Dynamic Animation of Spiders and Insects

A place to show off your latest screenshots and for people to comment on them. Only start a new thread here if you have some nice images to show off!
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Sundown
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Dynamic Animation of Spiders and Insects

Post by Sundown »

Here's some images and videos from a paper I presented at the TPCG07 Conference (Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics), which won the Best Paper prize. The simulation uses Ogre as the graphics engine, and OgreNewt for the physics.

Title : The Dynamic Animation of Ambulatory Arthropods
Abstract :

Whilst advances in real-time computer graphics continue to permit the development of increasingly vivid virtual
worlds, the degree of interaction between the environment and the animated characters within remains relatively
limited. There has been little research into the realistic real-time simulation of creatures with the ability to scale arbitrary surfaces and fully explore their environment. Natural looking animations of such feats would greatly enhance immersion in computer games, as well as being of benefit to fields such as phobia therapy and Artificial Life research.

We present a system for dynamically animating ground based arthropods in real-time, capable of traversing realistically across a complex, arbitrary environment. The physical simulation of the virtual world further grounds the creatures, enabling complex emergent animations to form.
Screenshots

Fins and Shells Fur shaders.
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High-Poly Huntsman Spider mesh.
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Huntsman Spiders exploring a Torus Knot.
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Huntsman Spider idle on a rock.
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Small Tarantula exploring some stairs (creature scale = 1.0)
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Giant Tarantula exploring some stairs (creature scale = 10.0)
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Underlying Huntsman spider skeleton.
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Tarantula climbing over some Rigid Bodies.
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May 2007 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTzY5kS-DVI
September 2007 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1P_B65XW4I
September 2007 HD : http://www.informatics.bangor.ac.uk/~llyr/divx.html

Note : Updated simulation videos at bottom of this page.
Last edited by Sundown on Wed Oct 31, 2007 5:02 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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eugen
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Post by eugen »

Wow, very nice!
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Post by bibiteinfo »

Wow this is incredible, I hope we will have the chance to see the paper that you've done!!

I'm really amazed :shock:
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Post by bharling »

awesome 8)

reminds me of some videos from Spore. Procedural animation is the future i believe.

Please say you are going to publish the paper :wink:
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Post by Pau1o »

Thats truely amazing, one of the best things ive seen in Ogre... you got it so right it looks motion captured.

This kind of thing is the future of games, im making a football game at the moment and i can only dream of using dynamic animation like this for the players, being able to make them acutaly swing their leg/foot at the ball to kick it etc... think were a long way off that yet though, well i certainly am.. wouldnt know where to start :(
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Post by Devil N »

I really hate spiders, but this looks great.

It seems very realistic and believable, much like the way a real spider would sense his way around an environment. This definitely opens up some interesting possibilities, you can really make a world seem alive with a system like this.
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Post by PolyVox »

Ha! I was at that conference and talked to you on the bus on the last day (I'm David Williams). I didn't realise you used Ogre!

Anyway, for everyone who missed it it was a great talk and well deserving of the Best Paper award. Well done!
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Post by Sundown »

bharling wrote:reminds me of some videos from Spore. Procedural animation is the future i believe.

Please say you are going to publish the paper :wink:
The paper has been published, although its not appeared online yet!
Pau1o wrote:This kind of thing is the future of games, im making a football game at the moment and i can only dream of using dynamic animation like this for the players, being able to make them acutaly swing their leg/foot at the ball to kick it etc... think were a long way off that yet though, well i certainly am.. wouldnt know where to start :(
Yes I believe dynamic/procedural animation is the way forward.

Real-time environments are getting increasingly realistic, and so are the characters within. You've got more and more rigid bodies being simulated, and yet the animation is still largely based on pre-created key-frame animation (with IK and blending on occasion). There's a problem here, as there's a layer of abstraction between the creature and the environment - i.e its more about 'which animation should be played here', rather than just letting the creature figure it out itself. The problem's only going to get worse as the environments and characters increase in complexity, although things are looking up with SPORE and the Euphoria engine on the horizon.

Obviously, its easier to do primitive creatures like insects, spiders and lizards than humans, but you have to start somewhere! :)
esuvs wrote:Ha! I was at that conference and talked to you on the bus on the last day (I'm David Williams). I didn't realise you used Ogre!

Anyway, for everyone who missed it it was a great talk and well deserving of the Best Paper award. Well done!
Thanks! Small world! :)

I had to cut out about a 1/3rd of the talk- which originally included a couple of slides on Ogre and OgreNewt! I believe I managed to convert one first year PhD to switch to Ogre though.
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Post by tuan kuranes »

Very nicely done demo and paper seems also very interesting indeed. Can't wait for the paper !
Yes I believe dynamic/procedural animation is the way forward.
Mesh Animation seems the hot topic, as upcoming Siggraph 2007 papers shows.
There's some nice readings, not only in Character Animation I && II paragraphs but also in "Shape Deformation" (nice cascaded IK), "Articulation" (automatic rigging with source code), "Squish, Bounce, and Collide" (The CCD for animated models seems very fast and robust.), etc.


I would be very interested in any feedback on how you did plug animation into so that Ogre can become more dynamic/procedural "Animation" friendly, as we have an ongoing gsoc project on this.
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Post by walaber »

fantastic! I remember your post quite a long time ago about powered joints for this project... I'm sorry I wasn't more help!

it appears you got everything working, as the video and screenshots are just stunning! great work!!
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Post by skullfire »

absolutely astonishing... very complete work... looks so realistic!
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Post by SpannerMan »

That looks brilliant. Gives me the heebies though cos I cant stand spiders :roll:

I'd love to see a video of a bunch of spiders scuttling across an uneven surface at higher speeds. Its the speed that gets me I think. One minute on the floor, next minute halfway up your leg...
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Post by mikeInside »

Probably not an adjective that gets applied to them often, but those spiders are gorgeous! And the animation is so lifelike.


I've been freaking out people here in the Netherlands with tales of the agility and size of huntsman spiders back in Australia... I'm sure they'd looove to see this video :twisted:

I remember your post quite a long time ago about powered joints for this project.
I remember reading that topic too. Although I can't remember why I was in the forum in the first place since I've never used newt. :P
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Post by HexiDave »

That's absolutely phenomenal... I personally hate animating with a passion, so powerful self-animating systems like this bring tears of joy.

Really remarkable - I can't wait to see how this progresses in the future.
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Post by Sundown »

mikeInside wrote:I've been freaking out people here in the Netherlands with tales of the agility and size of huntsman spiders back in Australia... I'm sure they'd looove to see this video :twisted:
The Hunstman Spider model walks and moves more like a standard European House Spider at the moment - I haven't had a chance to fine-tune its behaviour (and the associated procedural variables). We are currently working on making the movements a bit less mechanical - i.e allowing the creatures to move in a more unpredictable manner / probing the surface etc, which will allow for a more accurate Huntsman spider simulation.
I remember your post quite a long time ago about powered joints for this project.
Yes we are still working on that too. In half of the video clips, there's only collison detection on the feet, the rest of the limbs being controlled via standard IK / mesh deformation. Which is the reason why the legs intersect the body on occasion.

We've coded most of the powered IK dynamics, but its taking a while to fine-tune and get the mass / inertia working realistically.
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Post by sinbad »

I'm not a big fan of spiders (especially ones that look like they could pick up a rolled up newspaper and hit me with it), but this is really cool.

Congrats on the award!
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Post by Kencho »

Definitely awesome! They even give me a bad feeling, like if I should take a look in my bed before moving in!
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Post by jacmoe »

Great graphics, great spiders! :)

They are indeed very creepy.. :roll:

The video really gave me goosebumps - excellently done! :D

*sigh*

I really would love having this in Ogre! :wink:
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Post by jjp »

Impressive :) Someone do this for bipeds... *dreaming*
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Post by Quall »

The torus knot would make a kick ass screen saver if it had color lol (like the image).
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Post by tau »

sinbad wrote:I'm not a big fan of spiders (especially ones that look like they could pick up a rolled up newspaper and hit me with it), but this is really cool.

Congrats on the award!
I double that on the spider feelings and the award! :)

When I was watching the movie, my right leg was really itchy and I was a bit jumpy :D
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Post by Yanko »

i was thinking "whoa, this is pretty cool!"

until i saw the spider climbing the wall. Then i went to "Holy christ, this is great" :D

Congrats, and hey, send your resumé to Will Wright :D
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Post by JohnJ »

Amazing! The spider animation is so lifelike, it's just amazing. I admit I haven't spent much time studying spiders, but as far as I can tell this is extremely close to the real thing :).

BTW, is the spider truly responding to a realistically simulated environment? What I mean is, can this be applied to a robot that walks just as well?
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Post by Sundown »

JohnJ wrote:BTW, is the spider truly responding to a realistically simulated environment? What I mean is, can this be applied to a robot that walks just as well?
Yes it can be applied to any creature sharing the same body structure as a spider. So anything with a body close to the ground, with legs coming out of the side. We've made skeleton tests with scorpions, ants, beetles, stick insects and it works very well. Needs polishing though.

You could extend it to Lizards, given some backbone/tail simulation. After that it gets more difficult, as you have to consider balance etc. with quadrapeds/bipeds.

The spiders are responding to the environment in the sense that there's no ray casting (appart from an eyesight analogue), no omnipresent knowledge and no processing of the environment meshes (hole here, use this technique here etc). In other words, any steps or orientation changes the creature performs is due to feedback it recieved from its legs / sensors.

There's no central mechanism that does the animation, its an emergent property of many control and regulatory modules all competing to satisfy goals.
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Post by Sundown »

I've updated my website with some recent-ish videos showing the advances made over the last few months.

Image

The simulation is now capable of switching between the method found in the previous implementation (where only the leg tips were physically simulated), to a full body simulation. In other words, the creatures can now gain a lot more information from the environment (collisions, friction, ragdoll and ragdoll recovery, centre of gravity), and affect the environment itself (interacting with / walking over rigid body piles etc).

YouTube link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1P_B65XW4I
High Quality link : http://www.informatics.bangor.ac.uk/~llyr/divx.html

The high quality link needs the DivX web player plugin.

Its not perfect yet - a few of the new spiders still need polish with regard to their physics settings (masses, inertia etc) and the many variables that make up their regulatory systems (see the almost cartoon way the first spider walks). Also there are issues with collision detection (legs intersecting the environment, legs not re-stepping when rigid body underneath shifts), but I am very happy with what's been achieved.

I'll update with some Rhino Beetle and Scorpion videos soon, when I get the chance to record some!
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