Rubik's Cube

[phnxpyre]

It didn't take me very long, and definately wasn't very hard to make. but thought it looked kind of cool. I used decals for the colors and the rubik's logo.

[jamagica]

I suggest somehow making the black gridlines bump maps as indents or add splines and pull in the grid area

[mtpeak2]

jamagica, if you look at the top of the cube you will see that it is indented. It's made up of individual beveled cubes.

 

phnxpyre, is it rigged to work like the real thing?

[phnxpyre]

I haven't rigged it quite yet. I am working on how to lay out the bones so that it can work like the real thing.

[jamagica]

jamagica, if you look at the top of the cube you will see that it is indented. It's made up of individual beveled cubes.

 

phnxpyre, is it rigged to work like the real thing?

whoopsie...sorry 'bout that...dude it'd be awesome to rig it. Maybe you can have a virtual competition when you see if you can solve the puzzle. You have a pose for "scramble" then you have to move the bones into the right placement. This rig would involve falloff and a lot of study of the anatomy of the cube, but it'd be worth the effort

[phnxpyre]

I am new to A:M, so i am still figuring out how to use the program and all of it's features.(especially rigging models the way i want to move them) Thanks for your comments so far. Much apreciated!

[robcat2075]

I'm looking at this full-size and I'm wondering... how is it that the red and blue tiles are anti-aliased but the white ones are not?

[iGeek]

Yay, I'm not alone! Check out my avatar. My cube record is 29 seconds. See http://homepage.mac.com/igeek1/ for details. I also built a cube a while ago. Then I tried to rig it. As far as I know, it's impossible. That said, I'm sure there's a way to do it in A:M. I'm a novice when it comes to rigging, etc. The best I could think of is to manually do it by selecting a group each time and turning it, but you get some weird results. There's no "Euler" equivalent for selecting groups of CP's. Still, I want to see how this turns out. The rigging problem has been bugging me ever since I tried it. btw, the logo on your center white sticker is not the one that's on a standard Rubik's brand cube these days. Check out a new cube and look at the logo. The current ones have a 25th anniversary logo, though, which I don't really like... Can you solve the Cube? Anyone else here on the forums?

-Zev

[phnxpyre]

iGeek, I know what you mean about rigging the cubes. I've tried several approaches on rigging it and it didn't work. And for the logo, i couldn't find the 20th anniversary logo anywhere, so i just found a standard rubik's logo. And my cube record is like four minutes.(I know its not very impressive but i just got the cube).

 

robcat2075, I just relized what you meanabout the anti-aliasing problem. I am not sure really why it did this, so if anyone knows, tips on how to fix it are welcome. thanks.

[bentothemax]

hehe, you guys can actually do the rubik cube thing, and not only that UNDER 5 MINUTES. I bet that i could do it, in about 15, if i really tried.

 

Looks good, it would be interesting to see it rigged . . .

[rossk]

Yeah, that would be awesome to the rubik's cube rigged... it would be an interesting project.

 

I wasn't aware of the whole "super-fast-rubik cube solve" hobby until I found out a friend of mine at college "plays" rubik's cube for 2 hours a day. He and a few of his friends have races and everything. Its crazy...

[robcat2075]

There's no "Euler" equivalent for selecting groups of CP's. Still, I want to see how this turns out. The rigging problem has been bugging me ever since I tried it.

You can make a pose that moves several bones at once, but it would still take a lot of poses to cover all the possibilites.

 

If A:M had a scripting environment that supported bone movement you could make it identify all the cubes that are on, say, the middle level and rotate them all by the same amount around the center.

 

Hmmm, I wonder if an expression could do it? Expressions don't have any looping capability for testing all the cubes though, AFAIK.

 

But I'm still wondering why the white tiles didn't anti-alias. I can't imagine why they wouldn't.

[heyvern]

When I was in high school, 20+ years ago, I was able to solve a Rubik's cube in about 90 seconds... at the height of my talent... with plenty of warm up... a carefully lubricated and a properly loosened cube.

 

This was back in the day... when those guys were on TV racing to solve the cube. When the cube was brand new.

 

I can still solve it now... it just takes a lot longer... I've forgotten the order of some of the steps.

 

I think the patent is up on the cube design. I have been planning to make hand crafted "Cube Puzzles" out of wood and plastic at about 200% "actual" size. I have the components laid out in the computer... quite a simple mechanism actually.

 

At one point I attempted to study a possible rigging system.

 

I honestly do not believe it is possible. Every single cube section must be able to belong to a different bone/CP group and snap into a locked position to rotate on a different plane... there is no way I can see this being created in one rig/model.

 

Vernon "!" Zehr

[iGeek]

Well, you could just make a pose for each possible combination. You'd just need a lot of RAM to load them all. Yeah, there are 43 Quintillion possible combinations of the cube. That's rounded to the nearest quintillion. The actual number is 43,252,003,274,489,856,000. Yeah. Big number. The thing is, I've seen animations of the cube before! And it solves itself! And there are computer programs that do the cube! !!! I know someone who works for Solid Works, a 3D physical modeling and simulation app (it can do some very crazy stuff, but at like 20 times the price). He said that in his program, he would just build the whole mechanism. Yeah, sure. I think the best way to do it is to animate frame by frame using control points. It still might not look quite right though. Maybe we need a "twisty puzzle" plugin. A pluzzle, maybe? Anyone wanna write one? Anyone? Hello? Is anyone still here (here here here...)?

[phnxpyre]

Well, I havn't figured out how to rig it, but maybe one of you guys would be able to figure it out. So i have included the project file of the Rubiks cube that I made. (All you have to do is figure out how to rig it.)

Enjoy!

Rubiks_Cube_color.prj

[phnxpyre]

hmmm... i just downloaded that file to see if it worked and it asked where all the colored decals were and I realized that it didn't have the decals i put on the cube. So to fix that you can just probally make your own decals.

What i used was photoshop to make the decals. Just opened up a square and colored it. For the rubiks logo decal.... You can search the web for a picture.