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Recycled Animations in Eco Lifestyle
simgirl1010
Posts: 35,859 Member
I've seen comments that the Eco Lifestyle contains a lot of previously used animations. I have to admit that I rarely pay much attention to animations, except for the really over the top ones, and that's probably why I didn't recognize them as already being in the game.
For example, it was mentioned that the machine used to 'suck up' pollution uses the same animation as the weeding machine introduced in Seasons.
Can it be said that there are a finite number of animations and after 33 packs it's not unreasonable to expect some duplication in animations?
Would it have been better if the new machine was just left out of the game or create new animations?
I have no knowledge of what's required in game animation so wanted to know what everyone thought about this.
Can we omit the 'lazy developers' and 'cash grab' comments to a minimum and have a rational discussion?
For example, it was mentioned that the machine used to 'suck up' pollution uses the same animation as the weeding machine introduced in Seasons.
Can it be said that there are a finite number of animations and after 33 packs it's not unreasonable to expect some duplication in animations?
Would it have been better if the new machine was just left out of the game or create new animations?
I have no knowledge of what's required in game animation so wanted to know what everyone thought about this.
Can we omit the 'lazy developers' and 'cash grab' comments to a minimum and have a rational discussion?
33
Comments
Creating new animations...cannot be that much and take up resources...it certainly NOT helping them for reusing.
It breaks my heart.
There are really only a few new animations that I would like to see: slow dancing, playing various sports.
There is one animation that I would very much like to see recycled: Sims kicking off their shoes before getting into bed. They did it for yoga in the Spa Day Game Pack, and I wish they would implement it for Sims getting into bed.
I might add that there were several new animations around the basketball hoop in City Living, and I don't recall people praising the devs for those.
Doesn't mean I'll hate this pack but it's hard to miss how many animations don't seem particularly new. I think that they can definitely still make many new ones even if some duplication isn't necessarily a problem. It should be the exception rather than the norm though, otherwise it starts looking an awful lot like just reusing the same objects and animations, giving them a new name and outcome and selling it as new. This franchise is a little too profitable for that.
I pay money, regularly, to content creators who make poses for my CG figures, because posing is hard. And that's with a program that's already designed to make posing easy, working with inverse kinematics and joint control chains.
Getting these two posed took me an hour - and I started with two purchased poses.
Animation is harder. I've dabbled with it, including using an entire add on suite of pre-recorded animation cycles that again I paid good money for. I decided it wasn't worth the headache to clean up the places where there was still clipping for what I wanted to do.
Now, I don't know what resources for posing and animating are available to the Sims team, but I know that posing and animating take a lot of work and time. And it's time I'd honestly rather have the team working on something else.
This is their job not a hobby
My partner is in fact a CG artist and animator so yes it can be difficult and annoying work but it's still their job. Also, game studios tend to work with multiple departments, each taking care of their own work (animating, modelling, localizing, development, Q&A and so on). They don't just have 1-2 animators, they most lileo have a whole team. And that team creating animations shouldn't be preventing the other teams from doing their work (writing and translating text, modelling, sound work, developing new systems, fixing bugs, testing, ....). EA has enough manpower to manage the workload & earns more than enough on this franchise to put that money to good use.
Again it's fine to recycle some stuff but let's be reasonable about this. The majority of a pack shouldn't be recycled animations.
The first kiss and mistletoe is the same, I wish they removed the heart from the mistletoe kiss.
Those are the 2 that annoy me the most.
Recycling I liked was the workout videos. Reused animation for a new purpose.
But I feel like in general the recycled animations tend to save time and money to let the devs do other things within the packs. I also think after as many packs as we have it’s bound to happen more as again it’s a money and time saver. Would it be nice to see new animations for every new thing? Yes but I just don’t realistically expect it at this point.
So no it doesn't bother me that animations are reused for time and money. There are only so many ways a human body can move. Am I upset? No, because I work as a 3d modeller and animator making mostly copy and do that myself to save time for a client's project.
Wasn't it mostly one particular Disney animator who liked to recycle the same stuff time and time again? 🤔
And sure there's only so many ways a body can move but frankly: I would have liked real football animations (with sims actually playing a match like in TS3, not repeating the same animation over and over even when playing "together"), toddlers to play with the LEGO thing from Parenthood in a different way than with all their other toys (maybe puzzling something together on the floor), generally way more animations for kids and toddlers (playing a xylophone, small toddler kitchen, kids and toddlers playing together with sims from their own age group), teens and children being able to interact with their toddler siblings in the ball pit, sims ice skating together (maybe rotating each other), slow dancing, hand holding, have multiple sims going on a walk with their dogs together, volley ball, .....
There's tons of things they've never animated at all - or have seemingly not worked on in packs they would have been perfect for in favor of giving us gameplay mechanics full of recycled animations. Again: they have an entire studio animating stuff, they should be able to give us quite a bit more animations still
I've not really seen the need for new animations all the time. With regard to the example in the trailer, I thought it made sense. If the machine is siphoning up pollution, as it were, the same way the Seasons machine sucks up the weeds, how many animations does that really need? I'd rather the focus went into, say, the new skills or effects of the pollution, rather than an animation that might last a few seconds.
Some things i would love to see is a wide variety of snuggle animations. Like sitting on the floor (in front of the fireplace) cuddling. I'd love many more animations of playing with kids and toddlers. Like peekaboo, and different games they can play.
As well as animations playing different board games on the floor.
Animations holding hands and walking.
I wanted an animation for sims feeding eachother but not romantically.
I could go on an on.
However, I don't get bent out of shape if they reuse animations and I'm also aware of how hard and time consuming it is. No one know how many animators they have, what their budget is like or any of those things.
But in the end, if reusing animations means we get more items that our Sims can interact and the interactive objects have more options, I'm happy enough, no matter that the interactions themselves look the same. They generally have a different outcome.
I rarely mind recycled animations - my issue is that I don't feel like there is enough trade-off for them to continue doing so in Sims 4.
Sims 3 had a lot of complaints it used several animations from Sims 2 but this never bothered me because everything else included in the base game and expansion packs made up for this. I don't have the same feelings for Sims 4 which is why it is much more apparent and bothers me.
So I'm all for the team recycling animations to allow the animation budget to be used elsewhere, but many times It doesn't seem like that saved budget from recycling animations is going anywhere else.
ETA
@popstarissa
Well said, there are some interactions that deserve their own unique animations.
Haha, How did I forget the SimRay when that's my favorite object.
Something to be upset about though would be the pack budget as it is determined by ea and probably could be bigger. But even then I would prefer new objects and stuff to do than new animations for basically the same or similar items.
This is where I'm coming from too (the bold text in particular). I have no issue seeing previous animations used if they make sense.
Since this thread's focus in on recycled animations, let's discuss the animation for fixing/upgrading the Murphy Bed.... Wouldn't that animation have been better with a hammer and some nails? Or keep the screwdriver, but use it on the bed? And, why does my sim stand in the middle of the Murphy Bed to fix it?
Check out this link for pictures if you want (scroll to second post):
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/971084/the-one-only-tiny-living-complaining-thread/p6
I would really love to hear sound reasoning as to why recycling this animation for the Murphy Bed is OK. To me, that animation breaks immersion and absolutely makes no sense (the Murphy Bed is not a computer or electrical device, let alone the clipping issue).
I don't think it's an all or nothing situation with the devs or the game -- there are many good things about TS4 and there are a lot of things that could be improved.
Raising legitimate concerns and questions about what is in the game or packs in a respectful manner isn't a bad thing, is it? I mean, I think the most recent surveys seek to address the negative feedback that is out there -- and that is fantastic!
Some repetitive animations make sense, simply because trying to change the body position could just end up looking awkward. But reuse it too many times in too many packs, and it's noticeable. That's where I think they're skimping. We are constantly hearing about how much money the Sims 4 is making, how happy the CEO is, how well the game is doing...and they can't hire more animators? There are over 200 people on the Sims team already, this is a triple A game series...not an indie project.
In the case of this recent pack, Eco Lifestyle, there are what looks like several reused animations and that's just what was seen in a less than two minute trailer. This is an expansion pack. That's way too cheap for a multi-billion dollar company.