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

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Velcrofly

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Jan 25, 2021
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In BR9 and BR10 I had the issue that the boobs "deinflate" in some characters, no matter they were busty or wood-plane. I heard that some plugings can cause conflict working togheter, so I decided to get rid of all boobs' plugins. Lately I reinstaled Push-up plugin amd so far my girls are doing well
Deinflating boobs sounds like a disaster.
 

cptboofy

Member
Dec 7, 2022
379
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Alright, hopefully Ambient Occlusion helps you get your desired effect. If not (or either way), here are some more notes on lights:
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Hey drowsy, any chance I can get you to take a look at this scene and give me some pointers on how to improve it? I tried playing around as per your suggestions, but I want to know what to do to make it better. I'm still not happy with the shading, particularly around where she's sitting on his lap. Just doesn't look right. Plus I think the brightness settings are too high, but I lose the shadows if I drop it.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated. (Anyone else want to comment, please do).
 

drowsy

Member
Nov 23, 2017
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Hey drowsy, any chance I can get you to take a look at this scene and give me some pointers on how to improve it? I tried playing around as per your suggestions, but I want to know what to do to make it better. I'm still not happy with the shading, particularly around where she's sitting on his lap. Just doesn't look right. Plus I think the brightness settings are too high, but I lose the shadows if I drop it.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated. (Anyone else want to comment, please do).
Thanks for the request. I liked your original, and it's difficult to know what you're going for. Still, I gave it a go:
1. In F5>Settings, changed Rendering Path to Deferred. This makes the lighting "fixed", not varying depending on camera position. It also looks better overall, imo.
2. I liked your lights, but they were a bit strong (especially with deferred rendering). And, I don't use the camera/studio light, so I disabled that. So, I had to add a new directional light, which I made the key light (maybe should've been a rim).
3. Moved the other lights, added another pair of fill and rim lights to better capture both of their faces/bodies. The principle I followed for lights was just to retain depth (shadow/highlight) but make sure that legibility is somewhat good on both.
4. Changed the saturation of lights, so the result looks a bit more grey but imo more realistic. Personal preference obviously. Also, I had to alter the bias of the lights to remove issues with unnatural shadows.
5. Reduced the Reflection Probe intensity to half. In a scene like this, with a flat background, the reflection adds an artificial outline/sheen to bodies, so it seemed better to reduce it. With a map or cubemap, its colors reflect onto the characters.
6. Added depth of field effect. As discussed in previous page of this thread, though, it looks very subtle in renders.

Other than that, if this was my own scene I'd do a few things differently, like using other shader/skin on the characters and hair (for subsurface scattering and 4k/8k textures), and a graphics settings preset I've tuned over time. I'd also add a cubemap background or a map, but of course that depends on what your project/context is (f.ex. if you want renders with a transparent background, in which case what you've got is good). Edit: I added a final render from after I did a few more changes, applying Hanmen shaders and changing the key light to a spotlight (making one of the rims directional instead).
 
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Anonymous2019

Newbie
Nov 22, 2019
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is it possible to convert charastudio scenes (koikatsu) to studioneov2 (HS2)?
alternatively has anygot scene with a girl walking with swaying hips, i want to make a scene with a sexy model rampwalking
 

cptboofy

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Dec 7, 2022
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Thanks for the request. I liked your original, and it's difficult to know what you're going for. Still, I gave it a go:
Thanks so much for taking the time. I wasn't actually going for anything specific with that scene. Literally just a random pose I put together as I found your tips helpful so tried to use what you said and that was the result.
Now I'm going to take your above critique/suggestions and try to recreate it to something similar to what you just posted.
Any chance I could get you to upload your version of scene so I can study how (and what) lights you placed?
I'm finding getting a feel for the light placement to be super tricky. Just not intuitive for me. Let alone the post-processing stuff.
Also, how the hell did you get that damn couch to show color??? I spent easy 30 min trying to and it just would not be anything but dark. I could tell (if I shined a bright enough light on it) that the color was changing but it was always black. Drove me nuts before I gave up.
 

drowsy

Member
Nov 23, 2017
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Thanks so much for taking the time. I wasn't actually going for anything specific with that scene. Literally just a random pose I put together as I found your tips helpful so tried to use what you said and that was the result.
Now I'm going to take your above critique/suggestions and try to recreate it to something similar to what you just posted.
Any chance I could get you to upload your version of scene so I can study how (and what) lights you placed?
I'm finding getting a feel for the light placement to be super tricky. Just not intuitive for me. Let alone the post-processing stuff.
Also, how the hell did you get that damn couch to show color??? I spent easy 30 min trying to and it just would not be anything but dark. I could tell (if I shined a bright enough light on it) that the color was changing but it was always black. Drove me nuts before I gave up.
I posted the scene that I did. Since I wasn't that happy with how it looked I afterwards swapped the main (directional) light for a spotlight aimed in the same direction. A spotlight gives more depth than directional, but since it's good to have at least one directional, I made one of the rims directional instead. Also tried to see how it looked with Hanmen skin/hair shaders (using Shift-D in Studio to change their body and head skin types, then changed their skin colors to make that work). Oh, I guess I added and a scaled up an item called "Fog" (Aizen53) to the scene as well. I took a few renders after this but didn't save the scene, sorry. If you take the scene I posted and do the things I mentioned it should look similar.

Light placement was tricky here, and I actually think your lights were fine. But it's usually easier. Firstly, here there are two characters so close that they're almost - but not quite - one, which means you light two faces/bodies at the same time but still have to worry about light overlap and unwanted shadows. Secondly, even if I was just doing a random scene, I'd usually set a camera-angle or two and light the scene with those shots in mind, since I'm thinking about renders. F.ex. this scene I might normally setup lights so that from one angle, one character looks good, from another angle, the other looks good. Instead I tried to make it look decent enough from all angles. It was a good exercise, though.

For the couch, just select it, click on Mat. Editor (under the workspace, on the right), and change its color value to brighter. I also increased its BumpScale, which had the effect of making the material more detailed and realistic (that depends on the bumpmap of the object, it isn't always true). When it comes to the Material Editor, experimenting with values gives results, and after a while you learn which values are worth changing.
f95scenea6.jpg
I add a couple more renders I did of my final edit of the scene before I threw it away lol.
 

cptboofy

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Dec 7, 2022
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I posted the scene that I did.
OOps. missed that it was png thought it was another jpg. Thanks!

(using Shift-D in Studio to change their body and head skin types, then changed their skin colors to make that work)
Dang! Thats a lot easier than what I was doing (literally going back and forth in character maker and studio).

Light placement was tricky here, and I actually think your lights were fine. But it's usually easier. Firstly, here there are two characters so close that they're almost - but not quite - one, which means you light two faces/bodies at the same time but still have to worry about light overlap and unwanted shadows. Secondly, even if I was just doing a random scene, I'd usually set a camera-angle or two and light the scene with those shots in mind, since I'm thinking about renders.
I'm approaching this a bit differently as rather than rendering or 3d skills I'm trying to learn composition and lighting to use in actual photography. Can't really get a studio or hire models and this game comes basically ready with heaps of options, not to mention all the models the community puts out.
Learning to tweak the little bit of 3d related things also feels a lot easier than the various 3d apps I've tried. We'll see if it works out the way I think after I get a bit more experience on it.

For the couch, just select it, click on Mat. Editor (under the workspace, on the right), and change its color value to brighter.
This one didn't work. But I think my issue is that I'm trying to change the color. If I modify it away from red it just seems to go black. Might be a limitation of the asset.
Thanks again for all the help!
 

cptboofy

Member
Dec 7, 2022
379
268
How to adjust the eye?

First picture (white eyes) is the default AIT/Eye Translucency. Default settings as per char card.
Second image (red eyes) is same thing BUT after I changed it to a diff shader and then back (so I went from AIT to something else then back to AIT). Nothing else done.
If I save and reload the card, the eyes go back to normal (white) as per original pic.

I want to know what part of the material editor controls that redness/the white part of the eyeball.
If it's possible to adjust that bit I think it gives a more "realistic" eye than the flat white IF I can ensure that it's only on the extreme edges of the eye (so most of it is white but with a small red tinge on the extreme outsides plus there's small veins that are visible when the red version is present).
 

thisisweak

Newbie
Nov 17, 2022
19
68
I made a tutorial on how to import models into HS2. This process only works for items, but you can create Maps as items. This can be handy when you want to combine maps in a scene.

HS2_2023-01-30-15-51-13-284 (Large).png
I go into detail on how to import the Resident Evil 2 RPD main hall trying to keep it simple with lots of pictures. I recommend first timers use this same model so they can follow along.
If you want to see the results, here's the zipmod.

HS2_2023-01-30-15-20-55-884 (Large).png
 

zir175

Newbie
Aug 6, 2022
35
11
So whats the deal with Hooh's scripted cocks or whatever it's called? I tried to play succubus stalkers 8 but the dick in the scene is supposed to be animated but isn't moving at all, I'm guessing because the system says that mod is outdated when I load the scene. Can the scene just no longer be played because the mod doesn't work anymore?
 

drowsy

Member
Nov 23, 2017
380
621
I'm approaching this a bit differently as rather than rendering or 3d skills I'm trying to learn composition and lighting to use in actual photography. Can't really get a studio or hire models and this game comes basically ready with heaps of options, not to mention all the models the community puts out.
That's really cool. Good luck with that. I'm no pro photographer obviously, but can see the utility.

Learning to tweak the little bit of 3d related things also feels a lot easier than the various 3d apps I've tried. We'll see if it works out the way I think after I get a bit more experience on it.
If anything my impression is that the capacities of HS2 Studio are kinda underutilized and underexplored. Especially since it's incredibly easy to take materials/textures/bumpmaps and brush them up in Photoshop or Gimp and upscale them to 2k/4k/8k/16k, plus add whatever skin overlays one might want. My best chars look about as photorealistic as Genesis characters, in good lighting that is ^^.

This one didn't work. But I think my issue is that I'm trying to change the color. If I modify it away from red it just seems to go black. Might be a limitation of the asset.
Strange. Maybe when I did it I changed the shader to Hanmen/Item Cutoff, and then changed the color. Whenever I'm in doubt about an object I just change its shader to that one, generally does the trick unless it's translucent.

How to adjust the eye?
Not sure when it comes to AIT/Translucency. Maybe a slider in the character settings, but it would have to be accessible only through Character Creator since I'm not seeing it with Shft+D. I do know that with the shader Eye Deep Dive Advanced there is a ScleraSize slider that handles this.

So whats the deal with Hooh's scripted cocks or whatever it's called?
Maybe you need to update your hooh dick mod? Only problem I've had with Hooh dicks (or any dicks for that matter) is making them look seamless with the rest of the body. I usually end up placing some conveniently thick pubes to hide the transition, but that kinda sucks.
 
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Sepheyer

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Dec 21, 2020
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I'm approaching this a bit differently as rather than rendering or 3d skills I'm trying to learn composition and lighting to use in actual photography. Can't really get a studio or hire models and this game comes basically ready with heaps of options, not to mention all the models the community puts out.
Learning to tweak the little bit of 3d related things also feels a lot easier than the various 3d apps I've tried. We'll see if it works out the way I think after I get a bit more experience on it.
Don't know if you saw it, there is a scenes thread here. By the time you try all the scenes you'll be ready for a Director of Photography position on any Director's set:

https://f95zone.to/threads/illusion-ai-girl-honey-select-2-studio-neo-scene-sharing-thread.85125/
 

Sepheyer

Well-Known Member
Dec 21, 2020
1,571
3,768
I'm approaching this a bit differently as rather than rendering or 3d skills I'm trying to learn composition and lighting to use in actual photography. Can't really get a studio or hire models and this game comes basically ready with heaps of options, not to mention all the models the community puts out.
Learning to tweak the little bit of 3d related things also feels a lot easier than the various 3d apps I've tried. We'll see if it works out the way I think after I get a bit more experience on it.
Also, now seriously, about being a photographer.

00016-509356623-ultrarealistic photography, 4k, 8k, 16k._playboy centerfold style.__gorgeous w...png

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drowsy

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Nov 23, 2017
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If AI takes over for photography, it also takes over celebrity, modelling, fashion, news, journalism, etc. Put inversely, as long as we have new celebrities, new models, and news journalism, we will want real photography. AI will either change everything, in which case we'll probably outlaw it since it just crashes society/the economy, or it doesn't change that much. I think the latter, because people are mostly interested in other people, and in manmade stuff.
 

cptboofy

Member
Dec 7, 2022
379
268
Don't know if you saw it, there is a scenes thread here. By the time you try all the scenes you'll be ready for a Director of Photography position on any Director's set:

https://f95zone.to/threads/illusion-ai-girl-honey-select-2-studio-neo-scene-sharing-thread.85125/
Cool thanks! It was one of those things that I saw when I first started looking through here but then forgot about and just stayed in this thread. But the very first post answered a question I was going to ask. Why so many scenes had those floating balls everywhere (missing assets get replaced with them). HAH! Good stuff.
 

cptboofy

Member
Dec 7, 2022
379
268
If anything my impression is that the capacities of HS2 Studio are kinda underutilized and underexplored. Especially since it's incredibly easy to take materials/textures/bumpmaps and brush them up in Photoshop or Gimp and upscale them to 2k/4k/8k/16k, plus add whatever skin overlays one might want. My best chars look about as photorealistic as Genesis characters, in good lighting that is ^^.
Exactly my thinking. I'm not even at amateur level, just like taking nice shots and art in general. This allows a lot of flexibility.

Took me 37 seconds to generate that girl using AI tool stable diffusion. I bet all of the photographers and models are either doing or about to do soul-searching now, as this tool is a major threat to them earning income.

One can resist or one can drop everything they are doing and try to master these new tools.

If you are intrested in an AI drawing started guide, there is a thread too:

https://f95zone.to/threads/stable-diffusion-prompt-sharing-and-learning-thread.146036/

Should take you not even three days to be cranking out the pics like that above in thousands.
Nah, I'm not trying to take pro photos or anything. I'm not even close to amateur level. I just like playing around for the sake of playing around.
 
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zir175

Newbie
Aug 6, 2022
35
11
Is there a way to use mulitple custom HSPE faces in the keyframe editor? I alter the face with HSPE and hit register with everything selected but the face only moves if I use one of the default face settings in anim>kinematics. I think I read something about it here but I cant find the post.
 
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cptboofy

Member
Dec 7, 2022
379
268
Questions about the character cards:

1) Is there any way to generate higher resolution thumbnails images for the cards? So if you open the .png in an image viewer it shows a bigger/higher res image as opposed to the default thumb?

2) Any way to change the default naming system? So rather than HSChaf blabla.png I want to change it to say, character name or some other customized naming system.
 

cptboofy

Member
Dec 7, 2022
379
268
How to adjust the eye?

First picture (white eyes) is the default AIT/Eye Translucency. Default settings as per char card.
Second image (red eyes) is same thing BUT after I changed it to a diff shader and then back (so I went from AIT to something else then back to AIT). Nothing else done.
If I save and reload the card, the eyes go back to normal (white) as per original pic.

I want to know what part of the material editor controls that redness/the white part of the eyeball.
If it's possible to adjust that bit I think it gives a more "realistic" eye than the flat white IF I can ensure that it's only on the extreme edges of the eye (so most of it is white but with a small red tinge on the extreme outsides plus there's small veins that are visible when the red version is present).
In case anyone else had this issue - seems like when reverting back to default (AIT) it kept the deepdive shader but with the AIT settings/controls. So only reloading would clear it.
The deepdive shader allows for a sclera (what I was looking for) but I seem to have some sort of issue with changing the iris color. It will change but there's something affecting it so it comes out too dark (no detail in the iris, just the most minute hint of color along the bottom edge).
 

Paddycake

New Member
May 19, 2021
5
0
I know this is probably a stupid question, but why am I missing Studio Neo v2? I've downloaded the DARKSiDERS version of HS2, and there's only a HoneySelect2.exe in the root directory. I know I can just install the latest HF Patch, but I don't want to do that because it's very bloated and there's a lot of stuff in there that I don't need. I can't just untick the stuff I don't want during the installation (I've tried it and it broke the game and deleted all my previously installed mods). Where can I get only Studio Neo v2?
 
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