Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
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The arms look a bit too small, and they look more like rounded squares than arms. The head should be curved instead of straight at the bottom of it. Also, I notice that the legs and torso look way too fat, so you should thin that down a bit.
You wouldn't believe how much trouble I've had with those bloody arms. But now that you say it the Legs and Torso do look a little bit fat.
BTW the head is curved on the bottem 
If you're going to keep those arms rigid, good luck modeling them. However, if you're going to give them joints, I'd suggest modeling the arm without any bends in it at all, since it's pretty much going to look like a loose noodle anyway.
Ok thanks I'll take that into consideration.
Uh, does anyone have a .blend file I can download just with a rigged minifig so that I can see how to move the arms? I once asked this, but when I tried it didn't seem to work. And besides, how would you rotate the arm perfectly if it isn't lined up with the axis of rotation?
Is there a rigged minifig for Carrara? If so, could anyone send it to me? 
We did a rigging for a CGI LEGO minfigure once, but it didn't work too well. 
Same. On another note, I could do something like this, but I'd much, much prefer being able to use the regular arm rotations of a regular minifig then that of a "free range" arm, as done in the link I posted above.
Sounds like I'm the only one with a decent rig for both Blender and Carrara. I could share, but then I take away the suffering you must endure like I have when I built the rigs. 
But it's more of me being able to understand it when there's only words (unless it's a step by step tutorial, such as Add>>...>>... and so on). I just don't see how you can actually rig it, then animate it.
Plus, would you have people suffer inhumanely without just cause? I would have to spend hundreds of hours of work trying to get it right. 
Ok here is my Lego figure 2.0. The arms don't really look exactly like those you would see on a regular Lego figure but I feel it would be easier to animate with these.
I could share, but then I take away the suffering you must endure like I have when I built the rigs.
Oh yeah like I don't help out people here on the forums, mostly with pain-in-the-arse FX 
Lechnology wrote:I could share, but then I take away the suffering you must endure like I have when I built the rigs.
Oh yeah like I don't help out people here on the forums, mostly with pain-in-the-arse FX
You're not helping people learn if you're doing the work for them.
T.G-Tom wrote:Lechnology wrote:I could share, but then I take away the suffering you must endure like I have when I built the rigs.
Oh yeah like I don't help out people here on the forums, mostly with pain-in-the-arse FX
You're not helping people learn if you're doing the work for them.
Why wouldn't he be learning if he does the effects for people .. ?
Uh, does anyone have a .blend file I can download just with a rigged minifig so that I can see how to move the arms? I once asked this, but when I tried it didn't seem to work. And besides, how would you rotate the arm perfectly if it isn't lined up with the axis of rotation?
I would suggest you build the rig yourself. It helps to learn how it is all done. For the arms it is pretty simple, just use this tutorial as reference. Then if you want more moveability in the arms, just add more bones.
For the legs I like using a combined IK (Inverse Kinematic) and FK (Forward Kinematic) chain. This allows you to move the legs at the hips like a normal minifig, but also allows you to move the legs my dragging the feet. I haven't perfected it yet, but so far I've found it works really well. It took me hours to understand how to do it, watched a lot of video. Here are some links if your interested in what I used to learn:
http://theprocessdiary.blogspot.com/200 … -2009.html
http://www.vimeo.com/1184944
http://www.blendernation.com/watch-the- … ittorrent/
Thanks James! The first tutorial link in your first paragraph is great! However, the only thing I don't know is how to rotate something (the arm) if it's not perfectly lined up on an axis. Any help with that?
Thanks James! The first tutorial link in your first paragraph is great! However, the only thing I don't know is how to rotate something (the arm) if it's not perfectly lined up on an axis. Any help with that?
To be honest I don't really understand the problem. Are you trying to force your bone to only rotate as if it were a real LEGO arm? If that is what your attempting, I can't help as I don't think that is the best way to do it. You should limit yourself in someways when using CGI bricks but I don't think that is one of the ways. Just my opinion.
How I rotate my arms is by simply lining up the bone to the arm (as seen in the tutorial, just not as precise) and then rotate my view point to line the bone straight up.
I'm not sure if that helps at all.
@ Brik Productions Not bad. The arms are bent a bit too much, but it doesn't really matter. The proportions are also not quite right, body is a bit too wide and head is too small.
Ah, it actually does help James. Thanks!
And I see why you think the arm should be able to move freely, but my way of looking at it is that if you are going to use a CGI minifig at all in a CGI/Brickfilm mix, then the arm has to move the same as the other minifigs, otherwise it will look odd that the real ones will only be able to move their arms up and down while the CGI ones can move their arms all over the place.
Lechnology wrote:You're not helping people learn if you're doing the work for them.
Why wouldn't he be learning if he does the effects for people .. ?
Read it again. Think about it: You need help writing an essay. Am I helping by giving you a completed essay that I spent time researching for, formatting, making the proper citations, etc. for you to hand in?
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