We are doing a game on John Christophers Tripods series and we need to animate giant Tripods (think War of the Worlds).

The model is already done (in Cinema4D) but animating it seems quite difficult.

Just asked myself if Poser could help here, are there already walking cycles for tripods available? Any other idea how to get a tripod walking?

I think there's a War of the Worlds mesh out there. Not sure if it's animatable or not.

quetzalcoatl1967 - You do like setting yourself challenges, don't you?

I'm old enough to remember the Tripods TV Serial from the eighties (BBC ; don't know if it ever made it across the pond). One thing I remember is that the tripods walking were extremely unconvincing in that.. They only ever showed them walking for a few seconds and they looked like they were about to fall over as soon as the camera was off them. (these would have been physical models, of course).
  I think there is a basic difficulty in making a 3 legged creature walk. Maybe thats why no animals are born with 3 legs? I think realistically the only way to do it is to treat it like a one-legged man on crutches, with the two outer legs moving together.

I've seen the War of the Worlds critter as well, I think it might have been at Daz, but don't quote me! My memory is it was not fully articulated.

Oddly enough, the gait described in the books, particularly "City of Gold and Lead" was a whirling motion. I've seen, somewhere, an attempt to diagram that -- I am fairly sure it was within the pages of "Barlowe's Guide to Extra-Terrestrials" (the great book of paintings of famous fictional aliens by Wayne Barlowe). http://www.amazon.com/Barlowes-Guide-Extraterrestrials-Science-Literature/dp/0894803247 I see that the BBC design used in tripods was quite different, however, and extended to the tripods themselves; instead of three balanced legs they seem to have two fore and one aft. Every film project I've read about that tried to visualize tripodal motion, whether John Christopher's or H.G. Wells's, came to the conclusion that a true tripodal gait was extremely difficult to visualize and inevitably looked stupid. At least that is the tenor of any commentary I've read. For a good gait for the two fore and one aft structure, however....you might want to take a look at a couple of creatures that have evolved to use it. There are some lovely creatures that drag themselves forward on two huge columnar arms in the Karl Sims movie "Evolved Virtual Creatures" http://www.genarts.com/karl/evolved-virtual-creatures.html And similar gaits exist in some of the species of the rather later "Spore," a game designed by Will Wright. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_%28video_game%29 In the case of "Spore" the game engine figures out a gait for a creature you design -- it could be a useful tool for looking at motion possibilities.

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:

Heh. He faw down and go boom! That hybrid turning motion does seem to work best. The straight walk is boring and the first rotate made me dizzy to look at. Sure, the Masters have gravity control, but even if they can cancel a centrifugal effect it doesn't "read" very realistic as a motion. There is something wonderfully alien about that slow determined turning motion, though. And given the length of those thing's legs, they don't have to move very fast at all to outpace a running human. Seems the key is to find several "gaits" and mix between them, like most earthly creatures do. Wonder what a tripod gallop would look like? All three legs off the ground, right? More to the point, I'd love to see some almost too delicate movement, a lot of little shuffling of legs, as a tripod shifts position slightly to get directly on top of a target. This looks lovely. Background "look" is perfect -- I think people forget the kind of setting the stories had. Oh...have you considered having the dome rotate so as to remain forward as the legs circle? I'm thinking that dance movement here (tours chaînés déboulés) that's a spin but moving across the stage but with head facing (mostly) in same direction.

ya, the dome will look always in the same direction, so much is clear...and if we get it right the hydraulics should keep it upright and at the same height at all time

kukulcan.de/tripods/straight_turning.avi

Maybe this one if you could add another joint lower down? The motion would be similar to a ballet pioret, sort of a lift-fold-twist-AND-unfold. The combined weight of the legs is a bit ahead of the body... Still circular but with a kick towards the forward momentum.

I remember thinking it was cool the masters were tripods as well, and clearly they felt 3 legs made a superior locomotion. I think the mechanical tripods might have an organic-expressive flair that matched their own way of walking (whatever that is). Something not so mechanical and smooth, not like an eggbeater, but like waltzing.

holly

We just watched both seasons I and II last week!

If you have the daz pc club, get the war machien there.. Noggin and I redid him to use fewer system resources, and also to be easier to animate properly. I even added translat to all the parts for damage tuype renders.

If nothing else, look at it, and see how we rigged it, to see how to set yours up properly.

And odds are, if this was real, there would be a gyro inside that would "right" the interior cockpit, no matter the angle of the legs or entire unit. So it wouldn;t matter if the main portion looked "righted" because the interior cockpit would be auto righted anyway.

Sometimes we overthink something we're working on, and loose some of that "acceptance" we had as kids.