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A simple procedural animation technique [video]

by Meleagris on 7/26/24, 5:40 PM with 23 comments

• by cgijoe on 7/26/24, 7:54 PM

  I hope the author sees this. Dude, your video is so awesome, thank you! But your microphone is "popping" every time you say a 'P' or a 'T' sound. This is because you are speaking directly into it. Try talking "past" it instead. Your vocal sound goes out in all directions, but the "wind" from your mouth that creates the pops only goes in one direction -- straight forward -- so if you slide your microphone to the side, you will still have good sounding audio with no pops.

• by nox101 on 7/27/24, 9:37 AM

  This is very well made video. That said, the animations don't actually move like real snakes or real fish. Animals don't move from the head and drag the rest of their bodies behind them with constraints on circles. They pull/push with muscles though out the entire length of their body.

  Fish: https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-29361571-koi-fancy-c...

  In fact not only do they not drag their behinds, the tails turn further than the bodies

  Snakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEto1-ZTbd4

  That's not a dis. The technique in the video is pretty to watch and might be good enough but it just stuck out to me at a glance as unnatural. Like something was off.

• by owenpalmer on 7/26/24, 6:26 PM

  Beautiful video. I would love to see this animation technique combined with an evolution simulation similar to Karl Sims' Evolved Virtual Creatures project:

  https://youtu.be/RZtZia4ZkX8?si=vxQ904w_CNXsSoj5

  Previous HN discussion:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30719801

• by progbits on 7/26/24, 10:04 PM

  Regarding the "derpy lizard", I think it would look much better if it had some gait pattern - maybe not allowing some legs to reach at the same time, or just starting the legs and their target points with different offsets so they don't move in phase with each other.

  Beautiful video though, would love to see more content from you.

• by nighthawk454 on 7/26/24, 10:34 PM

  Wonderful video, cheers! I also had no idea Processing was so efficient at animations, I'll have to look into that furhter

  https://github.com/argonautcode/animal-proc-anim

• by irq-1 on 7/27/24, 8:35 PM

  Great video. Much more complicated, but checkout Godot "fish" in the docs.

  https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/performance...

  > The animation will be made of four key motions:

  A side to side motion

  A pivot motion around the center of the fish

  A panning wave motion

  A panning twist motion

• by mikhmha on 7/27/24, 12:30 AM

  You could also use these techniques as steering behaviors for a group of autonomous agents? Each agent is a point on the segment. It'd be like a team doing a dragon or lion dance.

• by globalnode on 7/27/24, 1:58 AM

  Had no idea about the FABRIK technique, that looks really useful in a lot of different contexts too. I did a little clap irl at the end of the video.

• by IndySun on 7/27/24, 5:08 PM

  The animations are less realistic grounded, legless, critters and more accurately things being dragged (without seeing whats dragging them). That said, engaging, concise, and well produced video. The technique also comes to life when legs are added. Maybe thats obvious.

• by worldsayshi on 7/26/24, 11:54 PM

  Great demonstration!

  TheRujiK seems to use a very similar animation technique. These creatures also somewhat remind me of the creatures of Spore: https://youtu.be/a87tB__3KEs?si=2Xl3Ub3j-Z3msxm6

• by albert_e on 7/27/24, 4:31 AM

  Great video -- any complementary resource that can help a young learner get started? What tool might one use to do such animations?

• by heyrikin on 7/28/24, 3:36 AM

  Oh snap these are built in Processing? I'll have to give it another go.

• by aloisdg on 7/26/24, 6:31 PM

  Great video. So smooth. Now I want to try it. Good job