Why procedural animations?
It began with my fascination of the organic movements of animations in games like Rain World. I just think its a really cool technique that I wanted to try out for myself and see how natural i could get the movements.
Rain World by Videocult
I came up with an idea to create a Chinese dragon with procedural legs, almost like a centipede. I wanted it to fly aswell as walk. So I got to work in Blender and made the dragon using feet and body segments. I then made a simple Rig.
It all begins in Blender
Inverse kinematics
While FABRIK, CCDK and Jacobian algorithms are fine I wanted something simpler. This is the result. It is based on cosinus, angles, bone lengths and supports simple constraints.
feet placement
Now that the limbs follows its target correctly it was time to create the logic for the feet placement. I made it so it can step in any direction and only one pair of feet can move at a time. If no ground is detected it will raise its legs like landing gear.
The Prototype
Now with the inverse kinematics done and the foot placements coded, this is the result. Note the retraction of the legs when high enough.
FInal Result
If I were to improve upon it I would make the feet two boned and make them align better with the ground. I could also make the landing and takeoff a bit smoother. All in all I am pleased with my results and had a blast making this project.
