Tuesday, December 4, 2007

This Mother Walks!

Alright, allow me one indulgence and reprieve from the rigors of the NWN2 Toolset (which I love). Behold Maya, my new favorite 3D Package (Sorry Max, we had a good run...let's stay friends). This is a little chicken-walker robot I threw together to test out Inverse Kinematics, or the basics of physics and animation playing nice. I got this thing to walk after adding in the bones/joints/etc and basically setting up a virtual stop-motion model that can be manipulated along a timeline.

Maya in all its glory

Very cool stuff, but a bit different from the biped method of 3D Studio Max's Character Studio which I am more familiar. However, I do think that I will sway my favor toward Maya overall. The ease with which I modeled this, slapped some hull textures on, set up materials and lights for the spotlight effect, and rendered an animation, it's just sick.

With that somewhat out of my system, I suppose getting back to the Solvheil modules is in order.

What's that you say? Does it REALLY walk? Would I lie to you? I feel called out here...the gauntlet is down. Fine, have it your way:
Click here to download a 12 second avi.

4 comments:

Andrew Glazebrook said...

Good work, though the anim plays really weird on my PC, it has an electronic type edge to the model, like I have the wrong codec or something !!

Raith Veldrin said...

Thanks Andrew!
The artifacts you see (I imagine you are using Windows Media Player) are from the Cinepack Codec compression I used on the AVI during render. Using VLC player takes care of this issue. If this had been an actual, production quality render, I would have gone full frames uncompressed. However, it would have then been around a gig or so.

Andrew Glazebrook said...

Cinepak does tend to be a bit dodgy at compression.

Raith Veldrin said...

BTW, I checked out your site. VERY smooth looking renders. I have to commend you on the modeling, texturing, lighting, and whole gambit.

Sometimes I wish I had more time to delve into 3D a little further, as it was what brought me over to IT which forced me to accept my dark legacy as a programmer (which I avoided accepting for many years).

Had it not been for MAX's requirement of NT, well, who knows what would have happened. Anyhow, great looking stuff on that site. If you ever feel like getting a few things released to the community just for fun (or if you have and I haven't put 2+2 together yet), check out the NWVault. NWN/NWN2 are both games that are primed for modeling w/ 3DS Max, and very accommodating for community content. You'd be a star (if you aren't already, in which case I apologize).

I sometimes think that my other dark fate lies with modeling for NWN2, as it is as close to professional game development as I will probably come. I can't believe I have put it off this long. Especially considering I am making a custom series of modes solo, in which case, who would object? lol.

Design Documents: