Tutorial: How to Create Robotic Arms in Blender (Part 1)
Why Blender Stack Exchange recommends it
Blender Stack Exchange users link it as a reference for rigging flexible or tentacle-like arms with bones, and as the source tutorial when they ask for help on specific steps like the claw array and parenting.
Recommended by 2 people across 3 different months, 2022 to 2022.
What it is
A 20-minute Blender tutorial by Polyfjord on modeling and rigging Doc Ock style robotic arms using inverse kinematics, then attaching them to a Mixamo motion capture character. It covers joint modeling, a claw built with an array modifier, and the limits of the setup, with a Part 2 following.
What people said
Strong rec Chris · 2022-01 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “rigging flexible hose connected between two objects”
[this video] -> Polyfjord is - in my opinion - one of the best Blender tutorial makers at all. He explains it there pretty well.
Recommends John Eason · 2022-06 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Can I affect bones with forcefields or somehow fake noise/turbulence on a group of bones? (animating anemone tentacles)”
There's a two-part tutorial on creating robotic arms by PolyFjord here [this video] which might show you how it can be done with bones. Most of it you can skip over, but it shows you the technique in detail. Basically, you add an empty to the end of the arm and animate that with noise. The section on animating with noise is in Part 2 and starts here [LINK] .
Recommends John Eason · 2022-07 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Armature and rigging for this sphere robot with tentacles?”
There's a 2-part YT tutorial on creating and rigging robotic arms here [this video] which you could easily modify to create the same effect.
Cites GamePlay · 2022-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Parenting Object Not Working”
I use this tutorial [this video] When I test it like what he did at 7:13, the robot arm is not moving, it only move the Armature [LINK]
Cites Lonely · 2022-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Robotic Arm - Claw Object Offset problem”
[LINK] Open claw: [LINK] Closed claw: [LINK] I was making robotic hands from the Polyfjord tutorial " How to Create Robotic Arms in Blender [this video] ", only I ran into a problem with Claws. When I do an object offset to duplicate, the copies are sometimes very high and sometimes very small. Anyone is able to help? [LINK]
Cites TRS · 2022-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Problem with Array Modifier in tutorial "How to Create Robotic Arms in Blender"”
[LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] I've been trying to follow the workflow of the tutorial [this video] as closely as possible, but I got stuck at the "Modeling and rigging the claw" stage. Originally I needed to generate three claws that were exactly the same shape. When I applied object offset to claw duplicator(Triangle one), somehow all three ended up being different sizes. The three should have been exactly the same size and shape. Since the same question was posted I think this needs to be addressed.
Cites John Eason · 2022-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Problem with Array Modifier in tutorial "How to Create Robotic Arms in Blender"”
There's a comment below the video by 'ishmael mercado' saying that you should apply all transforms to the claw duplicator at around 9:45 [this video] in the tutorial rather than clearing the location. That's the next option below 'Clear' on the menu and apparently solves the problem you're having..