VaM 1.x Thinking about creating my first scene – a few doubts before starting

[Bernom]

Hey everyone,


I’ve been using Virt-A-Mate for a few months now, and honestly, I spend more time modifying existing scenes and adding things I like than actually using it for its sexual purpose. I just enjoy tweaking stuff, experimenting, and watching the characters come to life.

After playing around for a while, I think I’ve learned enough to finally start building my first scene and maybe share it with the community — free or paid, depending on how it turns out.
Still, there are a few things I’m not good at (or simply don’t enjoy), so I thought I’d make my first post here to ask for some advice.

First, about animations. I’m not really good at animating (and to be honest, I don’t enjoy it much either). Is there any easier way to animate than going bone by bone inside VaM? Maybe some plugin, external tool, or alternative method that makes the process less painful?

Because of that, I was thinking about using animations from other scenes. Not copying them entirely, but maybe taking short parts that I like and combining them to build something new — adding my own variations like adjusting timing, changing poses a bit, etc.
However, I’ve heard that even if you only copy one or two seconds from a longer animation, it could still be considered plagiarism. So I’d rather ask first: do creators usually do this, or does everyone make their animations completely from scratch, muscle by muscle?
If that’s the case, I might honestly give up on animating altogether, because I can’t find any good tutorials and it’s just not the part I enjoy the most.

Lastly, about voices. I’d like to add some more personality to the audio instead of using the default moans that come with VaM. Is hiring a voice actress the only option, or are there legal voice libraries or other alternatives people use?

Thanks in advance for any advice or recommendations!

 

[hazmhox]

First, about animations. I’m not really good at animating (and to be honest, I don’t enjoy it much either). Is there any easier way to animate than going bone by bone inside VaM? Maybe some plugin, external tool, or alternative method that makes the process less painful?

Nope. Besides some potential plugins to animate the thrusting motion, the rest is either mocap ( with multiple trackers ), manual mocap (by hand) or manual animation. The last ones (manual mocap and manual anim) are totally doable with a bit of habit. Look at Scary Mary, it's fully manually mocapped and hand animated either the ghost mirror animation or anything else. Mostly by Spacedog and I did a handful of additional anims.

Because of that, I was thinking about using animations from other scenes. Not copying them entirely, but maybe taking short parts that I like and combining them to build something new — adding my own variations like adjusting timing, changing poses a bit, etc.
However, I’ve heard that even if you only copy one or two seconds from a longer animation, it could still be considered plagiarism. So I’d rather ask first: do creators usually do this, or does everyone make their animations completely from scratch, muscle by muscle?
If that’s the case, I might honestly give up on animating altogether, because I can’t find any good tutorials and it’s just not the part I enjoy the most.

VAM's resources works based on a license system. Anything CC (besides non derivative) is fair game, they're here to be used : )
That "plagiarism" thing is false, the license matters. Just use them and don't be too lazy, edit them ; )
People share content for it to be played or used... don't forget to properly credit and mention people.

Animation is a process that comes over time. I wouldn't show my first anims compared to what I do now. I don't consider myself a good animator, but I think it works enough for my own taste and quality standards. ( wip example of an incoming scene ). I did not look at animation tutorials, I looked at animation knowledge ( anime, cartoons, real animation tips & tricks and books on the subject, body mechanics and so on ).

Lastly, about voices. I’d like to add some more personality to the audio instead of using the default moans that come with VaM. Is hiring a voice actress the only option, or are there legal voice libraries or other alternatives people use?

No, there are not really legit libraries of moans. You have a bunch of choices in VAMMoan and VAMMoan 2. But trust me, if you're asking yourself that question... you're not ready for the answer. By that I mean, you did not dig enough to find out that voice is not cheap and comes with constraints.

VAMMoan 2 recordings for VAM 2 costs several digits, something you're probably not able to commission. And if you want something nice enough for a scene, you can count on a several hundred bucks just for a couple minutes of moan if you're lucky. And if you want actual VA, this can quickly get expensive.

If there was actual easy libraries, content or audio available for that kind of use. The community would have made a ton of content. You now know why I'm probably one of the rare creators who has ever tackled the subject.
You'll notice that some creators have paid for VA, but all and all, it's never really fun nor possible to use VA for a specific scene in another one.

 

[hazmhox]

Good luck with your project!

 

[murn]

Just to add in.
Animating can be a troublesome in VAM but it can be fun. More better if you work with dialogue and animate along the lines spoken. But all that is if you are into making story based scenes. just know that you can combine how you animate things. manual along with mocap or auto thrusting plugins. Heck sometimes you don't even need to animate as you'll see in some of Scamp scenes.

You can get free professional sound packs created by nsfw VA's here and free to use music here. I think only one of the Japanese dialogue has a few sentences based on situations if your going into a dialogue scene but it's only in Japanese tho the text translation is there I don't see anyone using them. but as for the others you'll get moans to sfx and some folly that you can make use of. All free to use. You can mess around with AI voices that create text to speech with places like Elevenlabs, Not all the time it will come out to your liking but it's close and can work when to find a good voice and understand the best settings meaning it's a lot of experimenting a bit. Actual voice actors I heard have gotten pricey but if you can afford them by all means.
Audio files can make your projects file size bigger and loading will take longer so make note of that.