Procedural animation of wolf-pack hunting

Erik Rakušček (2018) Procedural animation of wolf-pack hunting. EngD thesis.

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Abstract

Computer simulations are increasing in popularity as a source of education and entertainment. They allow us to observe and study natural phenomena, we could hardly ever witness in real life. One such phenomenon is group hunt of a wolf-pack (\textit{Canis lupus}). Even though there are plenty of videos on the topic, they do not enable us to interact with the environment and change the conditions at our will. That is why a computer simulation can help us study the phenomenon. Our simulation can be divided into two sections. Our goal in the first section is to simulate wolf-pack's search for prey and the prey's wandering. We create a model based on Boids (Reynolds (1987), Flocks, herds and schools: A distributed behavioral model, DOI: 10.1145/37402.37406) and upgrade it with additional tendencies of the agents. In the second section of the project, we focus on the hunt. We implement surrounding and attacking behaviour for the wolves and defensive behaviour for the prey, based on a model from (Gorišek (2017), Krdelo volkov: modeliranje in simulacija skupinskega plenjenja, FRI UNI-LJ). We adjust and upgrade said model to display a more realistic behaviour. Based on our testing and comparison of our model with the freely available videos on the internet, we found out that it is quite difficult to simulate wolf hunt the way it happens in reality. Nevertheless, we managed to create a realistic enough model that could be used in the entertainment industry or basic educational programs.

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