Robot from scratch - Part2: Hands

Finished the lower body rig! Finally... struggled a lot due to mirrored geometry and joints...

Robot from scratch - Part1.5: New Joints

I had to rebuild my robo-joints for a proper rigid bind. I will finish the model soon. Afterwards I'm going to add details like pistons and cables. Learned a lot due to this rigid/smooth approach.

Rigid Bind Joints With Pistons

Due to the fact that there is no possibility to use the hierarchy as a rig (equivalent to the 3dsmax technique) I had to figure out how rigid skin binding works in Maya.
Now I have all the essential experience for the technique to use it for my robot. In addition i figured out how to build and setup a piston in Maya with constrains. On the one hand it will look more technical and cool, but on the other hand I have to consider how to alter the joints to work proper with this method. Furthermore I'm planning to add dynamic cables into the joint. Either with a simple rig or with cloth dynamics.

Robot from scratch - Part1: Lower Body

I decided to build a new robot for my animation. Due to the fact that I can't draw, I started this from scratch without any imageplanes or robot-reference (only a proportion imageplane). I'm using techniques that i've learned during the previous modeling, and until now i have modeled everything without looking up certain techniques or the like. I hope that I'll finish the model tomorrow so that i can start building the rig.

Facial animation with blend shapes

Character Modeling

Here are some work in progress screens of a character I am modeling. I'm still sick --> Sinusitis. I hope to be cured asap.

3dmax to Maya rigging

I determined that it's not that easy to convert techniques from 3dsmax to Maya, as i thought. In Maya you have to use bones for rigging, there is no workaround to achieve anything similar to the 3dsmax techniques. So i have to find out how it has to be done in Maya.

I have nearly completed a rigging tutorial to assure that I'll be able to reconstruct all necessary steps in Maya.

I've put in joints, bones and IK handles. Additionally I added Pole Vector Constraints to adjust the behavior of the elbows and knees. To control the most important joints, I've made some icons to gain access to them.

Furthermore there are some "Set-Driven Keys" to clench the fist and to roll the feet proper.

Next: Skin Binding

Orrery

First animation task. Nothing special. Just a couple of spheres and some extruded splines. After parenting everything into a certain hierarchy it was easy to animate the planets. I picked up the AO style lightning idea.

I had some problems with the extruded splines. They are not proper smoothed whilst in smooth shaded mode, but whilst in wireframe mode they are. I am sure to find a solution.


Added a vintage look and subtle camera shake in AE.