basics first and Gus is a very good way to learn these, pay particular attention to bone naming and basic animation techniques through keyframes.

I will happily answer more specific questions once you have built and animated Gus. Don’t forget that you can post your blend files here, up to 2Mb file size or use www.pasteall.org/blends if they are bigger, and we can look at them and mend them if required.

Cheers. Clock.

Thx for answering my question :wink: i will do the tutorials to see if i can animate my robot :smiley:

I did the tuts as my first exercise with Blender - they give you a good grounding in the principles behind the product. We will of course help you if you need it.

BTW it’s a nice looking model - have you made sure you don’t have ugly “ngons” on it before you try to animate it?

Once you’re done with those tutorials, and experimented with rigging your robot, you might want to spend some time watching Humane Rigging by Norman Vegdahl.
Welcome to BlenderArtists :smiley:

(Ngons shouldn’t be a problem on a mechanical rig)

Now, sooner or later, you’ll need elbows and knees for your robot to have reasonable walk cycles and the ability to manipulate things with his hands. I see two possibilities:
First, add actual knee and elbow joints – separate the limbs in two, and add some kind of joint (like a ball) or no joint at all (like the point-joint you currently use at shoulder and hip).
Second, and maybe classier, is to use virtual upper limbs, that is, the current leg would be rigged to act as a shin, and the current arm rigged to act as a forearm. I’ve seen something like this done very effectively before: A matchstick character who only had hands (no arms or legs) and a face. IIRC, the ‘face’ was simply eyes and eyebrows attached to the side of the matchstick, and the lips attached to the front. The hands were not attached at all, but floated in space beside the stick. However, they moved as if they were on the end of invisible arms, so it worked.