Mech in Progress

[Mach Crit]

I am not up on Gundams as much. To me, when it says "mobile suit" I am thinking that the pilot takes up most of the torso and his head is part of the suit's "head". I guess I thought a Gundam was more like a Heavy Gear where the pilot is 1/4 the size of the suit where the pilot is roughly 1/10 - 1/15 the size of a heavy mech in Mech warrior. Shows what I know.

Most all of the mech animation I have heard discussed has been here (someone was working on an AT-AT variant, and I can't remember offhand.. Stonky?, Fractal sponge?) and the Mektek site for Mechwarrior 4. They all talk about mech movement being a controlled fall all the time, since they are so heavy. I suppose Gyro stabilization could keep the entire torso level, but at what cost for weight and heat and mechanicals?

@JanJaap - I wasn't going to violate the laws of physics, and in fact, my falling walk was a nod to that. I had hopes that a gyro of some sort would be able to detect level, and sophisticated hydraulics/motors in the torso would compensate and keep the torso level during motion. Even then, you would have a delayed and dampened updown cycle for the upper body. Actuators in the arms could help as well, lifting the cannons to keep them somewhat level and free from oscillation in order to fire acurately. Heck, they have something like that on today's combat tanks. Obviously, it won't work if your mech drops a leg into a crater or over a ridgeline, but it should keep the firing platform relatively stable in normal terrrain.

[tetsujin]

Originally Posted by Mach Crit

I am not up on Gundams as much. To me, when it says "mobile suit" I am thinking that the pilot takes up most of the torso and his head is part of the suit's "head". I guess I thought a Gundam was more like a Heavy Gear where the pilot is 1/4 the size of the suit where the pilot is roughly 1/10 - 1/15 the size of a heavy mech in Mech warrior. Shows what I know.

Yeah, it's a pretty screwy piece of terminology. As I understand it the "suit" terminology came from Starship Troopers' "Powered Suits" (but "mobile suits" were never actually "suits" in that sense) - Gundam started out at a more reasonable scale (8-12m maybe?) but wound up taking on lots of traits of the 1970s super robot shows - among other things the 18m height... Anyway, I certainly don't expect anybody to know how tall a MS is if I fail to make it clear to 'em.

[JanJaap]

Originally Posted by Mach Crit

@JanJaap - I wasn't going to violate the laws of physics, and in fact, my falling walk was a nod to that. I had hopes that a gyro of some sort would be able to detect level, and sophisticated hydraulics/motors in the torso would compensate and keep the torso level during motion. Even then, you would have a delayed and dampened updown cycle for the upper body. Actuators in the arms could help as well, lifting the cannons to keep them somewhat level and free from oscillation in order to fire acurately. Heck, they have something like that on today's combat tanks. Obviously, it won't work if your mech drops a leg into a crater or over a ridgeline, but it should keep the firing platform relatively stable in normal terrrain.

A gyroscope is indeed handy but only to steer the systems dampening the forces as you know.
Another question have considered making the mech remotely operated because that would deal with one of the weakest parts of the mech.

[Mach Crit]

Well, I was only considering a gyro system in terms of animating the walk. I am not going that deep into the hull to the mechanics of how a mech works (Although that would be an interesting project). I just want to animate the MAD5-R so I can expand my modelling skilz.

Remote piloted mech sounds too much like Dark Horizons:Lore - a Mech game from around 2000-2002. The concept was that the mechs were remotely piloted (which means what if you are playing a mech simulator from your desk?). For some odd reason, that also assumed the lack of any kind of targeting system. A simple target lead box would have sufficed nicely, buuut NOOOOO! It's remotely piloted, we can't have that! /rant ** looks around, slooowly gets down off the soap box and slinks away... **

[JanJaap]

Originally Posted by Mach Crit

Well, I was only considering a gyro system in terms of animating the walk. I am not going that deep into the hull to the mechanics of how a mech works (Although that would be an interesting project). I just want to animate the MAD5-R so I can expand my modelling skilz.

A gyro can't do that directly it can only help "steer" the systems that move mech legs and the ones keeping the cockpit stable.
Yeah, interesting as in the Chinese curse/proverb although it depends on the accuracy.

Originally Posted by Mach Crit

Remote piloted mech sounds too much like Dark Horizons:Lore - a Mech game from around 2000-2002. The concept was that the mechs were remotely piloted (which means what if you are playing a mech simulator from your desk?). For some odd reason, that also assumed the lack of any kind of targeting system. A simple target lead box would have sufficed nicely, buuut NOOOOO! It's remotely piloted, we can't have that! /rant ** looks around, slooowly gets down off the soap box and slinks away... **

Never heard of that game but do have my share of games were the targeting system was uhm ****.

[Mach Crit]

My favorite targeting system was for Starsiege. The network programmers actually set things up to return the lag time across the network between player and server. While not extremely accurate, it let the targeting system coders create a lead/lag box that not only included target rate of motion into the equation but also the amount of network lag you were experiencing at some interval. It levelled the playing field a bit between cablemodem and dialup guys. Not much, but it helped alot.

[Mach Crit]

It's still alive! Yet another walk cycle. Crits welcome!

walk2.avi


Mach

[JanJaap]

Your mech seems to saunter, I can't put my finger exactly what it causes this impression but one possibility is that your mech takes approx. 1 step/sec.
So I would advise to wind this down to 0.5 step/sec as well make the body of your mech move up when it pushes of and down (duh) when it lands it step.

In other news, have you heard of battlefield 2142?
It has two mechs in it as you can see is this movie:

YouTube - Battelfield 2142 Intro

[Mach Crit]

Yeah, I need to slow the walk cycle down a bit. I was also going to do a startup sequence with it as well. I am just trying to get all the parts to move in a coordinated fashion, with the appearance of weight.

[Mach Crit]

walktest3.avi

Here is a start up sequence and a more "mech-like" walk. What do you think?

Mach