Implementing Sound and Movement 2019

I set up the scale in 3ds max to match unity scaling system, Meters. I then matched a plane to the height of about 1.75m and applied the drawing of the robot that I made to it. I used a UV map to make sure the drawing is not stretched on the plane.

Next was setting up the feet. I started with one foot then mirrored it using a mirror modifier. While editing the foot I was saving in increments. After applying OpenSubdiv I was satisfied with the feet and moved on to the bottom part of the leg making sure I label everything as I went along and made sure I saved in increments. I made the ball joint in the foot then made the right leg. I then added a spring and used a modifier to shape it how I wanted. I decided that it would be a good idea to take the mirror tool off for now as it would work, I do add it on later though.

Moving on to the upper part of the leg I started on the knee joint. The top part of the leg is rather simple in that I used one object and just used bevel and extrude where I needed to, to make it look like a hydrolic. I then made the ball joint for the right hip. And to make sure everything was aligned I used the quick align tool in the toolbar at the top. If that didn’t work then I would use the normal align tool. I then used the Unwrap UVW modifier because I wanted to test out adding textures to the right leg in substance painter. 

Going back to the mirror modifier I applied it to each object on the right leg to make a left leg and keeping the material id’s the same so I could apply materials to just one leg and it would effect the other. I made sure to rename the objects on the left leg to make it clear that’s the left side.

I worked on the hip base and added some hip joint sockets again using the mirror modifier. I added sockets and socket holders (it’s what I named them to keep things clear on what everything is in scene explorer) Staying with the Hip base I then made a stomach hydraulic and assigned a material id to everything that I missed out. I simply used a extrude and bevel just like I did on the top part of the leg. I then added the stomach spring which will lead on to the lower torso.

Making the lower torso was relatively simple. I made a cylinder and used a FFD 4x4x4 modifier and shaped it to what I pictured in my head and what was drawn out. I then worked on the middle torso and used a hose which I’m going to attach the lower pivot point to the lower torso and later I will add the upper pivot point to the upper torso. Moving on to the upper torso I again used the FFD 4x4x4 modifier on a cylinder that I beveled and extruded.

Next came the neck. I used a hose once again and changed the parameters to fit the style of the drawing. I assigned the lower pivot point to the upper torso and the upper pivot point to the head. Which leads me on to creating the head. It was a bit of a challenge getting the top of the head smoothed out properly. I did a lot of bevelling then applied a smooth group (not a modifier) to the top of the head. I then extruded out a mohawk and detached it to a separate object. Still following along with all the naming, I named it accordingly.

Continuing with the head I made a cylinder and used the bevel tool and pulled in some polygons every 2nd poly to make what looks to be some sort of grill or cog. I then continued using the bevel tool and pulled out the top to make it rounded and smooth. I next rotated it and aligned it to the head as a right ear then mirrored it to make two ears and named them accordingly.

Now moving on to the arms. I started with the right arm holder which later on causes me a few problems. I copied the right socket holder for the hips and resized it to match the scale of the arm in the drawing. I flicked between orthographic view and perspective a lot to allow myself to view my creation from different angles. I then copied the right hip ball joint and aligned it and moved it to the right side of the character and created a socket that holds the ball joint in place. The right arm was also copied from the right leg, albeit I resized the hydraulics and removed the spring. Then I created a hand using spheres which I used a FFD 4x4x4 modifier on. I then mirrored the whole arm, right side to the left side and renamed each left object accordingly.

Now the character is complete I can now move on to rigging. I used a Biped which is located in systems and scaled it up to match the height of the character, (about 1.75m). As my character is made up of individual objects it was just a case of attaching each object to the relevant bone on the biped making sure that the bones were correctly sized to match the character as much as possible. Once I attached all the objects I set a default pose at this point again. It didn’t really matter too much how the pose was set out as I didn’t create one single mesh so no stretching of textures would occur later on.

Now my character is rigged I can apply a mocap file and this is where all the problems occured. I searched around on google looking for websites that hosted mocap files for a walk animation. I could’ve used the built in walk animation in 3ds max but I wanted something more human and casual. Then I came across a site called animium which happened to have the exact walk style I was looking for. I proceeded to download that and apply the file to my character. The file format is .bip. A lot of cleaning up needed to be done. The arm holder which I said about earlier wasn’t attached directly to the collar bones. This is because I used a mirror modifier, so it only attached to the left collar bone making the right arm holder move inline with the left collar bone, way up in the air. I corrected that by making it a separate object from the mirror and attaching the right arm holder to the right collar bone. The steps were slightly too close together as in the feet were crossing over each other with each step so I hand to manually alter the distance apart. Now the walk cycle is complete.

Making sure that I was saving as I went along in increments I went back to a save file that I named defaultRig and went to a site called cgspeed. I was looking for a roll animation which I found and applied to the rig and this is where it all messed up. The character looked like it was being sucked into a little ball. I figured out that I could load up max in a separate instance and make a biped and apply the roll animation to the biped. I then saved the biped animation which I then applied back to my character biped which solved the problem. I then went in and manually cleaned up the animation because the head of my character was going through the floor when doing a roll. I deleted the keys on the pelvis from the point on which the head just about goes through the floor to when the heads then leaves the floor. I then recreated the roll by rotating and moving at each keyframe to give the illusion that the character is rolling. I then went on to create more keyframes once the roll was complete to make it look like the character is opening an oven door and pulling out a tray. I saved this animation as OpenOvenDoor.

For the whisking animation I simply went back to the defaultRig and manually keyframed what whisking looks like based on videos and references. It didn’t take too long as I could utilise the smoothing of the keyframe tool and literally only made 4 keyframes to make it look like the arm was moving in a circular motion i.e whisking.

I then went on to make the environment around the “OpenOvenDoor” animation.