Animation: Spiders, thousands of them..... :)
 

Ok I'm back with my master's project now :D I've decided to do an animation where thousands of spiders swarm over a hill. So here's my second attempt at the spider model. C&C would be fantastic.

I also have no idea how to rig this bloody thing let alone make a walk cycle for it.. any help with that would be great also

:)

Alan

closer in

Hi Alan,

yech... you have just spoiled my beauty sleep... :D

just kiding... model looks really cool... :)

however the left front leg looks kinda strange and a bit smaller than the rest... but it might just be the angle from which the picture is taken that makes it look like that...

maybe this will be the beginning of... "Eight Legged Freaks II" :)

regards

Strarup

lol that's what I'm thinking! :D the front leg is roughly the same size (spiders front and rear legs are slightly shorter than the main ones in the middle) I've stupidly put them at bad angles for rigging :( but I am playing with some IK setups right now to see how it looks

thanks for the comments though :)

Alan

very quickly just rigged half of it, need to figure out how to duplicate the rig onto the other side

ok done the rig and I've done a quick pose... what do you guys think?

Loads more detail will be added in with bumps and displacements when the spiders are rendered (time to learn some renderman!!) ;)

That is good. I think you should get that script on highend 3d that makes the floor glow when the spiders foot touches the ground. That would be an awesome effect in an awesome project. :)

that could be quite cool, do you have a link to the script? I will post some test renders I have with some old spider models where there's 500-600 of them running at the camera. It's pretty cool for a first render.

Anyways there's some problems with the model so I may start it again (it only takes a day or so to make the model) just to get it 90% right. It doesnt have to be detailed cause you will never really see the models that close up and the wow factor of the piece will be the sheer multitude of them.

Ok i'm done for the nite but I will post more tomorrow.

Alan

even if so - i suggest you dont do all of them low detail. i mean, yes for the great mass of spiders you should use the less detailed spiders. but for the real wow effect you could create maybe 15 spiders that are high detailed and a little bit differant each, look about like the low detail version. and with the high detail spiders you can create some real shocking close up with the cam below them, looking up and they ran over the cam. it might be even worth changing the camera position every half second. so that you have 5 or 6 cams watching - and they cycle through. that way the eye will not have time to see that all the spiders are the same. going from seeing all of them to just a few closer up, then all of them and a few again - with the right matching music (e.g. faster and louder at close up and silent and slow when seeing all) might add a blood freezing effect. :D

Oh, A link. Ok. I will find it for you.

Hi DrKnow,

I guess it is this one you mean... "expression-driven distance shader" by Gergely Vass... -->
http://www.vassg.hu/letoltes_en.htm
and if his site should be down, which it is sometimes it can also be downloaded on Highend3d in the Shader section... -->
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/shaders/

to Alan,

I think it would be great with a few very detailed spiders aswell... and Babyduck idea sounds fine...

maybe this plugin from Carsten Kolve could be useful to give the spiders life... "brainbugz"... -->
http://www.kolve.com/mp_brainbugz/brainbugz.htm

I was thinking if it maybe could be an idea to make the spiders a bit hairy... so the maybe would be a bit more scary... :)

sorry couldn't help a bit ryming... but I think a bit fur would be great... I don't know if you have seen "Eight Legged Freaks"... if you haven't I would suggest you to do it... nasty movie... :)

btw. Alex Alvarez gave a 2 hour lection about expressions on the 3d Festival... one of the subjects he talked about was something with detail... e.g. you have 5 similar objects from a very low poly object (1) to a very high detailed object (5) so e.g. when the camera is close to the object it would show the high detailed one, and the longer away from the object it will show the low detailed one... if you are interested I will see if I can find my notes about it... :)

maybe displacements map also could be an idea to make the spiders a bit different... same basic shape but some with diffrent displacement maps... just an idea... :)

regards

Strarup

do you have them textured yet
you should use a touch of fur for their
tiny hairs

wow loads of replies!! :) I just watched 8 legged freaks and now I'm really inspired! I'm gonna start the model again and get the legs attached to the body properly (i botched it together before).

I am planning on rendering this with PRMan and that has LOD (level of Detail) stuff built into it. So you can load different models at different detail levels dependant on the distance from the camera. Also because it's in PRMan all the shaders will be procedural thus I can have unlimited different spiders. I am also planning to have about 5 different walk cycles and various other animations that will be loaded randomly to generate different animations for each spider.

My lord there is soooooo much to do! and 8 weeks to do it in!

:)

Alan

why do you only have 8 week to do it in?

because it's my masters project and it has to be handed in on the 22nd of August (or thereabouts)

:)
Alan