Hardest Form of Modding?

[SiLeNtDo0m]

A simple topic posing a simple question.  Which is the most difficult?

As somebody that does it probably more than almost anyone else on this site, I'd have to say animation.  The concept of it isn't hard to grasp at all.  Or you're doing is moving a ragdoll in a space and time frame.  Anyone can do it (much like texturing) but few can do it well and it's hard to get good at.  I've been making animations for around two years now and I've still a lot to learn. 

Learning and appreciating what makes a good animation is hard.  Then of course is the fact that it's rather unrewarding for how time consuming it is.  Fun fact, I spend the vast majority of my time making the animations for my movesets, despite the fact that the PSA stuff is what I find more drawn out and tedious.  However, it's the one form of modding you literally cannot do on its own for two reasons:

1) You can't release one animation for one character no matter how long or impressive it is.  For example, the Deadpool MC Hammer dance I did took me 2 and a half weeks to make (working EVERYDAY).  Longer than the vast majority of textures, vertexes, imports heck even a good few movessets), but it's no where near substantial enough to release on its own.

2) If you make a set of animations for a moveset, you have to (or have to have someone) edit all the frame data of the attacks in PSA or an equivalent moveset editor so that the mod actually works well. 

So yeah, that's my view.

[Gamma Ridley]

I swear, this topic has been made before.... though my memory is a bit dodgy.

Anyway....

-Warning-
Wall of text inbound

... to start, my personal philosophy is that the challenge in anything isn't learning how to do it, it's learning how to do it well.

Any of these forms of hacking can be considered "easy" if you don't take the time to improve upon it to get past the surface level, and unfortunately that's where most people get stuck.

I once considered PSAing to be the most difficult form of hacking, but since I've been taking C++ classes, I've realized that most forms of programming can be pretty simple once you learn the language. Even with the small things I've done in PSA I've learned how simple it can be. Though debugging can be a huge pain.

I agree that animation can be very difficult, since if you don't do it properly, the animation won't come out looking right at all. Plus, there are several factors that involve your own judgement, thing that can't be taught. Like where to place key frames, which parts to move at what times, etc. It's difficult, but once a person develops their own style it can become somewhat automated. Unless you lose motivation, like me. :c

I'd have to honestly say that texturing may be the hardest. And by "texturing," I don't mean open up the texture file in Paint, slap a solid color all over it and call it a recolor.  I mean legitimately making a texture and making sure everything goes together.

There are sooo many things to consider, like color balance, shading, making sure the actual "texture" part is there... it boggles my mind.

Model importing, in it's current state, is relatively easy to do once you get the hang of it. There are so many opportunities to be creative with it, but few people actually take those opportunities. Staging, to me, is a subset of everything else listed, since there are so many aspects involved, but again, not terribly difficult if you know what you're doing.

Vertexing is tough, mostly due to the patching, but it's pretty dead so it's almost become irrelevant. (I say almost because there are several vertexes that I'd take over the model import counterpart any day)

And SFX making is just confusing as hell to me.

tl;dr

1.)Texturing
2.)SFX
3.)Animating
4.)PSA
5.)Vertexing
6.)Importing
7.)Stages

[Anonymous]

I myself would be a bit torn between textures and animation, since I'm awful at both and they are kept at higher standards (to be considered worth using). However, since animations are generally coupled with a PSA, meaning there are a lot of animations, I'd go with that since I rarely make models that need more than 2 or 3 textures.

But I look at the amazing vertex hacks and how I've never even tried stage hacking so I have no idea what goes into that.

[jrush64]

I have to say PSA'ing. I love animating so I enjoy doing it. But after you finish animating and you have to PSA the move to work just like it does in the animations, that's pretty annoying. It's taking me almost 2 weeks to get Riku's up-b working the way I wanted it to.

When I finally found out what was wrong, it was just a simple error that I overlooked. It really pissed me off.

I guess model importing is annoying. When your fixing the vertices. Especially if you're importing someone with a coat. Webbed feet and all that.

[DoctorFlux(Mariodk)]

i will say PSA/Movesets/Animating is 2nd hardest
PSA coding if making something that has not be done before like glide or making hardcoded stuff

Animating cuz it take long time/hard to get it 100% perfect but its atleast easy to get started with it but hard to get it good  

model importing is not that hard but then again it can be hard
like if you try to rig a human like model over pikachu or sometimes stuff on lucario with his weird legs bone translation
took me months to get my super/kid buu over lucario as good as it is now and still i dont think its so good

SFX is easy idk why it is so hard and even now ppl got problems with it with the new super swandz i will say SFX is the most easy to make
installer a SFX pack is just 1 button press and place the brsar in Sound folder and use Rii or replace the file in the .iso and still ppl have problems with that  and it can´t be easyer

stages idk about since i have never done it

Other (specify) if you mean programming stuff like model importing/PSA with model preview on brawlbox so i will say that is the hardest

[Exorcist]

Animating.
I try so hard, but no matter what it comes out horrible. I don't have the patience to learn it either. :p

Easiest is making .brstms.

[SonicBrawler]

I say vertexing.

Textering can easily be done in paint. tho the good ones in paint.net or photoshop. I find it easy
Animation is tricky, but not as had as vertexing.

PSA, again, is easy but harder for better ones.

SFX you take .wavs then get the right ids. Not hard.

Rigging U also put into the Texture, Animation, and PSA section, that its easy but harder if you went better results.

Stage, i have never done that, so i cant really say anything about it.

[Spex130]

On this topic, I gotta agree with Gamma that doing things is easy. Doing things well is hard. Quality is hard. I don't even know if there IS one I can say is the hardest.

There isn't a particular order to these, but:

- Good Textures are hard
- Good Custom Modeling is hard
- Good Vertexing is hard
- Good Animations are hard
- Good PSAs are hard

- All of them take a very long time for good quailty.


Now, I can only speak for these because these are the ones I've successfully completed personally, but it's my opinion that good modding in general is very difficult.

On what you said, SDoom, I can agree as a fellow animator that Animation has the lowest work/reward ratio. It's the only thing that can't be released by itself, after all.

On another note, I don't find rigging that hard. Might just be me, though.

[SJS]

Textures.

Not sure if they're the hardest, but they're probably the most important. Because you can have a great rig or a great PSA, but if your textures (the first thing that will catch a user's eye) suck, you'll have a tragic time.

[Pik]

In general, animating. There a lot of things to get right, and you have to keep muscles and bones in mind. Balance, comfort, movements that look natural- They all play part in an animation.

But for me right now, it's rigging. Specifically the waist. Everything else is pretty simple, but man... I've been working on the waist for a week. (Maybe longer)

[GabbaGhoul]

People think it's animating... Really?

In general, animating. There a lot of things to get right, and you have to keep muscles and bones in mind. Balance, comfort, movements that look natural- They all play part in an animation.

For arguments sake it's fairly easy to animate -
and I have no trouble finding that comfort/smoothness when I animate. It can take a-lot of time sometimes; hell most of the time it does - but it's not difficult. At least not for me, but I'm to busy of a person to be working on animations non-stop.

Now PSA - (and I've been messing with it for a few years) is a pain in the ass.
And you have your [censored] PSAs, and your Good PSAs, there's not really a middle ground. They either suck or don't. In the actual program its self it's got some easy bits, and it's got annoying bits. Adding damage/hitboxes, adding graphics, Adding flags, Changing amount of jumps, Momentum, it's all fairly easy- but you get around to screwing with sub routines, specials, learning where to place said coding that effects all of the other coding. (If, Else, Loop, etc) It's a-lot to have memorized, plus a [censored] ton more.

[Beyond]

Beyond2cents here...


Personally I think Texturing and Animating are the most difficult forms of modding. Stages have the potential to be the most difficult as they can encompass both those things.


Texturing and Animating both require a level of artistic (I'm not sure if this is the right word to use for this) thinking and ability to pay attention to details that other forms of modding don't.

How difficult something is shouldn't be how long it takes or how tedious it is but the amount effort it requires to get right. Rigging, PSA, SFX, music... are either you know how to do it right or you don't, requiring more technical skill and knowledge.


So ummm.... In order from most difficult to least difficult.

1) Stages
2) Animating
3) Textures
4) Vertexing
5) PSA
6) SFX
7) Model Importing
Music

[Velen]

Beyond2cents here...


Personally I think Texturing and Animating are the most difficult forms of modding. Stages have the potential to be the most difficult as they can encompass both those things.


Texturing and Animating both require a level of artistic (I'm not sure if this is the right word to use for this) thinking and ability to pay attention to details that other forms of modding don't.

How difficult something is shouldn't be how long it takes or how tedious it is but the amount effort it requires to get right. Rigging, PSA, SFX, music... are either you know how to do it right or you don't, requiring more technical skill and knowledge.


So ummm.... In order from most difficult to least difficult.

1) Stages
2) Animating
3) Textures
4) Vertexing
5) PSA
6) SFX
7) Model Importing
Music

Most definitely agreed here.

[Hero ©]

Never tried vertexing or texturizing, so I don't know much of it and im pretty sure I would do terrible.

So here's what I have to say...

Animating
Im able to animate decently OK, not at a pro level. Its only difficult when you're trying to make the animation look exactly how you want it to be or how its suppose to look and making every frames transition to the other one as good as possible.

SFX Modding
Its kinda easy. All you need is to get the .WAV files and replace it on the desired voice of a character. The annoying part is having to fix the .WAV files because they might sound too low or too high. And some may have bad quality and make a static-y effect. Thank god for Super Sawndz.

Stages
Importing stages or creating one from scratch has to be the most difficult for me. I've seen so many people struggling to get the lighting right and other things. You gotta mess with the stage too dam much to get it right on brawlbox AND on 3DS Max.

Importing Characters/Rigging
Character rigging/Importing, its the second most difficult to me. I tried it myself and rigging is god dam annoying. (WE NEED AN AUTO-RIG BUTTON!!! [/NZM joke]. I hate selecting every vertice to rig it on the specific location. And you have to do a lot of stuff to make it look like a really good import, like how Beyond does.

PSA
PSA-ing, I only know the basic stuff, so im sort of a beginner on it. The only thing i cant do is code the B-moves. Thats one thing that I CANNOT do for [censored]. A-moves are fairly easy to do. But If you want the specific character to do something like "I want him to do another attack when you press B button depending on the direction of the analog", I can't do complicated stuff like that.

Other
The easiest modding has to be BRTSMs and making CSPs for characters quickly. No need to say much about that.

In short from difficult to easiest according to my skills...
1) Stages - Most Difficult
2 & 3) Character Importing/Rigging and Animating - Difficult
4) PSA - Fairly Difficult
5) SFX - Easy
6) BRTSMs - Easiest

[LC-DDM]

Everything is subjective. It's easier to learn how to do something than how to master it - and yet people somehow still manage to botch up BRSTMs, so THAT's completely [censored]ed up.