Dev blog: Animation Testing (Patreon)

As you know, currently the animations in ToD are based on blended keyframes, which I consider "servicable" for now but I'm constantly evaluating new methods to make them more engaging and fluid.

Hand animating them with some form of polygrid morphing is one of the options I see, or creating more in-between frames manually.

All of these take a sh*-load of time though that I rather invest in developing the game further right now.

That being said, AI video generation is on the rise and results get better every day. It's something I have a close eye on and attached you can see some of the first, promising results!

I tested a couple of generators and many of them tend to loose the style of the game quickly, or replace Clara with some kind of anime version of her.

Luma yielded the best result so far, sticking close to the style of the game, esp. in the video I have at the top. Here's another one where the face looses a bit of detail, but I think it's still pretty good:

https://vimeo.com/979005973

This one's in 24FPS which is the default framerate. It's nice and fluid but may be a bit uncanny in a cartoon style visual novel? What are your thoughts? (might do a poll on this later on).

I still need to check out Runway Gen3 as it is reportedly even better than Luma. I'll keep you posted.

As cool as this is, there are 2 major problems with these kind of animators at the moment:

• Premium plan for Luma is bloody expensive. But it may get down with more similar services rising up. Either way, I could wait for some time and do many animations in one month, that way I guarantee to not waste any precious patron money ;-) . Or I use Gen3, which is significanty cheaper.

• Biggest problem: Censorship. I have yet to find out how this is handled with premium subscriptions. But as of now anything that vaguely resembles explicit content is not allowed. :-(

The best solution would be to have something that I can run locally without any restraints. Let's see how this develops over the course of the year.

But I wanted to give you a glimse into the future. It might take a while till I find the perfect solution but I'm confident that some nice animations will find their way into the game, one way or another.

In the attachment you find some more video tests. Enjoy!