Dev Diary: Character Animation Sequences
Hey there!
How was your week? Ours was really great. We made some progress on exciting things that I can’t wait to tell you about in the future! Today’s Patreon post is exciting as well and it’s about the character animations in Paralives. This post is for Patrons only so please don’t share it, thank you!
Animation Sequences
In Paralives, performing interactions often require playing a sequence of animations. Playing multiple animations on a character one after the other might seem simple but there are quite a few things to consider.
If Sebastian wants to do push ups, he needs to:
Play the animation to get in plank pose
Play the push up animation a random number of times between 5 and 10
Play the animation to get up from the plank pose
End the interaction
Sebastian doing push ups. The whole interaction requires 3 different animations. It could have been one long animation instead of 3 but then, we wouldn’t have control on how many push ups can be done.
We will also need to be able to define conditions in these animation sequences. We haven't made final decisions about the skill system but here is how the sequence could be affected by a potential fitness skill eventually:
Play the animation to get in plank pose
Play the push up animation but
If the Para has a low fitness skill level: Play a different push up animation that is slower and where the Para shakes. Play it between 2 to 5 times
If the Para has a medium fitness skill level: Play the default push up animation. Play it between 5 and 10 times
If the Para has a high fitness skill level: Play a different confident push up animation . Play it 30 timesPlay the animation to get up from the plank pose but
If the Para has a low fitness skill level: Play a different animation where the Para gets up more slowly and painfullyEnd the interaction
These kinds of animation sequences will be used everywhere in the game. Another example is when your Para stands there doing nothing when they have no interactions in their queue.
Maggie standing idle and yawning. Please excuse the low quality of this animated GIF.
Play a soft breathing animation between 4 to 7 times
Randomly pick an animation to play once. Possible animations:
- Sneeze
- Yawn
- Bigger and happier breathe
- Swing armsGo back to step 1 and repeat the whole sequence
Developers and modders can define these animation sequences in our in-game modding tools. Here is the Standing Idle animation sequence that we have right now:
The Standing Idle animation sequence as defined in our in-game modding tool, the Control Panel.
Right now, we can already do a lot of things with these animation sequence tools and it opens up a world of possibilities. When we work on needs and skills in the future, we will integrate them as conditions, as mentioned with the push up example. Also, maybe the yawn animation could only happen if Maggie is tired. If she is stressed out, it could show in the way she stands, she could have her arms crossed and tap her foot. We’re also looking into the ability to multitask which we can’t confirm or share more details about just yet. This way, for instance, Sebastian would be able to talk to someone close by while doing push ups, unless he’s out of breath because his fitness skill level is too low, maybe!
Hope you liked today’s Patreon post and have a great weekend!
Cheers,
Alex
Comments (37)
I absolutely love that you think so much about modding in the future game 😊👍
The animations are soooooo beautiful in the imperceptible movement of his knees when doing push ups 😍 like wow wow wow ! It’s crazy but I look at everything when it comes to animations it’s what brings the characters alive it’s not ridged it’s so beautiful well done guys !
j'adore!! continuez
I love the ideas of having multitasking too maybe!! That’s so awesome. I love it so much! And especially how, if a para isn’t active much or fit? They wouldn’t be able to do much and get more tired easily, unless they work on their fitness skill and run more etc. I’m loving the ideas!! 🫶🏻 great job devs! ✨
it looks exactly the same as the sims4, I'm worrying the team will copy most of the animations from sims4. instead I'm expecting to see more realistic actions if that make sense. sort of like sims2 or FF14
I would like to give the team some credit/benefit of the doubt with it being a simple and basic first animation. Like Alex wrote there can be added character/personality to the animation like with different skill levels.
Amazing!!
I don't workout much, so I have a really hard time getting into and staying in a plank position. So I think that it could be cool if paras with low fitness skill could have a really unstable planking position where maybe their butt is too low or too high or something like that. Or maybe they could do modified pushups instead.
This is amazing as always.
I know that I am coming in late to the conversation, so please forgive me if this has been said I think it would be cool if characters with advanced fitness AND a confident personality would show off with things like one handed and no handed push ups. Of course, I realize that this just adds steps to the process, but it would still be cool. Oh, and characters with low fitness could fall after or during the first attempt. I know it's a lot, but you seem sincerely interested in our input.
What about motion capture to make animations for paralives will this be possible? Does this also prevent the number of time the sequence is to repeat as well?
I think motion capture is still very expensive so I think only big developers can really pull it off. There is however a program that can extract motion capture data from simple video which might be worth looking into for the team (I forgot the name sorry). Could you imagine having the paralives team becoming actors themselves for the animations? That sounds really fun tbh haha. But ofc the animators do a tremendous job themselves
This looks great! I was wondering though, for the push-up sequence, could you add more nuance? Push-ups are difficult, particularly for those who are very unfit, and much more for women than for men, generally (very few women can do more than a couple push-ups unless they are very fit). For unfit people, the last few we generally slow down, and the last one is very shaky with effort. Could we have that added? So for unfit paras could you slow down the animation a little to show that, and perhaps add a shaky effortful animation for the last one?
"Developers and modders can define these animation sequences in our in-game modding tools"... So, someone could create a new animation, and it'd easily be inserted into any animation loop ?
This is so great. Really loving the thought of multitasking!
I am so curious at the results 🥰
Great summary as always. This made me think of potential skills for individual sports! It would be amazing to have a soccer or basketball skill
Still not over how natural and smooth the animation work looks. Also like the "modular" approach with the animations, pretty smart way to speed up the process for just one animator while also hopefully keeping the quality high. Looking forward to those exciting reveals In the future!
I really appreciate that you're already thinking about mods.
I was actually just thinking about having the animations play based on certain conditions. I absolutely loved seeing how my characters improved and progressed in skills when the animations played based on how good they were at something. It really felt like a sense of accomplishment! I'm also really impressed that even something as "mundane" as idle animations will be mod-able. I was not expecting that, but I'm excited to see what others come up with!
this is amazing, great work everyone!
Love all the work that’s gone into this!! 🥰 keep it up devs!! ✨
great!!
[this isn't a comment because there are no words]
Love these little insights into development. Not too long or complex, but also not oversimplified to the point of it becoming obnoxious. Thank you! I also have a question although that might be more related to actions than animations: would it be possible (either vanilla or mod-able) to tell a para to do x push-ups or read for x mins etc.? And if the number of times/minutes is too much for them to handle due to their decaying needs and/or poor skill level, they will simply abort it before time (and maybe be a bit upset about not reaching their goal) unless they are overachievers or something.
Thank you, glad you liked the post!! We are considering adding the ability, in the action queue, to define for how long or how many "times" an action can play. We are looking into it to see what we can do but can't confirm if we will do it or not yet :)
I wonder, when you become involved in creating such a game, do you guys find yourselves, sometimes, staring at people's/strangers' movements and behaviors? 😂
Yes, haha! When you think about actions and animations all day at work, you end up looking at people in real life to see how they move, without realizing it!!
Hi Alex, it's so fun😸 A Multitarefa poderia ser aplicada somente para determinadas ações. Hoje é muito demorado realizar quaisquer comandos no The Sims porque a multitarefa não deixa o personagem se dedicar ao que é ordenado. O que é bastante irritante. Super ansioso para a demonstração do modo ao vivo. Thank you Alex🇧🇷❤️ i love Paralives
Thank you! It's true that multitasking implies a lot of things and it has to be thought out well otherwise it will cause problems to the players. We are studying all this to see what we can do!
Sebastians shoe soles are IN the floor lol. But other than that it looks really great. I'm getting more excited with every new post of you guys. <3
Thank you! Hehe, these small issues can happen and we will be tweaking them :)
Awesome! For me, the absolute number one most important application of this system is setting up rules for personality sliders to affect these types of idle animations. Introverted vs extroverted, neat vs messy etc. I think personality can really come through in the details here. I would prefer higher weighting to that over emotional state or skill
True! The personality really shows in the way people move, their expressions, etc! Looking forward to seeing what we can do about that in the future, when we make progress on the personality and identity systems!
You guys are amazing ❤️
love it. the attention to detail is phenomenal yet again. thank you. :)
Beautiful as always❤️