Altering a Chicken’s Center of Mass to Reproduce Dinosaur Locomotion

As I mentioned in an earlier post, properly modeling the CoM (Center of Mass) of a character in motion is essential to producing lifelike behavior.

In this interesting study, from the University of Chile, researchers examined the role of CoM in determining movement style in animals and how this information can be used to simulate the movement of extinct species by altering the CoM of living animals (in this case, giving chickens prosthetic tails to make them walk like velociraptors).

The result:

 

PLOS ONE: Walking Like Dinosaurs: Chickens with Artificial Tails Provide Clues about Non-Avian Theropod Locomotion.