Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris is me
...octagonal robot? o_0
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Yep - I admit the picture isn't much of a tease - If you saw the Tumbleweed in action during the Overdrive season you have a good shot at guessing this picture.
Warning - Long post follows:
While you are waiting for the those parts to come in; here is a suggestion - Draw your own (simple) bot to install into the 5th Gear gallery of robot selections.
I/we should have the time to plug a few of the sexier ones folks send me into the simulator (and it won't be too hard to be sexier than the simple ones I drew
).
The lowest risk method is to send me the robot model as one single SolidWorks part (
not an assembly,
not an assembly converted into a part,
not two or more parts, but
a single part from inception to completion) (yes - I know that is a horrible way to do CAD, but this is a special circumstance). I will then convert it into a Collada file and then convert that into an FBX file.
If you care to create a Collada file, that is the equivalent of converting a single "part" into a Collada, I can try converting your Collada file into an FBX.
If you care to create an FBX that is the equivalent of going through the steps outlined above, we can try using your FBX.
However, if you submit either a Collada or an FBX, the physics half of creating a model in the simulator will cause us to put those submissions into the time-consuming pile - See below.
Getting or creating an FBX file will let us draw (in the simulation) the 3D picture of your submission. That is good,
but it is only half of our job. We will also need to define a simple 3D border/envelop around it to use for the collision detection and similar steps in the PhysX physics calculations.
If you send me a single SolidWorks Part, then I can easily use SolidWorks to draw a rough approximation of your submission to use for the physics. If you send me a Collada or an FBX, then I/we have to sort-of manually guess at the locations (in simulator coordinates) of the envelop. It won't be truly manual guessing, but it will be tedious...
Please, draw your bots so that the
Top View in SolidWorks really shows me the top, the
Front View really shows me the front, etc. Also, please put the
origin in the bottom left corner of the robot when it is seen using SolidWorks "top" view.
If you do give us a Collada or FBX, please use units of
meters. Meters are what come out of our SolidWorks to Collada converter (even though I draw the SolidWorks part using
inches), and you need to be consistent with that.
Finally, if you submit something that uses smooth curves, has more nooks and crannies than an english muffin, and consequently requires ten zillion vertices and triangles to represent it in Collada or FBX format, then ordinary computers won't be able to draw it fast enough for the 5th Gear simulator to operate well (or at all) in real-time with 6 players.
5th Gear is run on
very ordinary computers with ordinary CPUs and ordinary (or worse than ordinary
) graphics cards/GPUs. Part of your challenge is preserving the style of the robot you are modeling while also keeping the drawing simple. For example, in the default models that will ship with the initial downloadable simulation, I used good-enough 12-sided polygons instead of circles, and I created good-enough bumpers by shaving the corners off of rectangles.
So... Do I have any takers? - If you want to cook something up and send it to me in a PM or by using the email info in my signature below, please do. When you do also tell me a little about its functions (top speed, bump climbing ability, # of kickers, kick distances, ability to aim/steer kicks, drive train style, etc.) I can't promise that we can incorporate every model we get; but we can certainly pull in a few. Who knows, your model might become the favorite during the exhibitions and informal tournaments at the FRC Regional Tournaments and the Championships.
Blake