Tutorial: Making an Animated Robot in Blender

in this tutorial we're going to make this dancing light bulb robot character using only three assets and most of the parts you see here are already available just from the default blender add-ons so we just have to combine this with the free version of my mechanical creature kit a light build from polyhaven and some motion capture from the Rococo motion Library so we're going to download Rococo Studio I'm on windows so I'm just going to click download just click sign in with browser and I'm just going to make a free account with Google let's go to motion library and here you can see new assets let's go view all and you can sort by free so here you can see there's a bunch of free motion capture which you can download super easily what's important is that you choose a mocap that has a proper t-post so in rest position the Armature should look like this and not like this so I want to go to categories and go to dams and yeah I like this one so let's click on this and here you can preview the mocap in real time yeah I like this one so I'm going to click add to cart so now let's click purchase and now you can click open folder and there it is so here we are in London version 3.4 I'm going to start off by deleting everything and go file import fbx and now let's go to the desktop and let's import our fbx but before we click import make sure that you open the Armature menu and you enable automatic bone orientation because if not it's going to look really weird so now let's click import fbx so here you can see you have the Armature in our scene and you can press play and now you can see the animation and the animation is a little bit short so if you hold your mouse down here and you press home now you can see all the keyframes so let's go to the end and let's go Ctrl end so now when you press play you can see the entire animation so our workflow today is that we're going to take various types of mechanical parts and just parent them to these bones so that when this Armature is moving around we're going to see mechanical Parts instead and I'm going to show you where you can find all the mechanical parts that you need completely for free and it's important that you set the skeleton to rest position while we are kick bashing these models so for the legs we are going to use my mechanical creature gift so let's go to blunder market and you can search for po oh there it is fully Fjord search and just click on the mechanical creature kit and here you can see there's a zero dollar free starter kit and I know it says it's not for commercial use but I'm going to remove this so when this tutorial is live you can use this free starter kit for commercial purposes as well so let's go ahead and click purchase and continue to check out and if you don't have an account you can create one it's super easy okay so I'm just going to unzip this and place it to my desktop and in blender let's go edit preferences and under file paths you can add asset Library desktop and you can just choose this folder and click add asset Library so now if you right click vertical split you can set this editor type to the asset browser and then you can change it from current file to Mechanical creature kit free so here you can see we have some assets that we can use in this project so for the legs I want to import this joint object and we're also going to be using bar and bracket and then you can just collapse this if you like so now you can select this joint object and you can rotate it by pressing R and x and you can view this from the side and now this workflow is all about lining this up with the bone so that this part down here is lining up here and then this top part is lining up here so let's move this over let's scale it down a little bit and then you can press tab to go to edit mode and you can select this and press G and z and just line this up so there's one leg and now if you like you can go to modify properties and under this bevel modifier you can hold down shift and you can increase this so it's a little bit smoother and then you want to press Ctrl a and apply the scale and then let's actually tweak this a little bit further now let's press shift d and duplicate it up here there we go and then shift d and make it double and we can take the bar and the bracket and hide them for now okay so I'm going to see if I can use this joint object to just create all the parts of the legs that we need so I'm going to duplicate it even more and I'm going to use edit mode to scale this down and just make this into a leg foreign [Music] leg and what's really cool about this is that if you set the viewport shading to material view you can see that these already come with the material from the mechanical creature kit look at this beautiful procedural metal material that we already have so now I think I want to make some arms as well so let's take this leg and let's just duplicate it and let's do the same procedure where we just line this up with the arm bones just like we did with the leg bones [Music] foreign and you might notice that these are not completely straight I think that's cool it makes like a handmade look and it can actually really help when making hard surface stuff look a little bit more organic I think okay so for the wrist I want to go shift a and let's make a Taurus and let's just scale this down and now I realize that this needs to be changed 90 degrees so let's go to edit mode Let's delete this and let's select this part and press R and x and then rotate it by 90 degrees and then you can hold down alt to select this part and then hold down alt and shift to select this Edge as well so now we've got both these edges selected and you can go Ctrl e Bridge Edge Loops so now we got this joint that rotates 90 degrees let's place our Taurus inside of this and you can press tab to go to edit mode and press alt s to make this thicker and right click set the shading to smooth now let's duplicate it and let's go to x-ray View and press Tab and then select this part and press e to extrude so you got this much longer part and we want to make this Slimmer so press Alt s to slim it down a little bit and I also want to get rid of this overlapping part so just box select it and delete vertices and now to make a finger let's just simply take another part of the arm and press shift d and move it over so I want to make the index finger and I want to make the ring finger yeah so the hand will basically be uh looking a little bit like this I think that's cool so now let's make the part that's going to connect these legs let's go shift a and let's make another Taurus now let's press tab to go to edit mode alt s to make it a little bit thicker and let's go to x-ray View and let's just box select and delete half of this now in edit mode you can hold down alt and select this one and hold down alt and shift to select this and press e to extrude and then Z and then press F to fill and then you can press right click shade Auto smooth let's go add modifier bevel yeah there we go I think that's good let's press shift d to duplicate it so I want to fill this hole with a sphere so let's go shift a and let's make an icosphere and let's set the subdivisions to three and right click set the shading to smooth and then you can just scale it down and you can move it over so I want to try and populate this area so it doesn't look so empty and let's make a cylinder scale it down and place it in here so we got like some connection between these legs and you can right click set the shading to Auto smooth and if you go to modifier bevel modifier you can see that this looks a little bit weird so you can control a apply scale so now let's connect the legs and the arms and I'm going to use the cylinder so let's go shift d and duplicate it and I want to make this into like a torso object and for the Torso I want to add a spring so to make a mechanical spring let's go to edit preferences and under add-ons let's just search for extra objects and let's go add curve extra objects so now when you go shift a you can go curve and under curve profiles you can select Helix 3D so let's set the end angle to something really high like 3000 or something and we want to make this smoother so let's change this to bezier and let's lower the width a little bit let's try a end angle of 4000 instead so now we can move this over so it goes around the cylinder and under object data properties you can go to geometry and under bevel and depth you can pull this so you can increase the thickness you can hold down shift to be a little bit more precise and to change the diameter you can press tab to go to edit mode press s and then shift Z to scale it on all axis except for z-axis then you can scan it on the z-axis as well and you can set this to wireframe view and you can see that this has a lot of geometry and we don't need that so under object data properties you can lower the resolution preview from 12 to for example three and you won't really see the difference but this could help make your scene a little bit more responsive so I want to add a spring inside the legs as well so let's go shift a curve profile Helix and let's change the end angle to something really high like twenty thousand and this just looked like spaghetti look at this yeah so we need to increase the resolution so let's just increase this to something like 300 and I want it to look like a spring not like a phone cord so perhaps it should be 15 000. so now let's place this inside the leg so it looks like there's some sort of uh mechanical spring inside of here I think that's cool and let's go shift d and place one here as well and then I want to rotate it a little bit on the z-axis just to give it some Randomness okay so now we need to make our shoulder and I think I want to use a Taurus again so let's take this one and let's press G and move it over here and let's make a sphere let's place a sphere in the center here and let's hide the Torso for now I just want to see this sphere so let's take this Taurus let's duplicate it and let's rotate it by 90 degrees and let's press tab to go to edit mode let's view this from the top and I just wanna extrude this like that and let's delete this oh it goes too far ahead let's press alt s to make it just a little bit Slimmer okay so I think this needs some more flexibility and support so I want to add some extra stuff at the side here which maybe has some details that can interact more with the movement of this spine area because there are a lot of Bones there that will be moving around so I want to make sure that our design can handle that so now you can press alt H to bring back this bar object that we added earlier and I want to use this to sort of support the Torso here foreign [Music] okay nice this is looking good now for the neck area up here which we are going to connect to the Head let's use this bracket Ctrl a to apply the scale and now it gets really thin so we have to increase this again okay so for the head we're going to use a light bulb so let's go to polyhaven.com and let's go to models and let's just search for light bulb and let's go light bulb zero one and let's just click download okay so I'm going to save it to my desktop so I'm just going to right click extract here so it's unzipped and now let's go file append and let's find our project file light bulb object and just go light bulb01 so now we have imported this light bulb and you can go to material View and you can see that this light bulb looks really cool look at this so let's scale this up and let's move this to the top of the head and this is really cool because now you can change the age of your character so grown humans tend to have smaller heads but if you scale this up it looks like a kid I think that's so fascinating okay so now we want to add some more details here you can see these holes we're going to add some screws so to do that let's go edit preferences and under add-ons let's search for bolt and let's add mesh bolt Factory which is an amazing add-on that just comes with blender so now you can go shift a mesh bolt and for some reason this adds a 7 meter tall bolt but you can change the bit type to for example Phillips and you can increase the diameter so let's scale this down let's rotate it and you can right click set the shading to Auto smooth and I want to rotate it a little bit just to give it some random rotation which can really help if you have a lot of these and if you're struggling to find where you're going to place it you can use x-ray View and it's a lot easier to see [Music] thank you oh I made a mistake I have forgotten to duplicate this one I just moved it so okay so now we got half a robot but luckily it's symmetrical so we're going to duplicate it so let's just box select everything that we want to be on the other side as well I think this is it so let's go shift d to duplicate and then press escape and then press Ctrl M to mirror and then press X to specify the x-axis and then let's just line this up oh we've forgotten to attach a screw to the back here so let's just uh duplicate one of these that's important so the kit bashing is done and now you can see if you want to change any proportions for example you can change the size of the head or in this case I think I want to make this bracket a little bit smaller so I'm gonna have to tweak that a little bit foreign okay so now our light bulb robot is fully assembled but if you select the Armature and set it back to post position and start playing on the timeline you can see that these objects are not attached to the Armature we're going to use an add-on that just does this in one click so this is an amazing add-on called parent to nearest bone made by Gentile which just does everything that we wanted to do so let's go to releases and let's just download parent to nearest bone I'm going to save it to my desktop and in blender let's go edit preferences and under add-ons let's go install desktop parent to nearest bone so now we can enable this now let's select our torso let's hide this for now make sure that your Armature is in rest position select the Armature and press a to select the rest so the Armature is highlighted and all the other objects are selected and now let's go object parent parent to nearest bone and now you can see all these tiny little relationship lines these are now parented so now you can move the Armature around and they are attached so now if you set this to post position now you can start moving and it works so now you can press play and you got yourself this animated character look at that okay so since my result actually was perfect on the first try and I was super lucky I have messed this up on purpose now just to show you one of the things that can go wrong so here you can see for example these bars right here if these are for example coming loose like this that is because they got parented to the wrong bone so to manually re-parent an object to the correct bone you can select the Armature go to rest position press control Tab and select the bone that you want them to be parenting to and then press Ctrl tab go back to object mode and then you can select these two which were messed up hold down shift select the Armature control p and parent to Bone so now these will be parented to this bone so now when we set this back to post position it will look correct again so now let's add the Torso okay so the reason that we have waited with the Torso all until now is because these bones are moving a lot and we just want the Torso to be attached down here and then it's going to have an object that is attached to a pair so it will use a constraint instead so to set this up let's select this spiral for example and let's go to object constraint properties and let's add object constraint damped track I'll set the target to be this sphere and now this doesn't really work so let's change the axis okay there it is so now let's press tab to go to edit mode and let's just cut away some of the vertices here to make it not go out on the other side so with this constraint this spring is always pointing towards the sphere so to copy this to the cylinder as well let's first select the spring go shift s cursor to selected and then select the cylinder right click set origin to 3D cursor and then select the cylinder hold down shift to select the spring and in The Damp track let's click this little arrow and go copy to selected so now the cylinder will also be pointing towards our sphere at the top there so now all we have to do take the cylinder and the spring and then just hold down shift and select one of this object for example and then just go Ctrl p parent to object so now this will be like a stiff core in a robot which I think looks really interesting when we have all this deforming things now you got yourself a dancing light bulb so to set up the materials let's just hide the Armature and let's go to material view select everything except the light bulb and then hold down shift and select one of the objects with the material go Ctrl L link materials okay so now you might notice something if you zoom in on these bolts for example you can see that the material is not really working here it's tiling and that's because these bolts are originally this big press a to select everything go Ctrl a and apply scale but now something weird happens with the shading of this one because the normals are flipped so let's press a to select everything again press tab to go to edit mode a to select all the vertices and let's press shift n so now the normals are recalculated so now your light bulb robot has metal materials oh and by the way here's something really cool if you go to the Shader editor and you select one of the objects with the metal material you can see here that in the procedural material you have all these colors like brass or gold so to make a new material let's select the spring and under material properties let's click this button to copy the current material and then you can for example select the brass so now you can take all these springs for example and you can select the one with the brass material the last and go Ctrl L link materials so now all the Springs are brass and if you want to do this with the bolts as well you can select one bolt and go select select pattern and search for bolt with a star after it and and then press enter and now all the bolts are selected now you can hold down shift select the spring again Ctrl L link materials now look at this you got this beautiful materials in your object and that's it now you have an animated light build character ready to render with beautiful materials foreign [Music] if you thought this tutorial was too short and you wish it was longer I've actually made a longer more in-depth version on my second Channel where I just go through every single setting in the entire process so feel free to check out that video on my second Channel polyure Deep dive if you enjoyed this tutorial and want to support my channel on patreon you can now get a new desktop wallpaper every month with a new rendered view tier this gives you access to wallpapers that are high quality Runners of my work with resolutions that supports up to 8K displays the render view tier also includes all the other stuff on my patreon like my project files in material view which you can pick apart study or just copy all my Runner settings thanks for watching [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Polyfjord

Views: 165,331

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Id: MtlLUdUvw-g

Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2023