A simple procedural animation technique [video]

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

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

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.

I was thinking the same! Hope everyone that liked the first video check this one out too.

Thanks, I didn’t know about that technique. I’ll definitely fix it for the next video! I was on a time crunch while making the voiceover for this one. I didn’t have a pop filter and thought I could get away with a software de-plosive. Turns out popping is pretty difficult to fix without warping or trimming audio.

Funny enough, I came here to say that I watched that without sound and it was still very interesting and easy to follow. This person is a really great educator. Their other videos look equally intriguing and well done: https://www.youtube.com/@argonautcode

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.

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

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

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.

I'm going to level with you, I can't hear the popping noise. It just sounds like someone talking.

Maybe don't stress too much about it?

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.

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

I'd recommend starting with the book "The nature of code", if I recall correctly, a new version was published very recently

Jefferey Ventrella has a few programs along those lines

https://www.swimbots.com/genepool/

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.

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.

The beauty of procedural animation is not thas it's realistic, but that very simple principles allow for good-enough results. It's something used for videogames or presentations, not simulations.

TL;DR: animation by simplistic algorithms is a beautiful technique, but a lousy simulator.

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

Some people like myself are very sensitive to some some vocal/audio oddities, while others seem insensitive to it.

The issue is for those sensitive, it literally creates the feeling sick and/or needing to escape or fight the situation (rage) despite rationally knowing there’s nothing wrong. See: misophonia

While sometimes the cause is unavoidable, reducing the avoidable ones is worthwhile, though I would agree that getting paranoid about it isn’t needed.

For those that encounter this in video/audio, a useful trick I’ve found is watching at a higher playback speed, which seems to mask many of the things that would drive me mad.

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

Making a more realistic "looking" simulation would not be more work or less simple.

For both, simply following the path of the first circle is both a simpler algorithm and closer to natural movement

Definitely don't stress, but it is certainly some low hanging fruit. The quality of the animations is far beyond the quality of the audio. There's no reason the creator needs to care. But given the care and attention put into the appearance of the animation, they just might.