Mech Spider

[gre03]

Hi

 

Here's a mechanical spider I modeled. My main problem is having the whole spider in the one 'model'. At the moment I have each leg in a separate 'model' so that I can change the copy/paste things quickly. But if I put the entire spider in the one 'model' it takes about 10 minutes to copy and paste one leg

 

Does any one have any tips for faster copying and pasting or to reduce the amount of CP's quickly without changing the original shape?

 

Comments appreciated

[dborruso]

That is a really nice spider.

 

The cp's are a little heavy in the legs but I guess you need that geometry for the effect you want. It doesnt look so heavy that it would slow it down so much though. I don't know why you are having such trouble. Maybe open the spider and import the legs one by one, instead of copying and pasting. I don't know if that would make a difference. You never know.

[jamagica]

10 minutes to copy and paste? Maybe exaggerating...my patch heavy cotton gin I made took about 1 minute to copy/paste stuff....I think it's pretty much impossible to sit at the comp just watching for ten minutes until the thing finally pops up there

[Dhar]

Exquisite design. Good work.

 

I see you have a large number of patches hidden in the legs. Could you substitute those hidden parts with decals instead of actually modelling them? Leave the modeled details for close up shots.

[arkaos]

I think it would be better to use some decal-style texturizing for the inner portions of you legs. That would allow you to use fairly simple cylindrical geometry and dramatically reduce the cp count (which seems to be killing your computer). It may be a little work at first to generate the different decals for color, texture (whichever method), specularity, etc. But you can achieve some fairly realistic results with a bit of tweaking.

 

If you don't want to do that, use a proxy model for setting up the animations and place the real-deal in for the final rendering.

 

By the way, that is one AWESOME spider, dude! You did a fantastic job designing this one.

 

Another option would be to leave the leg in a separate model and add 8 shortcuts to the leg in your chor. Then constrain the legs to the spider-body model and animate from there.

[agep]

The legs do as mentioned look a bit spline heavy. Other than that, This is one COOL spider, love the design! I hope your going to rig him

 

Regards

Stian

[heyvern]

Too many patches/splines.

 

I was looking at the effect of the "ribbing" in the leg...

 

...I could... spline that mesh in... half the patches...

 

Since the parts are "stiff"... mechanical... you could get those leg shapes using less cross sections and adjusting the bias.

 

The ribbing... same thing... you could cut down on the splines. Since it is an "exponential" kind of thing... drop the splinage in one "piece" and baby it really adds up.

 

You don't want to hear that i am sure... and it doesn't address the actual problem...

 

That kind of slow down could be related to the power of the computer.

 

Could you let us know how many patches are in one leg?

 

 

Vernon "!" Zehr

[nyahkitty]

Hmmm....

Is it correct to say that the inner ridge portion of the legs are lathed cylinders?

So theoretically, only half of the ridge leg item will ever be visible?

 

If so, then delete the buried half of the cylinder.

Don't forget to break the splines before deleting CP's.

 

Also, I wonder if you could get away with reducing the number of patches by thining out the splines towards the bottom of each leg segment. You could try using hooks extensively to do this. I'm not certain this will be completely successful, but it's worth a shot.

 

Very nice model.

I really like it when someone uses A:M to make a cool mechanical design with lots of geometry.

Of course, this is coming from someone who revels in achieving 10,000 to 20,000 patch counts within a single model.

[Clone Reject]

personally i think the spider is awesome. as for it taking 10 min to copy and paste, you should maybe defrag your harddrive, or check for possible viruses. and also try closing all other programs before running a:m.

[Odog2020]

That, I think, is an extremely well done model. Looks to me that it was made out of Titanium. Man I can't wait to see this baby in action.

 

I have to agree with some of the other post about the CP being heavy, that may be what is caused you to have to wait 10 minutes for the paste. I can only imagine how long it would take to render an animation of your model in action.

 

Great work, really awesome stuff.

 

James

[phnxpyre]

I LOVE it!!!!!

 

That is some really awesome work you have there.

 

I love the metal material and the reflections, and the green/glowing stuff, and pretty much the whole thing!

 

Even if the copy and paste takes a long time.... I definately think it is worth it. that is an awesome model. But i do have one question....

 

Have you rigged it?

[gre03]

Have you rigged it?

 

Just rigged it today

[gre03]

Here's a quick video (5 min to make, and 19 sec long) made with Windows Movie Maker to showcase the spider.

 

thanks for all the comments guys

Mech_Spider.zip

[oakchas]

Your spider is AWESOME! Your video shows his glowing properties!

 

He is rigged... Why doesn't he move?

[gre03]

He is rigged... Why doesn't he move?

 

I haven't had enough time. i've been doing the spider for about 3 days (that includes modeling, texturing, rigging, and the scene). and i also haven't been able to find good references for spider movements

 

Does anyone know of any?

[pwknox]

I have used the Duplicator wizard for copying when patch counts get very high. It can be found by right clicking on your selected model in the modeling window and going to "Plugins | Wizards | Duplicator". The copy times goes from minutes to seconds. Somehow it gets around having to recompute all of the patches.

 

BTW, very nice model.

 

A few years ago Carl Albrecht-Buehler made a really cool IK rig for spider legs. It was complete with fot targets and everything. You might want to look him up for some pointers on the rig.

[Dagooos]

whoops, I have a new desktop image now! nice work

[DanCBradbury]

Nice spider model... looks like one someone did a while ago. It's in the a:m stills section.

[KenH]

I did one a while back too. This is where I got my reference:

 

http://www.hash.com/users/threechickens/Spider.htm

Spider.mov

[DanCBradbury]

WOW! nice spider and walk cycle... the only thing i see that's a little funny with it is that the back end doesnt move as much as it would seem to. You should realy rerender it with real raytrace shadows. There's a lot of funky shadow mess-ups... especialy near the feet tips.

 

BTW: Spiders freak me out.

[jamagica]

man I'd love to animate that guy...can ya post up the model file? I'd be happy to animate. Why don't you animate him like drawing out an iron web from his butt...that would be awesome...I'd do that for you when I got the time. Just send the white light set, the model, etc.

[gre03]

man I'd love to animate that guy...can ya post up the model file? I'd be happy to animate. Why don't you animate him like drawing out an iron web from his butt...that would be awesome...I'd do that for you when I got the time. Just send the white light set, the model, etc.

 

I've already animated it but i havn't been able to post the 1.75mb file of a walk cycle.

 

here's the project anyway (i had to zip it twice to get it down to 793.43kb from 7mb )

Mech_Spider.ZIP

[jamagica]

oh man...dude your rig is like..not too good to work with. I could rerig it for ya...your arms need to be more controllable than that. And there are no torso bones!

 

I understand, though..you're new, right?

[gre03]

oh man...dude your rig is like..not too good to work with. I could rerig it for ya...your arms need to be more controllable than that. And there are no torso bones!

 

I understand, though..you're new, right?

 

I'm new to rigging and animating. If you want to rig it...please, go ahead, but could you post the finished project file so that i could have a look. And if you really want to, you could animate it as well, perhaps a walk cycle.

[jamagica]

yup man...I rigged it...you'll love what I've done to set it up...IK legs, motionable pinchers, movable torso, moveable abdomen. Here's a rig test:

spidertest.mov

[jamagica]

Here's an overall shot of the rig:

 

in the next posts I make I will break down each part and explain

 

alright...the first thing is the sweetest part...the fang null. This is not an ordinary null. If you move this up the y axis, the right fang swings to the side....across the x axis means the other fang swings to the side. Limits are set on this null for maximum organization and efficiency.

 

The next pic is a closeup on the "butt null"..haha I love saying that. Move this around and the abdomen follows it. That way you don't have to worry about having to grab the right bone.

 

 

Finally, with the option On as shown in the last pic, you can view all of the nulls to completely control each joint of each leg...this is a very good feature for touching up when there's a problem with leg seappage or popping. It also looks very cool

[Dhar]

That's super cool jamagica

 

I DL'd the project but found it to be a memory hog. I gotta get rid of the inner splineage and other fancy lighting to keep the file size down.

[Mr. Jaqe]

WOW! Great model! Love the look you've given it.

 

Impressive rig! Will you post the model with the new rig, Jamagica?

[jamagica]

yes....right now I'm trying to figure out how to double-compress it...I put it in a zip and it's barely over 1 mb...it's 1.32. Gre, how did you double compress your file using two zips? I tried that, but the file size stays the same

[jamagica]

still havent' figured out...for the time being I'm still improving the rig....now I have a "hybrid" fang control bone so you can move both fangs at one time, and you can also move them individually using the relationship null

[jamagica]

Ok..now i have a roll target so tha spider can move it's thang'

[Odog2020]

I'm confused on how you put all those target controls on there, I don't even know how to put one, but man you did an awesome job with rigging this baby. And the leg movements are great. I would really like to see this thing crawling up the WTC in WIP.

 

James

[bentothemax]

Nice looking rig Jamagica! you seem to keep getting better n better!

 

 

I really Love the model to! nice job on that!

 

 

Jam: Try compressing it using win rar, u can then put a zip in a rar, for more compression.

 

 

Ben

[jamagica]

hmmm...out of all the things I try to learn, seriously don't know how to make a rar compression folder

[gre03]

yes....right now I'm trying to figure out how to double-compress it...I put it in a zip and it's barely over 1 mb...it's 1.32. Gre, how did you double compress your file using two zips? I tried that, but the file size stays the same

1st right click the project file and zip it there. then open up WinZip and do the same thing manualy with the 1st zipfile...i think thats how i did it

[Mr. Jaqe]

I'll try'n explain aswell :

 

1. Create a zip folder.

 

2. Drag'n drop the project file into the sip folder.

 

3. Create a rar archive.

 

4. Drag'n drop the zip into the rar archive, but set compression to maximum, this is easier to do if you pause the compression.

 

This should make the file considerably smaller.

[jamagica]

it doesn't matter now, since I got it uploaded, but...

 

I don't see an option for creating a rar archive...anything I have to install?

[Mr. Jaqe]

winrar, from www.rarlab.com . It's free and always good to have

[Rodney]

Awesome model... and renders (final and wireframe)!

A really cool critter.

 

...and you look like you are having fun too. That is of extreme importance.

I've downloaded... Thanks for the movie and project file!

I was looking foward to seeing it move.

Rodney