3d simulation of extinct biomes

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

I love seeing your 3D reconstructions - they're exactly what I would like to make, but I don't know how to do anything in blender but paint preexisting models. Your model looks so good! I would not show Praearcturus with such an upright posture, though, as again it was almost completely aquatic and maybe only came out on land to mate and shed. If its stinger was similar to other scorpions', it wouldn't have had a lot of trouble defending itself and the setal hairs on its pincers and body provided adequate detection.

[ftlcgi]

1 hour ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

I would not show Praearcturus with such an upright posture,

i looked at Brontoscorpio from Walking with monsters for the side view, it looks similar and i saw it's in the same family

https://youtu.be/dPCjARQaBKQ

What do you think about the accuracy of their reconstruction?

I liked this show a lot becaure it maked reconstructions of animals that looked natural, not cgi monsters, even if they are called monsters right in the title

 

For me it feels great to make 3d stuff that i like and to see that it's apreciated by people who value the realistic reconstruction of these animals

I've been working in the background on the comitioned ammonite and i could't finish it faster enough because i wanted to get back on working on this project.

It's almost done and i'l post some renders here soon but having to make those unrealistic embelishments didn't felt right.

Edited March 23, 2023 by ftlcgi

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

The Walking With Series is NOT accurate and should not be used as a resource for modern paleoart (I think your Hyneria looks like it was and is outdated). Also worth noting is that for Brotoscorpio we only have one free (movable) finger of the pedipalp, the rest being based off of modern and extinct scorpions. In the Praercturus research paper I wrote I also noted that a modern scorpion seems to have been used to estimate its size; we have much better fossils of Praearcturus and know that its coxae seem to have been better suited for aquatic life than terrestrial; it's hard to tell for Brontoscorpio when we only have a fragment of a pedipalp.

[ftlcgi]

The Rhynie chert biota, the video shows the current progress of the reconstruction, there are few more obscure plants and some arthropods to make

 

[Maniraptora]

7 hours ago, ftlcgi said:

The Rhynie chert biota, the video shows the current progress of the reconstruction, there are few more obscure plants and some arthropods to make

 

Watching this feels almost like being there! Super cool. I especially liked the parts with the animals in action and the big zoom-out at the end.

[ftlcgi]

8 hours ago, Maniraptora said:

I especially liked the parts with the animals in action

Thank you, i'm trying to ad improvements all the time

 

[ftlcgi]

I tried to ad some improvements my old rugose corals without making the models to complex, the arms have a nice animation but i can't upload vertex animations to sketchfab

It’s inspired by “Tetracorallia” from Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur, 1904 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugosa#/media/File:Haeckel_Tetracoralla.jpg

Edited March 26, 2023 by ftlcgi

[ftlcgi]

I completed the Praearcturus model

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/praearcturus-gigas-d525d06e8de6452696dac5cbe0b35898

The hairs don't work well with sketchfab and i didn't added them

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

The Praearcturus looks so good! The only objection I have is that it was a freshwater scorpion, not living in the ocean. Are the hairs going to be in the finished simulation, though?

[ftlcgi]

4 minutes ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

The Praearcturus looks so good! The only objection I have is that it was a freshwater scorpion, not living in the ocean. Are the hairs going to be in the finished simulation, though?

i didn't knew it's a fresh water scorpion 

In the simulation the hairs work great but if i want to ad them to the model in sketchfab i need to convert and re-atach them to the model, and when the is animated they will go throug the mesh, some will hover over it, and it' not worth the trouble to show them there, it matters that it works in the simulation, i'l post more renders soon

[ftlcgi]

I completed my older Comura trilobite model, i'l try to work on my unfinished models and improve some

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/comura-fab40c9c91e040428f351ee4b656a030

 

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

For any Asteropygines or Phacopoids I have found pictures preserving soft tissue, if you are going to reconstruct them too. Is there a way for the trilobites to make tracks in the seafloor?

Edited April 4, 2023 by Bringing Fossils to Life

[ftlcgi]

I planned to make Phacops, it fits one of my biomes and i know there are different tipes of legs but i havent looked closer into this yet, send me some pictures and i'l try to make it.

It should be easy to make an animal leave tracks behind, i'l look into this today

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

Here are pictures I've found:

Calymene -

http://www.online fossil retailer.com/Science/Trilobites/phacopida/calymene/calymene-trilobite-antennae-legs.htm

 

Chotecops -

http://www7b.biglobe.ne.jp/~kunitomotoubee-kaseki-yakata/insect/chotecops.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/3871/15346813712_9994d78c5a_n.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2d/9f/3f/2d9f3fa00d6f3a62591da6ea1615603d.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/2943/15160354959_498e2d1743_b.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9f/36/72/9f3672d70c097171ec1f68c8c791e9d0.jpg

https://www.bundenbach-fossilien.de/galerie.html

http://www.trilobita.de/exhibits2/archive/jan07/jan07.htm

https://www.trilobites.info/Hunsruck.htm

Rhenops -

https://www.pbase.com/hajar/the_whole_trilobite

 

And one of the very common Triarthrus examples:

 

Mating:

https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/50/8/897/613523/Claspers-in-the-mid-Cambrian-Olenoides-serratus

 

[ftlcgi]

I added a simple method for trilobites to leave tracks, this method can be used for more different things, for example when an ammonite will grab a trilobite  it can generate some seafloor mud flying

I looked into improving trilobite legs, i've seen some reconstructions and i will try to make them in a way that they can be animated easy, i guess they had a wavy swimming style similar to a triops or sea monkeys : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTElmUuOAk4

 

[ftlcgi]

I managed to reupload some static models with hair on sketchfab, the option is very limited but it's something

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/desmana-radulescui-beb220a6d4174fd7add1212461e4bf7d

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/trogontherium-27448bb5422d442a8bde9f8879d14754

 

i've improved a bit on the animated models but i still have to work alot on the conversion process and the result is not thet great but i'm getting there

[ftlcgi]

I figured out how to upload wind animation to sketchfab, i can ad wind to the older models to, it increases the file size and i might have issues with some of the hipoly models, but i'm glad that eventualy i can upload all  models animated

Edited April 9, 2023 by ftlcgi

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

The swimming would have been similar, I think; the tracks look great. If you're up for a bigger challenge there are multiple kinds of tracks that a single trilobite could make; I found these illustratios helpful.

 

[ftlcgi]

14 minutes ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

I found these illustratios helpful.

it's easy to make different tracks for different actions, tracks can be enabled on specific surfaces, for example it wont make tracks on rock.

[ftlcgi]

there is a key component that i've been trying to ad that allows that bending of the body on curved surfaces (like the last trilobite in your image), right now walking on rocks or going over a hill looks weird, and with this fix the movement will seem alot more natural, here is an example of what i'm referring

https://youtu.be/qfQ_B3gt36c

There are different methods to ad this, i'l just have to try them and make it ease to implement

 

[ftlcgi]

I improved the trilobite legs a bit, they were attached wrong before, now they are mostly correct

[Bringing Fossils to Life]

Overall the Phacops looks good, except for the following things:

1) It looks more like an Eldredgeops species based on the shape of the head, especially from the side. - click here.

2) There are no cephalic or pyginal limbs - Chotecops, the Hunsruck Phacopid, had 3 cephalic and more than 12 pyginal - here.

3) The legs seem to be modeled off of another trilobite, as they have 7 instead of 6 podomeres (segments). Same link as 2).

4) Only Olenoides from the Cambrian, an unrelated trilobite, is known to have had anal circi, same link as 2).

5) If you modeled the color pattern off of my website, I'm sorry, but I have not remembered to mark that incorrect - the paper Original spotted patterns on Middle Devonian phacopid trilobites from western and central New York, here, suggests that Eldredgeops had a pigmented body with transparent spots so that the trilobite would change its appearance depending on where it was and what substrate it lived on, helping to break up its outline.

6) the eyes have way too many lenses; I looked up Chotecops and counted 6 vertical rows. This paper may come in helpful.

For later enrollment animations, I found a 1988 paper documenting different positions and orientations of Eldredgeops rana fossils and speculated on how it and another trilobite, Greenops boothi, enrolled; below is a figure redrawn from this paper. The link is from another Fossil Forum post and will alert you saying it is an unstable file; It seems safe.

For more trilobite reconstructions see my recent post about trilobites from a locality called Seven Stars; the Greenops reconstruction has antennae that may come in useful.

Also, here is a picture of an Eldredgeops hypostome:

Edited April 11, 2023 by Bringing Fossils to Life

[ftlcgi]

I generally use two types of animations
- vertex animation that it great for fluid movements (i use it for wind movement in plants), this one can be generated procedurally and it's controlled with parameters
- skeletal animation used for animals to produce movement with the use an invisible bone structure that is influencing the model, it's edited by moving or rotating bones
Here are some examples of vertex animations i can use on animals
Sorry for the poor quality of the render, i worked on a laptop

A simple vertex animation for trilobite legs

 

Another example showing a vertex animation (for the legs) coupled with a bone animation (for the body)

 

[ftlcgi]

2 hours ago, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

Overall the Phacops looks good, except for the following things:

Thank you for the corrections, i read the article on your website only after i posted the model :)) and i saw some of these things.

I'm going to adjust it soon

Those are some perfectly preserved fossils

 

Edited April 11, 2023 by ftlcgi

[ftlcgi]

On 4/9/2023 at 9:23 PM, Bringing Fossils to Life said:

If you're up for a bigger challenge there are multiple kinds of tracks that a single trilobite could make; I found these illustratios helpful.

 

I added these tracks to specific animations

- if they would stop completly they would go inside the ground, leave a resting track and generate dust

- i made a "defend" animation where it would close up and stirr up more dust that usualy but i don't know wht it goes dirrectly into resting animation after that

- if it walks slowly it would make walking tracks and generate very little dust

- if it walks faster it makes a striding track

- i coupled the the cruziana tracks with a feeding behavior but it rarely generates it.

I could ad some blending between these animations and some overal improvements to the AI like swimming but for now i'm going to keep these simple behaviors untill i understand the AI system better