Feature request: moving ears

[Bun_Vivant]

If I had to choose between getting more hats for my bunnies and having ears that move, like real animal ears do, I'd rather have the moving ears. Especially ears that move to express emotion.

I'll bet some other long-eared races would, too.

However, I'm under no illusion that this would be easy to do.
The only precedent is that tails are animated, so maybe it's not too far fetched.

Either way, I'd be very pleasantly surprised if Dawntrail included this as a feature.

[Turnintino]

Considering that catgirls, a very, very popular race/gender combo, haven't been updated to match the expression of their male counterpart's ears in emotes... I wouldn't hold my breath. But of course I'd like to see it too.

[Supersnow845]

Female cat ears still do the wiggle during some various drinking animations /joy is just a catboi specific animation (same as catboi /sit and catboi /aback) I don’t think they need to be updated on that front

I do agree that viera ears need to do more but I’ve given up hope they will ever fix the 10 million problems vieras have

[HeyMcFly]

I remember a translated interview talking about when viera were 1st being added; they originally were going to do 1 or 2 ear types to allow for more *options*? (idk if that was the correct translation) and viera were supposed to have the two different looking races apart from being bunnies- the Rava were meant to have the upright ears just like Fran. And the Veena were supposed to be shorter, with cuter features and lop ears but they decided against it, either bc of time restraint (they literally could have waited for endwalker to release a finished raced instead of a rushed one)
But frans ears don't move and I believe they used her model to port some viera stuff.

Unfortunately, ear movement will most likely never happen - it's probably something that should have been programmed into the viera before they were released. Or might have been possible had they had less ear customization and only 1 ear type (like the miqote) Had the viera actually looked like the ones from ff12 (they all had close together, forward sitting upright ears which I still wish we had had instead of what we got...)

[TKMXIV]

For the time I played Viera the thing I found most odd was just how stiff the ears are when moving around. Like when fighting, running and dashing. They really should bounce a bit more. With the lop ear option being the bounciest.
Even if they don't make the ears more emotive while emoting, they should at some point update the ears movement physics at the very least. It would really make them feel more like a natural part of their body than just something stuck on.
I mean given the size of their ears they are about on par with a tail. So, I can just imagine how much less popular the Au ra would have been if their tails had been stiff as a board when just moving about.

[CVXIV]

I'm currently a lalafell for the cosplay, but my race normally is viera and I agree that it would be nice to have more movement physics to the ears.
It's a pipe dream but I think it would be fantastic if they did it alongside the work they are doing for the hats, but nothing has ever been said about it.
Granted, there is some movement depending on what you do, as often when I'm thinking I either tap my movement keys to move back and forth or run around in circles, but I would still like to see more.

Maybe in doing so they can edit the ear wiggle emote to use the viera's actual ears like it did in the material shown for new years rather than summoning loporrit ears.

[Bun_Vivant]

For the time I played Viera the thing I found most odd was just how stiff the ears are when moving around. Like when fighting, running and dashing. They really should bounce a bit more. With the lop ear option being the bounciest.
Even if they don't make the ears more emotive while emoting, they should at some point update the ears movement physics at the very least.

If I had to choose between having the ears move during movement (i.e., having "rigged" ears that implemented ear physics) and having scripted ears that moved in response to emotes (including cut-scene emotes) I think I'd prefer the emotive ears.
But I'd be happy to get either, and especially happy to have both.

I would take someone with more experience in 3D animation than I have to estimate which would be easier for SE to do.

[TKMXIV]

If I had to choose between having the ears move during movement (i.e., having "rigged" ears that implemented ear physics) and having scripted ears that moved in response to emotes (including cut-scene emotes) I think I'd prefer the emotive ears.
But I'd be happy to get either, and especially happy to have both.

I'm mostly tunneling on movement physics because I'm drawn to the lop ears option most. So, shifting my focus to emotive ears. Key emotes I think are perfect for viera to move their ears are /lookout, /attention, the salute options and /furious&fume.
Those emotes to me seem like the easiest to mimic a rabbit's style. With look out, attention and salutes having them twist forward facing like an alert rabbit while furious and fume have the ears lean back to mimic an angry rabbit.
I don't have any experience in 3d modeling, and my animating experience is so little it's easier to also write it off as zero. It's just I figure it would be easier to take the already existing ear physics and just improving on them first.

Also, my comment wasn't meant to force a choice to be made or anything. Sorry if I came across that way. I'm just not very good at explaining or wording things. Having both is the ideal outcome 100%.

[Aco505]

I support more moving ears through emotes, poses or other means for viera, miqo'te and any other suitable race.

[Bun_Vivant]

Also, my comment wasn't meant to force a choice to be made or anything. Sorry if I came across that way.

No worries, it didn't come across that way.