Spider Animations

[_Atti_]

great anims Odd i fear i will have a hard time playing with your spiders around:)

 

btw an idea for the campaign to implement some fearful moments with spiders:) or as part of FM since i dont how how it would fit to our campaign..i dont want to spoil it for myself so i didnt read the plans:)

 

you are in a manor thats near the forest,close to the walls of the city

lets say you got to get some things from the cellar..you pick the lock,go down,notice some webs and a dark passage that leads down to the wine cellar..wind screams from the passage and the door shuts locked behind you...the cellar was abandoned and locked because when they dug the winecellar(its like a cave..since it wasnt finished) they misfortunately connected it with the tunels of the giant spiders that lies under the near forest.. (however the thief knows nohting about that)

 

so you succesfully get the things you need from upper cellar..(can be anything) when something happens..spiders crawling out slowly from the dark lower winecellar..there are much,they kill you if you go melee,you can shoot some down with arrow..or let them eat you:) or go out back the door..at least you can try it..there is no lock from inside,so noone can enter the manor if ever the spiders get viped out or somthing

so you shoot some down..a guard hears the noise from the cellar and goes to check..a new guard at the house..eager that finally something happens.. gets out his keyring and starts running..without thinking he starts searching for the right key..the spiders flee back to the darkness(actually they disappear in the dark so its easier to script),you stand in the darkness hear the jingling of keys and see the flames of the guards torch dancing on the floor as it comes throught at the bottom of door(thats scared the spiders)..you cant let him find you,the only way to hide is where the spiders hide.. now here some well places spider patrols,lighting,and hiding positons..you try not to get in the ways of spiders..you can find one point where tunnel leads to a very big hall,lighting of the moon comes in at several places..its full of spiders and webs, you die from the fall if you slip out accidentaly from the tunnel)

meanwhile you can hear the guard is coming into the passage as well, slowly..then after a certain time of his search he notices the giant spiders and starts running..he runs to alert the others,but again without thinking in the haste.he leaves the door open..now you may leave the cellar..once you step out the door it triggers the guards coming back to investigate..if you keep your ears open you can hear an older guard telling the story of the cellar while cursing the owners name why didnt he walled it all the day after they first noticed the spiders..

 

and the thief is back on his 'duty'

 

you could ask why wasnt the tunnel collapsed instead of protected by a simple metaldoor..

the winecellar was built illegally,noone knew about it,only some trusted..and hm well bribed guards.. the collapse of the tunnel could have been dangerous to the citywalls that was above it..also..it happened in the last weeks,there wasnt time to wall it:)

[Darkness_Falls]

I keep getting an error when I try to post here:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /darkmod/index.php? on this server.

Baby Jesus cries...

 

Apache/1.3.xx Server at modetwo.net

[Darkness_Falls]

Good thing I saved what I wrote to a notepad doc first, otherwise I would've lost this. TRYING AGAIN. Looks like I need to break my reply up into multiple postings because it won't accept one long post (get the above error message)..

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I don't condone the killing of innocent spiders or anything... but we need to do some research on dying spiders, imo. We need to find some videos of some 'just killed' spiders, or something.

 

I don't think your death animation looks very realistic, especially with the dropping of the single leg. I don't think a leg would drop as though it has the weight and lack-of-tension as that of a limp human arm.

[Darkness_Falls]

Continuing my post...

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My recollection of spiders that I've seen dying, granted this is just small spiders... no tarantulas or anything... is that it's different than what's shown in your animation. Aside from I think the legs curling up a bit slower than your animation shows, I think there's some short nerve twitches that go through their legs when they're on their back dying.

[Darkness_Falls]

Continuing...

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Then after all the twitches are done, the legs slowly stretch out, with a few of them (maybe the front 4?) even becoming nearly rigid and nearly straight out.

[Darkness_Falls]

screwit.I will post rest once board is fix'd.

[Corth]

oDD, you can't have two objects as a parent at the same level, that's why you loose joint connections when you try to do that. Instead of a straight parent, use a parent constraint (under the constrain menu in animation) that way the curve will effect the joint like you want.

 

[oDDity]

Ahh, parent contraint...so much to learn in Maya an never enough time...

BT - I'm going to do several different deaths anyway for variety, so I can make that one of them. Also remember that these are not spiders, but weird mutated spider things and you cannot extrapolate from the fact that the legs of a tiny spider which weigh almost nothing do not flop out, that the huge exoskeleton covered legs of this giant spider would not flop out. Gravity has a greater effect on larger heavier objects, or at least its effect versus air resistance becomes greater.

I read that spiders legs work by a kind of hydraulics when the blood is pumped through them, so that would work differently at a larger sacle s well.

I was also thinking of giving the spider a jump attack like the ticks and trites in D3. THey can jump and hit you from halfway across the room.

[Springheel]

I think the jump attack is a great idea, Odd. Part of the reason I hated (re: feared) T2 spiders was that they would occasionally jump right over my head, disorienting me and making it hard to hit them.

 

As far as the 'spotting player' goes, we probably don't need an animation for that. Just a sound cue and the spider breaks into a run.

[Darkness_Falls]

I had considered that a larger spider like that might equate to a heavy enough arm that would cause it act like a limp human arm... but personally I just didn't see that happening. Partly because I didn't think spiders had the same joint configurations, muscles, tendons and internal workings as a human arm; and partly because I diddn't think the mass of their leg would be near the mass of a human arm. If I turn anything up in research, I'll let you know.

 

Side note: A tarantula is considerably larger than a tiny spider, yet its weight is still barely noticeable. I just don't think a spider of T2's size would weigh as much as a large dog... do you?

 

EDIT: I can just see that spider lifting it's head one last time going "Why??!" and then its arm dramatically falls to the ground, as the audience applauses at such a beautiful performance. j/k

[Springheel]

The arm falling seemed perfectly natural to me.

[New Horizon]

The arm falling seemed perfectly natural to me.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Aye, me too. I'm sure it won't fall that fast ingame...likely just the speed of the animated gif throwing it off.

[Darkness_Falls]

I can see how slowing the animation down considerably (like 10 times slower) for the leg drop would be better. Unfortunately, there's more to it than just that. For example, I don't think it's realistic that just one leg would drop. I feel multiple legs would be affected at the same time. It's okay; this isn't urgent. If I come with any proof, I'll let you know. Otherwise, carry on...

 

PS: I still get that error. WTF?

[oDDity]

IT seems you're the only one who doesn't like the leg flopping out, so..

objection overruled.

YOu aren't going to come up with any proof since giant spiders don't exist and never have, so it's all guesswork.

[Fingernail]

True, it's not even something ZylonBane will criticise as unnatural.

 

Don't hold me to that.

[Darkness_Falls]

I'm holding you to that! You guys just aren't as observant with regards to these things. A good artist friend who used to own a tarantula agreed with me that a single leg flopping down like a human arm just wouldn't happen. It's just funny to see oDDity be such a proponent of realism in all other respects except this one You play it off as though it's acceptable because the spider will be in a land of make-believe, but with your desires for realism, wouldn't you want to find out if that's what would happen if a spider of that size did exist?

[New Horizon]

It's not something that affects gameplay and in my opinion, it's a nice dramatic touch. It gives the spider some personality. Almost makes you feel sorry for it. It's good.

[oDDity]

THere's no argument that can be put forward to suggest that the animation is not realistic, given that giant spiders are imaginary. I'm going to do a few different deaths anyway, so don't fret.

[Darkness_Falls]

An analogy...

A small feather is very light. I understand the structure of feathers and how they react to air while falling. Can I not take this knowledge and deduce that a giant feather may still remain somewhat light and may still somewhat react to air in a similar way? Or should I just throw out all present knowledge I have of feathers and have it fall from the sky like a brick?

[Fingernail]

Hey, it's a giant feather. ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN.

 

Just drop this. It's silly beyond belief.

[Springheel]

You guys just aren't as observant with regards to these things.

 

Perhaps. Or perhaps we just disagree.

[Fingernail]

Maybe. But perhaps we should all shut up and let Oddity do some more animations without constant inteference!

[Darkness_Falls]

Ok, so oDDity's admitted to not being the most knowledgeable or skilled animator before, yet you're okay with just accepting whatever he creates without comment? I just feel you'd think it was more freaky if you actually saw a real spider dying and mirrored that for this. But since you maybe haven't closely observed, then you have no clue. (Edit: What you don't know doesn't hurt you, I guess.) I personally just don't need comic relief when I'm playing a Thief game, and to me the animation is somewhat comedic. Then again, I've closely watched spiders die before after spraying them with poison.

 

In every other respect we've had eyes for detail and tried to make things consistently believable based on real world phsycis, for real world items. I don't really appreciate how its conveniently dropped here, but I'll go into "blindly accept" mode with you all if that's what is desired.

 

I know he has lots to do and I'm not trying to create more work for the heck of it. Just trying to make a better game/toolset. Movie makers try to figure out how to make something that's not realistic be believable. If we're not of that same mind-set or caliber, then so be it. I can't change you all.

 

It's not that oDD's animation couldn't or wouldn't work. I totally see it working. I just think it can be improved.

[Ishtvan]

A giant feather, with every part of it scaled up uniformly, probably would fall like a rock. For the same reasons that a giant waterstrider (those bugs that walk on water) would not be able to stay on top of the water anymore. You have one force pushing up (drag force in the case of the falling feather, and the water surface tension in the case of the water strider) and the other force is gravity (mass * g) pulling down. When you scale everything up uniformly, the mass increases linearly, since it depends on density x volume and you increase volume. The surface forces however do not increase linearly with the size, so the forces are no longer balanced the same way.

 

Think of it this way: A feather is made of lots of tiny fibers, and the drag force from these fibers is enough to give the feather a very low terminal velocity when it falls, so it floats down. If you increased this by 1000x, you'd have big ropes instead of tiny fibers, and I think we all know that a pile of big ropes does not float down gently when dropped.

 

Another example of this type of thing is capillary action: If you put one end of a cyllinder of cotton in water, the water will get sucked up into the cotton some distance. Does this mean we can build a giant cotton cyllinder to move water into space? No. That also doesn't work as you scale it up.

 

Similarly with bugs, there are internal forces controlling the limbs that do not change at the same rate as gravity forces when you increase the scale of the bug. So we can expect some different behavior for the large scale bugs than small scale bugs, like a heavy limb flopping down when the spider goes limp. (I read somewhere that the breathing mechanism for bugs would not work on large scales, so technically giant bugs wouldn't even be able to breathe, but I'm happy to suspend disbelief a little in order to have giant bugs)

[Darkness_Falls]

Well, maybe if you're talking about a feather the size of a football field. I was more thinking several feet across. 5' or 10' maybe. The surface area of the combined feather fibers coupled with the still relatively light-weight feather would mean the feather would not fall like a brick at 9.8 m/(s^2). I'm not dumb; I know there are exceptions to any rule (surface tension of water, etc.) We're talking about a spider that has gone from the size of a quarter or something to the size of dog; not to the size of a soccer stadium. If it were as large as a stadium, then yes I agree it would be more believable to have the spider leg flop down like an arm.

 

oDD told me not to fret. So I won't. At least I'll try not to...