Saturday 14 March 2020

Work in progress: A cloakfish documentary, with music!

Cloakfish have featured before in this blog, for instance here and here. With their four undulating fins, the 'cloaks', they lend themselves well to animation. Actually, like some other shapes and ideasm they really NEED animation. The movements of the cloaks are calculated with matlab using trigonometry, and the results is written away as a so-called obj-file and later imported in a rendering program, in my case Vue Infinite.

The animation in this post was one of my last attempts. The movements of the cloaks were calculated with Matlab, which resulted in lots of so-called obj-files that were imported in a rendering program, in my case Vue Infinite. If you look carefully you will see that the cloaks are the only moving part of the animal; that is because the rest is modelled as an unyielding and immobile blob.

The last time I showed such an animation to an international audience was at the TetZoo convention in London in October 2018, where I was given the chance to talk about the Furaha project. Afterwards I met another speaker, Fiona Taylor, who had given a talk on the use of music in nature documentaries. She showed, with examples, how strong music can influence the mood of the documentary, or in fact determine that mood. Here is Fiona's website; she has a very nice blog as well. I recommend that you read part of it, to understand the art and craft of using music for nature documentaries.

We got to talking in the corridors afterwards and she mentioned that, when she saw the cloakfish animation, she starting thinking what kind of music would fit with it. I liked that idea very much; as I have absolutely no musical talents whatsoever, the idea of getting a professional to take care of music was very appealing.

Unfortunately, I was too busy for a year to working on a big project, but that has changed now, so I have starting programming. The new programmes should result in more detail, and in particular in much more control over cloakfish form and movement. Once that is achieved, it should be easy to produce several species of cloakfish and set up scenes. After that, my computer will take over: one minute of film will require 60 times 25, or 1500, images. I would like to achieve a resolution of 1280x720 pixels, but that will depend on how long the rendering takes.

The first item on the programming agenda consisted of better mesh-producing algorithms. A 'mesh', in computer graphics, is a set of connected triangles (or other shapes) that together define a surface. Unfortunately, I cannot make use of ready-made programmes because I have no idea which programme can produce the undulating membranes that define cloakfish movement. I suppose that high-end programmes such as 3D Max and Maya can do so, but one look at their price range is enough to start looking for alternatives (doe any readers know whether Blender can do that?). One alternative, of course, is the old-fashioned hard work approach. Lacking the means to solve the problem using a lazy approach, actual work seemed the only choice left.

I chose to start on another marine animal, a 'crin', a sponge-like sessile lifeform that feeds by filtering sea water. It is simpler to produce. Crins are tube-shaped. Their plankton sieves are hidden away inside the tube. Crins can increase the volume of water they 'harvest' by pumping water actively through its tube. In some form or another they have featured in the Furaha universe from the beginning, even though I never painted one. My present aims were firstly to define it in such a way that I could produce low- and high resolution versions at will; secondly, to deform the body while keeping the mesh structure intact; thirdly, to deform the texture of the animal along with the shape itself. For the connoisseurs: that meant a better understanding of 'UV coordinates' and much better housekeeping of which vertex goes where.
 
Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

This is an image of the 'Crin Designer', showing how the contour of the crin is initially defined with just a few points, shown connected with blue lines. These are connected by smooth curves, in red, that form the basis of the mesh production. The crin’s 'foot' is supposed to be fastened to a rock or something similar, but here it is just a disc. The tube does not run completely through the animal, but outward appearances are enough for now. I had not realised how much it looked like a wineglass. Perhaps I should call this species "P. grigio"...

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk


Here is a high resolution mesh.


And here is an animation, in Matlab, of a low resolution version. The movement worked nicely, even though the water transport should perhaps be in the other direction, with water flowing in at the bottom and out through the top, instead of the other way around. In life, I imagine that crins do not pump water this energetically continuously, but only every now and then.



How about texture control? Here is a test render with a simple texture that allows me to see how the texture responds to the deformations. It worked as intended, so that's good. The deformation is simple and the background is not animated at all, but this is just a test render, after all.



And here is another test, this time with a more natural texture. It looks a bit like an octopus skin, which I like.

Work on the 'Great Cloakfish Designer' progresses nicely. But it will take quite time to get it ready, and only then can I start producing animations, even at a small size that I hope Fiona can work with. We hope to keep you informed of the progress on this blog, and possibly also on Fiona's blog.

30 comments:

tribbetherium said...

Nice to see you working on Furaha again! The site seems to have no new updates though, would be interesting to see more of Furaha's wildlife featured on the site (is there any pictures of the marshwallow? We only get to see a silhouette of it in the walk cycles but no images...)

Anonymous said...

I wonder if that wineglass looking critter could eventually use its water-pumping mechanism to achieve jet-propelled locomotion after some further evolution, akin to the Cardiocetes from Snaiad?

Anonymous said...

what if: brachiating crustaceans, shrimpanzees if you may

Sigmund Nastrazzurro said...

Tribbetherium: Oh, I have been working on Furaha all the time. Just slowly...
For instance, I am currently working on a painting and chapter on trees. I do have a completed painting of a marshwallow head, but I still do not wish to publish all paintings as that might destroy the chances of getting the book published. Then again, it is time to do something about the website again.

Anonymous 1: I see the crins as rather simple creatures, and so far they are all fastened to the sea floor. I was thinking of a painting i which they are in symbiosis with arthropod-like thingies equipped with stinging feelers/legs. There are certainly crins in which the body is rotated by 90 degrees, and they are tethered by their feet, with the tubes taking advantage of tidal flow of water, so they do not actively have to pump water.

Anonymous 2: Well, they would have to become very good as land-dwellers. To become brachiators they probably have to become very agile first. Brachiating, as a type of movement, seems best suited for fairly large animals with sizable inertia. Samller animals could just jump. So we are talking about a large organism. Then their exoskeleton becomes a problem, as it will be relatively heavy. If you somehow manage to do away with the exoskeloton, the animal probably does not deserve the name crustacean anymore...

TheWingedScourge said...

I'd love to see Furaha be depicted on a different site that can accommodate all its new features. Ever heard of the Amphiterra project? It's got a neat interactive site, perhaps Furaha could use a similar medium ;)

RoastHog said...

Maybe you could make a review of the game "Species"? It nicely plays off on the principles of evolution, but strangely it messes up a few, such as organisms constantly sprouting new parts when it's far likelier to modify or lose existing parts. Still, it's a fairly solid concept and probably worth a look.

Anonymous said...

Maybe some crins/crin species are semi-colonial: they don't gather in large groups of dozens to hundreds, but instead in smaller sets of 2-6 or something like that, one aiming its funnel shorewards & the other aiming its funnel in the opposite direction...they counterbalance one another, which might make it easier to keep basically in one place.

-Anthony.

Anonymous said...

the furaha site mentions the term fish iv, what does it mean? are there different unrelated classes of "fish" on furaha

creepysheep said...

I wonder what niche would make a plausible precursor to a sapient species? spec evo keeps portraying them as descended from arboreal tree-swingers that came to the ground (apparently because of the whole "grasping appendages" bit) but it kinda sounds too anthropocentric.

could sophonts realistically evolve from say, a herding plains herbivore, or a social apex carnivore, or even a eusocial hive species?

though some niches seem completely unlikely: for example, solitary arctic carnivore like polar bears would probably not develop intelligence due to scarce food making a big energy-hungry brain a wasteful use of resources

Anonymous said...

Anon, there are lots of different Fish groups on Furaha...some differ in number of jaws or fins...I'm not sure if the Cthulus are still canon - or if they qualify as one of the Fishes.
(I used to have a link to some blogs about the Fishes of Furaha...let me see if I can dig it up)


Well, Creepysheep, orangutangs are pretty brainy & they use their intelligence to find food over large distances (not every tree of any given species is near its kind, nor do all of a species bear fruit in the same years)...so I'd imagine a polar bear-like predator using its intelligence to outwit seals, outsmart rival polar bears, and maybe start herding reindeer and seals.

Similarly, I could see herding herbivore sophonts arising (maybe domesticating small or medium-sized carnivores to keep rivals or competing species away)

eusocials...not sure. eusociality at the level of molerats and honeybees, probably not. solitary and social bees/wasps level, sure.

-Anthony.

Unknown said...

I like the crin's design, it seems simple, plausible and alien-looking all in one. The resemblance to a wineglass is also a nice little touch: I'd imagine that some of their common names are "vases" or "goblets"?

Also, to add on to "creepysheep": wouldn't the superorganism of a eusocial species revolve around all the organisms acting as one and behaving automatically like gears of a unit? Imagine an ant colony if individual ants were smart, if they were intelligent and self aware enough to go against the rigid system the colony would fall apart very quickly.

As for herding herbivore sapients: how would they domesticate carnivores which they instinctively fear? Humans domesticated wolves since we were both predators and hunted together, but given that herding herbivores are staple food for most plains carnivores I doubt they'd even try to make social bonds with the beasts that eat them...

Anonymous said...

um, no...for most of history (and even today), humans are prey - for wolves, crocs, and pretty much everything else. even horses were deadly to us.

why would individual ants be intelligent? emergent intelligence works fine. (also, not all ant species are as rigid as the stereotype)

-anthony

Plantypus said...

I don't really see grazing herbivores having much motivation to evolve intelligence. Leaves and grasses don't have much nutrition and need a complex and large digestive system to process, and since they don't have to outwit prey like a predator or memorize food sources like a fruit-eater, instead just mowing down the grass that grows everywhere, a large brain would just be a waste of energy that would be better off being used for digestion.

Anonymous said...

...and yet apes evolved intelligence long before homonids started scavenging and eventually turning to active carnivory.

Also, you're ignoring that herbivores have to compete with each other and their predators. and not all browse are equal - just ask the big-brained elephants.

(I think we should move this discussion to the Spec Evo forum)

Anonymous said...

apes are very much predators tho. chimps are known to hunt and eat the young of other primates such as monkeys and baboons, orangutans feed on slow lorises quite frequently, even the mostly vegetarian gorillas turn to termites and insects as a source of protein. hominids certainly weren't the first apes to eat meat.

Anonymous said...

your examples are of suppliments - just as lions from time to time eat grass, so should we call lions a grazing cat?

again, we should move this discussion.

Sigmund Nastrazzurro said...

WingedScourge (16 03): I am looking for a new host and will simply transport the site there. I hoep to keep the name intact so visitors will not even notice.

Roasthog (1703): Perhaps. I’ve never played it, and the reviews are somewhat mixed. But it does look interesting.

Anonymous/Anthony (1703): I cannot quite picture it yet; would it mean that one crin ingests the outflow of water from another one? Each one would want to use water with a good plankton load.

Anonymous Anthony on Fishes (1703) / : Yes, there are six clades, all related, of water-dwelling animals that vary in external shape from simple Amphioxus-like shapes to forms resembling whales or plesiosaurs. There is more explanation here: https://planetfuraha.blogspot.com/2010/11/furaha-swamp-scene-ii.html. Terestrial hexapods evolved from one such group (one that already had necks as waterdwellers).
I know that the plural of ‘fish’ is still ; fish’, and yet you can apparently use ‘fishes’ to refer to a group of species of fish.
The Cthulhuoids are not Fishes, but a separte group with as tell-tale traits a head with tentacles. No arms and legs though, so they do not really resemble Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.

Unknown (1703): Thank you. I like the idea of crins being called goblets or something similar. If I produce more, that’s in.

---------------------------------------
creepysheep and others, regarding the evolution of intelligence.

I do not think we have a good idea which factors promote intelligence, seeing that we have a limited number of examples. Some mammals. some birds and cephalopods might qualify. In various cases ever more complex social interactions seem to contribute to evolving intelligence. As often happens in biology, multiple factors are probably at play. As for eusocial species, a colony of individually not-bright ants seems smarter than its component. A troupe of individually smart humans may well behave less intelligently than its components... But I am joking.

More importantly, I do not think that this blog is the best place to discuss subjects that are not related to the post under which they are posted. I simply do not have the time to moderate a forum, and some of the ideas in fact deserve a bigger audience. If the discussion strays too far or becomes too convoluted, I reserve the right to delete such posts in the future.

The speculative evolution forum is here: https://specevo.jcink.net/index.php.

TheWingedScourge said...

The spec evo forum link doesn't seem to be working, unfortunately...

a_monotreme_egg said...

Nice to see the Furaha creatures continuing to get further updates! Would be neat if we got a sort of "wildlife guidebook" about the creatures, written from the POV of field researchers studying them in their natural habitats.

I'd first happened upon Furaha years and years ago and instantly fell in love with the unique creature designs that looked both believable and alien (my favorite one has got to be the brachiating predator whose name seems to escape me right now, since it's a niche unlike anything we have on earth now). Glad to see Furaha continues updating to this day, and fingers crossed for perhaps a book or a series of animated vlogs in the future? :•)

Anonymous said...

link works perfectly well; also this: https://specevo.jcink.net/index.php?showforum=4

work is progressing on The Book, which is all about Furaha.

-anthony

Sigmund Nastrazzurro said...

WingedScourge: the period ( . ) end the end was probably what caused the problem. Do not include that it is should be fine.

Monotreme-egg: Thank you fo the complimanets. The work is indeed slowly continuing but picking up more speed now. However, the current circumstances (corona) certainly impair concentration (still quite healthy, thank you)

Anthony: right you are!

Anonymous said...

a_monotreme_egg: I think you mean the Marblebill?

sidney-the-aussiedude said...

Are there any large cloakfish on Furaha filling the apex predator niche similar to a shark? Does the cloakfish anatomy lend itself to fast and agile swimming?

Sigmund Nastrazzurro said...

sidney: Cloakfish are filter feeders, and their jaws are not well-suited to catch, kill and dismember other animals.

Filter feeding also doesn't require much agility, so there is not much prssure on them to become faster than they are. However, one group you might find interesting has shifted the task of main propulsion from the cloaks to the four fins in front, that in normal cloakfish are stabilisers. In this group, they now function like the flippers of plesiosaurs or turtles, allowing the animals to make swift turns. They feed not on plankton but on schools of small Fish.

Anonymous said...

are cloakfish the whale-analogues on furaha?

Sigmund Nastrazzurro said...

Anonymous: they are in the sense of being large filter feeders, biut not in the sene of being the largest marine animals: that distinctions belongs to Fishes (V or VI, I think; I sometimes get confused and have to consult my notes).

Anonymous said...

so Serina just updated with a new creature called the Painted Repandor and it got me wondering, would the unpaired hind leg of a tripedal animal need to be thicker than the paired front ones since it carries the weight of the entire hindquarters?

Anonymous said...

wrong forum for that, anon. I think Serina has its own forum, anyway
-Anthony.

Anonymous said...

what are the mega-herbivores on furaha like? any tall giraffe analogues or something? perhaps giant rusps?

Sigmund Nastrazzurro said...

There are (very) large hexapods as well as megarusps. See an earlier post on megarusp on how they use their rostrum to extend their reach. There are also specialised megarusps with an elevated front end. Those reach parts of the vegetation that other rusps cannot. They do not really look like giraffes though.