Goals for this week
In class we built a little piston for the arm and I would like to move the thumb into place and create more of a hand shape.
What I learnt
Nick showed us how to use the Arnold Renderer in the Viewport which was really cool.
There are different options in something called the Debug Shading which has a variety of shading, in the example be
To create the piston I used a polygon primitive Cylinder, I learnt that it you hit the Shift key and drag a shape, it will automatically duplicate the object.
I also learnt that you can adjust the scale on specific axis’s by changing the colourful squares.
After creating the piston shape out of Cylinders that were manipulated in shape and size, we then moved onto rigging.
Rigging
Nick showed us how to rig up the piston by first adding a Locator. I learnt that a Locator is just an area in space that we can anchor objects to, to make them move.
I added to Locators to the top and bottom cyclinder and used the Snap tool to make sure they were in the correct place. Then changed the pivot point of the thicker outer case and the thnner inner case to also be the centre of the top and bottom cylinders, again using the Snap Tool.
Constraints
Next it was time to add constraints. To make it work I learnt that the object that is the master controller is the one that must be selected First, then the object that you would like to constrain. I constrained a locator to the piston and then the other to the outer case.
I needed a little bit of extra help because the different types of Constraints were confusing me so I found this video which helped me understand what the difference between a Parent and an Aim Constraint is.
The object, in this case the piston will maintain its position but will point to wherever the Locator is.
By applying Maintain Offset, you can control the position.
Then we applied a Point Constraint. This time of constraint will apply the translate only.