I actually like some simple loops during sex scenes, so... occasional animations, I guess?

Thank you so much for posting this poll, Mortze!

It's something I've been curious about forever myself. As a player, I appreciate animation that works with the story, adds to the scene plays in line. If it's say an embedded movie file to show the animation and the experience doesn't "Flow," then imho, it's not worth it.

However, as a creator, animation is something I would love to do more of but don't given that Daz's animation tools (hm, that plugin on their site, forget the name). The whole aniblock thing. It's decent but I have so many issues with things not working...eg, click a character, move them a bit and things will jump to a new location. Or if you try to use an existing aniblock with a new character there seems to be artifacts that appear on the time line and I have to delete an empty timeline 2-3 times before it really cleans out the history or whatever. Frustrating.

For a more story driven experience more static renders, especially ones that are well done, can be a decent but imperfect substitute for well done animation.

I also found DAZ's aniblocks to be really hard to use, but there's a different system that works much better. I can't remember what it's called, but Mortze will know, because I got it for him. (-:

As a game designer and storyteller, I find animations where Mortze gives me a bunch of jpgs that I animate with AC2 to be ideal. Back in the day when these games used gifs, I felt they got in the way. The boundary between "image" and "animation" was too big. But when it's "string together some jpgs" I have a lot more control, and I think it works well. I often use an image or two from the animation in a static page, then vary the animations in rate or frames (maybe making it go slow then faster, or animate part way then more, etc). There's no question in my mind that occasional animations give me more ability to tell the story.

I think all the people who are saying, "skip the animations and do more images" are ... misguided.

Tlaero

tlaero wrote:I also found DAZ's aniblocks to be really hard to use, but there's a different system that works much better. I can't remember what it's called, but Mortze will know, because I got it for him. (-:

I use mostly Keymate if that's what you mean. Before that (DwE and beggining of RfJ) I used the Pupeteer function in DAZ.

tlaero wrote:I also found DAZ's aniblocks to be really hard to use, but there's a different system that works much better. I can't remember what it's called, but Mortze will know, because I got it for him. (-:

As a game designer and storyteller, I find animations where Mortze gives me a bunch of jpgs that I animate with AC2 to be ideal. Back in the day when these games used gifs, I felt they got in the way. The boundary between "image" and "animation" was too big. But when it's "string together some jpgs" I have a lot more control, and I think it works well. I often use an image or two from the animation in a static page, then vary the animations in rate or frames (maybe making it go slow then faster, or animate part way then more, etc). There's no question in my mind that occasional animations give me more ability to tell the story.

I think all the people who are saying, "skip the animations and do more images" are ... misguided.

Tlaero

Yeah, I liked the animations in Elsa and Jessika, the ones done with Adventure Creator.

That's it. Keymate. There was also a "Graphmate" but I remember using Keymate more. It was pretty natural. You'd set up frames as "key frames" and it would animate the transitions between them. I just remember there being some weirdness with facial expressions. Still, it's worth checking out, Jillian.

Tlaero

A little late to the thread, but I'll add in my view.

I like seeing animated loops, but I think they're only important for the sex scenes. Animations else where in the game rarely add too much.

In Redemption for Jessika terms, I would gladly have swapped things like the animated tour of Jessika's apartment and Sylvia flashing her breasts, in exchange for some animations in the bonus scene, or the early scene where Sara and Sylvia are having sex.

The evolution of graphics has spoiled me. I personally prefer more developed pics with text rather than funny and limited animations.
Besides, as i understand it, even a perfect 5 minutes movie can take months to create.

I like animations if they are really well done and smooth. The problem is, if you want to make it right, a good 2-3 second animation takes 200 frames or more and this will take forever to render. And when it's done you only have one single scene where at the same time you could have done a lot of different non-animated sex scenes with different angles.

Problem I have with animations is, while Daz gives you better looking models, movement looks unnatural.



This isn't mine, but I love the hair movement achieved here.