Dark's Animations For SL + SLAL, WIP (21/05/2016)

[darkevilhum]

Current Ver 0.3

 

I'd just like to give a big thanks to the LL Community, CE0 for his great tutorials and SirNibbles for answering my unending storm of questions regarding animation   . More animations to come!

 

I will get a basic install guide for the SLAL Pack asap, but it's the same as everything else, extract the archive and paste into your data directory. Obivously you need SLAL (Sexlab Animation Loader) and all it's requirements.

 

Intro:

 

So I've been around on LL for a long time, always wanted to give back to the community. But whenever I tried, i'd get the tools setup and have a go and I found most things fairly easy (save for animation) but they never held my interest. So I've been in a long cycle of have a go here and there, get bored, give up.

 
Well today I got past the give up stage and actually made my first animation (art and animating are my bane as a programmer by day).
 
I'd love opinions and constructive criticism as to how I can improve. Particularly how I can make the motion more life like, it feels very robotic to me atm.

I will release my animations when I think they're decent and complete because right now all I have is a single loop. In regards to theme, I reckon we're lacking sex animations that involve bondage play so I'll probably go down that route. (As the gif might give away huehue).
 
Some questions I have also;
 
Am I right in assuming that for SexLab paired animations you need two animations? One for male and one for female per stage?
 

 

 

Previews (NSFW):

Two gif previews per animation, even though some animations can have a lot of variance and 5 stages+. 

 

 

Lifted Anal Bound

 

 

 

 

 

Standing Bound

 

 

 

 

 

Cowgirl Bound

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changelog:

 

 

Update 5: I don goofed, missnamed a folder causing the animations not to be read, fixed.

 

Update 4(21/05/2016): Smoothed Lifted_Anal_Bound quite a bit, added Standing_Bound and Cowgirl_Bound animations.

Added all animations to an SLAL pack which is down below, I haven't test that yet. (Going to soon).

 

Update 3: Once I check out my first animation in game, I will likely smooth it up a bit using SirNibbles advice. Also uploading some previews of what animation I'm going for next.

 

Update 2(18/05/2016): I think I rushed a little but it was mainly because I felt like I needed to feel a sense of completion for my first animation set so that I can hold onto the drive to do another. Adding a download for 'Lifed Bound Anal' 4 stage animation, would appreciate if someone could test it out in game etc (i'm strapped for time atm). This is a release as a resource only, feel free to put it in game via a pack or whatever as long as you reference me   Cheers.

On a site note, I will try and get up to date gif previews up once I have time!

 

Update 1: Taking a lot of SirNibbles suggestions to heart, I tried refining as best I could. The new gifs appear a bit unsmooth because of the video>gif framerate conversion but there is still that pause at the end. What's the recommended frame count for a single stage? (I used 30 here and feel like  I need more to allow for a smoother transition/ loop across the keys)

 

 

 

 

Dark's SLAL Animation Pack V0.3.zip

[SirNibbles]

You're right on the male/female stages, when you're finished animating just export the female animation and the male animation apart from each other.

 

As for some tips that I noticed after seeing your gif (tips that could improve the animation in my opinion, I can't speak for the other animators opinions),

First remember Newton's Third Law : "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction", try to let either the male or female react to each other's movements be it neccesary (for example give the feet some simple animation after the female gets penetrated etc).

second try to make the female's head frame some less sudden, sudden movements aren't wrong but don't make it too sudden otherwise it will look unrealistic.

And something I personally discovered a little too late into the animating game was the extra options for feet/fingers

 

And try to set some keyframes a few frames forward or backwards, For example:

 

male:

 

female:

the keyframes don't have to by symmetrical, for example I've set the keyframes for the female's animation 3 frames after the male's frame and added a movement for the (spine?) controller  and made the female's head movement less sudden plus put the head frames also a bit forward.

So it goes from this (just a quick reenaction to show what I mean):

 

to this:

 

[darkevilhum]

You're right on the male/female stages, when you're finished animating just export the female animation and the male animation apart from each other.

 

As for some tips that I noticed after seeing your gif (tips that could improve the animation in my opinion, I can't speak for the other animators opinions),

First remember Newton's Third Law : "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction", try to let either the male or female react to each other's movements be it neccesary (for example give the feet some simple animation after the female gets penetrated etc).

second try to make the female's head frame some less sudden, sudden movements aren't wrong but don't make it too sudden otherwise it will look unrealistic.

And something I personally discovered a little too late into the animating game was the extra options for feet/fingers

 

And try to set some keyframes a few frames forward or backwards, For example:

 

male:

 

female:

the keyframes don't have to by symmetrical, for example I've set the keyframes for the female's animation 3 frames after the male's frame and added a movement for the (spine?) controller  and made the female's head movement less sudden plus put the head frames also a bit forward.

So it goes from this (just a quick reenaction to show what I mean):

 

to this:

 

 

Wow some super helpful insight. Thank you for this! I will refine it next pass whilst keeping all of those points in mind. I did already try to add some reactionary movement ( like in the feet ) but I guess it's far too subtle atm.

 

[darkevilhum]

Added my first animation, I'm sure I messed something up somewhere in which case let me know so i can sort it out asap before starting my next animation 

[SirNibbles]

Just tested them in game via SLAL, and they're a lot better then my first animations.

 

One thing you forgot to do was make the 4th stage loop, I don't know if it was intended to not loop but it won't work like this.

You can either make the 4th stage 180 frames+ and adjust it via the script.txt files for SLAL or make it loop, otherwise it looks kinda weird. (180 frames+ otherwise SLAL doesn't read it half of the times.)

 

As another tip, I see you wrote that you made the animations 30 frames; my current standard is 120 frames because I can implement frames for extra things, breathing for example (I usually put those somewhere around frame 1-30-60-90-120) and make some head movements (which I usually put somewhere around 1-40-80-120).

 

Also another thing, when you finished animating the scene (let's grab your 30 frame animation for example) I put all the frames that are on frame 30 to frame 31 while keeping the animation frame reach on 30; that way you'll get a better looping transition.

 

 

*Just select all controllers and move the keys to frame 31, while keeping the animation frame end time on 30.

 

And yes can you can link controllers to each other, and also unlink (the hand controllers are linked to some of the body controllers for example)

 

 

The one I circled here is for unlinking, and the one left to the circled one is for linking.

 

And one last thing, when you convert the animations to .hkx files try to use the following name structure for actor1 "Lifed_Bound_Anal_A1_S1" and for actor2 "Lifed_Bound_Anal_A1_S2" otherwise it needs renaming every time.

 

 

I've attached a copy of the files I used to test them in game.

Just take a look for yourself how they look like in game. (You need SLAL though, just install via drag and drop or use NMM or MO and run FNIS after that)

SLAL DarkAnims 0.1.rar

[darkevilhum]

Snip

 

Thanks again SirNibbles, always very helpful. Will give them a look in game asap. I'm not actually sure what you mean about the 4th stage, It's a climax stage (a bad one for sure ) so I didn't think it needed to loop, although I used the same export settings etc, wouldn't it just continue to play from the start when used but look a little odd? Though i suppose it was quite short for an ending stage, so If i just set it to 180 frames +, do I leave those frames blank and re-export?

 

That tip about the frames 30-31 was something I was trying to do in order to somewhat 'blend' the ends together, had no clue how though haha thanks.

 

Oh one last thing, the file naming conventions, does it matter which animation A1/A2 refers to? (male/female?)  A being actor and S being stage right? or is it A = animation and S = ?

Cheers!

[SirNibbles]

 

Snip

 

Thanks again SirNibbles, always very helpful. Will give them a look in game asap. I'm not actually sure what you mean about the 4th stage, It's a climax stage (a bad one for sure ) so I didn't think it needed to loop, although I used the same export settings etc, wouldn't it just continue to play from the start when used but look a little odd? Though i suppose it was quite short for an ending stage, so If i just set it to 180 frames +, do I leave those frames blank and re-export?

 

That tip about the frames 30-31 was something I was trying to do in order to somewhat 'blend' the ends together, had no clue how though haha thanks.

 

Oh one last thing, the file naming conventions, does it matter which animation A1/A2 refers to? (male/female?)  A being actor and S being stage right? or is it A = animation and S = ?

Cheers!

 

Well the 4th stage starts fine, but when it finishes it starts from the beginning without transitioning; so it teleports both actors back to the starting positions. This can be either fixed by making the 4th stage like the rest by making the actors move to the starting position again (making it loop like the rest) after "cumming"; or by making the animation at least 180+ frames and set a timer via the scripting in SLAL so it will only play once.

(But I suggest u take a look at them in game to get a better description from what I've explained here, I'm trying to explain it to my fullest capability but english isn't my native language so my explanation might come over a bit strange)

 

And for the A/S on the end, A means indeed actor and S means stage.

The "A" naming just gives them a value of "actor1" and "actor2", via scripting you can assign which actor plays the role of female and which actor plays the role of male. (I just assigned "A1" to female and "A2" to male in this quickly pulled together script).

[darkevilhum]

Update V0.3 added, if anyone fancies testing the pack out for me, I'm having some FNIS troubles atm (My FNIS generate is taking over 20 minutes at a time)

[bytion]

Update V0.3 added, if anyone fancies testing the pack out for me, I'm having some FNIS troubles atm (My FNIS generate is taking over 20 minutes at a time)

It's working, all 3 of them, about the animations, there is some strange micro twitching in Standing bound, not sure it's the animation itself or something wrong with my setup.

[darkevilhum]

 

Update V0.3 added, if anyone fancies testing the pack out for me, I'm having some FNIS troubles atm (My FNIS generate is taking over 20 minutes at a time)

It's working, all 3 of them, about the animations, there is some strange micro twitching in Standing bound, not sure it's the animation itself or something wrong with my setup.

 

 

I had a quick test run of all three in game and they seemed fine, did you notice this in the whole animation or a specific stage?

[bytion]

 

 

Update V0.3 added, if anyone fancies testing the pack out for me, I'm having some FNIS troubles atm (My FNIS generate is taking over 20 minutes at a time)

It's working, all 3 of them, about the animations, there is some strange micro twitching in Standing bound, not sure it's the animation itself or something wrong with my setup.

 

 

I had a quick test run of all three in game and they seemed fine, did you notice this in the whole animation or a specific stage?

 

 

just the 1st stage, and only in 1st person view, so I am not sure it's the animations or something else.

[Guest]

great stuff hope theres more to come

[darkevilhum]

great stuff hope theres more to come

 

Thanks! I'm working progressively so that I end up putting out more animations per update than the last (3-4 atm). As it's my first time animating, I keep learning new stuff and end up going back to improve the older ones too so it's quite a timely process. But more to come for sure!

 

Teaser