Animated Robotic Bird
Added 2022-02-12 14:19:05 +0000 UTCHey!
In my latest video (part 2 of the robotic arms tutorial) I experimented with some different use cases for the armature. So in this project one of the robotic arms is a bird's head, and two robotic arms are its walking legs! You can see the animated result with sound effects here.
The legs are animated with the same path technique as used in the Walk Cycle tutorial. I recently discovered that multiple objects can use the same path, since the offset is local for each moving leg. This also makes it possible to control the animation path for all legs with a single curve path, instead of each leg having it's own path.
The tail feather is a cloth simulation with very few vertices. I encourage you to inspect this in Edit Mode to see how little geometry is needed to create some interesting movement with the cloth modifier. Then it's made more smooth with a solidify modifier and a subdivision surface modifier. Note: If the cloth simulation in the project file is bugged, simply delete the bake and re-bake it.
The motion of the body/tail and this energy orb element is not simulated. It is simply an object with the same animated F-curve noise as the main body, but the trick is to give it a few frames offset! This is also applied for the sine wave bounce. This offset makes it look like there is a delay for the random motion, which gives it some sort of weight I think. It's an incredibly efficient technique to get some more mass to living creature animation.
Download the project file here: Robotic_Bird_v3.0.blend
BTW, ever since the last tutorial got an insane amount of views (over 20 million in 9 days!), the comment section of the video has been very crowded, making it difficult to participate properly. So if you want to continue the discussion with like minded 3D artists, feel free to check out the Polyfjord Viewport Community on Discord if you haven't already!
Thank you for the support!
- Asbjørn
