How Do I make an Object with an Animation?

Hi John-Sims,
Animations aren't possible yet. There has been some testing with this, but there's something wrong within the game engine itself that makes it very hard to make our own animations at this point. It probably will be available in future, but I can't say when as it also depends on EA itself.

Feyona
That's one of the few animated objects right now. He also made "Duncan the drinking bird toy" that can be found in our The Sims 4 DLC Pack: Household stuff.

Both those object go from left to right or up and down. Rotating objects, like for a clock isn't possible yet, without seeing some stuttering. When Studio will be able to make custom animations, there will be a more easier tutorial written by Orangemittens probably. But for now it isn't that easy as it maybe looks in Andrews steps.

Bakie did you see Veranka's water wheel? I didn't test in the game but animation seems looks good on this video and it's spinning. I don't know what program she used. I suspect that instead of creating new animation she could use new shader that came with SP "Backyard stuff" (spinning flower), as per SimguruGraham every object with this shader applied will spin.

No this is not entirely correct. There are different types of animations.

Until recent all TS4 (at least so far as I am aware) animations were described in the ASM (Animated State Machine). In the ASM, each animation is attached to a specific "state" of an object and when the object is in that state the ASM calls the appropriate animation(s), which are in separate clip files. The ASM files basically describe which animations to play at what moment (to take yoga as an example, the ASM describes different states such as idle, yoga poses, and the possible transitions between poses and, for each one, calls upon the appropriate clips). These clips are hand-made custom animations that apply only to that object.

From what I understand, Backyard Stuff was the first pack to introduce another type of animation, which comes in the form of a shader. Basically, the shader refers to a generic "movement" (in this case spinning), which can be applied to any object. It bypasses the ASM and is instead read and rendered directly be the game engine like all shaders are. This is not really an animation in the traditional sense of the word, more like a new way in which the game can render an object (spinning around).

I have never looked at how the GTW objects work, however. Perhaps that was their first attempt at building this specific shader? Or they may have been traditional, ASM described, animations. Or none of the above, considering EA has ways of creating in-game assets that we do not (like simulating "wind").

Geostates are not vital for animations. Geostates are two or more separate meshes that are switched depending on the state of the item. So, for example, the item can have a dial that is meshed on the object. When it's on the dial shows a mesh with the arrow in one position and when it's off it shows the mesh with dial in another.

True animation doesn't require different meshes and therefore it doesn't require geostates and animation state machines have nothing to do with geostates.

Andrew and I started a tutorial (more like finished it...it has well over 150 illustrations and steps) showing how to animate an object when we ran into a flaw in the game. It's a problem with render times that causes all animations...even EA's own animations, to skip and stutter. I posted about this at EA forums and I guess this lame shader solution is their answer to fixing the problem. It doesn't bode well for the idea that they'll ever bother to fix their game so it plays right and this is quite disappointing. The use of shaders instead of true animation may severely limit what modders are able to accomplish.

ETA: shaders for animation have been used in previous Sims games. For example, if you apply the plumbob shader to an item in Sims 3 it will appear to "animate" the object.

Thank you for the explanation orangemittens ! It is a shame to hear about that problem indeed.