Alright so I'm planning on doing something I've never done, animating. This is what I have planned. I'm modeling a flash drive, I'm also taking video of my computer desk, once I'm finished modeling and rigging up the flash drive I'm going to attempt putting the modeled flash drive in the video. I will be sitting in my chair then get up and walk off the scene, the flash drive will have arms and legs that pop out, it'll get up and jump off the desk, maybe do something to the desk to, but I'll have to model a few more objects for something like that.

Thats my plan anyway, wish me luck!

Here is a picture of the flash drive I'm modeling:


And here is the modeling I have done

Non-smoothed:


Smoothed:


Non-smoothed Wireframe:



What I was thinking was having set driven keys to make the arms and legs pop out but my only question is how would I rig the arms and legs with joints if they're in a more condensed form inside the flash drive?

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

Had a look at the mesh and thought "That won't smooth correctly"... then looked at the smoothed one, and no it didn't...

You can't have all those edges running through the circle, it doesn't smooth to a circle then...

thanks, I've been trying to work on that, I needed all those lines to shape the form of the light down at the bottom better. So I don't really know how I'm going to get rid of them and keep the light section shaped smoothly without having a bunch of tris
And trying to smooth out the sides of the flash drive is being a bit tricky to

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

To get it right, let the circle has 8 or 16 edges. Every vertex in the circle should only connect ONCE to another. And you can probably stop those edges in the middle so they doesn't get all the way to the circle. You will get n-sided polygons, but it wont matter on a flat surface.

I am working on deleting some edges like you suggested, my only question to you is what is an n-sided poly? Thanks for your help I appreciate it, and hopefully you and everyone else can help me with any problems along my way with this

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

here is the wireframe non-smoothed:


no wireframe smoothed:



Seems to look better and cleaner and I didn't even end up with the tris at the bottom like I thought I'd get. Thanks again for the help DJ

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

Originally posted by Rhetoric Camel
I am working on deleting some edges like you suggested, my only question to you is what is an n-sided poly?

Originally Posted by

i take it you aren't much into algebra? :p

the n in n-sided poly refers to the number of sides the polygon has
if n is 3 you have a triangle, if n is 4 you have a 4-sided polygon etc

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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

Oh ok I thought that might be what it was but I wasn't sure. Math was never my good subject, then again I wasn't the best student attitude wise either. And I haven't gone to college yet so my math skills are only getting worse as time goes on, not that I had much to begin with. Thanks for giving me the answer though I appreciate it

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

Haven't done much but I made the hatches for the arms to come out of, they extend out, all the pieces fit in eachother and tuck nicely inside the flash drive.
Going to work on the hand. I wanted it to be more of a robotic looking arm but I can't think of how it would come out and assemble into the arm and hand.
If anyone has any ideas I'd be willing to give it a shot. But this is the best/easiest thing I could come up with.
Going to make the hand shoot out at the end there and the fingers shoot out of the hand. And basically the same concept for the feet.
Still not completely sure how I'm going to rig this if it needs to be all condensed at the start and expand with set driven keys. Is there another way to do this other than this?

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

Alright so I scrapped the previous arm, it looked too cheesy, but when I was making it I had watched a lot of twilight zone before that haha.

But anyway this is the new arm, no hand made yet, just about to work on it. This arm will pop out the side in a transformers kind of way with parts of the flash drive plastic on the arms almost like little shields. Sorry no art work to show the idea but it's here in my head. If I could draw on paper I would to make the idea easier to show.

the arm:



Anyone with any ideas or thoughts of what I should do with the flash drive body itself before I move on, please let me know. I do want this to look realistic in my video, but there wont be any super close ups of it in action.

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

Here is the arm with the hand

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

and both arms just near it, not in place yet

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

The fingers need bending mechanisms sort of like the arms have.

what would you suggest they look like? like the upper arm with the gas strut bars going along the top of the fingers? or in between the fingers little balls that they move on or something like where the elbow is? I've been looking around for reference images of robot arms like what I'm making and I didn't really find much of anything.
I was thinking it needed something other than just fingers.

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- Mike

https://rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com

what were you looking for when you searched? you probably wont find the arms you're wanting so easily, and what you have so far is cool

the hands you can use these for inspiration, but i would think you'd like to keep to a similar style to your arms

https://ken-cheong.com/wp-content/Pic...2/rx78ca09.jpg

https://www.mahq.net/MECHA/GUNDAM/cca...dlaunchers.jpg

https://www.androidworld.com/joerush_hand.jpeg

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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