Animations vs more in depth content

[khumak]

I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on the importance of animations in an adult game vs more of a focus on still shots but with more actual content. I'm still struggling to get good at animations while working on my mod, but from a time management perspective it takes me about a week to do an animation on my slow POS computer. In the same amount of time I can do a fairly in depth and fully illustrated scene with dialog and choices for the player. Or I can do 1 sex animation and nothing else. This is assuming I have a full week off of work so I can actually do a full day's work on it every day.

Most of the games I've played from this site suffer from this same type of issue from what I've noticed. If the game is heavy on animations, it tends to be pretty light on actual content. If it's mostly still shots then it tends to be more in depth. And by animations I don't just mean plugging your models into one of those Stimuli animations without adjustments, I mean a polished animation where hand/mouth/genital placement/etc is actually correct (touching the other model without clipping, etc). That means manally tweaking every frame. Some people are good at that. I'm not yet.

I tend to think I'm better off focusing mostly on still shots and then maybe try to do 1 animation for a big scene as sort of a finale instead of trying to turn every sex scene into an animation. Then again, posing scenes for still shots used to be a lot more difficult for me and it's gotten a lot easier with practice. I wonder how much easier animations would get if I really practiced them a lot? Being a DIK is one of the rare exceptions I've seen where the game is pretty in depth while also having good animations (although he does have some clipping issues).

 

[Rythan25]

Depth content >>>> animations

I dont know how many times I faceplam and get cancer everytime that one poster goes to every new or even old classic game just to spout his same asinine line and leave...

"does this game have animations ? EDIT - just checked it doesnt, into the garbage bin"

I mean what a ..... *counts to ten*... silly reason to ignore a game...

Honestly very few people do animations right... some do alright with their original animations, and others just put in janky ugly 3 render animations that look awful... and then there are those criticized for using the smooth as butter "animation loops" where you just inject your own character and let it fly (despite those looking the best so far still)...so basically animations is almost a no-win situation...

 

[pasunna]

can't say until see your work
all dev had their strong point
if the depth you say is really good you don't need animation at all
but that depend on how good it is
by myself... animation is nothing without dialogue or reason before sex
because I watch porn every day...
I had seen good sex scene with hot woman of my type in motion every day
don't want more of just that
and that why I do not like to play renpy game... without mechanic or mini game
well... I wanna play a game not read a book... or watch porn

 

[Avaron1974]

I prefer content over animations.

Unless a dev is interested in making animations personally not just to please players I think they should avoid them.

Shit animations ruin scenes. Those stop frame animations like those in Dreams of Desire or those made by people learning look shit, there are no two ways about it.

Every single sex scene in Dreams of Desire is terrible. It's like watching 2 people stuck together with crazy glue having an epileptic fit during an 80's disco. Nothing about it is sexy or hot, it's just janky eyebeall fucking nonsense.

I stopped playing Dreams of Desire and many game like it when the jumpy scenes started making me feel sea sick while sat perfectly still at my desk.

Some devs can do great animations but even then they take a long time and content shrinks to fit the time in.

If they know what they are doing like say, Philly, then fine. I'd even go as far as saying the animations there are needed. The way he sets a scene and animates them even if they aren't sex scenes make that game and set an atmosphere no still frame could.

But he has a beast of a rig and knows what he's doing.

A lot of amateur devs I see are trying to render on potato powered toasters and the chances of them making a decent animated scene are on par with with me waking up one morning to find Natalie Portman's face between my thigs tongue punching my clit while my girlfriend cooks me breakfast in bed that is served by a naked Eliza dushku ... in other words it aint happening and that's a fucking shame, i'd love a naked Eliza Dushku maid.

A games story, depth and characters are far more important than a moving scene.

If a dev believes he/she/attack helicopter/gender fluid tumblr tart believes they can create decent looking animations that aren't going to leave people reaching for the sick bucket wondering why a multi limbed monstrosity is trying to dance the Cha Cha Slide on their monitor then go for it.

However if you have as much talent at making animations as I do in understanding just what the fuck contemporary dance is supposed to mean (seriously, ever watch those dance shows and they say "that dance told a beautiful story" and all I saw was some bitch in lycra throw their arms around and fall over a lot ... i'm missing something) then just don't.

 

[Conquestus]

Personally I found animations oftenly even annoying and simply try to skip em. I don't need to see that dick going inside on an infinite loop, while she makes the ever same weird expression. A bit more textual depth + nice shots are way more exciting, in my opinion.

 

[SpikeZg]

content ofc... example game: no more secrets (no animations but great story)
animations are great if they are done right and they bring life to game

but only a few devs on F95 are creating awesome looking animations

 

[khumak]

I think most people's skill at animation is pretty bad and I'm definitely not an exception in that regard. In my case the only way I can make an animation that looks fairly smooth is to use a plugin like one of the Stimuli series and tweak it a little so hand/body/genital placement/etc is correct (no clipping/etc). If I try to make my own animations from scratch they tend to look jerky and very amateurish. I can do still shots that look the way I want but trying to get them to work as a smooth animation is something I just haven't mastered so far.

I've found that for my skill level it seems to work better if instead of doing an animation I separate the positions that would normally make up the animation by changes in perspective. So for instance instead of a jerky animation that doesn't look right, you see a close up shot where the guy is just barely inside, then a shot where the girl is moaning/saying something/whatever that shows a close up of her face with him grabbing her neck or groping her tits or something, then another shot where one of them is saying/thinking something that shows the full scene and he's mid way inside, then another close up where he's all the way inside, etc. So you still get the full effect of them fucking but it's not an animation and usually less total renders as well.

I'm curious whether people who are good at making original animations (no plugins like stimuli/etc) are just really skilled at posing in Daz to do those animations or whether they're using some other tool. In my case, if I try to do an animation that includes more than 2 or 3 images without using one of those animation plugins usually I can't get the parts that I want to move to follow a smooth trajectory. I get things to go in the right direction but the angle is a bit off and frequently wavers back and forth or up an down a bit so it just looks wrong. I also struggle with the fact that for an animation to look believable, for the actors involved in the animation, pretty much every part of their body has to move at least a little or it just looks wrong (and for it to look believable those body parts need to move by different amounts and along different planes, not just shifting the entire body in 1 direction or something).

I have no idea how someone can do one of those animations that are smooth and natural looking with no strange wavering or jerking around, no clipping, no unnaturally motionless body parts, etc. IMO if you can do that it's definitely worth it but I personally can't.

 

[crewfalcons]

I think one of the big problems is since soooo many games in the VN category usually are made with DAZ or Honey Select you either have:

A) seen all of the animations before (if they are from honey select)

or

B) most developers don't seem to be very good with creating animations with DAZ

The sad thing (when it comes to DAZ) is there are HUNDREDS of poses and animations already available (and some that are quite good) on sites like Renderotica (heck there's some here on F95 you can download in the Assets section) but I'm guessing some people don't want to spend a little bit of cash on them (if you're getting them from an asset site) and rather try and do it themselves? (haha to varying degrees of success )

I like animations -- if they fit the story, the dialogues well written, the setting and build up are pulled off correctly, etc -- especially if the animations are unique or hand drawn (adds that unique "I've never seen this before" feel to it). Like SpikeZg said - animations can bring a little life into the story especially if you feel like you've been reading never ending walls of text.

 

[Volta]

Depth of content is always better, animation is the icing on the cake, pretty pointless without the cake.

However there is an argument for animations, though i don't think they are worth the time compared to stills, they do add a lot of character to a game, but so often they aren't done well, the movement is shoddy, clunky, unnatural or some combination of the above, whereas renders don't have that issue, it's just a matter of posing once rather than posing a whole movement, something that is way harder than setting up a single still shot.

On the whole i value 20 renders above a single short animation, devs think that time spent rendering/animating is directly proportional to quality or impact in the final scene, it isn't, good writing matters more than an individual render, a group of good renders matters more than an individual animation, note how writing is faster than rendering is faster than animating.

Basically animation alone won't save or make a game, good writing will, good rendering will in some cases, make better use of your time and effort, stick to renders till your gear can hack animations quickly enough for them not to take a whole day, just my two cents.

 

[SeventhVixen]

All my animations are made from scratch, if I can start from a pose (knelling, laying) and then modifying the better.
It's not because I'm good at them, cause I'm not (I had & have some terrible animations, and I redid several of them and even not happy with them (Avaron1974 when you play again possibly half of all renders of that hour of gameplay have been redone.. but well that is mostly because the hardware limitations I had), is just that usually I use a lot of the furniture in the surroundings as part of the scene (supporting herself on a stool, jumping over with the wall on the back, over a barrel...) and also they're usually half dress, because is spontaneous sex (generally), so I have to animate the clothes too.

And even if I'm not very pleased with the quality of some animations, I like them in my game. Even if I cannot assess well my own game, when I play I enjoy more the setup of still images and the two or three frames little animations fades (that is, getting a good timing fading some images over the others instead of just changing many frames per second). BUT, I like some animations in the game I play.

Anyway, there is no dispute over what is better, animations vs content. If you are making a porn game is possible that if animations are the strong point, just more and better animations. If is a story driven adult sexy game, if one has to choose, well, of course more content. But one can always try to make both, is not a race.

And

Depth of content is always better, animation is the icing on the cake, pretty pointless without the cake.

this.

 

[HopesGaming]

Animations 'requirements and demands' mostly started after milfy city. Once that got out and the boom happened the 'if this game doesn't have an animation I won't play' talks happened.
Then a lot of really bad animation started to appear due to dev being affected by such talks and people were like 'nah fam, just don't fam...'
Nowadays people are mostly okay with anything as long as it's quality.

Personally I try to add a couple of animations in. This is because I want to improve on that aspect. Of course, not all of my animations get in the game as they are terrible and even some terrible ones are in the game still. But alas, you can't let the fear of the garbage deter you from learning to turn that garbage into something beautiful.
Most of the amazing devs out there with amazing animation didn't start with amazing animation. They started with amazingly bad animations.

 

[Ragnar]

Give me the content, do animations when you complete your game if you want.

 

[Floga]

I prefer animations when they are done right, I mean really right. Even when they are fluid, I prefer faster animations like in Babysitter and Becoming a Rockstar to slower ones like in BADIK, Milfy City or Timestamps. The game with one of the best animations according to me is The Visit.
Having said that, I absolutely love static sex scenes where facial expressions are on point matched by good writing. Some f the games that implement this perfectly are No More Secrets, Sins of the Father and Sisterly Lust.

 

[Xavster]

I would have to concur with most of the responses here, that content is far more important than animations. However having said this, animations can add quite a bit, provided they are done correctly. Unless the animation hits a certain level of quality, it will actually detract from the game. Additionally if you are not experienced with scene lighting and how to optimise in order to increase convergence rate, they simply take too much time.

I am also running on fairly modest hardware (GTX 1060), however have included several animations in the latest revision of my game. These took probably 2 hours on average to pose and about 1/2 day to render out (range between 80 and 240 frames). If you do the posing for planned animations reasonably early in the development cycle, you can use your batch render to process these during times of the development time, where you are not working on other rendering.

 

[desmosome]

I haven't read all the comments, but this is a topic I'm very passionate about.

Animation vs content is a concern, but the bigger issue is mainly that most devs think slapping on some animation makes for a complete scene. This is my biggest gripe. Even some of the biggest and most popular games on the western front suffer from this. Animation without proper sexual banter is absolute shit. I don't care how flawless the animation is. Of course, everyone has different tastes, but I have a hard time imagining anyone just wanking it to a 3 second loop without any kind of mental stimulation. In this sense, not only does animation take an exponentially longer time to render than still shots, it often makes the scenes worse due to the dialogue being neglected. In a perfect world, there would be a bunch of still shots with a bit of descriptive text and a lot of sexual talk, mixed in with animations that runs alongside the dialogue.

Now look at games on the japanese front. I can sometimes bust 2-3 nuts on one scene in Black/Anime Lilith games. The dominant kinks being my favorite ones helps with this of course, but its mostly how the scenes are made. Even with only 2-4 2DCGs with variations, the dialogue adds such an incredible amount of eroticism and depravity.

Of course, writing sex dialogue that is better than just "ahhh ahh, harder, I'm cumming!" is kind of hard, but I find that devs are leaning on animations too much to carry a scene.

 

[Avaron1974]

'if this game doesn't have an animation I won't play' talks happened.

Most of those are ignored now. The "do X or I won't play your game" crowd aren't worth bothering with.

They will push for what they want in any given game until that dev hates what they are making and drops it altogether. Now, fortunately, the majority of developers ignore them completely.

I play games to see what a developer can do not what they are forced to do by random forum dwellers. If a dev is new and has no experience making animations then they don't need to do anything. As long as what they put out is of decent quality there is no problem.

Take your game for instance. Even if you never added animations you'd still have a well developed story people that read it love. Sure a bit of flash on top is great but it isn't needed.

The problem is you get the vocal few that have no idea what goes on behind the scenes for any given developer and expect them all to have Icstor's team behind them.

Sure there are devs like Philly who can put out some visually stunning work but he's running a beast of a rig with far more knowledge and experience than the majority of amateur devs that get into this.

The downside to animating sex scenes is they make or break the game. Said it once, i'll repeat it for this, I can't play Dreams of Desire or games like that because the scenes are ruined by some of the worst animated sex scenes i've ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.

It's less animation and more frames looped to show movement and it looks shit. Which means every single scene in the game looks shit. Sure it's subjective and i'm sure there are people that don't mind it but it's not what I want to see.

 

[MrJBJ]

Bad animation is worse than no animation.

 

[thecardinal]

Animations take a long time to render. Summertime Saga has better "animations" than most Daz games, and it's just 3-4 looped images made to look like an animation. Plus that method gives a developer lots more versatility, because there are 12 animations for Daz and we've already seen them dozens of times.

 

[Deleted member 645861]

I prefer content over animations.

Unless a dev is interested in making animations personally not just to please players I think they should avoid them.

Shit animations ruin scenes. Those stop frame animations like those in Dreams of Desire or those made by people learning look shit, there are no two ways about it.

Every single sex scene in Dreams of Desire is terrible. It's like watching 2 people stuck together with crazy glue having an epileptic fit during an 80's disco. Nothing about it is sexy or hot, it's just janky eyebeall fucking nonsense.

I stopped playing Dreams of Desire and many game like it when the jumpy scenes started making me feel sea sick while sat perfectly still at my desk.

Some devs can do great animations but even then they take a long time and content shrinks to fit the time in.

If they know what they are doing like say, Philly, then fine. I'd even go as far as saying the animations there are needed. The way he sets a scene and animates them even if they aren't sex scenes make that game and set an atmosphere no still frame could.

But he has a beast of a rig and knows what he's doing.

A lot of amateur devs I see are trying to render on potato powered toasters and the chances of them making a decent animated scene are on par with with me waking up one morning to find Natalie Portman's face between my thigs tongue punching my clit while my girlfriend cooks me breakfast in bed that is served by a naked Eliza dushku ... in other words it aint happening and that's a fucking shame, i'd love a naked Eliza Dushku maid.

A games story, depth and characters are far more important than a moving scene.
nimate
If a dev believes he/she/attack helicopter/gender fluid tumblr tart believes they can create decent looking animations that aren't going to leave people reaching for the sick bucket wondering why a multi limbed monstrosity is trying to dance the Cha Cha Slide on their monitor then go for it.

However if you have as much talent at making animations as I do in understanding just what the fuck contemporary dance is supposed to mean (seriously, ever watch those dance shows and they say "that dance told a beautiful story" and all I saw was some bitch in lycra throw their arms around and fall over a lot ... i'm missing something) then just don't.

Blood sweat and tears...to do your own animations but if you don't make them often you will never get better at them...personally speaking i have found that if you don't face a "challenge" you will never progress...and learn from it...my approach is test it in viewport rendering before you commit in Iray rendering...you will never find also how it can become good if you don't know how to utilize frame animation through photoshop...for example, in a series of crappy frames i pick the good ones and through manipulation on frame rate speed and multiplication i have a gif or a small-long animation which then it can be further worked in a video editing software...NO PAIN NO GAIN

 

[Deleted member 645861]

Animations take a long time to render. Summertime Saga has better "animations" than most Daz games, and it's just 3-4 looped images made to look like an animation. Plus that method gives a developer lots more versatility, because there are 12 animations for Daz and we've already seen them dozens of times.

True...but you can still "milk" them further through your own variations...on angle zoom of your camera, additional changes in moving hair, limbs, neck head, expressions, plus ani-blocks adition, scenery, add multiple partners, wardrobe, cum effects, sound effects etc etc...we don't have sight only we have hearing too!!!

https://f95zone.to/threads/daz3d-bestiality.2485/post-11148180

in the zip file an example....of milking plain aniblocks and using sound effects...to "cook" a doggy lover animation...just for fun not for developing a game!!!