Recycled Animations in Eco Lifestyle

As a player ( as opposed to builder) I don’t mind recycled animations as long as the gameplay is good and in-depth.

Recycled animations don't bother me when it's a different object with a similar function. I certainly don't expect new animations for sitting down or tending a garden every time we get a new pack.

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.

I think they could (and should) definitely come up with new animations. The worm hugging is the same animation we got with MFPS, the 3D printer uses the same (just smaller) animation as the inventor machine (or whatever it's called) from GTW, I have the feeling that the way they work the garbage recycling machine looks awfully similar to how they use the weather machine in seasons (however TS4 loves giving us machines with buttons and levers and they always look awfully similar so idk), I don't love the way they slide down ladders (that's not recycled though, but it means they only really had to show them climbing the ladder and they already made that for IL), there's new food stalls and vendor tables which will also likely be using the same animations, ...

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. :)

One of my other hobbies is CG art with Daz Studio. So I do a lot of posing of rigged figures to have them fighting, kissing, walking etc.

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.

https://i.imgur.com/A0yyQon.jpg

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.

"DaWaterRat;c-17493813" wrote:

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 ;) look at how many animations they used to add per pack in previous installments. They're clearly capable of it.

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.

When pickpocketing uses a hugging animation, that's an issue.

I don’t mind I just wished they would tweak it a bit sometimes. The toddler bath/pool/beach is all the same. I wish they at least changed the toy.

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.

I feel like it’s not a major deal as well. As long as the recycled animation makes sense I don’t see why it’s a bad thing. The only animation I’ve seen recycled that shouldn’t have been was the toddler bathtub being used as playing in the ocean that just looks off.

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.

As somebody who does animation, I understand it's often easier and less costly reusing the same animations rather than create new animations. It's done in other games, in movies, commercials, and anytime animation is used even in cel and claymation. Disney back in the day did this all the time with cel animation. It's a "dirty little secret". Also in games, premade 3d models are used and can be changed a bit and you get a new character. Poser and Daz have lots of premade 3d models like Michael. The Girl, Freak, Giovani, Lee Aiko, Hiro and many more that can be brought into programmes like Maya and you have someone work the back end and code and then you have a game.

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.

The animation of the sim hugging the worm thing in the trailer is the same as a sim hugging a rodent from MFP Stuff