Animals for the Ice Age Exhibition at Brighton Museum were created using traditional modelling techniques. They exist as completely separate and ready to go resources for the future and were simply posed into position for the shots required.
Hair and Fur was created using Ornatrix. This allows a procedural approach to creating any kind of variation and allows for speedy editing and modification in the future. As seen in the video below, once you have set areas of hair, you can modify length, frizz, gravity and orientation. You can also style intuitively.
The skeleton was rigged using the character animation toolkit (CAT) inside of 3DS Max. These were based on existing examples of Woolly Rhino and Mammoth skeletons and then walk cycles were tweaked according to footage of the closest living examples.
To add variety to the little movements of the animals, procedural modifiers were applied to the mesh to make ears, tails and head movement randomized. All of this is controlled in an attribute holder that can be turned up or down based on how much movement is needed at a certain time.
For any background crowds of animals, CAT was used to make a handful of different walk cycles and idle cyclical poses & variations of animals were made. These were then baked into the meshes using a Point Cache. This allowed them to be used as Forest Pack objects and be scattered across a wide area, each varying in their playback to create a seamless crowd of gathered creatures.
To find out more about where these models were used, take a look at the final series of renders, or go to Brighton Museum and take a look for yourself! If you have any questions about any breakdowns, or want something in specific shown for a certain project, just post below!
