My animation skills are weak at best but I would love to see this walk! I will definitely give it a go. Looking forward to doing some nice textures first!
References are mostly from modelermagic.com. I've been looking at stills from the Battle of Hoth too and I've noticed 1 or 2 discrepancies with those references. This one in particular is different on the model used in the film. In the movie there is a piece of armour platting in this section but on the models there is a weird looking cylinder shape. i modeled both options and I like the armour plate one better. The other one looks out of place.
Yeah, a great site for reference, that's for sure. I found my self in the same position with my AT-AT build, having found differences between each studio model (which is typical). In the end it just came down to which one I liked the most.
When it came to rigging and animation, my first couple of attempts were very enlightening, and ugly. At first I rigged the legs as if they functioned normally, like, say, on an elephant, but something wasn't working right. It took me a while to figure it out, and after pouring over the material in the films for hours you start to get a sense as to what is actually happening mechanically. Only one leg moves at a time (not a problem), but when one leg is in motion, the others lock their knee joints so that they can't bend. This makes all the sense in the world when you treat it as a stop motion problem. The feet on the ground are screwed into place, and when a step is taken, the screw is released a little bit per frame (gradually releasing the spring in the feet that allows for the compression) allowing the foot to eventually leave the ground and take a step, after which it is screwed (from underneath) into it's final position, again, a little tighter each frame for the compression. Because the other feet are screwed down and the knees are locked (the hip and ankle joints remain active), it allows the animator to ease the entire body forward for the step, maintaining the vehicle's balance.
Long story short, there are two IK chains running down each leg, allowing each knee to lock when not being used. Something to keep in mind as you move forward (so to speak ).
Try to ignore the animation, it's only a rig test:
Well I'm done modelling on this bar some optimisation here and there. Here's some renders of the final model. I threw in some wire frame renders too, I promise I'll clean up some of those unnecessarily high poly pieces (don't' judge me! )
Excellent work! How many hours did it take you roughly to make this beast from the beginning?
I've been at it on and off since early May. Kinda hard to say even roughly how many hours i've put in. This has been a black hole of time. I've lost track of time so many times in modelling this and what you think is half an hour would actually end up being 2 hours. I've had some many cups of tea go cold on me ;-)
A wild guess here I'd say upwards of 80 to 100 hours. Maybe more....
After a short break from 3D stuff I started playing around with rigging, bones, animation and I decided to give animating the AT-AT a go. It's a short 8 step sequence but it was a great learning exercise. Learnt loads about rigging and rendering!
The render is a short 13 sec mental ray render with some motion blur. Some issues with flicker due to some final gather problems that I need to look into but it's fine for testing. Eventually I'll try to composite this into a nice scene (another sharp learning curve ahead!)
I've been playing with render element and compositing. Picked a random HQ scene from the web just to practice on, probably could of picked something easier! Shadows are a bit messy, need some work. Direct/Indirect illumination looks good I think.
Posts
References are mostly from modelermagic.com. I've been looking at stills from the Battle of Hoth too and I've noticed 1 or 2 discrepancies with those references. This one in particular is different on the model used in the film. In the movie there is a piece of armour platting in this section but on the models there is a weird looking cylinder shape. i modeled both options and I like the armour plate one better. The other one looks out of place.
1.JPG
2.JPG
Apart from that the refs are great. There are some very impressive physical pieces of work out there!
When it came to rigging and animation, my first couple of attempts were very enlightening, and ugly.
Long story short, there are two IK chains running down each leg, allowing each knee to lock when not being used. Something to keep in mind as you move forward (so to speak
Try to ignore the animation, it's only a rig test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9E0QMAOozw
Don't mean to hijack (and I apologize if I did), just trying to save you some of the pain that I went through.
Texture time....
I've been at it on and off since early May. Kinda hard to say even roughly how many hours i've put in. This has been a black hole of time. I've lost track of time so many times in modelling this and what you think is half an hour would actually end up being 2 hours. I've had some many cups of tea go cold on me ;-)
A wild guess here I'd say upwards of 80 to 100 hours. Maybe more....
Al
The render is a short 13 sec mental ray render with some motion blur. Some issues with flicker due to some final gather problems that I need to look into but it's fine for testing. Eventually I'll try to composite this into a nice scene (another sharp learning curve ahead!)
https://youtu.be/PYwWLaHWxcU
:thumb:
https://youtu.be/69M6a10rEYE