Character Animation Progress
Hi there!
Anna here. As you may already now, I am working together with Alice on the roots of our animation system. It's a very big task for a lifesim game like Paralives as it requires a lot of animations. Usually, we like to do development diaries to show you the work we've been doing in the background after a video, explaining more technical insights of what we've been up to. I did one about the astronomy system after the Day and Night Cycle video, which you seemed to have really enjoyed! (thank you!! <3)
However, even if we've been working on the animations for a few months now, it's still early to show anything final, as we're still on preliminary phases of design and implementation. We're still going to be at it for a while, animations are really a core system!
For your eyes only (please don't share!), here's a sneak peek at some recent animations that have been included into the game and are being tested on our poor Charlie:
Can you guess what Charlie is doing in each of these images?
Here is also a summary of what we've been meaning as "animation system" and what I've been working on lately:
Layering system: To combine part of an animation with part of another, like sitting + drinking
Procedural system: To adapt an animation to its environment or height of the character without having to make hundreds of animations for each action
Locomotion system: To adapt an animation to the character's position and rotation in the world, when climbing stairs for example
Action and interaction system: To link animations to chunks of actions, and actions to a single interaction: "eat burger" interaction is actually divided into background invisible actions like "go to table", "start eat animation", "play eating animation in a loop", "transition to idle animation when finished".
Another challenge for us is to make each of these animation features accessible to modders. This will allow animators to add their own animations to the game and share them as mods on Steam Workshop.
A week with a Paralives developer
As we're currently a bit slow on releasing videos (which doesn't mean that the development slowed down!), I feel like more behind-the-scenes would be a cool thing for the public to follow, even if it's not polished or even fully tested yet. This is the reason why I'd like to try a new format for behind the scenes, which will happen on my (Anna's) twitter account, next week. I call this ✨A week with a Paralives dev!✨ I'll explain my current struggles there and talk about the "typical" day-to-day tasks or problems I have to face in the making of a robust animation system for our game. I hope you will like it!
With that said, even if it's going to happen on my Twitter account instead of here, don't hesitate to ask questions (about animations) in here during the week! There will be a whole day (next Friday) where I'll try my best to answer some of them. A summary of this week of tweets will be available in a future public Patreon post too! There will also definitely be a more standard development diary on Patreon when we're done putting the basic bricks on this wonderful simulation wall (oh boy am I looking forward to this moment!).
Anna
PS: As a last bonus for Patrons only, here is our (cat)walk cycle test environment.
As always, it's still a work in progress. If the GIF doesn't work, click this link.
Comments (46)
whys it kinda giving y/n ? ❤️
just watched a vid going through your tweets on the subject. squeeing hard over the integrated modding system! no matter how hard you guys work, youll never be able to please everyone and i thin its great that you acknowledge this by making modding easy! no one expects you to be able to do everything, but easy access to do so ourselves is a gift in its own right <3
That looks amazing, great job!
I am LOVING seeing the development of this game! Cannot wait to see all of the dev teams' hard work come together to make this wonderful game! :) Keep it up the great work!
Procedural animations are one of those things I adore seeing in action. I cannot wait to see more results of this system! 😍
Alice you legend, and Anna you monarch, yes!
very good. i'm very excited
superduper excited about thisssss
Nice.
Love it 🥰🥰🥰
In the last picture of that animation collage, is Charlie opening a door? If so, that is a really neat detail I was hoping would be included! No more automatic doors! Also, the walk animation looks good and I know it's not final, but I'd like to see some shuffling when parafolk stop walking or are directed to change direction. I noticed currently they just kind of do a "instant turn" on the spot. But that may be part of the "locomotion system" you mentioned. Also, different (subtle) walk styles/speeds would be a neat feature. In conclusion, great job, love these dev diaries!!
Looks amazing! Maybe you could add an animation where the para registers that the distance they need to walk isn’t that far so they just take one big step, or just kinda shuffle to the spot. Otherwise super fluid!!
I really like the animation, but I must say it feels a little stiff... perhaps some movement with the head or arms could help here? Swinging arms or holding hands, looking around you etc etc... but that does not take away from the fact that it looks gorgeous as it is
thank you for the hard work Anna and Alice! Don't know squat about animation but everything looks good so far, i'm sure they'll be perfect by the time the game's out, keep up the good work!
I do hope to see interactions between parafolks in a future - like holding hands or team sports. I know its really hard probably, but I would love to see it
Even thought its only a WIP, it already looks way more responsive than any of the Sims games :)
the catwalk looks so nice and fluid!
Very happy about work on a more dynamic system. This might seem challenging, but will be worth it in savings to animation flow and duplicating animation work down the road.
Agreed. Really hope they get the dynamic system working because it will save resources for working on brand new animations and features in future. Just thinking of that hot mess called TS4 with all those recycled animations and the amount of time and work it is needed to add new interactions and animations for different emotions and life stages with different heights... >_>
Oh no! I LOVE following this development process (It's fascinating!!) and I really want to see "A Week With A Paralives Dev", but I'm not on twitter and really don't want to be on twitter. Is there another way of seeing this?
Yes, a summary should be available later in a public patreon post! :)
Nice animation. But it looks a lite bit robotic to me. Maybe the speed through the walk cycle is too even? Looking at animation and video on youtube and comparing. Maybe some more hip movement? When the leg is fully extended forward, I also noticed that it is slightly higher in the air and falls, like in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Veye-N0A4 They have a counter, and I'm thinking of "frame" 70 to 85.
The behind the scenes animation looks so interesting!
I'm so happy you guys are still giving procedural animations a shot so we can maybe have different heights!! This is awesome
Thank you for sharing so much of the process! I love every little thing as much as the big ones! I can see how animations could take a looooong time, you explained everything perfectly! I guess changing height and thickness will also afect a whole lot. I recently watched Polygon's video on this topic and I was amazed at how much work it requires. And you have such small team! So great work, the progress is great.
I feel like a proud auntie. 😂 LOOK AT HOW CUTE CHARLIE IS WALKING ACROSS THE ROOM! 😍
Swimming (or what it is?) left bottom corner animation shot is a bit ... ambiguous)
Yes it a swimming animation
thank you for keeping up with us on this beautiful project ! one question though, weren’t you guys supposed to release a video of the chalet in february ? unless i’m mistaken ? if it’s notpossible or has been delayed i totally get it. good day !
Hi, thank you! The chalet will be ready a bit later this year. We focused on different core game features so it was delayed. It's definitely coming and we'll keep you updated about that!
I've done very little with animating walk cycles but damn it's super hard! So I have so much respect for what all of you are doing!!
I love it but do you think the walking animation will be faster? It's good but if feels quite slow and the long legs seem to be the running factor of that
Alice mentioned In discord that this was only a first draft and it definitely will improve
As an animator I understand the process! You're doing awesome I love these updates! I'm curious about interactions regarding Paras of different heights and how you will handle that.
Amazing so far! Just one notice: when Charlie stops walking I found that standing on one side of the body too repetitive and suggest making more variation of idle poses. ;)
Oh, "A week with a Paralives dev"?!?! You are so amazing!!! Thank you so very, very much for doing that Anna!!! ❤️❤️❤️
This looks so amazing!!
1. Holding food and drink? 2. Yawning 3. Sleeping 4. Checking the time 5. Taking a shower 6. Something smells! 7. Swimming 8. Running 9. Holding a door open? This is all so wonderful! I enjoy seeing how things work on the backend. The catwalk segment looks GREAT! Thank you for the post!
That is sooooooooooooo freaking awesome 🤩
I'm so glad you're making an effort to open the animation system to modders! It's one thing that always bothered me in the sims, how difficult and clunky it was to add custom animations to objects.
Charlie has such great posture that it made me realize I was slouching and immediately sat up LOL. They does look a bit weirdly bouncy though. Regardless, great work everyone!
As a developer myself, I'm always curious... What kinds of things were really daunting when you started this project with the animation that you now know like the back of your hand?
From Anna: Procedural animations were definitely a scary mystery to me at first! It really looks like magic when developers explain it but it's another story to implement our own use cases. I wouldn't say I know it like the back of my hand just yet, but I'll get there with this project hopefully :D
the catwalk is looking really cute!!!
Holding a drink and food, yawning, sleeping, looking at watch, showering, drinking, swimming, running and (i guess) standing in a bus maybe :/
I think the last one is opening the fridge