this is going to be a digital alarm clock (based on the one i have in my room right now from back in the day)



alarm clocks have the purpose of waking us up (or more in my case it reminds me that i'm awake because i only know it goes of when i'm awake)

but sometimes people just hit the snooze button and don't get up when they should...

but wait... why are there so many border edges??

because of this:



it was bound to happen sometime..

i'll make an animation for this transforming too
right now it's just a bunch of boxes... well it started with a sphere that got cut up and then bridged... add a few more boxes and here we have our robot

i'd rather the forearms be fatter than what they are now but i couldn't fit them inside the clock

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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

"i'd rather the forearms be fatter than what they are now but i couldn't fit them inside the clock"

Just cheat like in the films - as long as you cant see it no one will ever know

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just wondering... doesn't 'scale' attribute count as a transform node??? if it does, why not use it to get the desired scale?

i like the idea of alarm clock n robot n all, really really superb concept. let's see how the story turns out... i am really interested in its animation!! if it's not a problem, i'd like to be involved in the animation phase of this project... :bow: as i am a grt fan of transformers ...

i could do a set driven key to scale the forearms, but i think i'll leave it as it is.

the left arm will be a gun (i'll just make it expand, it originally was going to be like a gattling gun, but i'll just change that design a bit) and the other just a normal arm... with blades

but yeah, you guys have valid solutions


effacer, if you can find a solution to my parent constraining problems then you would already be helping

but seriously, it would be cool if you helped out.
heck we could even make a competition and see who can make the coolest looking transform once all the detailed modelling bits are done


at the moment i'm trying to make sure that the robot will transform into a clock but i'm having trouble with the constraints... bits and pieces keep flipping 180 degrees even though maintain offset it checked and the transfroms are frozen and history been deleted.
it's bizzare because it only does it for some pieces (i think the pieces that have been duplicated at some stage)


EDIT:
actually never mind about that, turns out i didn't freeze transforms on the groups
EDIT:
actually never mind about that, turns out i didn't freeze transforms on the groups

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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

this should act as some form of tutorial for me so dont spare on the details of your workFlow

seems like u got ur problem fixed. :attn:
i'll be more than happy to help u, Chirone. :attn: i'll be just a 'message' away.

n i do like the idea of 'who'll be the best transformer-er'!!! and if u like the idea, let's put up another competition of 'who'll rig it the best way' too.
anywayz, i'm getting a really good feeling about this! :attn:

effacer, are you saying you'd like all the pieces so you can try rigging it when i'm done with them?

haha murambi, no pressure right? :p

i'm making everything up as i go, but yeah, i'll go into some detail about how i'm doing things if you want, i'm kind of going backwards to the whole model -> texture -> rig workflow and going model+rig - > model -> rig
... if that makes sense... i'm just rigging as i go along

to start with, here's what i'm calling a proof of concept (never actually heard that term until last year now it's being said everywhere...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzWobN6vXoY
this was proof taht i could manage expressions, parent constraints, and set driven keys

i'm still in the pre production phase, but i don't expect it to last too too long

...so... because i've never actually used expressions and i didn't know how to use them on parent constraints it took a while to figure out... ok it didn't take THAT long, but still took a little longer than wanted

so to catch you up with what i've done murambi (and anyone else interested, and i suppose for my own documentation in case i ever have to repeat this)

the model

first i started with a sphere, i probably duplicated it four times and deleted 3 quarters of them.
combined them, then selected their border edges to use bridge, and then fill hole (since what i ended up with was a round square frame)
took the giant bottom face and extruded downwards making the base of the clock

so now that i had the base mesh for the clock done i wanted to cut it up.
i figured it's better to make sure all the pieces are going to fit together before i start detailing anything

i tried to transform it in various ways, i had a way of doing it in my mind, and since i can't exactly cut up my alarmclock and put it back together and cut it up again to see a different transformation i thought i'd just go straight into maya (and also because playing with an imaginary clock wasn't as useful as seeing what is actually happening)

it changed from the original design a fair bit but meh... not worried so much i guess

the rig
made a skeleton for it and since it's hard surface i dont need to worry about soft skinning, i can just parent everything to the bones and detail the bits later on

now... there was a slight problem... if i attached IK to the skeleton i didn't think i could fit all the pieces into the shell because of all the restrictions IK gives
so i couldn't just parent geometry to the bones.. had to use parent constraints

i then used parent constraints to constrain geometry to geometry
so now each piece of geometry will have two parent constraints (at this moment i kept making lots of mistakes like parenting the wrong things and having to delete the constraints, which i ended up doing in the hypergraph, because edit > delete by type > constraints would kill all the constraints including the ones i wanted still)
part of the transformation is changing the weights of the constraints from 0 to 1 (you can go outside these boundaries but i dont know why you would want to and i needed to know the limits for later)

first i decided to just set a keyframe on them to try the transform, but you can already guess what the drawbacks of doing it that way would be.

so i could either use set driven keys to change the constraints around or i could try expressions

decided to go with expressions because i thought it would give some flexibilty later on if needed... probably also because i can't remember how to edit set driven keys...

what i did was i made a custom attribute on each geometry piece that would link the two constraints together so that they were always 'opposite' of each other (in other words they would always add up to 1... i dont know what you would call such relationship...)
so i opened the expression editor and i had no idea how to set the expression on the constraint itself... i did spend a few minutes thinking of other solutions when i didn't know how and some time seeing if the answer was on the internet, but then i figured the script editor would tell me how to write the expression

and it did

so i used the script editor to tell me what i needed to change or link up and all went fine (do you want me to go deeper on how i did this?)

then i made a curve, added an attribute and used set driven keys to make the animation you see in that youtube link

anyway, now that i've figured out how to do it i'll just make a rough transformation so i can model the pieces based on the animation

---

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

Originally posted by Chirone
effacer, are you saying you'd like all the pieces so you can try rigging it when i'm done with them?

Originally Posted by

i'll be glad to :attn: .. but actually wht i meant was if rigging is done, there will be not much variety in animation/tranformation. so better make it available for rigging too, so that others can come up with more ideas. (however, i like UR concept )

Originally posted by Chirone

probably also because i can't remember how to edit set driven keys...
[/B]

Originally Posted by

just key over the required attributes, ie overlapping the keys. or just del the keys (break connection) from the driven and start over the set driven again.

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projects of my company
3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPTmThoCrIY&feature=related - project - disney diwali (india based company)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSAfzqMBHqs&feature=related - project - 2 medhak (Public Service Ad)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLR2L-swZo - project - ace bank commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZogNsf8k-xU - project - company Profile
2D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82xV3bII9bU - project - (a fren named jimmy)

effacer:
you could make your own and we we can battle or something

i think you can edit set driven keys in a graph editor, i can't remember, memory is a bit fuzzy with things i've only done a few times

anyway, here's an update

doing some details on the body and arms


ignore the box on the right arm where a hand should be. i haven't bothered working on the hand yet


closer look at the left arm. originally it was just going to be 4 cannons that pop out from the big cylinder and it wasn't going to be indented like that. but due to space issues there are more parts on the left arm that will 'pop'

---

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

goddamn it!! superb!!! u blew me away chirone.. impressive.
ok i'll, once i get free time to do it... u can expect sum frm me in early 2010.

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projects of my company
3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPTmThoCrIY&feature=related - project - disney diwali (india based company)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSAfzqMBHqs&feature=related - project - 2 medhak (Public Service Ad)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLR2L-swZo - project - ace bank commercial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZogNsf8k-xU - project - company Profile
2D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82xV3bII9bU - project - (a fren named jimmy)

Looking good so far, any updates on this yet?

Will be interesting to see it transforming, hope you do plan to do at least a playblast of it, if not a nice shiny render!

Also I like the way you've used different colours in your posts for each of your pictures, nice to see something different from the usual AO renders!

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Virtual City Challenge Apr 09



Spaceship Challenge June 09



Speed Machine Challenge Feb 2011


My Art and 3D Instagram
My DeviantArt Page

second that. yeah, this could be cool. looks promising

changes:
the two sword-like attachments on its right arm have been altered, looks more like the inspiration for it.

the left arm now hides a larger gun...

a spine, hips and legs have been added.

the spine is rather spine-like... and you'd wonder how such thing could hold up those heavy looking arms (the left arm itself must weigh heaps givin it has 9 guns)
unfortunately since the arms are right close up to it when it's an alarm clock it has to be that skiny
i planned on making something come down from the chest, not sure how that will work out.

legs are looking a bit... funny i guess...
couldn't figure out how to do the legs since my block out was just two scaled cubes... but i went to my toy of astrotrain and copied his legs with modifications to make them fit into the alarm clock shell. quite blocky looking, not sure how to change it or if it should be changed

i think i'll get rid of the piston thingys on the arms... the legs just don't have room for identical pistons and i think it would probably look really bizzare to have pistons on the arms and no where else on the body.

also the spine pieces were originally going to have little arm-like things that held onto plates left over from the clock (see first pictures) but i think i might change that after wondering about what the face looks like
the shell that covers the chest reminded me of scorpion, sub zero, and reptile from mortal kombat so i might make the face kind of like scorpion's



effacer, thanks. would be nice to see what you can do

dango, here's my update!
i'll render it transforming, and i'll do it slowly and dramatically enough that you see it happening

ben, thanks!

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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

looking very good just out of curiosity is it possible to make the transformation one attribute??

what do you mean?

---

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