thanks I will use those as ideas towards what I am doing... there will be pieces of the outside plastic from the flash drive attached to the upper arm, forearm, and hand and fingers, so I have to think of that possibly getting in the way of what I'm putting on the fingers.

In the next couple of days I will hopefully reach the point of attaching those pieces to the hand and getting it all in place for the transformation. Then you can see what I'm talking about better.

Keep looking and keep throwing ideas to make this better, I will do what I can to make this work and to make it look as good as I possibly can

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

like this?

(yellow things are the outside of the flash drive)

it should work

Attached Images

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
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yeah thats what I'm going for so the gas struts on the fingers or moving mechanism shouldn't be needed with that on the arms and fingers

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

Ok I've started working on the shield type covering on the arm still more work to do but a few questions

Below is a picture with one part circled in read, that part will be the piece on the side that will hide the arm inside
The part in yellow is what it will look like once the arm is out of the flash drive and in action (still not done placing the items.



roughly where the arm will be placed inside:



Now the couple questions
The part circled in red will not be the part that is actually attached to the arm because of the way the arm sits in there it wont work right being attached to the arm. But as the arm is pushed out in the animation as a piece starts showing that's attached to the arm I want to make the outside piece actually just disappear, almost like it is attached to the arm. How do I make the pieces of that vanish as the pieces attached to the arm in yellow start showing when the arm is popping out of the side? Is there a way to do this? Should I still be thinking of using Set Driven Keys for the arm coming out? Can I use set driven keys to make the pieces disappear from the outside?
Or maybe with the set driven keys the part from the outside will move into place as the arm is moving out and I shouldn't have the part in yellow pre-placed?

Any help with this and I would greatly appreciate it.

If you need to to clarify any of this any better just ask and I will do my best.

Sorry to ramble like that. Just trying to get it all out in one post without having to make 5 posts just to ask the one question

Thanks for all the help so far to

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

it looks like your arm is able to compress itself right?
you should be able to get away with actually making the shell part of the arm itself
if you reshape/reposition the arm so it fits perfectly to the actual shell then all you have to do is animate it popping out and then extending the arm to show the gaps in the shell that you have showing in the yellow circle

otherwise if you stick with what you have you'll have to key the visibility and get the timing just right or it'll look funny

i dont know if you can put visibility into a setdriven key but i assume you can

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
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I think I have another idea of how to do this


One more quick question, can you mirror set driven keys to the other side or will I have to do all this again on the other side to?

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

taking a short break from the champy model I was doing to do a little bit more of this. All I did was some set driven keys (thanks to Perfectos tutorial on youtube) to open the arm and leg doors and then set driven keys to bring out the arms and legs.





the hands and feet will be moved into position by joints along with the rest of the legs and arms for movement.

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

i like the idea however im not a fan of how you have approached it. The arms and legs dont look like they could even support itself.

If i were going to tackel this project i would think more transformers... have it so the flash drive is like a shell that folds appart to reveal the lil robot guy.

you can still use the same assets just slightly differently then you could also beef them up a little.

Some food for thought.

T

thanks for the comment I appreciate it, I do have a little more work to do on the legs and arms.
And it is just a shell of a flash drive and the arms and legs come out of the inside. Going all transformers on it would be too much for me skill level at the moment. But I will definitely keep what you've said in mind.

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

alright I've come back to this project, I've scrapped the idea of the arms and legs and am starting off fresh with just the empty shell of a flash drive. I want to make it transform, have arms and legs and a head.

I've spent about a week now just looking at it and I'm totally stumped where to begin. I'm taking any and all ideas that you want to give to help me get this transformer started. The top part (the usb connector) is separate from the shell, along with the bottom piece that the lanyard connects to. I know I'm going to need to cut this into pieces and I know I'm going to need to relearn set driven keys to get it to work. But how and where things are going to pop out and so on is really stumping me pretty good right now. I don't know if I need to watch more transformers movies, or if I need to buy some transformers toys to get ideas.

I did come across this https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/p...27&mode=retail which is pretty cool and all but the flash drive doesn't look like a normal flash drive, like I want mine to. I also would like to make it a two legged creature instead a 4 legged one like Ravage, although if that's the best idea then I wont shut it down.

So any help, ideas, or anything would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

dude.... i wants that usb flash drive!!

one thing you could do is block out the case of the usb drive then take the cut faces tool and go crazy chopping it up and seeing what can be used for limbs

also you could take a usb flash drive and try transforming that as if you were transforming a toy (may sound crazy but i did it with an imaginary alarm clock while on the train and sure, things popped out where they wouldn't normally be able to fit but that's where the blocking out side of things makes it easier to see if its going to work)

say like the bottom of it where the handle thing is that the string/rope thingy ties into, from that to where the circle is you can split that into legs and above the circle you can split taht up into arms
or the other way around (although given the placement of the circular piece it's probably best to make the bottom part into arms and the top part as the legs)
want me to show you what i mean or do you get the idea?

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
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yes please show me, like I said I'm having a hard time coming up with how to do this and so on that any ideas even visual ideas would be great.

And also I will most likely not be using those arms and legs for this guy but I am saving them so I can use them at a later date with a different character.

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

ok took slightly longer than anticipated, but 32 minutes later and here we go

i managed to kind of replicate your flash drive

i've colour coded the shell bits (the orange bits are the robot parts that get hidden inside the flash drive when in flash drive mode)

the legs are pretty simple, they just pull down and undo a few times to give articulation to the joints
the feet (which i didn't properly block out now that i think about it) are made from the bit that inserts into the computer

unlike the feet the arms don't follow a linear path for transforming... well... they can if you want but it will seem funny i think
they just curve down to where they are (that probably doesn't make sense but you should be able to figure out what i mean from the picture i think)
the handle bits just came down because i thought it would be able to bring it's arms up into a t-pose properly if they aren't in the way

the forearms just fold out, however i think in this current state it would actually conflict with the shoulders but that can always change when you go into detail

the head is tiny compared to the body because it came out from the circle thing
i think to make it look in proportion to the body you'd make it fold out and expand, unless you say it's a morphing head in which case you can always scale it up in it's transformation. but more non-morphing transforming you'd want to make it expand like how the all spark in the first micheal baye movie un-expanded down from a big cube to a small one

hope this will give you a good idea on how you could do it.

Attached Thumbnails

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
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wow that visual was really helpful thank you very much, of course I was having trouble, it makes more sense to have it transform that way instead of the way I was trying to get it to.

Now my next question, don't know if you'll know or not. How am I going to get to modeling those parts for this guy? Am I going to have to split him apart and build all these parts and then try to fit it all back together, or am I going to build all these parts and place them inside my flash drive then work on the set driven keys to make him transform?

Sorry if the question is confusing, but thank you very much for the visual idea! Should prove to be extremely helpful.

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

it might be me but it sounded like you listed the same option twice!

what i did with my alarm clock was i split the shell up, then i arranged it how i thought it would go when in robot mode and put in blocks for the actual robot limbs

originally what i was going to do was set up set driven keys on parent constraints and modify the pieces after it was rigged

but i found by doing that i couldn't do things like mirroring or combining and all such things that make modelling easy because then i'd lose the set driven keys and constraints

so i duplicated the entire robot without the shell, moved it over and just started detailing on that and i would bring it back to the original to see if it was still the correct size. (but then the shell can always change size to adjust for larger limbs..)

...but i dont think that answers your question, eh...?

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D