Short answer: That's on purpose. Vizno adds two ambient stage behaviors that Ren'Py doesn't have: a speaker spotlight (the talking character eases forward and brightens while everyone else recedes) and entrance animations (a sprite pops in the first time it appears). An imported Ren'Py project arrives with staging its original author already tuned, so those extras start switched off - your game plays exactly like the original. Projects created fresh in Vizno start with them on. You can turn them on whenever you like from the Sprites dock settings, and the change is fully reversible.
The two extras
- Speaker spotlight - while a character speaks, their sprite eases forward and brightens; every other on-stage sprite recedes and dims slightly, keeping the reader's eye on the speaker.
- Entrance animations - instead of cutting in instantly, a sprite plays a short entrance the first time it appears on stage.
Why imports start quiet
A Ren'Py project comes in with its staging already decided - where sprites sit, when they appear, how they move. Layering unrequested motion on top would change how the game feels. The spotlight is especially risky on imports: its "recede" half affects everything on stage, and imported games often carry full-screen images the original author thinks of as backgrounds - dimming those would look broken. So imports default to off, and your game looks the way it did in Ren'Py from the first playthrough.
Projects started fresh in Vizno (blank or from a template), and projects imported from a native Vizno export, start with all of these on.
Turning them on
Open the Sprites dock in Forge and click the settings cog in its toolbar:
- Spotlight switches - flip the speaker spotlight on; it takes effect across the whole project right away.
- Default entrance - sets the entrance for new sprites you create from then on.
Each sprite also carries its own entrance setting. For sprites that came with the import, set the entrance on the sprite itself in its per-sprite settings - the project default only seeds sprites created after you change it.
Everything here is a switch, not a conversion - flip any of it back off at any time.