3d simulation of extinct biomes

[ftlcgi]

Hyneria lindae from the late devonian of Red Hill

[ftlcgi]

Here are my latest reconstructions, they are all part of the Red Hill Fauna, as usual they still need some improvements and will be updated soon

 

Hynerpeton, it's known from only few bone fossils, the model is  based on other reconstructions i found, wich i guess are based on Acanthostega that was found more intact and with more complete specimens

 

Ctenacanthus, the model is based on the old Cladoselache model, they are similar in shape so there was no need to make it from scratch

 

Phyllolepis rossimontina, i edited the old Groenlandaspis model, they are very similar

 

Turrisaspis elektor, also based on the old Groenlandaspis model

 

I've purchased an Ecosystem AI module for my game engine, the animals will forage for food, hunt, sleep or explore, it's easy to adapt and i won't have to bother with complicated game logic. 

If anybody is curious about the plugin here is a shwcase video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kR5KC5Miw

I made some tests with hynerpeton and it works great, i'l post a video soon after i make some more animations

Edited February 15, 2022 by ftlcgi

[ftlcgi]

I remade some of the plants like Protolepidodendron and i'm working on optimizing the models to reduce some of the polygon count, the plants in the Famennian were much larger and detailed than the earlyer periods and rendering them in realtime requires a lot more resources. I need to make them as realistic as posible but also low detail so they work on a decent framerate on most pc's.

More Red Hill fauna, Sauripterus is a genus of rhizodont lobe-finned fish

 

Designathus, is another tetrapod from Red Hill, is known only from a lower jaw fragment an it was probably larger and sturdier than Hynerpeton

 

Gyracanthus was a large acanthodian found at Red Hill

 

[ftlcgi]

I uploaded some new videos of my project

Famennian (late devonian) fauna of Red Hill, Pennsylvania

Famennian (late devonian) flora of Red Hill, Pennsylvania

Eiphelian (Middle Devonian) flora of Lindlar, Germany

Ediacaran biota of Flinders Ranges, Australia

 

More plants from the late devonian, i couldn't find any complete reconstructions of these plants, i added general features so it looks like a real plant, i will eventualy make more plants closely related to these ones and "fill the gaps".

 

Gillespiea, made from a reconstructed branch, it was common in Red Hill flora

 

Pseudobornia, an early ancestor of Calamites from Alaska

 

Archeosigillaria, one of the several lycopsids found at Gilboa, NY. There are no reconstructions available, i made it to look as a crossbreed between devonian lycopsids and Sigillaria.

I've used Substance designer to make scales for fish but i can use it to make all the different bark patterns of these trees.

 

Elkinsia polymorpha, one of the first seed ferns, it was common in the late devonian

 

Sphenophyllum, very common in carboniferous it appeared in the middle devonian

 

Zygopteris, ancestor of the fern trees that were very common in carboniferous it appeared in the late devonian

 

More screenshots from the videos i posted

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[A.C.]

This is amazing work! I am having so much fun checking out the 3D models and now want to learn to make my own!

[FossilDAWG]

I am so impressed with your work!

 

Don

[ftlcgi]

On 3/16/2022 at 7:51 PM, A.C. said:

This is amazing work! I am having so much fun checking out the 3D models and now want to learn to make my own!

You shold, it's a lot of fun for me

 

Conodont

 

Edicacaran biota of Newfoundland, Canada

Edited March 17, 2022 by ftlcgi

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

I'm sorry I haven't been on for a while! I LOVE the Red Hill animations; it's only gotten better. Could you add some arthropods to the Red Hill fauna? Gigantocharinus and Orsadesmus, for example. There is also an unidentified scorpion telson from the area. This is way better than pictures I've seen of the Walking With Monsters Series. Yet again, could you do some more cephalopods, maybe a Seven Stars or Montour habitat?

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

(Here is a picture of Gigantocharinus)

http://bringingfossilstolife.infinityfreeapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Gigantocharinus-768x1024.jpg

[ftlcgi]

22 hours ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

I'm sorry I haven't been on for a while! I LOVE the Red Hill animations;

Hi, i'm glad you like my updates, i'l try to improve my skill and make the animations much better, i added an idle animation to this Hynerpeton for example and i'l ad more, so the animals look more natural, the ones on the video had just one animation for walking or simming.

 

22 hours ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

Could you add some arthropods to the Red Hill fauna? Gigantocharinus and Orsadesmus, for example. There is also an unidentified scorpion telson from the area.

I made another very similar trigonotarbid spider model called Palaeocharinus from Rhynie Chert that i was going to modify to look like the one from Red Hill, i found this this reconstruction of Gigantocharinus on devoniantimes.org
btw that's a very nice reconstruction you posted can you tell me what resource did you used? i read about the other arthropodes on devoniantimes here and i want to ad them aswell but becouse they are way smaller than the rest of the animals i cannot ad them to the same scene without taxing the resources to much, i can show small arthropodes as very low detail models in the normal level but not as detailed as i want.

So i came up with a solution for adding micro enivroments, while walking around the forest you (the player) will find small areas where you can shrink to a smaller size and get a more detailed perspective of the forest floor or a puddle or a bush. I't very simple to ad this feature, there will be a floating icon and and interact key , once you press it, the new level will load (just like a door in games). This new level will have smaller plants with higher detail like this Sphenophylum that will normaly have a smaller detail, small plant debris like this detailed Archeopteris branch and high detailed bugs that otherwise will be very low detailed in the normal level. I made a simular thing a while ago on the Rhynie Chert map but i only posted photos, for example you have the normal human perspective in this image and you have the micro perspective of a lake in this image where you can swim and see the small animals, in this micro enviroment the large trees will be part of the background, like mountains. You can exit the micro enviroment when you press a key or from a floating icon that will send you back. Eventualy i may improve this and allow the player to change it's size and perspective everywhere but for start this it's a simpler option.

 

As i was saying, i was about to start working on Gigantocharinus, i was not sure how to make the head and mouth parts, the one i made Palaeocharinus rhyniensis was based on a 3d reconstruction and it was easy to make a similar model, for the rest i want to read a bit more about what features are common for them.
There is this nice image on wikipedia with different trigonotarbids that will be helpfull. And i'm sure there are more on sciencedirect i could find

 

Regarding the scorpion, since there are very few reconstructions that will help me when making devonian scorpions i will use a simple model of an actual scorpion and maybe change it a bit with features common in ancient scorpions.
Giants like Brontoscorpio from early devonian had thinner claws, based on the single finger discovered (image here). I'm not sure but i think the rest is made up, based on living species.
I purchesed some animal packs from Unreal Engine marketplace and i can legaly use them in my project. Animal Pack Ultra and Animal Pack Ultra 2, they might be very usefull in the future if i'm making some more recent reconstructions
One of this packs includes a fully animated scorpion, it's simpler to use as a template and i can modify it's claws or it's texture and use it. I won't be able to post it on sketchfab but it will be in the future videos.

 

I never heard until now about Seven Stars or Montour habitats but recently i read about the Hunsrück Slate and it got my attention with it's perfectly preserved fossils. So i started to make some simple brittle stars, brachiopods, a more detailed crinoid (i will post them here soon)

And this Carpoid, it's similar to a crinoid that crawls on the bottom of the sea.

I want to make the most known and best preserved sites first (the Lagerstätte) but after that it will be easy to use the already made assets and repurpose them for other sites.

 

In rest i've been working on the the way the resources are managed so i't easier to ad new models and update them once they are improved, it's important to keep a clean project now when i have 88 models of plants and animals, landscape models and textures, some megascans models of seaweeds, rocks, tree stumps etc

 

The menu is tough to make as i want it, i managed to make the high resolution planet textures update very fast with a technique called virtual textures, it's like google earth, The huge texture gets splin into small size slices, only the slices you see are loaded and only at the necesay detail in order to look ok, once you zoom into the planet, the textures update and you see a detailed texture of the region you zoom into, the other texture slices are unloaded, and you can hover the mouse over a geologic period and the texture updates fast, you can even drag the mouse and see the continental drift animated.

Video Example here

For now i aded the Scotese Paleomaps but i'm making my own to look more photorealistic, and eventualy i can alow the use of external data so the player can download these maps and use them as optional.
The real problem i'm having is that i want to ad the locations on the map and replace them for every period, so i can have Rhynie chert and Yunan in the Pragian stage, Red Hill and North American shalow sea in the Famennian stage etc. I tried different ways but i can't get it right for now.

 

 

 

Edited April 3, 2022 by ftlcgi

[ftlcgi]

On 1/26/2022 at 12:11 AM, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

Nice! Most nautiloids, though, likely had ten arms. Treptoceras arm imprints have proven this to be true for orthocerids, and they may have had beaks, too. Fossils of Michelinoceras have revealed its radula, which was quite similar to that of modern coleoids.

I made some improvements to the nautiloid anatomy, and i tried to keep the poligon count as low as i can so some of the features will be more visible from textures

More extinct nautiloid features are from this blog https://incertaesedisblog.wordpress.com/2020/02/16/reconstructing-fossil-cephalopods-endoceras/

The radula the athesive ridges will bebe more visible when i ad the texture

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

Thanks! I used this paper to reconstruct Gigantocharinus, using paint.net. I have a reconstruction I made of the giant Devonian scorpion Preaercturus, using this paper. Your nautiloid looks amazing; much better than before. In fact, I used the same post to reconstruct them. I have been doing some research, and it turns out the reconstructions on the blog are inaccurate; the aptychopsis was partially inside the shell, like here. I have included some of my reconstructions to help.

http://bringingfossilstolife.infinityfreeapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Gigantocharinus-768x1024.jpg

http://bringingfossilstolife.infinityfreeapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Aptychopsis-picture.png

[ftlcgi]

15 minutes ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

the aptychopsis was partially inside the shellI have been doing some research, and it turns out the reconstructions on the blog are inaccurate; the aptychopsis was partially inside the shell, like here. 

Thank you for the details on the nautiloid i wanted to be sure it's ok before i start animating the model.

These were amazing animals and i want to make them as best as i can.

And i'm going to read on the scorpions to.

Edited April 6, 2022 by ftlcgi

[Dinoreplicas]

Fantastic work you're doing here!

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

The orthocerid looks great with the new texture!

[ftlcgi]

14 minutes ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

The orthocerid looks great with the new texture!

Thank you, i'm making some animations and i'm curious how could they attack prey on the sea bottom if they normaly moved backwards, maybe with the help of the arms?

Edited April 9, 2022 by ftlcgi

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

I'll give you some details; could you do a Michelinoceras  version?

 

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

Because of their straight shells, orthocerids couldn't have turned very quickly. Some lived on the seabed and may have swiveled their hyponomes backwards to swim forward this would have been possible for any orthocerid. Here is a (very) quick sketch of my other theory.

[ftlcgi]

53 minutes ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

could you do a Michelinoceras  version?

 

Thank you for the sketch, i'l adapt my animation to work like this, if you want some 3d models or renders ask me in pm.

This is the same model but with the Michelinoceras paint from your website

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

PERFECT. I love it! when will it be added, and will it have another ecosystem?

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

Also, will it pull its head into its shell when provoked by another creature?

 

[ftlcgi]

1 hour ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

PERFECT. I love it! when will it be added, and will it have another ecosystem?

i'm picking at least one land and one sea ecosystems for every devonian stage. I'l find a place for it.

1 hour ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

Also, will it pull its head into its shell when provoked by another creature?

 

For sure, i'm a beginner when it comes to animations, that's why i don't have more than one or two for each model, but eventualy all models will be fully animated.

 I'm trying to build a standard method of sharing animations between similar animals, i found that animations made for one model can be retargeted to another model if all the bones (technicaly speaking) are the same, there may more solutions.

Until now i've been animating every fish independently, it's ok for one animation but i want to ad sprinting, turning left or right, multiple idle animations etc. And i need to do it once and reuse it.

[ftlcgi]

Hunsrück Slate from Germany is a lagerstätte famous for exceptional preservation, i'm going to make as many of these weird and wonderfull animals as i can.

I am going to ad them in these sketchfab collection, along with other models made for other biomes but were also found in Hunsrück Slate or nearby.

 

Palaeoisopus problematicus, a sea spider known only by one species

 

Brachiopods, i'l ad here all the different species i make

 

Furcaster paleozoicus, a brittle star

 

Imitatocrinus gracilior, a crinoid

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by ftlcgi

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

Bring on the invertebrates! More amazing work. My friend Hynerpeton Hunter has the brittle star; it coexisted with Michelinoceras at Swatara Gap.

[ftlcgi]

I'm working on an ammonite to use as template, these are masic models for now, and i will improve them once i am confident the annatomy is allright

Compared to nautiloids i added some features like:

- a pair of tentacles, not sure if the early ammonites had them, i can ad suckers with claws later on the tentacles, maybe on the arms to;

- a larger funnel, closer to the outer edge of the shell, maybe becouse the siphuncle runs near the outer shell to;

- larger eyes, i read that some of them lived in deeper waters, and the eyes had a camera eye with lens

- a basic aptychus, but i found that it's more complex on some later species, it will be changed after i found out more about it

- there is a collar at the end of the shell, similar to the living Nautillus, it will be added

Edited April 18, 2022 by ftlcgi