Maya - Robot

So in the second year there will be the opportunity to make your own characters and rig them for animation. In an effort to get ahead of the game I've done some character modeling. Going through the whole process of modeling, rigging, setting up controls and animating a character is an achievement to be desired, but not something that arose in the first year. The summer holiday is a good time to get ahead and practice what we will be doing in the second year.

 

 I modelled this robot albeit a little crude just to get some practice going through the whole process from start to finish.

 

 

The skeleton is all in place, just needing to set up the controls and get animating. 

Here it is all rigged with controls in place ready to animate.

 

 I added a sun and sky to this one as it gives very nice lighting. 

After spending most of 2 days modelling and rigging I was ready to animate. The drive to complete the whole process is so strong I've only slept for 5 hours in 2 days. My rig was going perfect until parenting the geometry to the rig, I found there was one small problem. One of the feet wasn't working, which put a stop to me making a walk cycle, which is what I intented to acomplish. It would be easy to say I failed in my efforts, but in reality I've learnt so much and it's best to fail now and learn, than struggle with a project in year 2. I've made a small animation just to satisfy my 2 days of work, but in all honesty my brain isn't at best. After a couple of days off for the weekend I plan on getting back to it and making a new character. Hopefully my efforts will be more succsessful.

Below is the render with some movement, not much I know. Hopefully time will allow me to go back and animate something a little more fluid and perhaps longer. This is just up for the purposes of seeing the full render in motiion.