Starter mesh of Planco-style human animatronics for Thememaker's Toolkit?

MsRedNebula

MsRedNebula
I'm so excited about the upcoming Thememaker's Toolkit and am working to learn Blender so I can contribute. Got lots of ideas! One thing I was thinking about was how cool it'd be if we had a downloadable mesh of what the human animatronic characters look like in game, so that when we go to create more animatronics, we'd be able to keep the look and feel of the game and Planet Coaster's unique style!

A male and female character mesh we could download and adapt would make the addition of so many cool, Planco-styled characters much easier. Clowns, mermaids, centaurs, wizards, elves, vampires... and that's just a few possibilities!
 

Vampiro

Volunteer Moderator
Vampiro
SarrahW said:
I'm so excited about the upcoming Thememaker's Toolkit and am working to learn Blender so I can contribute. Got lots of ideas! One thing I was thinking about was how cool it'd be if we had a downloadable mesh of what the human animatronic characters look like in game, so that when we go to create more animatronics, we'd be able to keep the look and feel of the game and Planet Coaster's unique style!

A male and female character mesh we could download and adapt would make the addition of so many cool, Planco-styled characters much easier. Clowns, mermaids, centaurs, wizards, elves, vampires... and that's just a few possibilities!
Click to expand...

I really like this idea!! You can't have enough "human" animatronics :D

+1
 

Samplerocker

Samplerocker
you are working to learn blender? to create complex animatronics like humans? with a max limit of 18 bones? 6 LODs?

please Show me [cool]
 

KickAir8p

KickAir8p
Vampiro said:
I really like this idea!! You can't have enough "human" animatronics :D

+1
Click to expand...

Yep, +1! [up] Right now we know they'll be providing at least one animatronic example, but not what it'll be -- although Samplerocker has a point (18 bones, one of which has to be the base, is evidently not the limit the developers were working with) it would still be a helpful resource.
 

MsRedNebula

MsRedNebula
It doesn't sound like you need a root bone (I'm assuming that's what you mean by base?) unless there's a static object in the same part. If you discount finger bones or complex torso movements, 18 is do-able - Head (1), shoulders (2 and 3), upper arms (4 and 5), lower arms (6 and 7), hands (8 and 9), torso (10), hip extenders (11 and 12), upper legs (13 and 14), lower legs (15 and 16), and feet (17 and 18). It seems to me a human (or vertebrate) skeleton without fingers or toes is exactly what they were going for with that bone count.

Though I am still learning, so perhaps I'm missing something. I'll be starting with much simpler stuff. But character and creature animatronics are my eventual goal!
 

MsRedNebula

MsRedNebula
A couple further thoughts on the subject... standing up, I realized the torso definitely needs 2 bones instead of one, but only if the animatronic needs to bend at the waist. If so, they lose the ability to bend at the wrist, or open their mouth, or whatever.

It got me thinking about animatronics you see at parks. There are some beautifully complex ones, of course, but most of the time, their movement range is quite limited. A theme park on a tight budget may have one that just waves, or sings, or whatever. We don't need to rig even human models to move like humans, we just need to rig them to move like animatronics. (Though I have no intention of having a pole up their bums like some of the poor Planco animatronics ;) )
 
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