Living Universe - Episode 3 : In search of an extraterrestrial life
Project/Runtime : Documentary – 3D / KeyFrame, 53 min
Customer : Fauns
Film Direction : Vincent Amouroux
Co-production : Essential Media & Entertainment, ZED, ARTE France, ABC Australia
Diffusion : ARTE France, ABC Australia
An exciting journey to a not-so-distant future
Living Universe is a science-fiction documentary series based on the latest developments in scientific knowledge about the universe.
It proposes to take us aboard an interstellar ship, with Steve Squyres, NASA astronomer , for a trip to an exoplanet located several light years from the earth.
We had the opportunity to work on the third episode of this wonderful documentary thanks to the company Fauns, to build a robotic spider called “spiderbot”.
Procedural animation for a spider crowd
The spiderbot was going to be multiplied to create a flock of exploratory robots.
One of the most interesting aspects of this project was to create a procedural animation system to automate locomotion.
The animator operated only on the trajectories.
The body and legs followed automatically by blending animations that were prepared beforehand.
Finally, the last step of the calculation was to project and freeze the legs on the ground in the interval where they were laid.
Presented at the Science and Environmental Exploration Film Festival, this exciting and ambitious documentary has just received the “Grand prix Lumexplore” !