TITLE: Robo Dance NAME: Bill Lemens COUNTRY: USA EMAIL: bill@lemens.com WEBPAGE: N/A (yet) TOPIC: Robot COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. MPGFILE: robdance.mpg RENDERER USED: Animation Master TOOLS USED: Animation Master for modeling, animating, and rendering, MGI VideoWave II for titles and mpeg conversion. Paint Shop Pro for JPG conversion. Sony Handycam Digital 8 for reference video for animation. CREATION TIME: To darn long - just started using the package. HARDWARE USED: Alternately souped up Pentium 200 (wah!) and Compaq AMD K7 Athlon 600mhz (yea!). ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: Robbie the GPHR (General Purpose Humanoid Robot - pronounced gopher) Model 2 had seen humans dancing and longed to know what it was about. He bought some music and decided to give it a try. Robbie sets up a video camera in his appartment to self-record his venture, turns on the music, and goes. At first he is unsure what to do, a bit nervous and rusty, but as the music gets into him, he begins to get down and get funky, until at last he is truly "Travolta!" ;-) Now he knows why humans dance. It is fun. VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: Seated with a nice beverage. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: This is my first animation. The robot was modeled after a combination of Asimov's "Robbie" (who I thought about doing in an interaction with the girl, but quickly gave that idea up) and a Star Wars droid, but largely of my own imagination. After modeling I put on Spherical constraints to keep the model animating in a way permisible with his construction, and then used the reference video for the movements. I did not use any other constraints, such as those that keep feet in place, as I had not read that part of the manual yet :-o and thus his feet slip a little on the floor. Oh, well. The music he is dancing to, incidentaly, is K. C. and the Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight", but since I have no time to re-record it myself, you have to imagine it, or play it yourself. ;-) This exercise was a lot of fun, but took a good deal longer than I thought it would. The idea came to me while listing to the oldies station here in Austin, Texas, and has expanded into a whole little story that I will try to animate sometime in the near future. For now though, I am getting back to my life! Hope you enjoy, and that Robbie puts a little smile on your face.