***These models & rigs were created in Blender 2.8 using Eevee***

These cute little spiders are very unique in nature. They are jumping spiders which are found all over the world and accounting for nearly 15% of all spider species but the peacock spiders are only found in Australia.

They are so unique that I had to learn more about them and once I did, I felt the urge to recreate the male and make him dance in a short animation because they are so awesome and they deserved their own short movie because they are not really known much and somehow I felt I could help a bit on that end.

https://youtu.be/Z4JgtoyNnw4

Now that I have accomplished what I wanted, I took the time to also create a female counterpart and now I want to share these awesome models and rigs with you so you can also create your own animations with them. I will probably do more animations with these two in the near future, if you beat me to it, please don’t forget to share.

Both the male and female have the exact same amount of verts, polys and faces. I basically adapted the abdomen of the male to be like the female. The rigs both work exactly the same at the exception that the female don’t have abdomen flaps. 2525 Verts, 2420 faces, 4840 tris. Both have two fur systems, one for the short fur and one for the longer fur. Both models have four materials, skin, short fur, long fur and eyes. They both use a mix of vertex color and texture for the skin and the fur materials. Both are set to simplify by default for fast viewport interaction. The rig is a very simple rig that is basically full body IK that is super easy to pose and animate.

I will most likely generate other peacock spider species with these, you can also to by simply using shape keys to alter the abdominal flap shapes and create simple fur texture and replace the ones that are there (everything was done directly in blender, the textures are mirrored and low resolution to save on resources, the skin use partial procedural to add bump details).

https://youtu.be/rOeuYg2D23A

I wish you have as much fun animating these cuties as I did! I love Blender 2.8 & Eevee because it renders fast yes, but above all, what I see is what I get and same for you. What you see here is exactly what you get!