Portal 2: How to Fix GLaDOS's arms and pistons.

This guide will show you how to fix the arms and pistons on the Portal 2 GLaDOS model so you can animate it with ease.

Introduction

OK MAGGOTS! WELCOME TO LESSON 2 OF SFM BOOT CAMP! TODAY! YOU NUMBNUTS WILL LEARN HOW TO FIX GLADOS'S PISTONS AND ARMS SO THAT YOU CAN ANIMATE OUR FAVOURITE HOMICIDAL COMPUTER WITH EASE- *cough* *cough*

Fixing GLaDOS's head pistons

*cough* *cough* Ok. That's enough. That is starting to make my throat hurt. Anyway. I am using the enhanced GLaDOS model from The Lab, however. This will work with the original Portal 2 GLaDOS.

Let's start off with the pistons.

You may have noticed that whenever you try to move the head. The pistons tend to become disjointed. Fixing these are easy, so let's get started.

Step 1.

Select the Headpiston_A_tip and then Headpiston_A_base. Remember, you must select these two in that particular order.

Step 2.

Right click on the selected Headpiston_A_base. Select DAG Utilities Menu.

Step 3.

Then click on constraint_aim.

Step 4.

Repeat Steps 1-3 for B to E. Remember, tip first and then base.


Congratulations. You will now be able to animate GLaDOS's neck no problem.

Fixing GLaDOS's arms

Now hang on a tick. We can't just go constrainting any old bone here, because SFM doesn't like it when a parent bone is constrained onto a child bone. It will crash if you try to select any of them once the constaint is in place. So we're going to have to use a workaround using the empty.mdl found within TF2's content.

For GLaDOS's Right Arm:

Step 1.

Lock arm02_04 onto glados_center_z.

Step 2.

Create an empty.mdl animation set. Lock it's rootTransform onto arm02_04. Then use the Zero slider to center it onto the bone. Then unlock it.

Step 3.

Lock the empty.mdl rootTransform onto glados_center_z. Then, without Zero sliding it. select it's rootTransform and arm02_01.

Step 4.

Right click on arm02_01 and use constaint_arm. The purpose of empty.mdl is to emulate the arm02_04 bone so that we can constrain arm02_01 onto it without SFM crashing when we select the bones.



And we repeat the same steps for the left arm. Only replace arm02_04 with arm_01_07 and arm02_01 with arm_01_01.

Outro

Congratulations. You will now be able to animate GLaDOS much easier as you now do not have to worry about the pistons and the arms. See? No IK Rig required. The constraints will do the pistons and the arms for you.

Just keep in mind that this is not perfect though, and the arms may twist themselves in an awkward way if you do any heavy posing. But it's better than nothing though? Right?


Anyway. Soldi-*cough* I mean, Playa. Signing out.








And an added note: Here's a render I made of our favourite Homicidal computer, after I applied this to her. I found it easier to pose her like that:

[FazbearFan426]

Everytime I zero slide the empty.mdl's RootTransform, it rotates the center_z and the arm02_04 which messes everything up.

[ThePlayaJam]

I'll give that a try.

[Kangaroodle]

For the arms I would have suggested using http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=823150917 , and make an IK rig for the sixth and third joints of each arm, that way you can easily pose the arms while she flops about