Snakes worms and eels (etc etc you konw what i meen)

[Tribulex]

Halllo, i need help with this.

DISCLAIMER: This doesnt have anything to do with ants, but if i get a solution i will include the functionally to enhance the body fluidity motion of ant body (like sexy dance XD)

I finally got my anims working with units that roll into ball then pop open. kind of like droideka or destroyer droid from starwars only probably more awesome. I did the defender, the scout, the attacker, and now i am working on the worm...

worm rolls around in a ring, and pops open like a spring (and its fucking sweet) but since its a worm, i want it to move like a worm. I dont mean like an inch worm, i want it to move where each section follows the last. I set up a system with a fucktonne of variables and cases in cob but it sucks and doesnt working right, so can anyone give help on how to make worm body move right? Needs to be likes serpent or centipede.

For example, when worm turn, the entire body doesnt stay rigid like a stick. head turn,s and when the ant moves, body parts follow smoothly.

imagine dragging string around on a surface, like sand.


does this make sense? Can someones help?

thank you,
Mr. Bigguns

[Saktoth]

If you've 20 body sections, say, turn the first 5 by 10 degrees, then the next 10 by -10 degrees, then the last 5 by 10 degrees.

Then move that down the body. The first one goes -10, the 6th to 10, the 16th to -10, Then the 2nd, 7th, 17th, etc. Continue that down the body until it restarts.

Just off the top of my head that sounds like it might work, zwzwsg probably has a much better method.

[zwzsg]

It would be complicated. How pretty is your worm model?

[Argh]

1. It will be pretty darn hard to make this work beyond a certain speed in terms of turning radius, due to the way Spring handles that.

2. It will suck up large amounts of CPU no matter what, to try and run a complete sim of this.

Instead of trying for perfection, try to think about how to do a sim that fakes it adequately. For example, each body section needs to be attached to the head via the previous child, so you can then write some code that runs a cyclic animation that works in most circumstances, with some specific sim for the few situations where it won't work (get slopes between sections, if there's a big variation, then rotate the parts in the X axis, so that it handles slopes adequately, and then only run the slope check every half-second or so, to save on CPU). I mean, most of the time, a snake's motion could be adequately handled with a simple cyclic walkcycle, especially if you put reasonable limits on the slope tolerance and took reasonable precautions in regards to clipping.

If you want more perfection than that, build the snake using OpenGL and run the simulation on it that way, because it will look better and be faster than a full COB treatment of the problem, I suspect. That said, let's see what zwzsg has to say, because I have never tried a snake, and he's done the Dune worm, etc.

[Tribulex]

Well my game is already ridiculous considering the amount of detail i have in the models and the kinds of things i am doing with the animations. I actually have a script to generate the cob, because it is too much to do by hand. My compiled file is like 20x the size of most ta scrip. but they look so incredibly awesome. like a whole new engine of sex, porn, but without even any nudity (unless you like nude rolling robot/snake etc).

basically it has 8 sexions and 2 legs per sections except for front sextion witch has 2 lazor and a anti-missile machine gun thingy. Also back has powerful stockpilable assrocket that has to be deployed to lauch. it r missile that home to destroy any small plane in 1 shot, except for giant airship.

All unit have very versatile roles as u see, but dont worry about that or ask question i just want to give feel what this unit is like and etc.

Also i dont really know shit about fancy opengl bullshit. please make a snake engine feature.


Also sorry for more words but to clarify i want the motion not to be like a snake per say (i have a good snake anim for when it slither through water already) i want it to be like a centipede. like the sectino follow only the section infront of it.

[Tribulex]

oh btw this isnt for ants.

[momfreeek]

remove section from end, place section on front
?

[Tribulex]

remove section from end, place section on front
?

GENIUS THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!

[Tribulex]

wait i take that back it will look like shit with this model, and even if i didnt use this model it will look weird. but good idea anyway.