Week 5-Creating the Robot

To make the robot for my animations I will began by creating the body and working outwards from there. For this I started by drawing out the box with a length of 21.354, width of 34.094 and height of 32.66. Also, I increased the number of segments for each of the dimensions. I chose the number of segments for the length and width as 10 and the height as 20 as this resulted in each segment being a square.

Next I went on to create the legs. For this I used a cylinder with a radius of 4 and set the height to 20.749 as I felt this length was proportional to the box for the body. When I was happy with the cylinder I cloned a copy and aligned them under the body.

After this I went on to produce the foot. For this I decided to use a sphere with a radius of 9.273 and chopped it into a hemisphere. Then I selected the scale tool to squash the shape to create a foot-like shape. I then aligned the shape at the base of one leg and once again used the scale tool to make it in proportion to the rest of the character before cloning a copy for the opposite leg.

I then created an arm by drawing out a cylinder. I set the dimensions as a 3.301 radius and 20.266 high. Also I changed the number of segments to 25 high and 9 for the cap. Finally I cloned a copy of the shape and symmetrically placed it on the opposite side to make a pair of arms.

Next I went on to produce the head of the robot. I decided to start with a cylinder for this as I felt this would be the most suitable to create the shape of head I had planned during my preparation. I changed the size settings to 14.058 for the radius and 19.577 for the height as I felt this would be in proportional to the rest of the robot. I then went on to create the dome at the top so converted it into an editable poly and selected the soft selection. Then I selected the central vertex at the top of the cylinder and altered the falloff value to 18 so it only affected the top. With the move tool I raised the area.

I was not that happy with it at this point as I was unable to create the curved shape I was looking for and so undid the soft selection steps. Instead to create the top I drew out a sphere with the same radius as the cylinder and used the chop tool to make it into a hemisphere. I aligned it to the top of the cylinder.

Afterwards I used the scale tool to flatten it slightly as the dome was larger than I wanted, but when I looked at the character as a whole I felt the head was too tall. To resolve this I reduced the height of the cylinder.

I felt the best thing to do next would be to create the hands. For this I started by drawing out a box with the length of 10.285, width of 10.067 and height of 6.602. I wanted to create a realistically shaped hand and planned to use the extrude technique to create fingers, so to do this I first segmented the box to make it 3 segments in length, 4 in width and kept it at 1 in height. Next I converted it into an editable poly and selected the vertex icon. I then selected the vertexes at the end of one part of the box and used the scale tool to move them closer together.

After I clicked on the polygon icon, selected the end segments one by one and extruded them. I did this by opening the extrude window and typing in values to the extrude height which would create a proportional, realistic looking hand. I started with the middle finger and worked outwards, setting the extrude value for the middle finger to 8, third finger to 7.3, first finger to 7.6 and little finger to 6. Finally, with then end segments still selected I used the move and rotate tools to space out the fingers.

I was pleased with the fingers and so went onto the thumb. To start I selected the two segments at the base of the box and extruded them to the value of 1.0. Then, with the segments still selected I used the rotate tool to make the thumb slope out from the wrist.

I then extruded the thumb and rotated it outwards slightly as I did for the fingers.

When I looked at the hand as a whole I thought the fingers looked too fat and so selected the end vertexes of each finger and, with the scale tool made the finger tips slightly narrower.

I changed the shape of the arm to a cone so I could make it get gradually smaller from the shoulder to the wrist. I made it a bit smaller than the cylinder, set the top radius to 3.203 and bottom radius to 2.2179. Then I scaled the hand so it was in proportion to the body. When I was happy with the proportions I cloned the objects and placed them on the opposite sides. Also, I increased the size of the body to fit in with the rest of the character.

Afterwards I went onto create the computer screen. I planned to put this on the left of the robots body with buttons to the right. So, to create this I made the box for the body into an editable poly and selected a number of polygons on the front. Then I opened the bevel window and altered the figures until I was happy with the screens appearance, this being to the height of 0.403 and outline amount of -0.6.

So far I was happy with the robots appearance and so went on to create the elbows. For this I drew out a sphere with a radius of 2.744 and placed it in the middle of the arm. I then cloned a copy and placed it evenly on the other arm. To get the position symmetrical took a lot of time and several alterations with the move tool.

I also used this process to create the knees.

Afterwards I went on the make the buttons. For this I created a cylinder with a radius of 1.161 and height of 0.872. Next I cloned the object five times and spaced them evenly to the right of the screen. I made sure that all the buttons touched the main body.

At this point I considered the character as a whole, and felt the feet did not suit him, so I decided to recreate them using the same methods as I did for the hands. Therefore I started with a box and changed the number of segments to 5 in length, 9 in width and 1 on height. I then made the shape into an editable poly. Firstly I selected the vertex icon and moved the vertexes at the top of the foot to create a curving shape.

Next I changed to the polygon icon and opened the extrude window. Then I selected each of the segments at the end of the foot one by one and extruded them to different values. For the big toe I extruded it by 2, the second and third toe by 1.6, the forth by 1.4 and little toe by 1.15. Once all the toes were extruded I was not completely happy as they were touching and were not easily visible. Due to this I used the move and rotate tool to space them out in a way which I felt was realistic.

Lastly I selected all the vertexes along the inside of the foot and moved them outwards to make the big toe wider than the rest as I initially thought it looked quite unrealistic being the same width as all the others.

As I was happy with the foot at this point I cloned a copy and used the mirror window to make it symmetrical to the first. I then replaced the original with the new feet by aligning them at the bottom of the legs.

Next I moved on to create the face. Here I started with the hair. In my designs I created a few short, spiky hairs on the top part of the robots head and still plan to include these. So, to do this I will use a cylinder.

I drew out the shape and placed the first strand on the top of his head. Then I altered the values of the radius and height to get the length and thickness I wanted, resulting in the radius being 0.279 and the height 3.041. I then cloned a copy of this shape and placed them across the top of his head, placing them evenly apart and trying to make the two sides symmetrical.

Afterwards I went on to create the eyes. I started by drawing out a sphere and set the radius to 1.607. I then cloned a copy and placed them on the front of the head, all the time trying to keep them an even distance from the centre and top. Also, I tried to make sure the same amount of the eye was sunken inside the head.

Next I created the mouth. For this I felt the best shape to use would be a cylinder and so created one with a radius of 0.811 and length of 10.346. I increased the number of height segments to 25. I then selected bend modifier and applied a bend to the angle of 90 degrees so the character would appear to be smiling. Finally I moved the mouth to the position I wanted.

The building of the robot was now complete, but I felt the hands and feet did not quite work with the rest of the character. To resolve this I applied a mesh smooth to these parts. I then changed the iteration amount to 1 and smoothness to 0 to make the edges slightly smoother, but not too smooth that it did not fit in with the other parts.

I was pleased with the robots appearance overall at this point and so decided to go on to adding colour. Firstly I produced the material for the body. I wanted this to be a shiny metal and so chose the anisotropic shader and selected a dark grey as the colour. I then changed the specular level to 120, glossiness to 30 and anisotropy to 10.

Next I created the buttons colour. I felt that the best colour would be red for this part as a brighter shade would stand out from the main body colour. Again I used the anisotropic shader and changed the specular to 65 and glossiness to 10.

I then went on to create the screen. For this I created a combination of materials for black, red, yellow and green, all with the blinn shader and a specular level of 30 and glossiness of 90. Then, in editable poly mode I selected different polygons on the screen and applied one of these materials to it. I arranged the colours in such a way that they would represent a computer screen giving out readings of the robots electronic activity. I also used this shade of black created by the blinn shader on the mouth and hair.

The final set was to create a material for the eyes. For this I wanted the eye to be human-like rather than just a plain colour and so create a bitmap in Photoshop for this.

I then changed the UV tile size of the diffuse map by making the U value 2 and V value 1. Lastly I dragged the materials to the spheres and rotated them until the pupils faced forwards.

I am pleased with how my work has progressed this week. Next week I will continue with the robot by adding bones to the limbs before moving on to the teddy bear.