This week I built a multi role strike robot. Download the model and rig from Gumroad.

Below is the making of and the animation test. 

The main focus of the concept phase was the leg mechanics. I wanted to build something with a longer leg, almost how a dog paw, might look.

Until now every episode of Machine Making was rendered in the Blender Internal Render Engine.
I really liked using the Freestyle option in this render engine, and I found that the toon shading was easy to use and quick to render. But unfortunately the Internal Blender Render is being stripped out for Blender version 2.8. 
I do think this is the right choice for future development of Blender. As Eevee is already looking like a powerful render engine. 

I have tried toon in cycles before, but I found it extremely difficult to achieve the quality I was after while rendering .I found this product called Toon Kit on the Blender Market, and this was a life saver. 
I'd like to do a full review on the package and maybe even a tutorial. There are some kinks to work out with this add-on, but for the most part it worked very well. 

I hope you enjoyed this episode and let me know if you have any questions in the comments! 

Episode 4 has been released and the main goal was to create gears of different sizes and calculate the teeth, rotation ratios and allow the gear set up to drive the catapult. Also I wanted to play around with rigid bodies and cloth simulations.

​​Episode 4 started out a little rocky. Originally this was going to be a backhoe with a wreaking ball. Here is a WIP image. 

​While working on the backhoe I never really found the composition I wanted to achieve, so I switched directions and built a small three-gear catapult system.

The catapult was way more fun to work on as well. 

​There is an addon for Blender called Extra Objects. There are a ton of great features that are included in this addon. One of the options is called mechanical, this brings up a little gear creator window.  

​Although I found some limits with this set up. While I can change the size of the gear, the teeth and the radius, I was unable to calculate the number of teeth needed for a new gear with a different radius. 

​Looking around I found a great site called Gear Generator. This was extremely helpful for creating mathematically correct gears. 

​Once I learned a couple of the equations I plugged the numbers in Blender and build this three gear system. 

The key to gears of different size is for the pitch to match up across the gears. This can be achieved by dividing the teeth into the diameter. Once you have this number you can then multiply the pitch by a different diameter to calculate how many teeth are needed. 

​There are other ways to get this number, and I am glossing over some other equations, but I found this to be the quickest way to generate gears (for a functional rig in animation, there are better methods for 3D printing/manufacturing)
 
Check out my working file if you want more insight into my process.

Big thanks to Gleb Alexadrox and his great tutorial 9 Ways To Destroy Things.
 
Next up from Level Pixel Level will be a series of tutorials going over how to rig pistons and gears within Blender.
 
Please leave a comment if you have any question! 

For episode 2 in Machine Making I wanted to try out a robotic leg. The main goal was to create the levels that go into a robotic leg, from the mechanics under the armour, through to the lights and wires. 

There are a couple of issues with the piston on the foot, and in the future I will spend more time on the foot mechanics. 

Here is the making of: 

Click here to download this asset and play around with the rig: https://gumroad.com/l/eSlck

I'll be doing another leg video, as I work towards a full mech. Let me know if you have any questions, or comments. 

Welcome to Machine Making. A new series of videos, models, rigs and animation I will be making to push my knowledge of industrial design, rigging and interactive 3D elements in Blender. Mostly I just love creating interactive things in 3D.

Here is the first episode: 

Each of these videos take about 3 hours to complete and have a ton of challenges. 

Let me know in the comments, if you have any questions, or if there are any parts of the process you might need a tutorial on.