Animaris Rhinoceros Mechanism

Resources

News

03.27.2013 - ACADIA election results announced. I am happy to have been elected to the Board of Directors for the upcoming term (2013-2015). Excited to serve with such a great group of people. More information here: http://acadia.org/features/Q7Q62C

07.01.2012 - I will be giving a lecture for the Advanced Architectural Design (AAD) degree program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture this Thursday, July 5th, 2012. Thanks to Josh Uhl and David Fano for the invitation.

08.24.2011 - I will be giving a demo of Firefly at this year's Open Hardware Summit in New York on Sept. 15th. If you're around the city, you should definitely stop by and check it out. Find out more at: www.openhardwaresummit.org/

07.26.2011 - I will be giving a lecture at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) in Barcelona, Spain for their Global Summer School lecture series.

06.02.2011 - In case you missed it, there was a nice write up in the May-June issue of GreenSource magazine featuring Firefly and it's potentials regarding building performance modeling. Make sure to check it out.

06.02.2011 - If you are around Cambridge tonight, I will be presenting at the Pecha Kucha Boston at the Oberon Theater (2 Arrow St, Cambridge, MA 02138). Doors open at 6:00 and the 20x20 talks begin at 6:45. I hope to see you there!

12.06.2010 - I'd like to thank Achim Menges for inviting me to be a guest critic for his final Performative Wood Studio review at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

10.07.2010 - I will be giving a demonstration of Firefly for Prof. Rodolphe el-Khoury and Prof. Nashid Nabian's architecture studio at MIT.

08.29.2010 - Jason K. Johnson and I are really excited to unveil the new website for Firefly! Come find out the latest features, tutorials, photos, videos and much more at: http://www.fireflyexperiments.com. Come take a look and let us know what you think!

07.08.2010 - LIFT architects has now moved! At least physically anyway. We're now located in Boston, MA and excited about all of the new potentials this city has to offer. We also have a lot of new things to unveil over the coming months (including a new website) so check back often. If your in the neighborhood, please do not hesitate to contact me: andy[at]liftarchitects[dot]com.

03.08.2010 - I will be presenting a lecture entitled "Parametric Optimization and Interactive Architecture" at Clemson University School of Architecture on March 8th, 2010. I would like to thank professor David Lee for the invitation.

05.13.2009 - I will be speaking at the 2009 ICFF Design Entrepreneurs Conference on Monday, May 18th. The conference will be held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City and is international gathering of entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and innovators from many fields and disciplines. I will be speaking about my runner up submission for the 2009 Metropolis Next Gen Competition titled, the Air Flow(er). To see more about this project, check out the May issue of Metropolis Magazine or come to the conference and get a first hand glimpse of the prototype that I've been developing over the last several months.

03.26.2009 - the FLUX Exhibition will open on March 30th at 8:30pm at the San Francisco campus of the California College of the Arts. The school is located at 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco, CA. Stop by if your in the Bay area and see what I've been working on.

Posted on April 15, 2008 by

AOP in Interactive, Research, Visualizations |

5 Comments

With a background in science from the University of Delft in Holland, Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures inspire a sense of wonder at the complexity of nature. For the past 10 years, he has explored the idea of making mechanisms that walk in the wind, ultimately generating a series of "beasts" that rome the beaches living out their own lives. While there are a full series of sculptures, I found the Animaris Rhinoceros sculpture particularly interesting. I decided that I would need to create an interactive digital model of the system to understand the mechanics behind the design. The digital model uses Inverse Kinematics and Bones in 3D Studio Max to create the connections needed for the machine. Essentially, each side of the model is rigged with Inverse Kinematic solvers and then parented to an invisible "Crank" in the middle. By rotating the center crank (named Crank1) around the Y-axis, the system begins to "walk" forwards or backwards depending on the rotation of the crank. Once the initial rig is created, it can be instanced to create the full system as shown in Mr. Jansens actual sculpture.

Download Animaris Rhinoceros.zip (3D Studio Max 9 size: 39k)

Note: This software and its documents are in the public domain and are furnished "as is". The author, Andrew Payne, makes no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the usefulness of the software and documentation for any purpose. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/

View Printer Friendly Version

Reader Comments (5)

Amazing work Andy!!!! I'm going to have to get schooled by you on IK systems.

04-22-2008 |

Dave

Thanks for the kind comments Dave.

04-22-2008 |

AOP

this is even philosophic. can i take this article to my personal blog?

05-20-2008 |

Yoon

Sure. What is your blog?

05-20-2008 |

AOP

Thank you so much for this. I tried it on my own and got so very close but it wasn't walking gracefully. Thanks again and well done.

03-2-2010 |

Ted

Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.