Procedural Animation: Tail, Wings, Hair, Tentacles! (Unity Tutorial) 

I absolutely love procedural animation, it makes games look so much more interactive and real

Really nice effect, dude :0

Thank you! Gonna use this to animate ropes in the wind for my 2D metroidvania! I was animating all of then by hand - think about time consuming….

Dang this is so cool! I'm gonna try this in my current devlog project, thanks for sharing this :D

This is so amazing! I always adored these smooth juicy Trails, Thank you so much for sharing this amazing tutorial noa and owen!

Your tutorials have helped me out with my own game, Stop the Saturnians, so much! Thank you! This one in particular taught me how to build the Centipede enemy ships. Thanks again, really appreciate what you do :)

Can't thank you enough for your tutorial. These type of creatures I hadn't ever thought of making it, because of the complexity my brain created. Thank you very much!

As always, super fun, super informative and super easy to understand. May the Lord bless you always.

The secret to good platformers is hair physics. (cough cough Celeste cough cough)

I really love the effects and flow of these creatures with long tails or wings, so smooth and beautiful, how I would love a game without obstacles , just a fun discovery of beautiful movement art like yours and music to go with a fabulous world created, like an animated story , what do you think NOA? 😉

What a great use of the Line Renderer. Nice one dude

this is exactly what I needed! Im making a platformer and I want the main character to have a nice looking scarf that follows him, and I think this will look perfect. there's something ethereal about the style of my game so I think the lack of gravity will only add to that. edit - I put it together and *I love it so much!*

I'm a Man of Culture and I have seen Enough Tentacles to know where this is going ✨

This is awesome! I love doing procedural animations on gamemaker, so your video made me super exited to try it on unity!

Imagine now using a All In 1 Sprite Shader material on top of this awesome stuff 😎🔥

Awesome, thank you! You seem to always notice where there is a tutorial gap on youtube :)

That’s very cool thanks for sharing and shoutout to Owen)

Wiggledir might be my new favorite word.

How many of you guys are curious on how to improvise making Celeste like hair?

I was looking for this, thank you so much man

There is a problem with generating colliders and sorting point for rendering. I think 2D Inverse Kinematics is better solution.

Thank you Owen!

Really love your vids, just a request, please post videos more often.....Thanks....!!!!

Thanks... very good tutorial

Nice video good job 👏

Thanks Owen!

Any thoughts on how to make something that wiggles consistently, but stays about the same length. I've tried a few things to make this but always end up with it either being too rigid and not really wiggling the whole length of the line, or it will wiggle nicely while holding still, but then it stretches out behind the creature when it moves.

hey can somebody help me its saying that target is invalid even though I followed all the steps.

How to make glide in unity for 2d game?????? Plzzzzzzzz help

Ah, this is why I like you so much hahahaha! 😂 you are a Brushian ;)

what is the fox game showed on the video?

i love you

Can I do something similar to move through but with velocity?

Make a video with subject buy or shoping system in unity please

Hello @blackthornpord make video on ( how to change weather in 2d parallex background like Alto odyssey

I was just searching for hair animation. Do you know any magic 🤔. Btw thanks :)

Great help! thank you. quick question please: Could I add this procedural animation to an already animated mesh 2d character? I mean imagine a dragon, that when you turn it left, you see more of it's side and under belly (adding a 3d effect sort of), while also applying this procedural animation to it. Thanks for anyone who can help me with this information.

Thank you for the video 😀but Why cant you just share the code ????

Hi, I just want to ask if I can do it with a Cape, or Cloak wave animation using this? ^_^

I want the tentacles to collide with other objects. How can I do this??

Love this effect, putting it to some use in my latest prototype. However I am trying to increase the scale of my player GO/Sprite when they collect food but the "tentacle" does not scale with the parent object. Anybody got any ideas on how I could do that?

How can I add more or less length in the script?

i love you

How did you make the wings?

Is this game in computer or ipaf?

How do you scale it properly?

What is the cat game I wanna play it

is it works for 3D?

pls help! i followed the tutorial but get error! this is my code: using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using UnityEngine; public class Tentacle : MonoBehaviour { public int lenght; public LineRenderer lineRend; public Vector3[] segmentPoses; private Vector3[] segmentV; public Transform targetDir; public float targetDist; public float smoothSpeed; private void Start() { lineRend.positionCount = lenght; segmentPoses = new Vector3[lenght]; segmentV = new Vector3[lenght]; } private void Update() { segmentPoses[0] = targetDir.position; for (int i = 0; i < segmentPoses.Length; i++) { segmentPoses[i] = Vector3.SmoothDamp(segmentPoses[i], segmentPoses[i - 1] + targetDir.right * targetDist, ref segmentV[i], smoothSpeed); } lineRend.SetPositions(segmentPoses); } } IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array. Tentacle.Update () (at Assets/Scripts/Tentacle.cs:29) PLEASE write back if you know what the problem is!

The sponsor at the beginning is creeping me out

I hope his editing has improved, this tutorial is a nightmare to navigate.

Stop promoting that scammer!

using System.Collections; using System. Collections. Generic; using UnityEngine; public class TentacleTwo : MonoBehaviour { public int length; public LineRenderer lineRend; public Vector3[] segmentPoses; private Vector3[] segmentV; public Transform targetDir; public float targetDist; public float smoothSpeed; public float wiggleSpeed; public float wiggleMagnitude; public Transform wiggleDir; public Transform tailEnd; private void Start() { lineRend.positionCount = length; segmentPoses = new Vector3[length]; segmentV = new Vector3[length]; } private void Update() { wiggleDir.localRotation = Quaternion.Euler(0, 0, Mathf.Sin(Time.time * wiggleSpeed) * wiggleMagnitude); segmentPoses[0] = targetDir.position; for (int i = 1; i < segmentPoses.Length; i++) Vector3 targetPos = segmentPoses[i - 1] + (segmentPoses[i] - segmentPoses[i - 1]).normalized * targetDist; segmentPoses[i] = Vector3.SmoothDamp(segmentPoses[i], targetPos, ro( segmentV[i], smoothSpeed); } lineRend.SetPositions(segmentPoses); tailEnd.position = segmentPoses[segmentPoses.Length -1]; public class BodyRotation : MonoBehaviour } public float speed; private Vector2 direction; public Transform target; private void Update() { direction = target.position - transform.position; float angle = Mathf.Atan2(direction.y, direction.x) * Mathf.Rad2Deg; Quaternion rotation = Quaternion.AngleAxis(angle, Vector3.forward); transform.rotation = Quaternion.Slerp(transform.rotation, rotation, speed * Time.deltaTime); } }

for those who didn't get the head rotation code: I'll give a brief explanation 1. direction = target.position - transform.position; basic vector math whenever you want a direction vector between 2 points, you subtract them. 2. float angle = Mathf.Atan2(direction.y, direction.x) * Mathf.Rad2Deg basically calculation angle like in a unit circle. now you might ask, why is it y and x and not x and y because coordinates will be (cos, sin) it's because unity's angle system as 90 degrees of offset, and sin and cos also have the same, so we exchange them. It will also work if you did x and y and subtracted 90 and Mathf.Rad2Deg does what it says. 3. Quaternion.rotation calculates rotation on the z-axis(Vector3.forward) based on the angle we provide. 4. we use the calculated rotation to rotate the head and that's it. hope you got it. :D you can watch Sebastian Lague's video on trignometry for more details.

I asked about this in the comments for your recent gamejam entry video, maybe you saw it. Thanks for making this video, these kind of things are great to learn about! :)

I love your art style, I’m surprised how well the smooth, blurred backgrounds work so well with the crisp cartoony art.

How would one go about procedurally animating the clothes like the ones on the character from 0:34 to 0:37?

Hi, when are you going to release the multiplayer tutorial? I love your videos btw.

Ok this tutorial really doesn't work for any meaningful application. Basically it jitters if your character moves and if you use fixed update, it lags heavily behind your character. If you try not using world space, then it behaves in an extremely weird way that has no reasonable explanation. So don't think you'll be using this tutorial for anything other than the simplistic games you see featured in this channel.

Welcome back tutorials.......

Wow this is exactly what I was looking for!!! Thanks a lot 😁

Amazing effects. Is it possible to have mesh/rigidbody effects on these trails? That will allow them to have colliders and give/take damage....

is it possible to add collision to the tentacle/hair/ whatever? Would you just have to add like a rigid body to it or something?

The wiggle does not work when I use the tentacle two script I want the wiggle to happen and also to not stretch. How can I do that ?

i know in kinda late, but would it be possible to add a collision to the tail, i couldnt find any solution because it is moving by transform.position

Amazing tutorial! How would someone add some kind of gravity effect in case we want something similar to a tail or hair that looks naturally influenced by gravity?

It says something about vector and y and x not worky

How do you do this with AI? That fish creature inspires me to make an aquarium style game and I'd like to know how to make it swim around on its own instead of following the mouse cursor. Also how would I move it with a joystick for controllers and mobile?

_Wait_ , how'd you read my mind? Just what I wanted... But how? Noa's a *psychic* .

Rotation Code at 1:38: private Vector2 direction; public float rotationSpeed; void Update(){ direction = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition) - transform.position; float angle = Mathf.Atan2(direction.y, direction.x) * Mathf.Rad2Deg; Quaternion rotation = Quaternion.AngleAxis(angle, Vector3.forward); transform.rotation = Quaternion.Slerp(transform.rotation, rotation, rotationSpeed * Time.deltaTime); }

Main Code at 6:15: public int length; public LineRenderer lineRend; public Vector3[] segmentPoses; private Vector3[] segmentV; public Transform targetDir; public float targetDist; public float smoothSpeed = 5f; private void Start() { lineRend.positionCount = length; segmentPoses = new Vector3[length]; segmentV = new Vector3[length]; } private void Update() { segmentPoses[0] = targetDir.position; for (int i = 1; i < segmentPoses.Length; i++) { segmentPoses[i] = Vector3.SmoothDamp(segmentPoses[i], segmentPoses[i - 1] + targetDir.right * targetDist, ref segmentV[i], smoothSpeed); } lineRend.SetPositions(segmentPoses); }

I can't believe you did a tutorial about this. I asked you how you created this in your BTP game and voila' .. a whole tutorial about this :) This is awesome! Thanks for your fantastic videos!

awesome stuff, Owen and Blackthornprod. Would love to see tutorial for 3D effect!

I appreciate the video and it helped me figure out how to create a squid. The video is a little sloppy and doesn't show some code on screen. Eventually figured it out. In case someone stumbles on this like I did, here's my code for the first part: using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using UnityEngine; public class SquidTentacle : MonoBehaviour { public int length; public LineRenderer lineRend; public Vector3[] segmentPoses; private Vector3[] segmentV; public Transform targetDir; public float targetDist; public float smoothSpeed; public float trailSpeed; private void Start() { length = 10; targetDist = 0.1f; smoothSpeed = 0.04f; trailSpeed = 350f; lineRend.positionCount = length; segmentPoses = new Vector3[length]; segmentV = new Vector3[length]; } private void Update() { segmentPoses[0] = targetDir.position; for (int i = 1; i < segmentPoses.Length; i++) { segmentPoses[i] = Vector3.SmoothDamp(segmentPoses[i], segmentPoses[i - 1] + targetDir.right * targetDist, ref segmentV[i], smoothSpeed + i / trailSpeed); } lineRend.SetPositions(segmentPoses); } }

Can someone help? For some reason my character keeps snapping back to 0 on every axis and won't move. " public float rotationSpeed; private Vector2 direction; public float moveSpeed; void Update() { direction = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition) - transform.position; float angle = Mathf.Atan2(direction.y, direction.x) * Mathf.Rad2Deg; Quaternion rotation = Quaternion.AngleAxis(angle, Vector3.forward); transform.rotation = Quaternion.Slerp(transform.rotation, rotation, rotationSpeed * Time.deltaTime); Vector2 cursorPos = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition); transform.position = Vector2.MoveTowards(transform.position, cursorPos, moveSpeed) * Time.deltaTime; }"

Super cool Noa! Now I just need to figure out what to use this for in our 2D world 😀

I LIKE THAT TITLE! Thanks for this tutorial ,it's really appreciated!

8:48 OMG I KNEW THAT WAS KEKE AS SOON AS I SAW IT. Also i need this for my project soon so thats awesome that this vid happened to come out

BlackThornProd you are a god Your art is great and there is nothing to hate Your the best keep up the good work

hi, love your content! may I ask one question: is there anyway I can make a tile- base plant ( seaweed for example) that apply this procedural animation and can be add or remove length? Thanks in advance

I know its been 2 years, but how would you go about taking it a step further to simulate like a real life tail that sorta flops around like the rainworld slugcat tail?

i know in kinda late, but would it be possible to add a collision to the tail, i couldnt find any solution because it is moving by transform.position

Perfect timing, exactly what I needed right now, thanks!

I tried doing each steps he did. But didn't work for me. At 6:25 why line renderer not showing in game view ? Did you change some extra settings? Thanks anyway ! I will be able to figure all out in few days because of your script as I just started undertsanding C# properly.

Can you do the same tutorial but for 3d?

It’s been a long time since I watched blackthornprod :)

how can I add collision physics to the tentacles?, you know... to not clip in the walls

Why is Vector3 used on the Tentacle script? and not Vector2 since it's 2D

How can I achieve some things like this when I use a rigiddbody 2d

Im trying to figure out how to make it so the tip of the tentacle can attack things. Almost like an IK where I can have a target that pushes toward something. Let me know if yall have any ideas :)

I'm super interested in the way that fox's head was made. Is he 2d as well? Looks more 3d or perhaps 2d perspective code manipulation

Great tutorial. Thank you. But I am shocked and said "Oh my god! I love those characters" at 8:48 . He seems to be nailing the style. When can we play that?

how exactly did you get this wiggle bone effect on your wings at 12:17

Here at 0 dislikes 😃

Thank you. Powerful examples inspired me to use this way instead of animation keys.

What if I have to detect collision of trails? Is there any solution of it?

Dude who made it THANK YOU!!!!

definitely saving this one for later

Absolutely loved this inspiring tutorial, especially because I am a nerd for procedural animation, and what it does to open up young minds to math and science they learn in school! Thank you...

Amazing! Thank you so much for uploading! ;)