Welcome to the first of the Connector Series. This first one focuses completely on the Hinge Connector (And some motors). We will walk through creating a dynamic briefcase, a toy snake, and a walking robot. Chris had some fun and push the walking robot to do battle to the death verses it’s twin. Enjoy!
Preview Video
Follow Chris on twitter here.
I see took my suggestion into consideration
sort of
thats awesome, cant wait to check it out
Ha. Completely unrelated, but a pretty good coincidence! BTW, the old hydraulic arm tutorial could get you a long way to doing that drum animation you mentioned, just make it a more simple arm, and copy it a bunch of times!
ha ha – love the fighting robots!
Haha, really funny. Just saw the preview and looking forward to check the tutorial out!
Yay very nice and funny! Thanks for the tutorial!
a – b – c – d – e – f – G – ……. ^^
Haha, you’re one crazy dude Chris! Thank you very much for the tutorial, although I would suggest you talked slower when hitting shortcuts and definitely when doing the extrude things (but to your defense, I know this wasn’t a tutorial on that!)
Thank you again, had a bunch of fun watching!
TO THE DEATH!
OH man! I love Wednesdays!
Brilliant Chris, as always,
Laughing so much at the end, i need to rewatch.. your primitives and dynamics education is incredibly important for both myself and many others..
I know last time you mentioned the struggle with original ideas to discuss but this is an absolute treasure.
Look at the mathematical power involved..things certainly have moved along..
beautiful mind…
If only every tutorial was as much fun as this instead of the stuffy technically perfect renditions I normally find!
Chris, you’re a master at modelling and you made me laugh out loud tonight. The ROBOTS OF DEATH are awesome!
Thank you so much.
You, Sir Chris, made my day!
Definitely a VERY educational C4D RoBOTerrific FUNFest – Thank You Chris!
Chris, dude, ur timing just could not be better. Modelling a bot and was about to give it tracks to move about on, think Im gonna be redesigning him tomorrow! Cheers
man, such a fun one! the spinning wheel of death, and the end the robots fighting against each other.
cool idea chris and a very very entertaining tutorial. thanx alot
Really enjoyed that one, Chris. Educational and funny as heck ! ;D
Thank you Chris. This is pure awesome tutorial. I’m waiting for your tutorials more then for tv shows episodes.
BTW.My favorite moment is when you point a finger at your monitor and said “do you see it”
Hope this series wouldn’t end at first episode.
My suggestion for tutorials in the future is “Joints” and surface/objects control with them.
Best from Poland.
Jan
SWEEEEEEET!!!!!!!!
Well started like…. here is a connector a snake or something…. booooooriiii……. WHAT??? Robots of Death dammm where did that came from. COOOOL tutorial and fuuuuuuun.
I was wondering if a “helicopter” (more like a propeller and a box) can be made to take off only by using dynamics. I am not into dynamics i do not know if there is a air friction option in there but i will try to make a Chopper Of Death to defeat the Robot of Death. That is my goal now.
Cool Chris. Nice tut.
Bye
Yeah !
It seems that the Robots Of Death’s battle is a great feature in your tutorial ! I thought GSG can organize a huge battle of virtual robots contest here and now (mostly like the 5 seconds projects), isn’t it ?
Great and interesting tutorial, as usual… Can’t wait for the next episodes around the connectors…
By the way, are you planning a part 2 of our TP’s tutorial ?
Give us more fun with C4D !
YEY!!! Virtual Robot Contest.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
great dude…
Great interesting Tut but only for people with the STUDIO version
Thank you very much my friend,I love U
)))
I like your tuts,thanks again for everything,please take care of yourself
I had to laugh at the end… the robot fight was just hilarious, but i liked the animation. the dynanims look very convincing, i appreciate the tutorial. i will definetly try it out and render some stuff.. would like to see things, what others came up with!
great tutorial as always!
Fighting Robots? Heck yes, i’ll have to watch this one. I smell a sequel…”Real Steel 2: C4d Death Bots” starring Hulk Hogan
Shunt, Matilda, Sgt.Bash, and Dead Metal and Sir Killalot VS ROBOT………b of death
Chris, just keep doing your work like that! Awesome
)
YES YES! … yes!
You are awesome sir. Realistic sims and moving parts are just kickass. Thank you!
I just used your tutorial to successful create working tank treads!
Your tutorial is great. I loved how much fun you were having experimenting during the battle bots portion.
Here’s a link to the tank treads:
http://vimeo.com/37395044
Now all I need to do is add some weapons to take you on.
that’s great well done…
how did you do the treads?
was it all just hinge connectors and motors?
Yup. Just a bunch of hinges, 50 per side to be exact.
I used a cloner object to place each slat of the tread into a nice rounded rectangle shape. Then I converted the Cloner into an Object. I made a hinge for every slat and made the hinge a child of the slat. That way I was easily able to zero out the position of the hinge and offset it so it would be in-between two slats. Connected the hinges/slats. Then added some motors to the wheels and fixed their position.
The tread intially drooped a lot at first. So I pushed my wheels past the treads just a little bit, making them intersect space. When the dynamics ran it popped the treads over the wheels to make them nice and taut.
What about GSG virtual robot championship? Consisting of Qualifying Round, winners go to playoff, 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, semifinal , and… GREAT DEATH FINAL!!! ) Crhis will make simple robot ring,and will set up technical uspects, Nick will setup render, introduce every robot, make animation render. May be only rules – size of the robot should be like default cube, users will upload links to they model of robot with name.. I think will be great fun competition.
Thankyou so much for this chris. I’ve always wondered about these connectors etc but never really known how to use them.
You’ve made it so simple and easy that ive already been playing and trying things out.
Thanks again.
LOVE IT….
And don’t worry about rushing long tuts don’t bother me.
just wondering if you could go over a bit more of the Mass options under Dynamics
Like the center of mass
not really sure how to use that it does not seem to change any thing for me
MAN ! THX! very cool idea! i will play arround with that too!
ah, it would be cool to break the connectors when the force is too big. so you could destroy the robots too
Thanks Chris! Love this series can’t wait for more! I studied a tutorial a while back by Tim Clapham on this same topic, here is my example from that here: http://vimeo.com/34144513
I’ve never laugh as well while watching a tutorial… wich is mind blowing.
Thank you Chris, thank you Nick and long life to the Gorilla !
*ROFL*
– at the end of it, i laughed ’til i got tears in my eyes – hahaha: Arm Of Death 
– very funny 
Very exciting tut, Chris
Thank you for a very useful initial walkthrough of dynamics.
Hey Chris,
I was just wondering if there is a way to add friction to those hinges. I am creating a bicycle chain using your ‘snake toy’ technique. The chain only has to drop whilst staying connected to the main sprocket (I do this by turning dynamics off for those links). It doesn’t actually has to be functional. But the whole chain seems to stretch a lot and flexes way too much! Therefore I would like to increase the friction between the individual links. I am not near as familiar with all the settings as you are but I can’t seem to fix it.
Thanks a lot and keep up the good work!
Jorn
Post that somewhere when your done. That sounds like an interesting project.
It is basically a bike spinning and whilst spinning being taken apart. Therefore the chain will have to ‘drop’ when the wheel is being removed and vise versa. I’ll drop a link when I’m done!
Hey does anyone know if there is a shortcut for zeroing out an objects center point? Maybe something like reset PSR but for a single object?
You could always assign a shortcut to reset PSR, I might do that myself actually.
BEST tutorial hands down!
great stuff maybe next you could do transformers
Where is simon?? i miss his tutorials
Great tutorial! Lots of fun!
Thanks so much!
Nice tut !
One thing I still don’t understand on the snake thing : why only the first hinge need to be a child of a “segment”. I can’t find the logic behind that behaviour :
On your first try on animating the snake, you only animate the first segment, but the first hinge is not linked to it, so it just doesn’t move, and so does the whole snake.
Making this hinge a child of the first segment, corrects it. I get that.
But then, even if the first hinge follows the first segment, why does the 2nd Hinge follow the 2nd segments ? It’s not linked in any way to any object… Can’t get that ^^
Answers and Explanations are welcomed ^^
I don’t mind assuming that “the first hinge is enough”, but I want to understand why.
Great tut still, thanks !
Nice Tut! A couple of months back I played around and made the robots do circus tricks. No key frames. Fun stuff.
http://vimeo.com/31703967
You could start a virtual greyscale-gorilla robot wars, where everyone can send in c4d-dynamics-robots and you make them compete against each other?
Great Job like always—you are awesome!
You should attach the snake to one robot and the other robot can throw briefcases of cubes.
Wicked and humorous tutorial with tons of educational content…….THE BEST…..
Love you guys, thanks.
my little robot fight
my little robot fight http://vimeo.com/38052245
Pingback: Tutorials #19 | skyINX
The thing about the snake, you don’t need to do the angle limit! The problem is you have to change the automatic thing to Moving Mesh! That way it will work perfectly!
That was the funniest tutorial I’ve ever seen!
Thank you very much Cris
Hi! great tut.
Just trying to figure out what version of C4D you have as I don’t have a ‘simulation’ menu with all these cool features. I’m using R11.5 …. can I still do this kind of stuff with this version?
Thanks
B