Hey, builders!
This one is about hands. Specifically, about the fact that ours weren't paying attention to where you were looking 👀
Everything you do in We Build Cabins happens in first person, with something in your grip — a log, a plank, an axe. So when the hands don't agree with the camera, the whole game feels slightly off, even if you can't immediately say why.
Here's how we got from "slightly off" to "correct" 👇
🌲 We started with The Forest
That was our reference point. Items in your hands barely moved with the camera, or followed it only partway. In the early builds that was fine.
Later it stopped being fine. The arms looked stiff, and what you were holding didn't always line up with where you were looking. Once you notice it, you can't stop noticing it.
🎥 So we hooked the body to the camera
The character's torso and arms are now tied to the camera. Look up, look down — the pose changes with you, and the item in your hands follows the movement instead of politely ignoring it.
✋ Then the left hand started improvising
Turns out fixing one thing reveals the next. With two-handed objects — planks, logs, the axe — the left hand would drift off the item or grab it in a way no human would attempt. The right hand did everything correctly. The left one had its own plans.
🔧 The fix: one hand leads, the other follows
We added a correction system for the left hand. The right hand stays the lead, and the left one is calculated from it and from the grip point on the object itself. Now both hands keep their position properly while the camera moves.
In the gifs you can see all three versions in order: the original animations, the camera-linked version, and the final one with left-hand correction. Watching them back to back is the clearest way to see what actually changed.
👁️ Also: getting out of your view
We repositioned held items so they take up less of the screen and stop blocking your view.
That's not just cosmetics. It matters a lot for placing furniture and decor later on — you need to clearly see the surface in front of you and understand exactly where the thing is about to go. Hard to do that with a log parked across half the screen.
Speaking of which: the decor placement system gets its own devlog soon 🛋️
Watch the comparison and tell us what you think — if something still looks wrong in the way the hands move, we'd rather hear it now than after you've built your whole cabin with it. Comments are open.
See you in Devlog #4 🪓
Project Zima team