Procedural Animation
A fully procedurally animated spider in Unreal Engine using the Control Rig, it can walk on any terrain.
At first, I downloaded a free rigged spider model and started experimenting.
I made two groups of legs that move in turn. While moving, each leg performs a sphere trace and snaps to the closest point on the terrain.
Then, I wanted the spider to be able to climb anywhere so I made a player controller with Unreal's character movement component. Each frame, the controller take the average position of every legs and add some height, a sphere trace is made in the spider's current velocity direction to anticipate the terrain changes and start rotating.
I am planning to make the movements smoother and add physics-based animation for more realism.