What are animated portraits? (beta)

Animated portraits bring the character sprites on the story stage to life with a light idle loop: breathing, a gentle head tilt, hair that sways. The original artwork stays sharp. It is the same picture, gently warped, not a video and not a redrawn image. Characters blink every few seconds too, but they don't move their mouths.

Animated portraits are in beta. They work wherever character cutouts appear on the stage: in the Immersive journey style, and in the Standard style when Display portraits is on.

How do I turn them on or off?

They are on by default. To turn them off (or back on) everywhere, use the Animated portraits switch in your profile settings, on the Play tab. That choice is saved to your account and applies on all your devices.

To change them on just one device, open Settings (the gear) while playing, go to the Theme tab and use the Animated portraits switch (marked Beta). In Standard style, the switch sits right under Display portraits. That switch is saved on the device and wins over your account setting there. Changing the account setting again resets it on the device you change it from.

Why is the switch greyed out?

The switch is disabled, with the reason shown under it, in these cases:

• Off while data saver is on: you turned on Data saver in your profile settings (Play tab), which skips animated portraits and video covers to use less data.
• Off while your device is in Low Data Mode (iOS app) or Off while your device is set to save data (Android app and some browsers): your device asks apps to use less data, through Low Data Mode on iOS or Data Saver on Android, so Imagina saves data the same way.
• Off while your device is in Low Power Mode (iOS app) or Off while Battery Saver is on (Android app): your device is saving battery, so the art stays still until you turn it off. Your own setting is kept and comes back on its own.
• Your system's motion accessibility settings disallow animations: your device has reduced motion turned on, so the art stays still. To animate it anyway, turn on Play animations anyway, just above this switch in the Scene tab in the journey's Settings.
• No GPU detected: the browser renders graphics in software. Animating sprites that way would burn CPU and battery, so the art stays still.
• This world has no animated portraits yet: none of the sprites in your journey have been prepared for animation (see below).

If WebGL fails for any other reason, the sprite simply shows as a still image.

Why don't the characters move in my world?

Only some worlds are compatible. Each sprite has to be prepared once (an analysis of where the hair, face and neck are) before it can move, and for now only the Imagina team can run that preparation. On a world that hasn't been prepared, or for a sprite that was added or replaced after preparation, the character just stays still. Nothing breaks, and there is no extra cost to you: animated portraits cost no credits.

Once a world is prepared, a new version that keeps the same sprite images stays animated. Changing a sprite's picture means it needs preparing again.

A journey keeps the sprites of the world version it started on, or was last updated to. If those weren't prepared, starting a new journey or updating your journey to the world's latest version may help.

Can I animate my own world's sprites?

Not from the editor yet. While this is a beta, write to [email protected] with your world's name (or a link to it) and ask for its sprites to be prepared. Standard stage sprites give the best results: a single character, a transparent background cutout, with the face and hair visible.