Bender Mesh construction
To create bender the robot from the television series - Futurama, the mesh design has been created and constructed in a different way that would be normally done.
both bender and the other character i am creating is the devil robot are constructed together by having separate pieces, one good example for bender is that if he was created with a single complete mess, his head and his body would distort his head movements, because the way bender is designed, his head spins on his body, so if the head and body are created apart from each other and connected to certain parts of the custom rig, then the head can still look connected but move as it should on its own accord.
To start bender the robot off, I first focus on his body's construction, being simple in design benders body is a cylinder with certain vertex points scaled out or in to create the body.
Then I moved onto marking out benders arm sockets beside his body.
Using the editable poly vertex points I moved some points around to get a square section to represent where his arms would go in.
A close up screen shot of arranging some vertex points to create the basic shape of the arm sockets, using the reference image I created as a guide, coming back to the body at a later date, i hope the turbo smooth should sort out the smooth edges.
Moving onto the construction of benders head, his head is basically a capsule shape, adding in segments to the capsule, will allow vertex points and parts of the capsule to be exuded out or in to create the features on benders face.
a screen shot showing the first stage of benders eye housing being made, simply using the editable poly exude option to bring out four sections of the capsule head.
To develop the head eye housing, using the reference front and side images, i crafted the very square exude blocks into a angled out oval shape, with the vertex points positioned to help the turbo smooth to finish off, the eye housings squareness and hopefully make it fully smooth and rounder.
another important feature for bender is his static mouth, as bender does not have a moving mouth, this was easy to create, simply selected vertex points to move them in place as lined up with the reference images, then to get the indented mouth the exude tool was used to push four polygons inside the capsule.
This part at first was hard to think how to do, how to make the eye housing hollow inside to place the eyes in, but as seen the screen shot it was created by using a simple exude option, first the end of the eye housing was exuded out, to create another layer of vertex points, then the new layer was exuded back inside the eye housing and then the new layer now deep inside the eye housing was scaled smaller, to create this hollow eye housing component for bender,
The next interesting part about the separate components to create bender and the devil robot is the arms and legs as well as other joints, because finding out if you have a separate cylinder for a arm with 33 lines segments, once its connected to the rig, you receive more immovability in the way to move the arm, so this part of the arms, legs, etc are all separated from the body because if i did connect them from the body when it came to rigging it the connected arm may not be as free flowing because a lack of multiple points to freely move the arm correctly.
so with the arms created separately from the body like the head, i went on to create benders hand which was simple to create, using the end cylinders vertex points i extended the length to match the reference images and using the scale tool made a angled cylinder to represent his head.
His fingers will be created separately and talked more about further down.
The legs are created the same way as the arms, but using a lot more vertex points to create the curved look of the dish shaped feet.
As shown here multiple leg vertex points are being moved down, using the reference image as a guide the vertex points shaped a dished shaped end for the feet to get benders feet.
A screen shot of the legs complete and positioned in place under the body.
along with the head, arms and legs being separate components from the body, benders aerial is another separated piece from benders head, the reason why the aerial was not created up from the head itself was because the way the capsule is created, there is no segments on the top of the capsule that can be exuded to create the aerial.
So using a cylinder, with less vertex points, the cylinder with assistants from the scale tool was scaled to get narrow at the top, then be exuded out to create the round sphere on top, with turbo smooth, the sphere on top should become more rounder and smoother.
An overview shot of bender before adding the final piece to the model, the fingers.
Overall bender came out really well better than i first thought at the start, I was not worried about the arms, legs or body for bender, but at the start i thought might be difficult to construct would be the head components like the eye housing and mouth, but they came out looking good, with a final touch's of turbo smooth and he should look ready to go for a rig.
this screen shot is showing why bender is being made separately, because looking at the vertex point arrangements there is no way you could make three fingers out of that, so the fingers will be separate capsule shapes positioned in place.
A screen shot showing the capsule fingers being placed inside benders hand.
The devil robot mesh construction
Like bender the devil robot is made of counter parts that will be made separately from the body or head because the arms, neck, legs and tail would receive animation rig immovability.
beginning with the devil robots lower body, i started with a cylinder preset with a number of line segments to help shape the preset to match the reference image of the devil robot i created.
The top body section was soon created but using the previous molded shape as both body section are the same apart from the top one is bigger, longer and slightly rounded at the bottom.
In this screen shot you can see that turbo smooth has been added sooner to this body component, this is because i was a little concerned about getting vertex points at the bottom of the shape to create a curved bottom, but as shown the turbo smooth was added and helped solve the problem.
The construction of the arms were created the same way as benders, have a cylinder with 33 line segments to help with moving the arm in rigging process, the 33 segments help give smooth and excellent flowing arm movements.
Another cylinder was also added in between the two body sections as this is the design basis compared to bender.
this process is a little different to the arms because compared to bender the devil robots arc slightly and come out of the sides of the body section instead of being underneath, so for the stage the 33 segments making up the leg, had to be repositioned and rotated to create a curved leg, this process was also done for the devil robots neck and tail.
Here is a screen shot of some of the vertex points being rotated and positioned to follow the reference image of the devil robots leg.
an overview of the finished constructed leg looking like its reference counterpart and in my option, the leg came out really well.
Next the devil robots leg was to be created, using a box preset, a number of line segments were added t o help shape the foot to give the foot a rounded top as shown in the screen shot.
to finish off the foot in its design the devil robot has a pointed in foot, so to create this i created another box preset, used the the vertex points to turn it into a triangle shape, then placing the presets in the foot, i used pro Boolean to cut a triangle shape i want into the devil robots foot.
A screen shot showing the final process of the pro Boolean effect, giving the devil robot his finished foot.
Moving onto the devil robots head, i used a box preset as a starting point, with a number of line segments to help shape the devil robots heads.
As shown in this screen shot i am moving the edges of the box preset to shape an angled head.
As the devil robot has a domed head, i started to align the top vertex points manually to get what is shown in the screen shot.
Then to get the head 100%, i went to the side view reference image and using the vertex points again help shape of the head.
This screen shot is showing the development on exuding out a nose and moving the vertex points to help give the nose an angled shape, i also positioned vertex points near the nose to help mark out where the eyes will be.
Then I focused on giving the devil robot his teeth, repositioning vertex points near the bottom of the head, i pulled certain vertex points down to create triangle points to create the teeth.
Next it was time to make the lower part of the mouth, using a separate box preset i positioned vertex points to match the shape on the reference image and soon enough created the lower mouth component and positioned it in the top part of the mouth.
A screen shot showing another cylinder being altered by its vertex points to create the curved neck, using the rotation tool as before on the leg, the neck arches around and connects to the top of the body.
A screen shot of the finished neck joint.
Moving back to the head the horns were needed to be created, using a cylinder again, but with less vertex points, i used the position and rotation and scale tool to create a curved pointed horn.
A screen shot of the horn in place next to the head.
Then i created the devil robots fingers, using the horn as a stating point, i simply straighten and rotated the vertex points to make a straight pointed fingers.
the tail was constructed, using the leg as a starter, i used a number of vertex points and rotated them slowly around to create a bent up tail, the end was stretched out to stick in the back of the body of the devil robot and the other end of the tail had the scale move vertex points out to create a pointed devil tail.
A screen shot of the complete robot devil in a standard colour.
Lastly the devil robot was joined by Bender, with some turbo smooth effects needing to be added to parts of bender and the devil robot, they are ready for a rig.
