Mechanical Rigging.

[Ethangar]

I've gone though all my DT tuts and everything that I can find online. Organic rigging is easy to find information on and XSI seems to be built for it. But what I've been asked to do is rig up a transformer/battlemech type of robot. And frankly, I don't have a clue where to start. I've done little to no rigging or animating in XSI. I've done some in Lightwave but I don't suppose much of that will apply. Basic layout for a mech applies. There is a "head" that rotates 360 deg in the y axis with some cannons that move around on hinges. These are all done easily with rotation constraints and parented to the head. The head sits on a pelvis and the legs off that. The legs are like dog legs with the knee backwards to a human. The hip is like a ball socket to allow some rotation and the rest is pretty much a straight leg assembly. The foot will need some rotation also for walking on uneven ground.

Can anyone point me to a tut or an example? I'm more than a little overwhelmed looking at what is available. Rigid body dynamics has all the hinges and ball sockets but I think that is a bit overkill for something that should be this simple. Bones are another route that I looked into but have no idea how to link the bones to the hip, thigh, shin etc. Parenting and constraints are how I thought it should be accomplished but can find little information on how/if this would be the best route or how to apply it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Rork]

There were some robot rigging tuts out there once, cannot seem to find them anymore (404's).
There's one more or less related one here:
http://www.edharriss.com/tutorials/tutorial_xsi_oil_rig/oil_rig,htm.htm

Hope it helps.

I will browse my archive to see if I can find anything else.

rob

[redmotion]

I don't think mechanical rigging is that different from organic rigging tbh. The main difference is that I (personally) model the components as separate meshes and envelope them each individually to the bones (when its all done and working well I merge the meshes back into one mesh).

You can set rotation limits to bones (I think its ctrl+K for kinematics - Look up "Kinematics property editor" in the docs - then the Rot.Limits tab). So you could set it rotate around one axis, essentially making it a hinge. It's probably best to just use rigid bodies for dynamic/procedural animation.

I only used constraints for hydraulic pistons in my last robotic model. You could also use them for loose panels that flap about, for example.

If you're not pressed for time then I recommend the 3d mastermind tutorial DVD which pretty much gave me enough basic grounding and confidence in XSI rigging to tackle most rigging problems myself.