Animatronic C-3PO

[TK-326]

Progress on the animatronic C-3PO:

The figure animation is built in Blender, joint angle data is exported to JSON, then my Python code reads/parses the data and velocity and acceleration parameters are manipulated in real-time to drive all 16 actuators to get the motion seen here.

Still lots to do. This is still rough. Smoothing, compliance, and tweaking of ranges and positions are needed, but it's a good start.

 

[TK-326]

Prior to today's video, I worked through getting the model into Blender for animation and digital character rigging. Each bone in the armature corresponds to a joint servo in the physical animatronic. Writing my own animation control system in Python to take the exported joint data and drive the figure functions. So far so good.

 

[TK-326]

First pass of a few seconds of animation. Was still getting the hang of it. This was 120 frames out of a total 1700.

 

[Frogfreak]

Dude this is so epic! keep at it! i am watching this project with great interest!

 

[animator]

Wonderful! You've really captured the character with this! Amazing!

 

[joberg]

Wow! Fantastic build...next time, you could just shoot C3PO without the sound and just the original soundtrack...the motors are making a lot of noise and you can hardly hear what Daniels is saying

 

[TunaBoy91]

Chris, it looks amazing!!

 

[TK-326]

Wow! Fantastic build...next time, you could just shoot C3PO without the sound and just the original soundtrack...the motors are making a lot of noise and you can hardly hear what Daniels is saying

That was intentional to mask the audio enough that YouTube and Facebook would not block the post due to copyright infringement.
Also, he's a robot so the noise should be expected .

 

[janglesworthy]

I don't know if your aware of this company, but they have an ai driven motion capture from 2d video. It may be useful at expediting the animation process for you.

AI driven motion capture from 2D video

 

[MattWinchell]

This is absolutely stunning! Awesome job!

 

[lmc3]

Great job!

 

[madhephaestus]

Wow truly EPIC!

Thank you for sharing!

 

[TK-326]

Update:
I’ve since moved on from Blender and am now using a package called Bottango. It’s great, free, and well supported by the author. You can set up the 3D model of your robot mechanism (even import existing 3D model assets), assign joints and servos, build the animations, and control the robot motion in real time. It uses Arduinos as the processing in between your PC or Mac and your robot servos.

Bottango | Easy Robot and Animatronic Control

They have an Discord for support and you can talk directly with the developer about your project.

Join the Bottango Discord Server!

 

[keeleon]

Wow, this project is one of my favorite things ever and I will be following it closely! It's funny you mentioned Bottango, because I just found it recently myself and was about to suggest it when you were talking about writing your own animation software. I actually found your build because I posted my own animatronic I'm working on and someone told me about yours. Mine is mostly pneumatic because of cost and skill level. But this is exactly what I'd like to eventually build up to! I'm still trying to wrap my head around designing servos and gear sets. I have been wanting to add a a waist rotation to mine and your servo/pulley looks like what I want to do, so I am eagerly awaiting your parts list and build guide.

 

[Strubi]

Update:
I’ve since moved on from Blender and am now using a package called Bottango. It’s great, free, and well supported by the author. You can set up the 3D model of your robot mechanism (even import existing 3D model assets), assign joints and servos, build the animations, and control the robot motion in real time. It uses Arduinos as the processing in between your PC or Mac and your robot servos.

Bottango | Easy Robot and Animatronic Control

They have an Discord for support and you can talk directly with the developer about your project.

Join the Bottango Discord Server!

Hello Chris
thank you for your great post.I am from switzerland and found a lot of inspiration in it while building my C-3PO. Here are a few pictures.
I have been looking at Bottango. I like it very much. I still have a few questions going through my head.
Have you found an audiostrem of the voice from ROTJ without movie effects? Where treepio explains the story.
How do you play the sound in sync with the movements? Arduino can't do that.
Are you willing to share the Bottango project file?
best regards
steve