Hayo Zookeepers!
We are looking forward to sharing the Planet Zoo: Southeast Asia Animal Pack, the first animal-focused Pack, with you all tomorrow! To celebrate, we have five members of the team sharing what the process behind developing an animal for the game looks like, from animation to sound design!
Please welcome Producer IJke Botman, Character Artist India Jones, Animator Kai Cheng, Senior Sound Designer Benjamin Scholey, and Designer Kilian Schmitt!
Hello all! We can't wait for you all to get your hands on the Southeast Asia Animal Pack, and we're looking forward to sharing more about creating an animal. Let's start with a look at the overall work that goes into an animal and for each team!
IJke:
To kick this Developer Journal off hereās a relatively high-level overview of what it takes to get an animal into your game. Iāve missed out loads of steps but it should give you an idea of how we make our animals!
First, we start with a theme for the pack. Up until now, theyāve been based on regions (Arctic, South America, Australia, South East Asia), or gameplay mechanics (Aquatic). This gives us a good starting place to pick animals. Once we have an idea of what direction we want to go in, we begin to research possible animals to include. This is a process driven by design and in collaboration with all the stakeholders: character artists, animators, riggers, audio, and production, as well as the community team to look at what you, our community, have been requesting. We create big lists of animals to research and evaluate based on things like conservation status, ability to thrive in zoos, complexity in terms of character art and animation, and, of course, how cute the juveniles are.
Once we have an idea of what we will be including in the pack, the real fun begins! Starting with Character Art, we see the animals take shape as they go through the different teams in development. The Character Artists take care of everything from the animalās shape, colours, fur, scarring, colour morph variants, mud textures, wetness textures, and much more. It's awesome to see the animals come together at this stage! While the Character Artists are working away, our Riggers take a static 3D model of the animal and give it functionality that allows Animators to bring it to life. Riggers do this by creating āskeletonsā, and ābonesā. It's an interesting process to see in action!
After rigging is complete, it's over to Animation. They work on everything, from walks and runs to fighting, mating, enrichment interactions, climbing, swimming, and most recently deep swimming. Our tools allow us to share some animations between similar animals as a starting point, which speeds things up immensely. However, to make sure animals feel unique we spend as much time as possible polishing the animations. While our Animators animate, our lovely Designers and superb Coders are hard at work setting these animals up in terms of behaviour. We can balance all sorts of stuff, like how much they sleep, and swim, and climb. We also create Zoopedia entries and create enrichment items!
Next, once an animation is finished, our indispensable Audio team will be able to add sounds to it, completing the animal and making it fully alive. Because our Audio team is at the end of the chain we have to be very mindful of last-minute changes to animals, and always need to ask ourselves if these changes affect them. Finally, our hard-working Quality Assurance team will look at the animals, and test everything available on them! They discover bugs that allow the team to work on resolving them before release.
As you can see, thereās a lot of work that goes into making each animal! Additionally, weāve got three family members for each animal: male, female, and juvenile. This means that we essentially build an animal 3 times! However, it's an incredibly rewarding process too, we love seeing the finished products!
India:
Thanks, IJke! Following that development pipeline, let's break it down further. As a Character Artist, my team and I make all the animals you see in the game. For this DLC, I made the Proboscis Monkey family and managed the feedback and review for several other animals. For Character Artists, our pipeline looks something like this:
First, we research all the visual aspects of the animal, choose our key art images, ask our Design team and Kilian for who will let me know the specific size requirements, any sexual dimorphism, colour variants, albinism or unique features I need to include as they relate to the game. We then make a mood board of all of these images and notations and then we can start sculpting! Sculpting has three stages. The blockout, where we make sure we get the right proportions, volumes, and size. The main sculpt, where we sculpt in most of the primary and secondary forms. And the detail pass, where we begin to add the finer details like wrinkles, pores, some texture or fur detail, etc.
After that, we create the game-ready mesh, making sure the topology deforms correctly (so it stretches nicely if it goes for a run or does any of its assigned animations). At this stage, as IJke mentioned, we can then hand it over to rigging and animation to work their magic on it. Then it's time to paint! A lot of our fur textures are hand-painted, using custom-built stamps and brushes in combination with our fur shader to create the fur. We have a variety of other technical maps to assist with this process, such as maps that tell the shader what direction the fur should be going and more! Once the textures are done we set them up in our game engine to begin fine-tuning and get it looking good.
The animal will then go through a series of reviews and feedback with teams from all departments to ensure it looks its best in every way. Each animal requires a lot of image research and watching a lot of video footage to see how the animals move.
Kai:
As Animators, we look at a lot of wildlife documentaries and sometimes even stock footage to see what the animals get up to. You learn all sorts of behaviours this way, not just the mechanics of how their bodies work, but also figuring out whether they swim or climb and what sort of ways theyād interact with the world around them for enrichment. Sometimes it feels a little bit like going on a safari, hunting after clips of specific behaviours youād only read about.
Working on the animals has always been a somewhat humbling experience, both in terms of animation mechanics and finding out animals do things that you didn't think they do. This time was not much different; I got to help wrangle a new prop and did a good part of the work on the Sun Bear.
Kilian:
Designers are responsible for all aspects of the animals on the design side. This includes initial and ongoing research to support the team as well as all the setup of the animalās needs, from a welfare aspect (habitat, terrain, population requirements), economical aspect (food types, costs, stress levels, guest appeal), or behavioural aspect (behaviour types, fighting balance, group structures) to only name a few examples. For the Southeast Asia Animal Pack, I had my hand's full juggling all of our eight new animals while doing some minor supporting work for the new Water Customisation and Billboards features, which are free in Update 1.5.
Iād consider there to be four high-level stages in the process that impact my work on the animals.
Firstly, Design does some initial research on which animals would fit into the pack. We tend to research some criteria like conservation status, popularity and population in captivity, and potentially unique behaviours. This list of animals is then triaged by all departments to determine the costs and time required for each animal until we have a selection weāre happy with. Usually, we try to strike a mix between common and unique animals that represent a broad image of the region or theme the pack focuses on.
Once animals are chosen, design consults with an external researcher to get a good understanding of the species, which I couple with my research. This is the time where we get all the work on the animal done. Character, rigging, and animation work on the models, textures, and animations, audio is researching and creating the amazing animal sounds, design sets up all animal data such as lifespan, population, behaviours, etc. and specs out any necessary new animal features, which the gameplay coders then implement into the game. Generally, all departments collaborate very closely on each animal to ensure we can translate all our researched information correctly into the game, such as size differences, colour variations or specific behaviours, etc.
As soon as every department deems the animal to be in a good state we organize a long review meeting with all team members who worked on it where we look at every aspect of the animal close up and in action. This helps us spot any bugs or issues we may have missed so far.
Coming out of a review, the team takes care of any issues that were raised during the review. Simultaneously, Quality Assurance will also flag up anything else that might need eyes on. Once those are taken care of, the animals are ready!
Benjamin:
I am a Senior Sound Designer leading everything audio for Planet Zoo DLC. For the Southeast Asia Animal Pack, there were multiple aspects of audio to cover. Everything from animal research, source collection, and recording, to music direction, implementation and mixing. My most important role is professional animal vocaliser and impersonator. From an audio POV, we go through several stages to breathe life into our wonderful animals. This is how:
We spend a long time looking at and listening to incredible animals. This usually entails watching David Attenborough, Reading articles on Vocalisations and animal behaviour, and plenty of youtube, surprisingly. After we better understand the animals, we start to gather audio of vocalisations and do some recording where appropriate. My cat, Nami helped out with some of the Juvenile Clouded Leopard vocals and I jumped in front of the mic for some subtle grunts.
After we have all the sounds, we give them an edit then Implement them into our game. This is very much like painting with numbers. We have our canvas of sounds and place them into an animal animation, bringing them to life. Finally, we listen to our animals as a whole in the Planet Zoo environment and make final tweaks. Usually, we subtract sounds from the animal, allowing the focus to shift to specific elements we want to highlight. The pat of a tail, the slurp of a drink.
There's a lot of research that goes into the animals, from obvious elements like what they sound like to more subtle behavioural aspects. Our designers spend a long time making tiny adjustments to the weight of an animalās behavioural aspect. How much do they sleep, do they like to be in a group, are they predatory?
Kilian:
Yes exactly, initial research on the animals first and foremost focuses on how theyāre represented in zoos and what kinds of conservation efforts are in place for them. We often share our findings across departments to highlight certain features, such as the range of locomotion, unusual behaviours, or vocalizations to make sure we can represent them in the game.
During development, I consult with an external researcher who compiles some important facts for us and provides the basis for our Zoopedia entries. My research intensifies depending on the area of the animal Iām currently working on ā if Iām working on the animalās habitat or population requirements, I will often read through zoo care manuals or try to find detailed references on zoo websites or in zoo forums. For some animals that are less common in zoos, I often rely on scholarly articles published in nature journals doing studies on very specific things for some species such as size, colour aberrations, communication, and even poop.
If Iām working on the animal behaviours directly, itās best to look at the animals in action, so I get to learn about it by watching documentaries or looking at clips uploaded by people going to zoos or safaris. It helps me break down how much time of its day an animal spends moving, grooming, sleeping, eating, etc., and balance its behaviour this way. Once itās safe to do, Iām also looking to visit zoos again to see some of the animalās behaviours in suitable habitats directly.
India:
On the other hand, finding the right balance between sculpting and painting is important for us Character Artists. Furrier animals donāt need as much sculpting time as something like a crocodile for example, which requires extensive time in Zbrush carving out all those wonderful scales! But the furrier animals do take a bit of time to hand paint in a specific style that our fur shader will read and project the fur shells in an aesthetically pleasing way. Having good reference images is key and also plenty of time to review the animal after itās been animated. They look so different when theyāve been brought to life!
Benjamin:
In Audio, it's interesting to create an animal from an audio POV and balancing Realism with Hyper Realism. Animals both in the wild and zoos tend to be very quiet and not vocal in the slightest. In regards to making an animal believable, we enhance certain aspects of movements and vocalisation. I donāt think there is one specific aspect which is the most important. With audio being towards the end of our workflow, usually, we have the privilege of adding the final element which brings the animals to life. Giving them weight, context, and enhancing whatās already there with sound design. Each discipline uses its technical and creative knowledge to help make the animal whole.
Something that we discovered during development is that Dholes whistle - instead of barking they tend to yip and whistle to communicate. This whistle helps them communicate in the dense foliage locations they inhabit. When initially researching this it blew me away. Having the rest of the team listening to my whistling dogs got some confused faces.
Kai:
In terms of animation, I would say the most important factor development-wise is the general appeal of the animal: How it feels and what it does. We try to pick out the best behaviours that suit the animal as well as stuff that seems iconic or just things players would like to see. For example, we knew that seals doing the banana pose had to get in and we reminded everyone about it until it happened. There's a balance to it all.
India:
I can't wait for people to get their hands on the Proboscis Monkey! That whole family is beyond adorable. Theyāre a wonderfully colourful addition to the other monkeys we have in-game. For the Character Artist team, weāre constantly looking for big ways to improve the look of our animals and always striving to make the next models better than the ones that came before. We're pleased with how the Proboscis Monkey looks!
Kilian:
Having a good communication system while development is underway full steam is essential to ensure weāre all aware of the stage each animal is currently in. We have a meeting with everyone involved in the creation of the animals a few times per week to update everyone on our current progress and any issues, and each animal gets its chat group involving everyone working on it to highlight any bugs or questions that arise.
Iām going to nominate the Clouded Leopard as my personal favourite animal! Iām super stoked weāre releasing these lovely cats into your hands! Iāll also mention the Proboscis Monkey ā it grew on me throughout development and the team has done an amazing job to give this animal some real character.
We'd also like to say from the development team to the community: thanks for your support and passion for Planet Zoo! We hope everyone enjoys the fun features, scenarios, and of course animals coming with 1.5 and the Southeast Asia Animal Pack. Managing the creation of seven habitat animals at once was an exciting challenge for the team and we're looking forward to seeing all the amazing habitats youāll create for all the new arrivals in your zoos!
We are looking forward to sharing the Planet Zoo: Southeast Asia Animal Pack, the first animal-focused Pack, with you all tomorrow! To celebrate, we have five members of the team sharing what the process behind developing an animal for the game looks like, from animation to sound design!
Please welcome Producer IJke Botman, Character Artist India Jones, Animator Kai Cheng, Senior Sound Designer Benjamin Scholey, and Designer Kilian Schmitt!
Hello all! We can't wait for you all to get your hands on the Southeast Asia Animal Pack, and we're looking forward to sharing more about creating an animal. Let's start with a look at the overall work that goes into an animal and for each team!
IJke:
To kick this Developer Journal off hereās a relatively high-level overview of what it takes to get an animal into your game. Iāve missed out loads of steps but it should give you an idea of how we make our animals!
First, we start with a theme for the pack. Up until now, theyāve been based on regions (Arctic, South America, Australia, South East Asia), or gameplay mechanics (Aquatic). This gives us a good starting place to pick animals. Once we have an idea of what direction we want to go in, we begin to research possible animals to include. This is a process driven by design and in collaboration with all the stakeholders: character artists, animators, riggers, audio, and production, as well as the community team to look at what you, our community, have been requesting. We create big lists of animals to research and evaluate based on things like conservation status, ability to thrive in zoos, complexity in terms of character art and animation, and, of course, how cute the juveniles are.
Once we have an idea of what we will be including in the pack, the real fun begins! Starting with Character Art, we see the animals take shape as they go through the different teams in development. The Character Artists take care of everything from the animalās shape, colours, fur, scarring, colour morph variants, mud textures, wetness textures, and much more. It's awesome to see the animals come together at this stage! While the Character Artists are working away, our Riggers take a static 3D model of the animal and give it functionality that allows Animators to bring it to life. Riggers do this by creating āskeletonsā, and ābonesā. It's an interesting process to see in action!
After rigging is complete, it's over to Animation. They work on everything, from walks and runs to fighting, mating, enrichment interactions, climbing, swimming, and most recently deep swimming. Our tools allow us to share some animations between similar animals as a starting point, which speeds things up immensely. However, to make sure animals feel unique we spend as much time as possible polishing the animations. While our Animators animate, our lovely Designers and superb Coders are hard at work setting these animals up in terms of behaviour. We can balance all sorts of stuff, like how much they sleep, and swim, and climb. We also create Zoopedia entries and create enrichment items!
Next, once an animation is finished, our indispensable Audio team will be able to add sounds to it, completing the animal and making it fully alive. Because our Audio team is at the end of the chain we have to be very mindful of last-minute changes to animals, and always need to ask ourselves if these changes affect them. Finally, our hard-working Quality Assurance team will look at the animals, and test everything available on them! They discover bugs that allow the team to work on resolving them before release.
As you can see, thereās a lot of work that goes into making each animal! Additionally, weāve got three family members for each animal: male, female, and juvenile. This means that we essentially build an animal 3 times! However, it's an incredibly rewarding process too, we love seeing the finished products!
India:
Thanks, IJke! Following that development pipeline, let's break it down further. As a Character Artist, my team and I make all the animals you see in the game. For this DLC, I made the Proboscis Monkey family and managed the feedback and review for several other animals. For Character Artists, our pipeline looks something like this:
First, we research all the visual aspects of the animal, choose our key art images, ask our Design team and Kilian for who will let me know the specific size requirements, any sexual dimorphism, colour variants, albinism or unique features I need to include as they relate to the game. We then make a mood board of all of these images and notations and then we can start sculpting! Sculpting has three stages. The blockout, where we make sure we get the right proportions, volumes, and size. The main sculpt, where we sculpt in most of the primary and secondary forms. And the detail pass, where we begin to add the finer details like wrinkles, pores, some texture or fur detail, etc.
After that, we create the game-ready mesh, making sure the topology deforms correctly (so it stretches nicely if it goes for a run or does any of its assigned animations). At this stage, as IJke mentioned, we can then hand it over to rigging and animation to work their magic on it. Then it's time to paint! A lot of our fur textures are hand-painted, using custom-built stamps and brushes in combination with our fur shader to create the fur. We have a variety of other technical maps to assist with this process, such as maps that tell the shader what direction the fur should be going and more! Once the textures are done we set them up in our game engine to begin fine-tuning and get it looking good.
The animal will then go through a series of reviews and feedback with teams from all departments to ensure it looks its best in every way. Each animal requires a lot of image research and watching a lot of video footage to see how the animals move.
Kai:
As Animators, we look at a lot of wildlife documentaries and sometimes even stock footage to see what the animals get up to. You learn all sorts of behaviours this way, not just the mechanics of how their bodies work, but also figuring out whether they swim or climb and what sort of ways theyād interact with the world around them for enrichment. Sometimes it feels a little bit like going on a safari, hunting after clips of specific behaviours youād only read about.
Working on the animals has always been a somewhat humbling experience, both in terms of animation mechanics and finding out animals do things that you didn't think they do. This time was not much different; I got to help wrangle a new prop and did a good part of the work on the Sun Bear.
Kilian:
Designers are responsible for all aspects of the animals on the design side. This includes initial and ongoing research to support the team as well as all the setup of the animalās needs, from a welfare aspect (habitat, terrain, population requirements), economical aspect (food types, costs, stress levels, guest appeal), or behavioural aspect (behaviour types, fighting balance, group structures) to only name a few examples. For the Southeast Asia Animal Pack, I had my hand's full juggling all of our eight new animals while doing some minor supporting work for the new Water Customisation and Billboards features, which are free in Update 1.5.
Iād consider there to be four high-level stages in the process that impact my work on the animals.
Firstly, Design does some initial research on which animals would fit into the pack. We tend to research some criteria like conservation status, popularity and population in captivity, and potentially unique behaviours. This list of animals is then triaged by all departments to determine the costs and time required for each animal until we have a selection weāre happy with. Usually, we try to strike a mix between common and unique animals that represent a broad image of the region or theme the pack focuses on.
Once animals are chosen, design consults with an external researcher to get a good understanding of the species, which I couple with my research. This is the time where we get all the work on the animal done. Character, rigging, and animation work on the models, textures, and animations, audio is researching and creating the amazing animal sounds, design sets up all animal data such as lifespan, population, behaviours, etc. and specs out any necessary new animal features, which the gameplay coders then implement into the game. Generally, all departments collaborate very closely on each animal to ensure we can translate all our researched information correctly into the game, such as size differences, colour variations or specific behaviours, etc.
As soon as every department deems the animal to be in a good state we organize a long review meeting with all team members who worked on it where we look at every aspect of the animal close up and in action. This helps us spot any bugs or issues we may have missed so far.
Coming out of a review, the team takes care of any issues that were raised during the review. Simultaneously, Quality Assurance will also flag up anything else that might need eyes on. Once those are taken care of, the animals are ready!
Benjamin:
I am a Senior Sound Designer leading everything audio for Planet Zoo DLC. For the Southeast Asia Animal Pack, there were multiple aspects of audio to cover. Everything from animal research, source collection, and recording, to music direction, implementation and mixing. My most important role is professional animal vocaliser and impersonator. From an audio POV, we go through several stages to breathe life into our wonderful animals. This is how:
We spend a long time looking at and listening to incredible animals. This usually entails watching David Attenborough, Reading articles on Vocalisations and animal behaviour, and plenty of youtube, surprisingly. After we better understand the animals, we start to gather audio of vocalisations and do some recording where appropriate. My cat, Nami helped out with some of the Juvenile Clouded Leopard vocals and I jumped in front of the mic for some subtle grunts.
After we have all the sounds, we give them an edit then Implement them into our game. This is very much like painting with numbers. We have our canvas of sounds and place them into an animal animation, bringing them to life. Finally, we listen to our animals as a whole in the Planet Zoo environment and make final tweaks. Usually, we subtract sounds from the animal, allowing the focus to shift to specific elements we want to highlight. The pat of a tail, the slurp of a drink.
There's a lot of research that goes into the animals, from obvious elements like what they sound like to more subtle behavioural aspects. Our designers spend a long time making tiny adjustments to the weight of an animalās behavioural aspect. How much do they sleep, do they like to be in a group, are they predatory?
Kilian:
Yes exactly, initial research on the animals first and foremost focuses on how theyāre represented in zoos and what kinds of conservation efforts are in place for them. We often share our findings across departments to highlight certain features, such as the range of locomotion, unusual behaviours, or vocalizations to make sure we can represent them in the game.
During development, I consult with an external researcher who compiles some important facts for us and provides the basis for our Zoopedia entries. My research intensifies depending on the area of the animal Iām currently working on ā if Iām working on the animalās habitat or population requirements, I will often read through zoo care manuals or try to find detailed references on zoo websites or in zoo forums. For some animals that are less common in zoos, I often rely on scholarly articles published in nature journals doing studies on very specific things for some species such as size, colour aberrations, communication, and even poop.
If Iām working on the animal behaviours directly, itās best to look at the animals in action, so I get to learn about it by watching documentaries or looking at clips uploaded by people going to zoos or safaris. It helps me break down how much time of its day an animal spends moving, grooming, sleeping, eating, etc., and balance its behaviour this way. Once itās safe to do, Iām also looking to visit zoos again to see some of the animalās behaviours in suitable habitats directly.
India:
On the other hand, finding the right balance between sculpting and painting is important for us Character Artists. Furrier animals donāt need as much sculpting time as something like a crocodile for example, which requires extensive time in Zbrush carving out all those wonderful scales! But the furrier animals do take a bit of time to hand paint in a specific style that our fur shader will read and project the fur shells in an aesthetically pleasing way. Having good reference images is key and also plenty of time to review the animal after itās been animated. They look so different when theyāve been brought to life!
Benjamin:
In Audio, it's interesting to create an animal from an audio POV and balancing Realism with Hyper Realism. Animals both in the wild and zoos tend to be very quiet and not vocal in the slightest. In regards to making an animal believable, we enhance certain aspects of movements and vocalisation. I donāt think there is one specific aspect which is the most important. With audio being towards the end of our workflow, usually, we have the privilege of adding the final element which brings the animals to life. Giving them weight, context, and enhancing whatās already there with sound design. Each discipline uses its technical and creative knowledge to help make the animal whole.
Something that we discovered during development is that Dholes whistle - instead of barking they tend to yip and whistle to communicate. This whistle helps them communicate in the dense foliage locations they inhabit. When initially researching this it blew me away. Having the rest of the team listening to my whistling dogs got some confused faces.
Kai:
In terms of animation, I would say the most important factor development-wise is the general appeal of the animal: How it feels and what it does. We try to pick out the best behaviours that suit the animal as well as stuff that seems iconic or just things players would like to see. For example, we knew that seals doing the banana pose had to get in and we reminded everyone about it until it happened. There's a balance to it all.
India:
I can't wait for people to get their hands on the Proboscis Monkey! That whole family is beyond adorable. Theyāre a wonderfully colourful addition to the other monkeys we have in-game. For the Character Artist team, weāre constantly looking for big ways to improve the look of our animals and always striving to make the next models better than the ones that came before. We're pleased with how the Proboscis Monkey looks!
Kilian:
Having a good communication system while development is underway full steam is essential to ensure weāre all aware of the stage each animal is currently in. We have a meeting with everyone involved in the creation of the animals a few times per week to update everyone on our current progress and any issues, and each animal gets its chat group involving everyone working on it to highlight any bugs or questions that arise.
Iām going to nominate the Clouded Leopard as my personal favourite animal! Iām super stoked weāre releasing these lovely cats into your hands! Iāll also mention the Proboscis Monkey ā it grew on me throughout development and the team has done an amazing job to give this animal some real character.
We'd also like to say from the development team to the community: thanks for your support and passion for Planet Zoo! We hope everyone enjoys the fun features, scenarios, and of course animals coming with 1.5 and the Southeast Asia Animal Pack. Managing the creation of seven habitat animals at once was an exciting challenge for the team and we're looking forward to seeing all the amazing habitats youāll create for all the new arrivals in your zoos!
. Can't wait for tomorrow, and congratulation to Nami for the voice acting lol 
