Making a Procedurally Animated Robot Lizard in Roblox — Transcript

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1. 0:00Procedural animation is basically when a
2. 0:02character moves using code and physics
3. 0:04instead of pre-made key frames. It
4. 0:06reacts to the environment in real time,
5. 0:08which looks really organic, but also
6. 0:10cursed when things break.
7. 0:13I've been wanting to try it after
8. 0:15watching Chimera's video on procedural
9. 0:17animation in Minecraft. You should check
10. 0:19it out. It should be in the description
11. 0:21down below. So, I decided to try it out
12. 0:24myself in Roblox. Here's how it went.
13. 0:32>> [music]
14. 0:37>> Starting off, I needed a model. My first
15. 0:40model, which I made using primitives,
16. 0:42was kind of, let's just say, terrible.
17. 0:46So, instead, I modeled this.
18. 0:52To stop the model from falling apart
19. 0:54into pieces, I added ball joints and
20. 0:56constraints so they don't just rotate
21. 0:58freely.
22. 1:00So, the body can be physically moved
23. 1:01now. But there's one massive issue. It's
24. 1:04kind of flopping around dead.
25. 1:07To fix that, I added a upward force to
26. 1:10the robot's body when it's [music] near
27. 1:11the ground, which I can detect using a
28. 1:14ray cast downwards.
29. 1:16If it's close to the ground, it applies
30. 1:18plenty of upward force. But the further
31. 1:20it gets, the less force it gets until
32. 1:22the raycast can't reach the ground. We
33. 1:25have to do this otherwise the body will
34. 1:27just bounce up and down vigorously.
35. 1:30So now the body floats properly. And I
36. 1:32also made it lose some horizontal speed
37. 1:34over time so [music] it just doesn't
38. 1:36slide away. And also another thing, the
39. 1:39body needs to stay upright. So I added a
40. 1:41rotational force to keep it oriented
41. 1:43correctly. Anytime the body starts
42. 1:46tilting one way, the [music] force will
43. 1:48push it the other way so it doesn't tip
44. 1:50over.
45. 1:54Next up, the arms. I'm using inverse
46. 1:57kinematics so the arms can reach a
47. 1:59target. Instead of animating each arm by
48. 2:02hand, I just tell the IK solver where
49. 2:04the hand should be and it figures out
50. 2:06how the whole arm should bend to get
51. 2:08there. Whenever the inverse kinematics
52. 2:11are doing their thing, I anchor the arms
53. 2:13and disable the ball joints so the
54. 2:15inverse kinematics can work without the
55. 2:17physics interfering. If I don't do that,
56. 2:20this happens.
57. 2:24To make sure the arm target is on the
58. 2:26ground, I use a raycast and set the
59. 2:28target position to where it hits.
60. 2:33But at first, the target just slid
61. 2:35around. So I made it update to the new
62. 2:38raycast position when it gets far
63. 2:40enough. And to make it look like a
64. 2:42proper step, the target lifts up a bit
65. 2:45before planting down at a new position.
66. 2:47I also made the arms take turns stepping
67. 2:50instead of moving together. And I offset
68. 2:52the ray cast directions based on which
69. 2:55way the robot is walking. Oh yeah, you
70. 2:58might have noticed I added a target
71. 3:00block that the robot looks at and goes
72. 3:03towards. At first, it was kind of
73. 3:05strong, so I turned it down a bit.
74. 3:08Next up, I made the target block move
75. 3:11based on player input and lock the
76. 3:13camera on the robot. So, you can
77. 3:15actually play as a robot. Now, to make
78. 3:18the robot ragd doll when it's falling, I
79. 3:19check the ray cast downwards from the
80. 3:21upper torso. And if it doesn't hit
81. 3:23anything, the robot goes into Ragdoll
82. 3:25mod.
83. 3:27I decided to add a little map cuz why
84. 3:29have a walking robot when you have
85. 3:31nowhere to walk? Anyway, I'm happy with
86. 3:34how it works now. All that's really left
87. 3:36is sounds and some more polish.
88. 3:41And that's pretty much it for this
89. 3:42video. Thank you for watching. I'd
90. 3:44appreciate if you leave a like. And
91. 3:46while you're down there, you should
92. 3:47check out the game. The link is in the
93. 3:49description. And now here's footage of
94. 3:51the robot lizard doing its thing.