Photorealistic spidrid animation (maybe...)

 Now that The Book is out of my hands, I can pick up some old Furaha projects that I had to pause earlier on. I used Matlab, a programming and analysis tool, to produce animations to see how various animals moved. The resulting 3D representations helped a great deal to get a better feel for the gist of the movement and were very useful to get the paintings right. However, I also wanted to produce more lifelike, even photorealistic, animations. Those with good memory may remember that I used to do entire Furahan scenes using a 3D rendering programme called Vue (or Vue Infinite) from the firm E-on. There are some on my rather inactive YouTube channel.  

Producing even short animations proved to be extremely time-consuming. Vue is a raytracing programme that produces very good atmospheric results, but each frame took ages. I used to leave my PC running for one or more nights. The problem with animations is then that you only get to judge the the quality afterwards, and you may then have to do it all over again. 

The main reason I stopped making visually rich animations was that they did not contribute to The Book; by consuming time, they in fact postponed its completion. Another important reason was that programming animations was often frustrating. I could achieve my goals in Matlab, where the problems boiled down to defining rotations and translation of every body part of a radially symmetric eight-legged spidrid walking on uneven ground, with the body attitude compensating for the slope. That was complex in that it was difficult to keep track of everything, but the key parts required fairly basic trigonometry. The seriously frustrating part was to reinterpret the resulting data with Python code to direct Vue. The coordinate systems never really matched up, even if I started with both the y-axes up in both systems and similar handedness orientations of axes (that means whether the positive x,- y- and z-axes pointed in the same direction in both programmes. Even though I made sure of that, I still had to swap y- and z-axes, which in turns messed up all rotations.  

Here is an old example I posted back in 2013. There was a problem with the legs: sometimes the leg segment closest to the body (that wasn't shown) flipped around, so the pale underside is suddenly placed the wrong way. This happened when that segment rotated beyond the vertical position; let's say the rotation angles moved from 85 to 95 degrees. This was almost certainly because a function such as arc tangent interpreted 95 degrees as 5 degrees. At the time, I gave up and shelved the programme. 

I have now tried again, helped by the fact that I now have the latest and much more stable version of Vue. Sadly, Vue's parent firm (Bentley) decided that it would no longer develop Vue at all, so the 2023 version is the last one ever. The good news is that Vue is now available completely free. This version is a pleasure to work with. You do not need to be able to code at all to use it.

Here is a Matlab example of expanded spidrid animation functionality. You can see that the spidrid follows the terrain perfectly, meaning that the body posture echoes the terrain under the body precisely. You can also see something new, present in my spidrid paintings, but not yet in earlier spidrid animations. In earlier animations, the body consisted of one part whereas theyere should be two: a bottom part (the abdomen) that bears the spidrid's eight legs and a top part (the cupola or cephalothorax). The cupola can move on the abdomen. In this animation the copula is stuck firmly to the abdomen. 

In this second example, the abdomen is partly stabilised and no longer follows the terrain completely, so it stays more horizontal than in the previous animation. The cupola now moves independently and has its own tilt-dampening stabilising reflexes, so it stays even more horizontal than the abdomen. That should help the animal get a more stable platform for its senses.

After rewriting the python code the next step was raytracing with Vue. After suffering much misery and new dents in my wall where I banged my head, I got it working. The next phases include adding an abdomen and a cephalothorax, perhaps even feelers, and then it is time to add plants swaying gently in a breeze. 

Wish me patience...

---------------------------------------------------------

For those who wish to use Vue, or its associated plant editing software 'PlantFactory', you can download them here. 

As I said, this last version is quite stable. With Vue it is not that difficult to produce an image of a forest with prehistoric trees or something like that. If you wish to have more control over Vue's myriad options, be advised that this is a complex piece of kit that needs attention and time. 

For tutorials, there are several; GeekAtPlay provides good ones.