Behind the Scenes: A tool to Create Cutscenes in Paralives 🎥
Hi, it’s Alex!
Today, I wanted to show you a tool I made for the game that allows the creation of cutscenes. It’s very useful for us developers to showcase the game, and we used it to make the release date announcement trailer. I named this tool Storyboards. Our goal would be to make it available to players, too, once we have finished developing it, which could be after the initial release.
🔐 This post is for Patrons only so please don’t share it, thank you!
➡️ Storyboards: How It Works
Here’s an overview of how Storyboards can be used:
Storyboards can also be used to animate characters and make them interact. In live mode, with the character autonomy and everything, it’s not always easy to make Paras do exactly as you wish, so Storyboards come in handy to create cutscenes and get full control!
In the release date announcement trailer, Storyboards greatly helped us with complicated scenes like this timelapse showing the life of a Parafolk.
Behind the scenes, we simply had multiple characters and moved them into the shot at specific timestamps. Bonus: you might notice here that there was originally a Halloween party shot in the time lapse, but we had to cut some scenes because the trailer was a bit too long, unfortunately!
What a more complex Storyboard like this one can look like!
➡️ Going Further with Storyboards
Storyboards have been really useful for us so far to create videos to show off the game. In the future, we hope to do more with them, and our goal is for players to eventually be able to use them too, once we have improved and polished the tool but it won’t be available for the initial release in December.
Some potential use cases for Storyboards:
Town cutscenes: For instance, when you first start a new save file, there could be a cutscene made by us, the devs, showing off the town.
Important life moments: When getting married or when saying farewell to an elder Parafolk, there could be short cutscenes to make the moment stand out.
Machinima: Youtubers could create stories with their Parafolks through cutscenes and share them online.
Showing off builds: Players could create cutscenes with animated cameras to show off houses that they have built.
And so on!
I hope you liked today’s post, and please feel free to share your thoughts below!
Cheers,
Alex
Comments (105)
OMG!! This will be AWESOME when this feature comes out!!! <3
OOooohhhh my gosh!! You are incredible! I can't freaking wait to see where this leads and all the creative content people are going to make with this!!! So! Much! Fun!!! Ah!
I LOOOVE this! So excited you plan to make this available for players! Being able to showcase builds, create machinima type stories or even just twirl our dollies around a little bit - how FUN!
PARALIVES MACHINIMAS🗣️ PARALIVES MACHINIMAS🗣️ PARALIVES MACHINIMAS🗣️
😯
WOW and here I thought Paralives would give us three types of play mechanics: character creation, building, and live mode. I didn't realize we were going to get to make movies eventually in this game too! A very favorite game of mine growing up was The Movies, and I feel like this Storyboard feature would be able to scratch that itch of more easily making scenes and little films with characters and sets we personally create. I was already excited for this game, and now I'm even more hyped.
This is maybe the feature I’m most excited for out of everything we’ve seen so far!
Justice for the Halloween Party!
Ooh, this might just single-handedly make me fall in love with editing again!
Omg this us soooo cool
OMG! I LOOOVE IT!!!!!!! I would spend HOURS on it!
Is it possible to put music into those cutscenes?
Could you please provide more information about your funding plans after Early Access? I, and many others, are quite concerned about funding the game. How do you plan to make more money? At some point, everyone interested in the game will own it, and then you'll no longer generate any revenue. What would happen then? Do you plan to work with a major publisher? I hope not, because then the entire appeal of this game would be lost. Please provide more information about how you plan to always make enough money to continue working on the game.
There are voices on YouTube who think that work on the game will stop after Early Access, and you just don't want to say so now. Many people don't want to buy the game for this reason. Therefore, it might be reassuring for many people to learn more about it.
Ooooh !
Pour créer une vidéo sans frustration j'aurai besoin d'avoir accès à toutes la liste des animations du jeux classé par émotions. Pouvoir aussi choisir l'heure et arrêté le temps. Que les para reste bien assis sur leur chaises. Pouvoir mettre une animation sur 20 para en même temps avec un seule clic.
Thank you Alex for this dream game.
I say I won’t use it, but that’s probably because we’ve never been able to do it before so easily. I feel like it’ll get some usage from me, but if not, I know this will be amazing for builders, CC creators, and whatever other uses people can find!
Oh. Oh I'm gonna use this so much. The insane amamount of fun I'll have with my roommate as we make dramatic scene and silly randomness is gonna be off the charts
An addition to my previous comment. I'm curious what the developers think about quests or story modes in the game. I think it would add variety to the sandbox genre. For example, completing quests to obtain specific items, or upgrading certain tools or equipment. It would be cool if, during early access, new items and gear were introduced gradually — not like a battle pass, but more as a reward system for players, either for simply playing or for achieving certain goals within the game. For example, certain items could be obtainable only during a specific time period. I think this would be a great way to add variety to a life simulation game
Amazing feature!! :)
This is so cool! So you mean we could potentially create a story, film, AND edit within the game? ✨️
A cut scene showing off the town would be so cute!! One of my favorite things in Sims 2 was the cutscenes. I love the thought of using this tool!!
Very exciting!
There's this builder in The Sims 4 community, daniellebuilds, and she likes to edit her videos like the AnimateItemAppearing animation. A lot of builders herself and myself included are going to be stocked when you finish adding this to the game during early access 🤩🤩🤩!!
I'm so obsess with every little thing you do to make life easier for everyone (even for you, dev, it's better that way to make easily trailer) thanks you very much <3
This tool would spark so much opportunity for artistic exhibition and exchange between players! On that note, if sims players are called simmers, what do we call paralives players?
Paranoids lmao
OMG! I knew it! When I watched the new trailer on stream I told my viewers "see that cool animation in the kitchen decoration scene?, it looks like a tool done for speed build videos" and I can't believe I was right! I'm so impressed and hyped by this 💚
THIS 👏 FEATURE 👏IS👏FRICKEN👏GOATED I can not wait to fiddle around with this feature!
Ooooh, this is so exciting! I can already see the awesome buildings videos and animations people will make with this tool!
Whoa, this is seriously amazing!?!! You just made it SO much easier to create mini films for our Paras! And the features?!@#!! The furniture popping into place looks so cuteee. The auto *action* feature (that overrides autonomy?!) is already saving me so much frustration in getting them where I need them and getting to the right animatio--TAKE MY MONEY! Phenomenal tool, thank you so much!! 🥰💞
As crazy as this may sound and possibly asking for way too much, would there be variations to the cutscenes? Or will there be adjustments to the circumstances? Like an elder passing with no loved ones? Or different looks for weddings? Or would there be a one size fits all approach? I totally understand if that’s the plan because that would be easier but I am curious
The Halloween party looks super cute and fun! I’m glad we got to see it! I wonder what surprises you have in store for us when it comes to parties. You all are so amazing and committed that I just know you’ll bring so much life and light to the party system to make them unique and meaningful 🥰
This is awesome! I also love the barbershops spinning thingie! Super cool. Keep up the stellar work guys!!!
So excited about this tool and how easy it will be for machinima makers! At least it looks easier--I don't make machinima myself but love to watch it :)
This is gonna be cool! I like to read other people's stories, I used to read simmers stories.
Fantastic thinking, really magic realizing y'all did all of this in game, without rendering in a seperate program like another big developer and trying to pass it off as in game. WOW! Wow! Never realized how much I wanted something like this--and it's built in! Bravo... as always!
the machinima creators are about to go nuts over this tool! As someone who storytells with the sims, I know what a pain in the rear it is to stage shots having to use outside tools such as poses and animations to get your characters to do what you want. Something like this will make that kind of storytelling far less painful. And hopefully as this tool becomes more refined it can be modded to include player made poses and animations and make that aspect of storytelling with outside player made things easier too!
If nothing else, this feature shows how much knowledge of this community is being utilized by the Paralives team. Sims players have been making machinima or websiodes of their characters since the beginning. Having a tool made for this purpose available to players is incredible!
One cool thing that I want to do with it is create my own TV channels. It would be very easy generate videos to play on TVs with it.
This is such a creative feature. I can already see all the possibilities with such a tool. This is going to be hugh for content creators
Do what?! My mind is officially blown. I never anticipated a tool to be added to Paralives to enable players to design their own cutscenes and showcase their individual builds! Alex, you have proven once more how you and your team are truly for us, the players. ✨️ Thank you, thank you, thank you!! 💖
This is my favorite update! I never even imagined something like this! Question about the insertable Para animations, will we able to shrink/extend the length of the animation in Storyboard to speed up/slow down the para’s animation in the video? That would have a lot of potential uses! Question about camera movement, will there be a way to set maybe more than 2 camera angles and have the camera do a sweep from angle to angle? Or will we just have to make separate camera sweeps to simulate that? Also, will options to set the speed of the sweep to be faster or slower, and making the speed be able to be changed mid sweep (like starting out fast and gradually getting slower as the final angle approaches) be included? That would be very useful! I appreciate all you do!
Thank you!! The storyboards doesn't yet have the feature to change the playback speed of an animation but that would be a great addition! Right now, a camera can be animated from point A to point B and we can set a curve to make it move faster at the start and slower at the end, for instance. It would be cool in the future to be able to set more than two points and make the camera follow a path made of many many points but right now, you have to add multiple camera elements on the storyboard to achieve that
This is simply amazing! Are there any plans to add shaders and dynamic lighting to the game?
Thank you! Modders will be able to tweak various lighting and shader parameters and should be able to change things to their liking
Yes!!! I really missed cutscenes from TS2 for the older Sims games. Now hearing that Paralives will not only have cutscenes, but a tool available for us makes me very excited!!!
Oh this is gonna be AWESOME when it hits!! Can’t wait to start tinkering with it whenever it gets released!! Thanks for the update, and hope the team has a good weekend! 👋
I absolutely loved that timelapse of the Para growing old. You're telling me I can remake it?!! I'm going to be making time lapses of ALL my Paras!!
Are there any plans of letting us use storyboards in combination with the modding framework to make our own cutscenes that get triggered by in game play?
I'm wondering this too, I think that might be what they meant by the "Important life moments" bullet point but I'm not fully sure....
This is groundbreaking!!
Ahhh, this is such a unique tool that I would love to see implemented down the line. I’m intrigued by the idea of using this feature for important life moments, but I’m not sure how it would feel in practice. I think I would prefer for it to be a mode players initiate and not something that automatically interrupts their gameplay. But I would have to see it in action to know. Very very very cool update :D
This is really cool and not something I expected. The machinima makers are going to go crazy for this. (and also so handy for people who make custom worlds to make intro cutscenes for their town)
Also the objects dropping in feature will be such a fun and different way for people to show off their builds.
This game is really becoming modder friendly. I love that it's making a name for itself! DECEMBER IS GONNA BE LIT🤩🤩🤩!!!
Wow!! This almost looks like you're adding a mini movie studio to Paralives!! Videos spliced end on end... Add their own voices...subtitles... Could that be possible...? I've spent years hoping in vein that someone would recreate "The Movies" as a modern game. Been sadly disappointed so far - no game has even attempted that - only sadly tycoon games. I think this is actually the closest I've seen... As usual, way beyond anything I expected. Expectations blown to smitherines AGAIN!! <3<3<3
Thank you! Players could add their own voice recordings to the game's folder and make them play in the storyboard, yes, that could work!
THIS IS HUGEEE!! This is going to generate story videos!! I love creating machinimas and it is so rare to see this type of feature in the actual game
Love this!!!! My stories will be telenovella worthy!!!!!
OMG, i love everything about this! you guys are really insane and manage to kill my expectations when ever i see a big chunk of news!
This is really cool! It's like having a mini Adobe Premiere right in the game. I can only imagine the telenovelas that will come from this. 🤣
Astounding, I love it
Awesome! Can we implement these cutscenes ourselves in game or are there going to be other built in cutscenes as well like maybe for a proposal?
Right now, we use this tool to make videos to showcase the game only but it's possible that we'll do in game cutscenes for the town and for important life moments in the future but it's still to be seen! Eventually, when we make this tool available for players, they will be able to make their own cutscenes
I don't think this is something I will really be using but it's definitely a super cool tool and I'm sure very useful to many people!!
Oh, my, god!! I obsessively use poses and basically play the sims paused just for my stories, so you bet when this feature is implemented, I'll be spending most my time in it! This is such a unique feauture! I love with this game how many unique features you have, it makes me super excited to try it all out.
This is awesome!!!! 🥰😍
Oh this feature right here is what I'm talking about. Once this gets added to the game, I'm never playing anything else lol this is gonna be a game changer for storytellers. I absolutely cannot wait!
This is lovely! Funny enough, I was curious about this very feature being implemented yesterday 😂
Holy moly, this is a GAME CHANGER for machinima makers
Oh my god the sims 2-esque lore will be back!!!!!!!! You guys are really making the game of my dreams
This is such a wonderful feature that I didn't know I needed 😍 reminds me of the sims 2 cutscenes.
Imagine the custom cutscenes modders could make!🤩✨
The possibilities are endless.
this is so cool!! please do add cutscenes for events and town showcasing :DDDDDD
Omg the fact that you guys made the trailer with tools that are actually in game 🥲 You’re hitting every note the community wants! Builders, Gameplay, CAZ and now creative tools too?! Machinima and stop motion builds are going to go crazy with this, I can’t wait to surround myself with paralives content after it’s out Keep up the amazing work guys
This is a great tool, brilliant idea. Can't wait for it!
This is going to make legacy challenges so much fun. I can imagine someone doing a cut scene for every new generation.
This is so cool! You guys are geniuses!
this is genius!!❤️❤️❤️ you can really tell paralives was made by players for players!
I wonder if there would be a spicy cutscene for the first time two parafolks are having a baby😌
Could be nice!
This is such a cool post and feature! This is going to be amazing for stop motion speed builds, stories, timelapses of growing paras like yours, or even just short videos or like intros- and imagining a town cutscene at the start feels weirdly nostalgic, like seeing a world render in on an old console with a sweeping camera or something.., I have many thoughts and ideas with this! Amazing job team, so proud of the progress- don’t think I commented on the last post but I can’t believe how far you’ve all come!
Thanks so much for this Alex!! I love to see stuff like this. I'll be excited to see it potentially used in game. Using it for weddings sounds amazing. Maybe even a first ever kiss cut scene? So much potential. ❤️
Such a cool idea— I love it!
Oh my gosh ! I am so amazed.
Amazing 👏
I remember asking about animated camera tracks for machininas 4 years ago on twitter, this is awesome news! 📽
AMVs, AMVs, AMVs!!! The Animated Music Videos will be AWESOME with this tool 🤩
As a professional video editor, I could not be more excited for this!!!
This is absolutely epic! Thanks for sharing! I'm excited for this to eventually be polished enough to be available to us :D the possibilities seem endless. Thank you, team, for all you do!
Thankyou Alex! This is so awesome, this journey has been such a pleasure and worth following and supporting! I can’t wait to finally experience what you’ve all made 🥰 I adore the storyboards!! (And CUTSCENES) 👏🏻 ♥️
*MovieStarPlanet flashbacks*
In all seriousness, this is such an awesome tool! I can see how vital this is for you, the developers, and it's awesome that you're willing to polish and release it to the public. 🎥🩷
It's really cool that you made and used this feature in the trailer. You guys have done such wonderful work and I am so happy to have been there to watch this entire journey.
I love this!! I can't wait to see what storylines people create with this. It's a wonderful creatuve tool
"Town cutscenes" To quote a wise man : "give it to me, give it to me now" XD https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/715503-stephen-colbert Nah, I'll be patient. But I'm really looking forward to it ! The timelapse was one of the most impressive moments of the trailer. It felt very emotional, especially when it became clear that this Para went through a rough patch at some point, but still ended up living a very long and happy life 🥹 Thank you for sharing the behind the scenes with us.
This is awesome! Can’t want to make videos and video memes along with personal and friends, models and family photos and videos from this! Just one question to expand this statement: can we use this cutscene tool to make photos (family friend and fashion modelling photos) from this?
It could be used for that!
DANG. We didn't even ask for this, but you guys delivered. It's going to be such a useful tool for speedbuilds and machinimas! Love that you guys are really thinking of the community with all these decisions. It's little details like these that make it cool.
"I expect a lot and I'm still amazed" :P
My excitement for this game just increases with every update - this is such a thoughtful feature!
This is so cool🤩🤩!! Also FIRST!!