I've finished working on the Lost In Space B9 Robot. I would like to send Thank You to robcat for providing me with his concertina model in helping me figure out how to rig the robot's arms. And thank you to all who comment and help me through the modelling process of this robot.

I am including a project file, separate model, two action files and a single decal that was used in the model. Pretty much everything is rigged, lights, arms, claws, whirly gigs and so on. Lots of pose sliders to help make things a bit easier for you. The pose slider for retracting the arms doesn't work properly all the time. Not sure why. Also, I don't have any rigging for the treads.

Enjoy...

Al

Updated - October 31, 2009

The buttons labels were not attached to the Torso bone (as found by Largento). Model updated to fix that problem. Thanks Mark for finding it and letting us know about it.

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Fabulous! Thanks!

Awwwww...he's a cutey!

Very generous as always, Al! Thanks!

wow!!!!!

Just what I wanted! A Robot for Christmas! Thanks Santa!

Wow! THAMKS! That show brings back a memory or two...that dastardly Dr. Smith!

Thank's Al thats very nice of you ,a great model

I was playing around with Al's terrific model...

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One thing I did find: the button labels are not assigned to a bone, so if you rotate the torso, they get lost. It's an easy fix, though. Just Use the button label group to select them, hide everything else and go into the bone mode and assign them to the bone that runs through the torso.

Thanks everyone.

Sorry about not adding the labels to a bone. They were a last addition to the model.

That is a really great render Mark. The body color looks really good. Did you adjust the material and if so, what did you set it to?

Al

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I've updated the model and the newest fixed robot is in the 1st post.

I've been looking more and more at your render Mark. I am really envious the result. I've said it before and I will say it again. Lighting and texturing is an art form, and one that I really, really need to practice. Would you be willing to share your lighting setup?

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Very generous contribution, Al! Great job too.

Thanks, Al!

Of course, I'll share!

Here's the choreography file and the modified model. You can see the changes that I made to the body grey material. I tend to go high with these sort of things, more moderate settings would probably give even better results. Basically I just set the diffuse color to a very dark grey and then made the specular color a light grey and made the specular size very large. The lighting is still three-point lighting, but I did set them up differently than I normally do. Still, the basics are always the same for me. I use a strong rimlight behind and above the central figure, I usually turn on "cast shadows" for the keylight and I use the fill light on the other side of the rimlight.


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I watched the first few episodes on Hulu a while ago and at the outset, B9 was a rather menacing character under the spell of Dr. Smith. I'll have to look at those again and see if the B9 name is mentioned early on.




That's better than he looked in the show!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I can't remember if the robot was actually called B9 on the show or not. I had the Alpha Control Manual in which it called the robot B9. I've seen references all over the web to the robot as B9 as well.

I prefer the first season in black and white due to Smith being much more of a serious villain character. The robot was more mechanical in everything he did, like walking and talking. Smith actually had the robot programmed to kill off the Robinson family one by one. Made for some pretty tense moments in the series. Unfortunately, the Batman TV show came on the air and it was very campy. CBS saw how the ratings were going up with Batman, and decided to shift LIS towards being campy. This is why Smith ended up being a snivelling coward.

In the Alpha Control Manual, there was another explanation for Smith's change. It was due to him not being in a freezing tube during the initial 'full power' lift off from Earth. An unprotected human would be affected mentally, which is why the Robinsons were in the tubes during lift off. Apparently, they never did a 'full power' lift off again, which is why they were only in their couches. That and June, the mother, did not fair well when she came out of the freezing tube. John, said she would never have to go back into it again.

Well, this has filled my geek quota for the day....

Al

Thank you Al for sharing your INCREDIBLY AWESOME B9!!!!

Lost in Space was my favorite t.v. show when I was a kid. As much as I love your modeling Al, as a big LIS fan, I gave some thought about your comment (about wishing Dr. Smith had stayed menacing) and I have to disagree. In my opinion Smith could not have stayed as the cold hearted spy assassin as he was portrayed in the beginning episodes. I believe most people who watched would not have accepted Dr. Smith as a viable crew member if he didn't either lighten up (become cowardly) or become sympathetic. I think the audience (of THAT time period) would have wanted the Robinsons to either execute hime or truly leave him on an asteroid. Also, I think the brilliance of Smith being outwardly confident but subconsciously cowardly and pathetic yet have a devious and conniving persona was perfect to offset the "Cleaver family" Robinsons. John Robinson was the strong leader character. He was the perfect busy father figure who put his family first and would defend his family with his life. Don was like a favorite Uncle who although knew John was the boss, he could easily step in when John was away and you never doubted his loyalty. I also really liked the open animosity between Don and Smith. If Smith would not have changed, there would have been a serious personality clash that I believe would not have worked. Also, his connection and affection for Will actually helps to humanize him. It also allowed the program to be more than just a Sci-fi show. It had very heart felt moments and each show was like a rollercoaster ride that you didn't want to get off. I'm deliberately not mentioning the females. Because (I think) of the time period they didn't do much with the female characters and their parts didn’t really affect Smith’s character if I remember correctly.

I think Jonathan Harris did an excellent job in his portrayal of Dr. Smith. By making Smith less threatening, it's easier to accept him being around. Had Smith’s character not changed, I think there would have been too much testosterone in the story.

I seem to remember reading an article where Jonathan Harris said he deliberately changed Smith's character because he didn't think He'd last. I'll see if I can find it and post the link.

Edit:

OK I found this Wikipedi article that is very interesting. He (Jonathan Harris) changed the character because Zachary Smith was originally suppose to be killed off. Very interesting stuff here. Scroll down to the Lost in Space section:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Harris

Just my LIS 2 cents.

Again Al, FANTASTIC JOB on the B9 model. I have a personal appreciation for your talent with this model (and your Jupiter 2). I tried to model this many times and gave up because I couldn't get the patches to look smooth enough with the cut outs. I'm absolutely... I can't even find the words to describe my feelings. I'm speechless.

George

Glad to be of help George, and thank you for your kind words.

LIS was and still is one of my all time favorite TV shows. I still enjoy sitting down and watching them every now and then. Even the giant talking carrot episode... It's pretty funny really, to see Don West turn his back to the camera when they are caged up in that episode. He turns his back because he is laughing at the giant carrot in the scene!

I agree it would have been hard to keep a show like LIS going if Smith had always been a seriously evil antagonist all the time. It would have been hard to keep a show with a small cast like that going. The movie was kind of iffy for me, although I did enjoy Gary Oldman as Dr. Smith. With the rebirth of shows like Galactica and V having a darker serious tone to them, I wonder if they would ever re-do LIS for TV?

I've modelled the Jupiter 2 three times now. Once in Anim8or (complete with launch tower), once in C4D (just the outer hull) and also in A:M (outer hull with working fusion core and outer hatch, partial interior upper deck with working flight consoles and now the B9 robot). The Jupiter 2 was done quite a while ago, and I have learned a lot about modelling since then. I would like to go back and redo it again, making it more accurate and functional. Would love to try doing the chariot at some point as well. Really need to learn organic modelling so I can start working on some human characters. Ohhh... the pain... the pain...

Al

Thanks for the beautiful model.

The Chariot would be cool but My absolute favorite vehicle that appeared in the later episodes was the space pod. I always thought it was cool to see the pod exiting the Jupiter 2. It even had the spiral lights on the bottom like the Jupiter 2 if I remember correctly.

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George

Did you know the serial number on the side of the space pod was supposed to be Irwin Allen's office phone number? Don't know how true that is, but it is what I read in on of my LIS books.

Al

Thank you. Nice robot!

Thank you great work

I finally opened this file and Wow! What a wonderful job!
And all the pose sliders!