Tutorial [ILLUSION] HS2 Studio Neo|Chara Maker - (Help & guides Thread)

[Velcrofly]

If you are using MMDD (MMD Director), you can load and edit VNGE clips directly in MMDD, just like you load .vmd or .wav files. It's called "Load vAnime" clip or something. If you are not using using MMDD, to begin using it rather than the default MMD editor (presuming you have Better Repack), you have to find MMDD in the Optional Mods folder and drag it to your actual Mods folder. Then, to open MMDD in Studio, open the little VNGE start menu, go to Utilities, and it should be there.

Thank you. Much appreciated.
Must have missed MMDD's arrival, although must admit it is a while since I've played much with MMD in Studio. Hopefully this will solve it.
Thanks again.

 

[Velcrofly]

If you are using MMDD (MMD Director), you can load and edit VNGE clips directly in MMDD, just like you load .vmd or .wav files. It's called "Load vAnime" clip or something. If you are not using using MMDD, to begin using it rather than the default MMD editor (presuming you have Better Repack), you have to find MMDD in the Optional Mods folder and drag it to your actual Mods folder. Then, to open MMDD in Studio, open the little VNGE start menu, go to Utilities, and it should be there.

Sorry, another question.
I've now managed to load character, dance, music, etc and have a workable scene. Not too happy with camera setup yet, but can work on that. The main problem is this:
How do I save a change of clothing state?

In VNGE SSS you can do so through tracking and mini-states. Clip Manager I seem to recall it is something like a right click on the timeline and register a new state. I can see lots about changing the body and its movement but nothing about clothing state. I've gone through several YouTube videos already but nothing seems to point to how to do this. I'm clearly missing something obvious.

 

[drowsy]

Sorry, another question.
I've now managed to load character, dance, music, etc and have a workable scene. Not too happy with camera setup yet, but can work on that. The main problem is this:
How do I save a change of clothing state?

In VNGE SSS you can do so through tracking and mini-states. Clip Manager I seem to recall it is something like a right click on the timeline and register a new state. I can see lots about changing the body and its movement but nothing about clothing state. I've gone through several YouTube videos already but nothing seems to point to how to do this. I'm clearly missing something obvious.

Sure! It is easy, but I will go through it in detailed steps. This might make it seem complicated, but it's really done quickly once you've become familiar with it.

In MMD Director: (1) Click "Add Asset". (2) Click "Link VNAnime clip". (3) If you have made a VNAnime clip already, you can link the target clip here, but I will assume you do not. So, under new clip, give it a name, like "Character Control". Set the Length to the total number of frames of the song/motion. Set At Frame to the frame (of the song/dance motion) you want the clip to start playing on, usually you want 0 here so that it plays in sync with the song/motion. Click OK.

(4) Go into "Keys" for the new clip you just created. Now, in your scene's Workspace, select the item you want to control with the clip, e.g. your character. Then, in MMDD, click the "Add" button to the left of the keyframes in your clip. (5) Give the character/actor/item some name other than "act0", if you want. Click "Add". (6) Now, you have keyframe control over your character. To change the clothing status of the character, click the "+" by the name of the actor in the yellow/brownish menu, to expand the list of properties you control. Then, you will see "Cloth status". Click it, so that it becomes highlighted in red. (7) Now, click on the keyframe interface so that you get to whatever frame you want to make a change. For example, you might want to remove the character's clothes on frame 1000. If so, scroll rightwards until you see the number 1000 above the frames, and click on that number so you "are there" in the timeline. (8) With Cloth status highlighted in red, click the "Register" button. A keyframe, a little square, will be registered on the frame you are at; click on it. This will open up a little window with info (the status, in numbers 0-2 for each piece of clothing). (9) Change one of these numbers. This changes the clothing status of the character on that frame. Again, 0 is clothing on, 1 is clothing half-off, 2 is clothing off. The first number is, if I remember correctly, the Top, the second number the Bottom clothing, the third the Bra, etc. Click "Update" to register the change.

Now, you can click "Back" to go back to the overall MMDD window, and press Play to see the result: it should change the clothing status once it gets to the specified frame. You can add and control several actors with a single clip, control various character properties, lights, cameras, objects, etc., and you can link several clips at once in a single scene. If you are deep in a project, I recommend going into clips' Settings and click "Export", to backup your data, every once in a while.

 

[ethanoll123]

You can also make sure that you are using your dedicated GPU to run the game, and not your integrated one in your control panel (AMD or Nvidia), but besides that, I've no idea why it could run worse

Thanks for tips. But nothing changed, I don't know why.

I understood that such lags were there all the time, but a few days ago it was working normally, I wonder if anyone else have same problem after upgrade to BR11...

Putting the game in SSD and HDD only affect the loading time imo.
Especially for the first run after boot.
But for loading props and stuff, I dont know.
Some props takes long time to load e.g. AiLegend's stuff even though I put the game in the PCIe 4.0 SSD.

Ok. Unfortunately, I don't have an SSD and without the certainty that the studio will work better, it's hard to decide to buy a disk only for studio..

People from discord didn't answer me, eh..

 

[HardcoreCuddler]

Putting the game in SSD and HDD only affect the loading time imo.
Especially for the first run after boot.
But for loading props and stuff, I dont know.
Some props takes long time to load e.g. AiLegend's stuff even though I put the game in the PCIe 4.0 SSD.

scene loading times should be taken into consideration as well, as that can be a relatively big time sink

 

[HardcoreCuddler]

Hi all, I have a Studio question:

Does anyone know of a way to combine VNGE and MMD in such a way where a card when launched will just play both?

I am working on a Scene that I think needs both:
MMD for the dance routine and music, VNGE for state of dress (and I also use it for changing camera angles).
Is there a way of combining or an alternative method to achieve this?

I have a manual workaround which is to load the card then run both simultaneously and it looks OK. But it's like giving someone a present that they unwrap, only to find they need to run to the shop to buy a special type of battery.

Thanks in advance

honestly I'd just ditch MMDD altogether, thing is way too janky for my taste.

You can use Clip Manager for everything: clothing, music, syncing, animations, blend shapes, whatever the heck else.
If I were you, I'd just make a main clip (call it main_anim or something) that starts and and sets the time for all the other clips in the scene.

Make the main clip have very low fps (like 1), have a bunch of frames (like 9999 or something) and have it run at an extremely slow speed.
Set a keyframe at the beginning of the main clip that rewinds and syncs the time of all the other clips.
Set another keyframe in the middle that only pauses all the clips.
Set one at the end that plays everything.

Boom you're done, now whenever you need to play, pause or rewind you just move the slider of the main scene. Sure it WILL loop at some point but it will take a while. I haven't had the chance to implement this myself YET but I think it should work fine, I've used all elements of this separately and they worked. It's not as intuitive as MMDD's interface but it gets the job done without needing to scour through weird documentation and forum posts lol

Whenever you want to add a new animation, you just set the main one to control that one at each keyframe. Hell you can even add more keyframes for more clip actions.

EDIT: well I'm not completely right, I think audio still can't be properly manipulated by VNGE Sounds just because the paths used are absolute so they only work if the person that gets the scene has the sound files in the same exact path on the same exact partition and folder structure....but I didn't find anything better in MMDD, but I haven't looked very much yet

 

[Velcrofly]

Sure! It is easy, but I will go through it in detailed steps. This might make it seem complicated, but it's really done quickly once you've become familiar with it.

In MMD Director: (1) Click "Add Asset". (2) Click "Link VNAnime clip". (3) If you have made a VNAnime clip already, you can link the target clip here, but I will assume you do not. So, under new clip, give it a name, like "Character Control". Set the Length to the total number of frames of the song/motion. Set At Frame to the frame (of the song/dance motion) you want the clip to start playing on, usually you want 0 here so that it plays in sync with the song/motion. Click OK.

(4) Go into "Keys" for the new clip you just created. Now, in your scene's Workspace, select the item you want to control with the clip, e.g. your character. Then, in MMDD, click the "Add" button to the left of the keyframes in your clip. (5) Give the character/actor/item some name other than "act0", if you want. Click "Add". (6) Now, you have keyframe control over your character. To change the clothing status of the character, click the "+" by the name of the actor in the yellow/brownish menu, to expand the list of properties you control. Then, you will see "Cloth status". Click it, so that it becomes highlighted in red. (7) Now, click on the keyframe interface so that you get to whatever frame you want to make a change. For example, you might want to remove the character's clothes on frame 1000. If so, scroll rightwards until you see the number 1000 above the frames, and click on that number so you "are there" in the timeline. (8) With Cloth status highlighted in red, click the "Register" button. A keyframe, a little square, will be registered on the frame you are at; click on it. This will open up a little window with info (the status, in numbers 0-2 for each piece of clothing). (9) Change one of these numbers. This changes the clothing status of the character on that frame. Again, 0 is clothing on, 1 is clothing half-off, 2 is clothing off. The first number is, if I remember correctly, the Top, the second number the Bottom clothing, the third the Bra, etc. Click "Update" to register the change.

Now, you can click "Back" to go back to the overall MMDD window, and press Play to see the result: it should change the clothing status once it gets to the specified frame. You can add and control several actors with a single clip, control various character properties, lights, cameras, objects, etc., and you can link several clips at once in a single scene. If you are deep in a project, I recommend going into clips' Settings and click "Export", to backup your data, every once in a while.

Thanks you so much for your help. I need to have a bit more of a play with the overall scene still, but I'm happy I understand that bit as well now, thanks to your guidance.
It is actually similar to Clip Manager as I remember it (Registering etc), however I was struggling to get through the interface to the point where I could do that.
Thanks again. Really appreciated.

 

[Velcrofly]

honestly I'd just ditch MMDD altogether, thing is way too janky for my taste.

You can use Clip Manager for everything: clothing, music, syncing, animations, blend shapes, whatever the heck else.
If I were you, I'd just make a main clip (call it main_anim or something) that starts and and sets the time for all the other clips in the scene.

Make the main clip have very low fps (like 1), have a bunch of frames (like 9999 or something) and have it run at an extremely slow speed.
Set a keyframe at the beginning of the main clip that rewinds and syncs the time of all the other clips.
Set another keyframe in the middle that only pauses all the clips.
Set one at the end that plays everything.

Boom you're done, now whenever you need to play, pause or rewind you just move the slider of the main scene. Sure it WILL loop at some point but it will take a while. I haven't had the chance to implement this myself YET but I think it should work fine, I've used all elements of this separately and they worked. It's not as intuitive as MMDD's interface but it gets the job done without needing to scour through weird documentation and forum posts lol

Whenever you want to add a new animation, you just set the main one to control that one at each keyframe. Hell you can even add more keyframes for more clip actions.

EDIT: well I'm not completely right, I think audio still can't be properly manipulated by VNGE Sounds just because the paths used are absolute so they only work if the person that gets the scene has the sound files in the same exact path on the same exact partition and folder structure....but I didn't find anything better in MMDD, but I haven't looked very much yet

Thanks. Will have a look at this. I've had a play with Clip Manager before but wasn't aware it could do all of this.

 

[HardcoreCuddler]

Thanks. Will have a look at this. I've had a play with Clip Manager before but wasn't aware it could do all of this.

it can, instead of adding characters or objects to an animation, in the interface you get after clicking "modify" you can choose to select "control another VNAnime Clip" or "Control a VNAnime Sound" or whatever, and it gives you a bunch of very similar properties for both.
The latest VNGE's Clip Manager also allows you to edit the values of the keyframes by hand, using an interface that replaces the usual curve editor with a numerical input (for things that are defined as true / false like play / pause, 1 is true / play and 0 is false / pause)
Keep in mind that an animation needs at least TWO keyframes to work. If you set a keyframe to play another clip, form example, without setting a different keyframe to pause it somewhere else, the play keyframe will NOT work when it's passed by the time seeker or whatever it's called, the thing at the top on the slider. If I only want a clip to START playing another clip, I usually just set a pause keyframe right before the play keyframe, the pause is usually pretty much unnoticeable. If it is noticeable, use a higher clip framerate.
EDIT: take a look inside the
Dev Clip man -> VNAnime helper (I think this is what the button is called) -> VNAnime Actor settings as well
you can set a bagillion different extra settings there, including and most importantly blend shapes inclusion into animations and interpolation.
If you want to know anything else @ me or DM, I've racked my head on these things so much at this point that there's not many things that I don't know how to handle, when it comes to animation anyway.

 

[drowsy]

honestly I'd just ditch MMDD altogether, thing is way too janky for my taste.

MMDD is good if you're working with .vmd (MMD) files. It's designed for making and rendering dance animations, and unlike the MMD plugin that comes by default with BetterRepack it enables actual editing of keyframes and various more helpful settings. When it comes to everything else (done through clips) it uses the interface/mechanics of Clip Manager, so it doesn't make much sense to contrast the two. The same people are behind both VNGE and MMDD, I think.

On a different note:

Does anyone have any extra cubemap files (.cube) they could share? They spice up my scenes but wish I had more, and it seems difficult to convert HDRIs to .cube files in a way that actually works in the Graphics plugin.

 

[Sepheyer]

MMDD is good if you're working with .vmd (MMD) files. It's designed for making and rendering dance animations, and unlike the MMD plugin that comes by default with BetterRepack it enables actual editing of keyframes and various more helpful settings. When it comes to everything else (done through clips) it uses the interface/mechanics of Clip Manager, so it doesn't make much sense to contrast the two. The same people are behind both VNGE and MMDD, I think.

On a different note:

Does anyone have any extra cubemap files (.cube) they could share? They spice up my scenes but wish I had more, and it seems difficult to convert HDRIs to .cube files in a way that actually works in the Graphics plugin.

You might already have these, but just in case:

https://f95zone.to/threads/illusion-hs2-studio-neo-chara-maker-help-guides-thread.66252/post-8663378

 

[drowsy]

You might already have these, but just in case:

https://f95zone.to/threads/illusion-hs2-studio-neo-chara-maker-help-guides-thread.66252/post-8663378

Yeah, those are the ones I do have, unfortunately. Thanks though.

 

[thisisweak]

Hi all. I'm still pretty much a beginner, but I'm learning fast. I'm wondering if anyone is interested in doing some workshop-like posts? Would this require a new thread?
What I mean is that when we learn something new we create a small tutorial and include the scene. People can ask questions and give advice — there's always a better solution.
Here's what I have in mind.
I created an animation of a robot scanning a human. Here is the final result. (Note: I haven't got the hang of shaders yet, so it looks a little wonky. Also, doesn't this site like animated png files?)

I began by placing drone and man in a room. Next I added a blend projector. Here are the settings.

Here is the texture I made to create the laser scanning effect. I replaced the default by opening the render editor by pressing ctrl-R. (Note: the area surrounding the red line needs to be transparent.)

I had to make a few adjustments to the projector get the widths correct. The settings are shown above.

The projection didn't work on the clothing until I changed the shader to "Shader Forge/main_texture". I have no idea why this is the case.‍
I also added a spotlight and light particle. I parented these and the projector to the drone.

The last step was animating. I right clicked on the timeline and set each marker by middle clicking.
For example for the drone position, I placed the drone at the head of the bed at seconds 0 and 1.7. I then moved the drone to it's final position and middle clicked again at the fourth second.

Now everything moves because the three objects are children of the drone. For each child, I set them to off state and middle clicked on the "enabled" row at 0 seconds. I then moved to the times where I wanted them on, turned them on, and middle clicked at those times. (note: you can snap to a particular second by holding down shift.)

Each of the red dots is a keyframe. If you click on them you get more options.

Here is the entire scene in case anyone want's to play with it.

I hope someone finds this helpful.

 

[Albertant]

hey guys i have a question
how could I create a flaccid penis?
I know how to create a penis and put it on the character but I can't give it the flaccid shape.
does anyone have a solution?

 

[AmaNo04]

hey guys i have a question
how could I create a flaccid penis?
I know how to create a penis and put it on the character but I can't give it the flaccid shape.
does anyone have a solution?

Use scripted dick but NOT the track nearest.
Use the FK one.

Activate the FK, rotate the nodes until you got the shape you want.
Use Type A for the circumcised one, Type B for hooded one.

 

[Albertant]

Use scripted dick but NOT the track nearest.
Use the FK one.

Activate the FK, rotate the nodes until you got the shape you want.
Use Type A for the circumcised one, Type B for hooded one.

yes, that's what I'm trying to do but only using rotate nodes I have problems....the dick ends up having an S shape. hahahaha

 

[ninetofive]

I'm sure this question has been asked before but it's a tough one to search for so apologies for that. I'm wondering if there's a way to load two characters into Studio and have them synced up in position to pose them for animations, essentially similar to what happens when you load into a sex scene in HS2. Or is it mandatory to pose each character manually and individually?

 

[Kaseijin]

You might already have these, but just in case:

https://f95zone.to/threads/illusion-hs2-studio-neo-chara-maker-help-guides-thread.66252/post-8663378

Hi!

I don't have discord account. would you mind to share KKY cubemaps somewhere else?

tnks in advance.

 

[Kaseijin]

Hi all. I'm still pretty much a beginner, but I'm learning fast. I'm wondering if anyone is interested in doing some workshop-like posts? Would this require a new thread?
What I mean is that when we learn something new we create a small tutorial and include the scene. People can ask questions and give advice — there's always a better solution.
Here's what I have in mind.
I created an animation of a robot scanning a human. Here is the final result. (Note: I haven't got the hang of shaders yet, so it looks a little wonky. Also, doesn't this site like animated png files?)
View attachment 2218951
I began by placing drone and man in a room. Next I added a blend projector. Here are the settings.
View attachment 2218956
Here is the texture I made to create the laser scanning effect. I replaced the default by opening the render editor by pressing ctrl-R. (Note: the area surrounding the red line needs to be transparent.)
View attachment 2218958
I had to make a few adjustments to the projector get the widths correct. The settings are shown above.
View attachment 2218961
The projection didn't work on the clothing until I changed the shader to "Shader Forge/main_texture". I have no idea why this is the case.‍
I also added a spotlight and light particle. I parented these and the projector to the drone.
View attachment 2218971
The last step was animating. I right clicked on the timeline and set each marker by middle clicking.
For example for the drone position, I placed the drone at the head of the bed at seconds 0 and 1.7. I then moved the drone to it's final position and middle clicked again at the fourth second.

Now everything moves because the three objects are children of the drone. For each child, I set them to off state and middle clicked on the "enabled" row at 0 seconds. I then moved to the times where I wanted them on, turned them on, and middle clicked at those times. (note: you can snap to a particular second by holding down shift.)
View attachment 2219001
Each of the red dots is a keyframe. If you click on them you get more options.
View attachment 2219022
Here is the entire scene in case anyone want's to play with it.
View attachment 2218988
I hope someone finds this helpful.

Thanks!!

 

[AmaNo04]

I'm sure this question has been asked before but it's a tough one to search for so apologies for that. I'm wondering if there's a way to load two characters into Studio and have them synced up in position to pose them for animations, essentially similar to what happens when you load into a sex scene in HS2. Or is it mandatory to pose each character manually and individually?

If what you are aiming is the exact same animation as the main game, you just need to select the appropriate animation in the animation tab.
Just be mindful that male and female animation are in different tab.
Also make sure both charas are in the same location e.g. XYZ 0,0,0.
There is a slider used to adjust the height of necessary body parts while the XYZ still at the same position so the animation connect in the animation tab.

But if you want an entirely different animation that main game doesnt provide (custom animation like my signature), yes you need to pose each character manually and animate the necessary bone manually using additional plugin.