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.

 

[Hipper]

I'm a VAM user of only three months. I like making story based animations just for myself and audio is something I wanted to apply. I offer some of my thoughts that may help you (and may not!).

I make the scenes in VAM Desktop then copy the screen views and edit the resulting video in a video editing software - Nero Vision.

There are a few free environments on the VAM Hub that I can use, such as classrooms. I haven't made my own rooms, yet.

Animation.

At the moment when I create a story I make it in a few 'chapters'. For example my first attempt was of a female neighbour giving a handjob to the next door's son. It was 'punishment' for him spying on her sun bathing in the garden! Therefore the introductory scene shows the female sunbathing in a bikini and includes our lad imagining her naked. We don't see the boy at this point, just what he looks at. We then go inside for the handjob. For this the boy walks towards the female who is sitting down clothed. I didn't animate the boy walking because I couldn't so I just used his point of view and used the 'World Camera' to do the movment, closing in on the female. For this change of scenery I use a tool in Nero that 'transitions' two scenes into each other. In these ways I avoid having to animate walking etc..

I animate using Timeline. Tutorials by the creator here:

asco's Timeline Tutorials (1-5) - Guides -

These are the first five tutorials in a series I've been working on to help beginners learn Timeline. The videos combined are just under an hour and are all located on this page. There is a supplementary var file and zip file as optional...

hub.virtamate.com

Big frustrations are 'colliders', soft flesh where fingers disappear into the flesh, clothing (both how they hang and removing them) and hair that doesn't behave like real world materials - e.g goes through furniture and skin. I'm still trying to get to grips with these things - using 'Collider Editor', Breast Physics sliders etc.. Morphs are another major resource I've barely scratched.

A good source of learning is looking at other people's achievements - e.g. I just looked at the Scary Mary scenes (thanks Hazmhox) and can open Timeline in them and get some idea of how it was done. Similarly you can get from the Hub some Mocaps of walking and sitting down. It won't give the full answers as to how its done but will give you some good clues and also confirms these things are possible. Walking and sitting down, along with climbing stairs and getting on a table are some of the things I need to learn. Maybe extracting Mocaps from videos is another.

Audio.

This was an area I wanted to explore and posted a question on it here:

VaM 1.x - Create Voice Audio - Changing the Voice Male to Female

I'm looking to record my voice (a male) for both male and female characters in a scene. The stages as I see it are: 1. Prepare a written dialogue. I can do this. 2. Record that dialogue to my PC. I can do this. 3. Convert that dialogue to other voices, notably female. This is my question. 4...

hub.virtamate.com

Unfotunately I still haven't got voices good enough but they are getting better. Syncing them with lips is another challenge which I haven't attempted yet.

For noises I found some on YouTube - heavy breathing and other ambient sounds such as doors closing. Spanking sounds can be created on VAM by using a Plug-in called SlapStuff. In the end though I found the best way was to make them myself with a microphone and making them in time with the scene!!! Moans I made using the method in my last post on the above link or by doing it myself - mmmmm, ahhhhh etc.. With Nero I can add a number of different sounds simultaneously - e.g. spanking with ocassional moans and some speech.

VAM seems incredibly versatile and what it is trying to achieve is, if you give it some thought, very complicated. Therefore it is very difficult to learn. Only you can judge if the time, effort and frustrations justify the results. For me it's about making porn exactly as I want it. For the moment the effort is worth it and I still enjoy the learning and doing despite the frustrations.