Thanks for the info, will check those

Have reread the books and there was no whirling motion described, just for the masters (the aliens)

But I always wanted to do a turning motion and already tried in Maya (didnt work that well)
First I had a straightforward motion (works  but looks a little slow):

kukulcan.de/tripods/walk_straight.avi

Then a rotating motion, but with no leg fixed (looks OK but more like sliding):

kukulcan.de/tripods/straight_turning.avi

Next idea was to keep one foot on ground and rotate the rest 60° then rotated 60° around the next leg and so forth (this looks 'a little' broken, as I used bind skin):

kukulcan.de/tripods/walk_rot.avi

Then I tried to have all legs move at the same time, but it was hard to keep track of the legs positions:

kukulcan.de/tripods/walking.avi
btw. his is what the tripods look like right now: