Shalini Vijayagopalan

ANIMATRONICS

Presented by

SHALINI VIJAYAGOPALAN

Roll No. 00103132

1 CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION

 JURASSIC PARK

 DINOSAUR EVOLUTION

 BUILDING YOUR OWN ANIMATRONCS

 CONCLUSION

2 INTRODUCTION

 An abbreviated term originally coined by Walt Disney as "Audio-Animatronics" (used to describe his mechanized characters )  The first use of Audio-Animatronics was for Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room.  Tones recorded onto tape on playback caused vibrating reed to close a circuit operate a relay. The relay sent a pulse of energy (electricity) to which resulted in an action o Two ways of programming a figure. o The first used two different methods of controlling the voltage regulation. One was a joystick-like device called a transducer, and the other device was a potentiometer.Each individual action would be refined, rehearsed, and then recorded.

3 o Using a control harness by strapping the programmer into a control harness. As the programmer moves and gestures so does the figure. The movements programmed with the harness are recorded on 35 mm magnetic film stock. o Problem with control harness is that it could not deal with a large number of actions and narrators. o Solution-IRIG (Inertial Reference Intigrating Gyro) consisted of a series of tones that wouldn’t interfere with each other.

 Animatronics is a cross between animation and electronics.  Animatronic is a mechanized puppet. It may be preprogrammed or remotely controlled.  One of the first films to use animatronics was E.T. and Jaws.

4 JURASSIC PARK

 Statistics of Spinosaurus-the largest animatronics ever created

o 43.5 feet long o 24,000 pound heavy o Moves on a track 140 feet long

 Spinosaurus was controlled largely by telemetry devices each of which are responsible for the movements of a particular group of movements.

 Synchronization of movements of animatronics and digital dinosaurs was done by dinosaur input device.

5 DINOSAUR EVOLUTION

 Building the Spinosaurus requires several major steps:

o Put it on paper. o Build a maquette (miniature model). o Build a full-size sculpture. o Create a mold (from the sculpture) and cast the body. o Build the animatronic components. o Put it all together. o Test it and work out any bugs.

Build a maquette

 Initial maquette is one-sixteenth scale.  Next, a one-fifth-scale maquette is made.

6 Build a full-size sculpture

 Cyber F/X scans maquette by a 3-D digitizer using laser scanning.  Precise measurements of the maquette by bouncing beams of laser light off its surface.  Laser scanner sends over 15,000 beams per second.  Cameras pick up the reflected light and create an image of the slice of the object being scanned.  CNC-Sculpting cuts rigid foam to pieces.

Making it Move

 Eight puppeteers operate the Spinosaurus: o Basic head/body - swivels head, opens and closes jaws, moves neck back and forth, makes body sway from side to side o Tongue slide levers - moves tongue up and down, side to side and in or out o Eye joystick control - eyes move, eyelids blink and eye ridge moves

7 o Front arms - full range of motion; hands open and close o Cart/body - moves creature back and forth on track o Breathing potentiometer - inflated bladder inside chest cavity simulates breathing o Tail - full range of motion o Body raise slider - raises and lowers body

 The telemetry devices used to control the Spinosaurus range from simple handheld units, reminiscent of a video-game joystick, to arm strappers.

 The telemetry device translates motion into a control signal that is sent to the circuit board controlling the mechanical components that comprise the arm system of the Spinosaurus.

8 BUILDING YOUR OWN ANIMATRONCS

 Connect the cable to your PC's serial port.  Install the software  No soldering or programming skills required.  You can record the movements of hobby servos and play them back exactly as recorded.

Kit Includes: System Requirements: Servo controller circuit 486 or higher processor board (Pentium recommended) Two Hitech HS-300 hobby 8 megabytes of RAM (32 servos recommended) Mini SSC Panel v1.2 3.5" 1.44MB floppy software Battery Pack Windows 3.x, 95, 98 or NT Two servo horn assembly Available serial port packs Illustrated Instruction 20 Megabytes of hard manual drive space

Mini SSC Panel v1.2 software

9  The Mini SSC Panel v1.2 software is a Windows based computer program by which you can control the movements of standard hobby servos.  GUI provides setup movement control and movement recording/playback features.  New features of Freelance edition include: o "Sleep" Mode o Playback Looping o Editable recordings o "Script Manager" o Smoother Playback o Enhanced user guide and help system

Control Panel

 First Screen to contain some motion controls

 Common window scroll bars are used to control the servos attached to SSCs.

 The Control Panel is used to:

10 o Test SSC/servo connections and functionality o Test the minimum bounds of your servos o Test the maximum bounds of your servos o Determine the "Home" position of your servos o Experiment with different speeds o Devise recording strategies and positioning techniques

Recorder

 Flexible and easy –to-use interface to record animatronics projects.

Script Manager

 Allows you to group smaller sub-recordings into larger, more robust animation productions.

11 CONCLUSION

 Animatronics works wonderfully for close-up shots and medium.

 The best way to tell if a dinosaur is digital or an animtronic –if you can see the entire creature then it is digital.Most animtronics do not have legs.

 Disadvantage-animatronic creatures are always heavier than the real creature would be. CG works best for that natural sense of locomotion.

 Advantage of animatronics is you can get something that looks absolutely believable and real, and it's right there in front you on set, and real light is falling on it, creating real shadows.