Giant Robot AVs. And stuff.

Hi-

Please forgive the blunt question - but I'm not in the mood to mince words. So, right to the point(s).

I have seen giant robot and bird AVs around - definitely larger than normal. Can anyone give me some hints as to how to accomplish this? My attempts to attach primitives at larger than normal offset to a normal human sized AV have resulted in mostly unsatisfactory results - sometimes it seems that the attachment points are not at a consistent distance from each other. An upper arm attachment and a lower arm attachment will suddenly be very far from each other depending on which animation is playing ( i still have to use stock anims ). Definitely not the look I'm going for - (which is basically a robot that moves like a person).

Is the best method to create a "giant" animation or something of the sort? Can you link attachments using hinges or joints to manage the distance between them?

Also, I have seen robot boots that basically amount to stilts - the user's av wears the boots and is translated upward. Is this also accomplished with an animation?

Please advise!

Thanks in advance-
Ivan

It can't be done, i've tryed it & it's impossible to make a giant AV on SL, nor will it be possible , there just aren't enough Macrophiles on SL to have this 'feature' added onto it....

In fact i'm gonna take a vacation from SL 'till this becomes possible, i've allready wasted too much L$ on trying to get this done mostly on my own too....

Woulfe
* Who's gonna take a LONG vacation from SL as ihe's fustrated w/ makeing a macrowolf *

How big is big? A friend just finished an avatar mech around 6 meters tall that works with offset animations so that she effectively walks 4m above the ground inside the mech body. Looks pretty darned effective.

I've been working on a framework and animation set for an even taller avatar, and that seems to be going ok too.

I'd like to see a giant mech I can ride on the shoulder of. Kinda like an anime!

it is possible to make large mech sized robots, ask Yadni Monde or David Street to show you theirs. Here's a hint: custom animations.

While on the subject of wishing for robots, how about a set of powered armors that transform and link up into a multi-AV giant robot! Go Voltron! Or Power Rangers! (depending on your generation)

Giant Mech's ARE possible. Though sometimes the mechanics are hard with scripting, it IS possible, to a degree. Kage Seraph, a person whom i know and look up to, makes mechs like crazy. He has made a mech AV around 20-30 feet high. The legs move with him too. There's a script for mech legs under your own legs. Also, if you want the real giant mecha, Adekii Musashi is making a combination style giant robo, he is learning new scripts for it and stuff and is doing an aweosme job and has some unique plans for the mech.

Hi-

Thanks for the responses. I'm not really interested in having it done for me or playing with other's creations, just learning mechanics so I can see some of my ideas come to life.

Also, iin my mind, big is really just going to be about twice the size of a normal avatar.

Thanks for the names tho, I'll see if I can't say hi when I'm online.

Thanks-
Ivan

I've been building mecha since June. Building a mecha that's roughly twice as big as your av is a simple task. The joints are not too far out of position, so it's just a matter of breaking the mecha into its components (legs, arms, torso, &c.) and using either custom anis or custom scripts to elevate the mecha off the ground. I have had scripts which have accomplished this for a while now, but custom anis with vertical offset are really the best solution for a final product. The only down-side is that the animations must be tailored to each specific mecha. The scripts are far more versatile, but the quality of the animation isn't quite as good as a full set of anis.

Really, the difficult part is building a mecha which is gigantic. The larger the mecha gets, the greater the offset between the joints of the av and the joints of the mecha. This disparity causes pieces not to bend properly. Instead of the leg of the mecha bending at the knee of the mecha, the leg bends at the av's knee. Which means the parts suffer considerable translation when they rotate. I haven't come up with any way of avoiding this problem. If someone has, I'd love enlightenment.

The largest mecha I've built was 20 meters tall, but I had to compromise between size and articulation by eliminating articulation at the knees and elbows. This had the effect of producing a very stiff gait, but the mecha still looked decent.

What about a script that reads the av's movement commands and translates them into animations?

It would probably work best as a vehicle, rather than an attachment.

Animation override is integral to the process. For mecha which use custom anis with vertical offsets, an animation override script is necessary to play the proper animation. When the av steps forward, the custom walking ani is played. When he jumps, a custom jump ani is played. The Franimator Override is one example of a publicly available animation override which new builders might consider examining, when first scripting their own systems.

[Yoda/]

Over my head all this scripting stuff is.....

[/Yoda]

But i'm trying to make a giant AV on my own.....

Seeing as no one is willing to help me out with this....

Wish me luck....

Woulfe
* Trying this out, who knows if it'll work tho' *

Ardith - would it be allright if I contacted you online sometime? I'm not looking for someone to do this for me - just a person who can take a look at something I have allready tried and give me some advice as to what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks-
Ivan

This is why I haven't bothered to make any giant size mecha avatars. I'm much too picky about having gaps at the joints.

I have seen some pretty nice larger mecha avs tho.

Ok, this question seems to haev come up a lot recently and Im coming out of hiding...
as has been said already this is completely possible. It requires the following:

a. custom animation(s) as a "booster seat" to lift your av above normal avatar height, and or lock limbs to better control large attachments. You will most likely want to script this custom animation into a piece of the avatar so that youre not walking around with your legs half buried. Im not going to go into poser101, but esentially you need to lock the hips at a height, and will likely benefit from locking part of the legs or arms so that attachments dont swing wildly and are more predictable.
( NOTE: the more you diverge from the maximum avatar height/width/whatever, the more difficult it will be to line this stuff up, addition of 0.5m, easy... addition of 25 meters, not)

b. a LOT of time modelling and painstakingly arranging primitives. There's just no other way to say this, I wish there was a faster way to create puppeted attachments that would move in a dampened fashion, but there isn't... ergo, you will have to exert effort to make this happen. ["LEET" SECRET EDIT: try combining prims over a larger distance than you are currently so that the centerpoint falls where you want it to, basically adding invis prims to offset the center of rotation]

c. The ability to live with something that is not 100% perfect, OR the ability to "fudge" a little to make it look intended. As Marcos (bow bow bow) has said things aren't going to line up very well at joints, and you will either have to live with it or do something like large black rubber gaskets to work around the large gaps.

d. an attention span. I have so far built one "giant robot" av and it was def. rewarding in the final product, but this project easily took me a couple weeks of experimentation with animations, textures, modelling, and scripting to make it work, and I'm not keen on doing it again any time soon.

TO sum up.... sorry if this post came off as a little gruff, but essentially what youre asking to do is to stretch the capabilities of an avatar sysytem that is already 1000x more advanced and customizable than any other game on the market. The beautiful thing about SL is that it is possible. However like life the most impressive and unique works often require a good deal of patience and determination. The reason you haven't seen a lot of 40 foot tall avatars stomping around is because this is a pretty difficult trick to pull off well.
Its no different than anything else, you get out what you put in.

Sure. If you manage to catch me online, just drop me an IM. Just a warning though: I tend not to be on much, as I'm usually either stuck at the university or toiling away at work.

I'm willing to pay loads of L$ to anyone who can help me out as I can't seem to get it working to what I like for it to do which is match my movements without giveing me a headach to repoistioning every limb evertime I move thus makeing it look oddball like when I type or whatever have you, I got it to look right walking or flying, and that was it....

I'm pretty much at the end of my rope as this is too hard for me to figure out what i'm doing wrong or why it's not working for me at all or why it just looks odd part time & okay the rest of the time, yadda yadda yadda....

Let's just say all this stuf is way way way too complex for my brain to handle & leave it at dat, kay ?

It's all greek to me, this scripting stuff namely....

Woulfe
* Who's about to toss the towel for SL if he can't be what he imagined to be *

I think i'm getting the hang of dis finnally....

Hopefully soon folks will see a fully articulated me

Woulfe
* Who now feels he got the help he so despertly needed awhile back *

Did you manage to pull it off finally ?

I've identified two other methods besides offset anims, and will be testing one to make an animated stead.

Sad to say this but....

I'm not even on SL anymore....

Seems someone didn't like my [ non-working ] giant Ava & I couldn't play 'round on the sim where I had the giant Av & was working on it still to get it to move....

I think I was pretty close to getting it to work, I found a solution sorta, it gave me limited movemet, but at least it moved, but I guess if I can't even play 'round on the sim I was working at it on, then it's rather pointless to even be on SL even as the whole idea was so I could be a giant anthro wolf, well so much for that....

Guess SL just isn't ready for macrofurs & may never be ready for them.... IMOHO....

Offset anims is way too hard IMOHO, so much trial & error, and once you go over any height, you need to have less moveing as each part moves more broad the further away it is from the core ava inside the center of it all, even at twice the height of the core sim you need to limit the movements of the larger Ava, the biggest problem with all this is that the Ava moves more like a robot then a living being, so it may be good for Mechs but for large Avas it's sadly lacking....

I may return to SL just to check up on the work you folks are doing w/ making it possible to make a more articulated giant ava, well, more so then one that bearly moves ATM....

I bought a poseing stand to make my work easyer, you may have to do the same for the same kind of work, as it makes it easyer to position everything if the core Ava isn't moveing at all, then you can get off the stand to test if everything is working propery, get back on the stand & readjust if things are acting wonko, repeat 'till you are satisfied....

Yea it's a lot of work, not much we can do 'bout dat 'till someone finds a better way to make large Avas that doesn't involve offset anims which seem to be the core problem with doing it ATM....

Well, i'll be seeing you guys 'round, checking on the board on your progress & see how far you get with it....

Woulfe
* Who won't waste his time on SL 'till he's more welcomed there.... *

If you do connect, go to the Sandbox Island, there you should be able to work on your giant AV. Plus you'll get to see a weird result I got from an experiment: a free-running chocobo-like creature that runs in circles in the Sim I decided to let it stay there and walk walk walk endlessly since it hardly hits the sim's processing time and adds no more than 15 kbps of bandwidth usage for players.

There are a couple of ways to make a large av without using vertical offset anis. That's not the problem. The problem, once again, lies with the joints. Your "macrofur" would flail and shake as he walked, and the movement would definitely not be realistic. Though obviously a 100 ft tall wolf wouldn't be realistic in the first place.

(Maybe if I become Amish, I won't ever have to see the term macrofur again.)

Are you using setpos to animate the legs? If you used one of the kinetic movement functions, it might move a bit more cleanly. It's a cool idea, by the way. I've got a couple Chocobo avs, but no chocobo vehicles. I would definitely pay for a more-cleanly animated version that can be conrolled.

I do log on to SL ....

I will be in Lusk or the island sandbox, that'll pretty much be it tho' ....

I don't feel like wasting my time elsewhere if folks don't want me 'round them ....

Woulfe
* this space for rent, call toll free, 1-800-big-wolf for details *

I'm using SetPos and am disappointed at the result, the built-in delay is making my chocobo vveerryy slow. I tried putting multiple scripts to divide the delay between them but it's NOT WORKING.

Here's the breakdown:
main script: read the controls, sets directions and passes them to handlers with MessageLinked
handlers: read the directions, have a timer running as fast as possible with setpos in it

End result: exactly the same as with one timer with setpos in the main script

[Edit]
Maybe I can pass the parameters onto different channel, one per copy of handler script ? And then I can set the main script to run across the whole range of channels so that it adresses only one handler at a time ? I'd have to set it that way from the top down to the leg handlers though, lots of work.