Remember your eighth birthday party when the animatronic band at Chuck E. Cheese sang happy birthday just for you? Now you can enjoy this any day of the year with RoboThespian. The complete animatronic platform has been modeled in Blender 3D. Animating the robot is as easy as producing an animation from its digital model. Lip syncing is generated automatically, with the handles to the right of the model’s head controlling facial expression.
Using Blender as a choreography tools is brilliant. We’re hoping someone will incorporate this technique in their Halloween shows this year.
[Thanks Rob via BlenderNation]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtdHsuRJnAg]
Nearing $84,000 for that thing… yikes. I’d rather go to Chuck E. Cheese than pay for that, even if it means dealing with little children to watch some robots.
From the site- “Imagine an interactive RoboThespian, the original robot actor, at your science center or museum, to greet your visitors, to entertain them, to educate them.”
At first read, I thought it said “eradicate them”. LOL
I’m too old, it wasn’t Chuck E. Cheese I went to, it was Showbiz Pizza Place ^_^.
wow. he must be loaded
Showbiz Pizza is the midwest version of Chuck-E-Cheese. Love how the ads are all going bonkers off the keyword..
This may be a bit off topic (maybe a lot), but Chuck E. Cheese came before Showbiz. Chuck E. was started by the ultimate geek of that time Nolan Bushnell. His visions brought us Atari, PONG, and a 6 foot anima-tronic rat. Before CEC got into financial troubles, Bushnell pioneered a company called Serpentine. This company created highly graphical 3D video games. My first job ever was at the first Chuck E. Cheese ever. And just to make sure I go way off topic, his daughter is still cute, even 26 years out of high school.
Im not sure if the new CEC setup uses this but, the one in the video uses VHS for audio video and anamatronics. the new system uses dvd’s, 1 for video and audio, another for the second video that plays along side the first video. and the third for lighting and anamatronics. all connected with a blackburst also. I used to be the tech manager at CEC. Wish i saw this when i was there. Poor spelling BTW
So tired of Blender…
I worked so hard on optimising the BGE for the last distro and it ended up being a huge sloppy-wet fail.
So tired… so tired……