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

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DuniX

Well-Known Member
Dec 20, 2016
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728
Is it possible to dress Male in female clothes. I say this because I want to use the female armour accessories for men.
I don't know, accessories might be common for both, but you can use invisible bodies and puppet the female body.
 
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Oncile

Newbie
Apr 11, 2018
39
49
Is it possible to dress Male in female clothes. I say this because I want to use the female armour accessories for men.
I haven't tried modding yet, but from what I read, you could do this by altering or duplicating the zipmod of the accessory.

 
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mIFFF322

New Member
Jan 17, 2020
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0
I download Sideloader Modpack and instal in game "mod", but how it must work and what it give?
 

Scrown6

Newbie
Sep 4, 2018
64
34
I haven't tried modding yet, but from what I read, you could do this by altering or duplicating the zipmod of the accessory.

Thanks I will give this a try and see how I get on.
 

hun hunter

Member
Dec 30, 2018
194
618
Thanks for the explanation. I will be keeping an eye on the thread for sure.

Edit:
NebulaX (and anyone else having this issue), I figured it out. I downloaded ScriptedDicks from Hooh's most recent update...HOWEVER....in that more recent post, he doesn't mention that there's another zipmod that you need. Go to the original ScriptedDicks post and down in the 'Download' section, look for the line that says, " Don't forget to download the studio category reserve! ". Click the Mega link under that and put the zipmod in you mods folder. Then the items show up in the list.
i as well forgot to mention the studio reserve, thank you for the follow up.

I haven't tried modding yet, but from what I read, you could do this by altering or duplicating the zipmod of the accessory.

Thanks I will give this a try and see how I get on.
the problem is that clothes meshes actually come with a custom body mesh for where it is placed to prevent clipping and other possible problems (functionality, size and fit), these body parts may be edited and some parts get removed depending on what kind of clothes it is occupying. changing the item list or references via zipmod manifest may end up loading those male body parts as well even if it worked. a real modding work is required using sb3utilty and an external modeling program to edit those meshes and files. i am not suggesting not to try it though, but please refer to the basics of modding first, understand the hierarchy and get the basics as this may get as complicated as importing another mesh from another game.

I download Sideloader Modpack and instal in game "mod", but how it must work and what it give?
when you open the studio, go to "Add>item" now you will notice that there are allot of new studio items added and ready to be used. same goes to "Add>map" and "Anim>animation". . .etc
 
Aug 11, 2020
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Some uncommon issues and solutions, for people who use the search function:
  • "Some of the animations make my character's upper arms rotate or glitch": Go animation -> Joint adjustment and then uncheck the arms that do this.
  • "My character has gigantic nipples": Don't save your studio scene while in POV mode.
  • "My video recording doesn't finish": Press ctrl+alt+del, click "task manager" and look at processes (in "more details" mode). If you sort by processor usage (click the "processor" column), you'll most likely have StudioNEO2 as top process. If you look at the sub processes, you'll see ffmpeg (the program that makes your video). If this is stuck at 0% processor usage, you'll have to exit the game (press escape, press yes). Don't worry, ffmpeg will keep on running and will now finish your video. Note that the image files don't get cleaned up automatically when you exit the game.
  • "When I record a video with a transparent background there is ghosting": At the top of the videoExport window you'll see the option to swap screenshot scripts. Put this on "built in". For some reason, the external image recorder doesn't work properly with transparent image sequences in videoExport. Note that your scene will look rougher because it doesn't use upscaling. Scratch that. It's just a black background apparently.
  • "When I use node constraints, it gives a message that shadow casting has been turned off": Either deselect your character (simply click on the selected one in the workspace) or press LAlt + N to turn them on again. This is caused by the render editor plugin.
  • HooH's semen doesn't work with transparency. I have no solution for this, besides rendering with a background.
 
Last edited:

Great_Old_One

Member
Aug 29, 2020
162
366
[reposted from the help thread]

Here's a quick (well, sorta) tutorial on converting an existing opaque clothing item to translucent. The idea is to grab the main texture with material editor, load that texture into photoshop or equivalent to change its opacity, then load edited texture back into game. First, find an item to convert, and set it to the color you want. The color will be in the texture file itself, and not easy to change afterward. In this case I'll use the "tight dress" in red. Then open the material editor for the top (see spoiler), scroll down to "MainTex", and hit "Export Texture". A window should pop up, showing your new texture file. It'll have a name something like _Export_2021-01-31-17-36-23_cf_m_top_tightdress_MainTex.png

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Now load that texture file into photoshop/whatever, and we want to make one simple change. On the "Layers" tab, there's the setting for the opacity of that layer. We want to change the 100% to something like 70%. If you're working with a white texture or other very light color, start more around 50%. Note that in many cases including this example, when you change the opacity the texture looks like it gets erased. Don't worry, everything we need is still there. Save the edited texture file as a png.
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Now back to the game - open the material editor again, find MainTex again, only this time we Import the newly edited texture. When you load the texture don't be surprised if nothing happens, or if things don't look like you expected. Some items barely change, occasionally they look perfect, but usually it'll come up dithered like this example did.
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Last step before saving, we want to check out a few shaders to see which looks best. The default shader is AIT/Clothes True, and usually it won't be the best look. At a minimum, we want to try AIT/Clothes Alpha, AIT/Clothes Alpha True, and Hanmen/Clothes True Pantyhose. Here Alpha True seems to look best, so we set the shader and create the coordinate card.
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Once you've done a couple of these it only takes a couple of minutes to make/load new textures. If you make anything that looks good, post it up on the card sharing thread! And here's the card made while doing the tutorial:
1035963_HS2CoordeF_20210131202440175.png
 

Magyno

New Member
Jun 30, 2017
2
0
Is there a way to lock the self-shadowing like in koikatsu? plugin name or something like that qw.png
 

K1T0 & K1TN

New Member
Jan 10, 2021
12
70
View attachment 895106 RESERVED FOR THIS THREAD
I'm just here to say thank you for the awesome guides =) They've been quite the help in figuring out the game!

Me and my GF come from modding TK17 (which is kinda dead now) and The Sims 4, we found HS2 a few weeks ago and have been hammering away at new mods (we'll be setting up a Patreon soon as a hub, but the work will be free for everyone). So far we've got:

- 40+ new eyebrows
- 10+ new eyelashes
- New makeup
- Custom overlays and underlays for more skin detail
- New male genital textures and bumps
- Custom scenes that act as interactable maps
- New eyeball textures
- New teeth textures
- Lots more..

The only thing that we've been fighting with are the bump maps, which work different here than in the Hook5 shader in TK17. They work fine with the "normal" normal bump you make is Photoshop, but because HS2 uses layered bumps (thus being transparent) they don't overlap well. Also, the original bumps seem to have different RGB channel values (this is probably the problem). We've been looking into what type of normal map conversion is needed but so far no luck, the single layer HS2 normal maps work fine tho and can be implemented quit easily.

Anyways, I'm rambling. Thanks for the guides and keep up the great work!

Greetz,
K1T0 & K1TN

PS: here's a taste of things to come.
K1T0-K1TN_Forest_preview.jpg
 

hun hunter

Member
Dec 30, 2018
194
618
Some uncommon issues and solutions, for people who use the search function:
  • "Some of the animations make my character's upper arms rotate or glitch": Go animation -> Joint adjustment and then uncheck the arms that do this.
  • "My character has gigantic nipples": Don't save your studio scene while in POV mode.
  • "My video recording doesn't finish": Press ctrl+alt+del, click "task manager" and look at processes (in "more details" mode). If you sort by processor usage (click the "processor" column), you'll most likely have StudioNEO2 as top process. If you look at the sub processes, you'll see ffmpeg (the program that makes your video). If this is stuck at 0% processor usage, you'll have to exit the game (press escape, press yes). Don't worry, ffmpeg will keep on running and will now finish your video. Note that the image files don't get cleaned up automatically when you exit the game.
  • "When I record a video with a transparent background there is ghosting": At the top of the videoExport window you'll see the option to swap screenshot scripts. Put this on "built in". For some reason, the external image recorder doesn't work properly with transparent image sequences in videoExport. Note that your scene will look rougher because it doesn't use upscaling.
  • "When I use node constraints, it gives a message that shadow casting has been turned off": Either deselect your character (simply click on the selected one in the workspace) or press LAlt + N to turn them on again. This is caused by the render editor plugin.
thank you very much for sharing this here, i encountered many other more but i forget to take note of them. i am glad you did, i will link those problems and solutions to the first post so it wont get lost. and please be free to add more or to update your post above at any time and let me know. people will always be directed to your original post. j_0002.gif

[reposted from the help thread]

Here's a quick (well, sorta) tutorial on converting an existing opaque clothing item to translucent. The idea is to grab the main texture with material editor, load that texture into photoshop or equivalent to change its opacity, then load edited texture back into game. First, find an item to convert, and set it to the color you want. The color will be in the texture file itself, and not easy to change afterward. In this case I'll use the "tight dress" in red. Then open the material editor for the top (see spoiler), scroll down to "MainTex", and hit "Export Texture". A window should pop up, showing your new texture file. It'll have a name something like _Export_2021-01-31-17-36-23_cf_m_top_tightdress_MainTex.png

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Now load that texture file into photoshop/whatever, and we want to make one simple change. On the "Layers" tab, there's the setting for the opacity of that layer. We want to change the 100% to something like 70%. If you're working with a white texture or other very light color, start more around 50%. Note that in many cases including this example, when you change the opacity the texture looks like it gets erased. Don't worry, everything we need is still there. Save the edited texture file as a png.
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Now back to the game - open the material editor again, find MainTex again, only this time we Import the newly edited texture. When you load the texture don't be surprised if nothing happens, or if things don't look like you expected. Some items barely change, occasionally they look perfect, but usually it'll come up dithered like this example did.
You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.
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Last step before saving, we want to check out a few shaders to see which looks best. The default shader is AIT/Clothes True, and usually it won't be the best look. At a minimum, we want to try AIT/Clothes Alpha, AIT/Clothes Alpha True, and Hanmen/Clothes True Pantyhose. Here Alpha True seems to look best, so we set the shader and create the coordinate card.
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Once you've done a couple of these it only takes a couple of minutes to make/load new textures. If you make anything that looks good, post it up on the card sharing thread! And here's the card made while doing the tutorial:
View attachment 1020845
thank you for posting your guide here, will also be linked to op. feel free to update or edit if you feel it is required as well. j_0002.gif

Is there a way to lock the self-shadowing like in koikatsu? plugin name or something like that View attachment 1021085
i am afraid that i don't know what does that do, i actually haven't tried Koikatsu nor it's studio. does it lock the shadow's color casted by the character? could it be ambient occlusion? will you show an example of it's functionality so i can relate to an altirnative? maybe other members know about it and can help you better as well.

I'm just here to say thank you for the awesome guides =) They've been quite the help in figuring out the game!

Me and my GF come from modding TK17 (which is kinda dead now) and The Sims 4, we found HS2 a few weeks ago and have been hammering away at new mods (we'll be setting up a Patreon soon as a hub, but the work will be free for everyone). So far we've got:

- 40+ new eyebrows
- 10+ new eyelashes
- New makeup
- Custom overlays and underlays for more skin detail
- New male genital textures and bumps
- Custom scenes that act as interactable maps
- New eyeball textures
- New teeth textures
- Lots more..

The only thing that we've been fighting with are the bump maps, which work different here than in the Hook5 shader in TK17. They work fine with the "normal" normal bump you make is Photoshop, but because HS2 uses layered bumps (thus being transparent) they don't overlap well. Also, the original bumps seem to have different RGB channel values (this is probably the problem). We've been looking into what type of normal map conversion is needed but so far no luck, the single layer HS2 normal maps work fine tho and can be implemented quit easily.

Anyways, I'm rambling. Thanks for the guides and keep up the great work!

Greetz,
K1T0 & K1TN

PS: here's a taste of things to come.
View attachment 1021610
thank you i am glad to hear that it could help :). i also will be happy to support you or if i can assist you in anyway using the studio. also that scene image looks amazing, the composition, light and camera angle are very expressive. you guys are very talented, looking forward to see more of it, please share as much as you like (y). btw let me know if you share your mods here or on discord/sideloader database, surely i will give it a try.

i am not a veteran texture artist, my knowledge does not go beyond some simple edits and tests so i will try to keep up to your problem as much as i can. the shaders illusion are using has several textures that layer with each other as you mentioned, the materials are basically are the main tecolor texture (alpha), the bump map tex (just a regular 1 color bump map, 1 color only, not sure if it supports rgb), the detail gloss maps (that can add another detail/gloss map texture layer to an object or part of it, it could work in rgb but i am not sure though. it is usually a tiled image) and several other maps for metallic and weathering/wet textures and a few masks. it is probably more convenient and leaves allot of room for reusing and saves time. if you wish to convert an already existed mod that has a different format as in just a single bump/normal map, then you can just load it in to the bump slot, you also can enhance/add more detail to it using the other slots if needed. also keep in mind that it has to be a 1 color bump map that support alpha, so if your normal map has rgb values you will have to convert them to a 1 colored map and use the other slots to support it.

i didn't get much in to other shaders but i hope this will help or at least give an idea to use your experiences on how to allocate your materials.
 

Magyno

New Member
Jun 30, 2017
2
0
well, my problem is number 3 shadow cast from another chara, how to disable this? cause then I disable number 1 all shadow disappear but I steel need number 2 to be on. sorry English not my native.
1.png 2.png
 

hun hunter

Member
Dec 30, 2018
194
618
well, my problem is number 3 shadow cast from another chara, how to disable this? cause then I disable number 1 all shadow disappear but I steel need number 2 to be on. sorry English not my native.
View attachment 1022019 View attachment 1022024
i see, this can be a little tricky. i am not sure if there is a more easy and direct function to lock other shadows of a character but you can use the material editor or renderer editor in studio to define what it object to cast and receive shadows, material editor cant edit clothes inside the studio, only the character and other studio objects (dont know why). so if you select lets say the male character and click on the material editor icon on the bottom part of "workspace", then search for "body" on the search field located on top left side of the plugin menu, then change "shadow casting mode" to (off), the male chara will not cast shadow on anything ever, but i am not sure if you have to do this for all the character parts like, hair, eyes ..etc. you also can do this on the female character but change "receive shadows" instead, but i guess you will have to do this for clothes as well. please try it and let me know if you achieve something decent out of it. hopefully somebody else may have a better solution.
 

NebulaX

Newbie
Game Developer
Oct 26, 2017
32
181
Anyone a patron of Animal42069? Seems like he's working on and I'm curious what the changes are. I'm hoping it'll work in studio as that would make the stock h-animations look way more realistic without so much work.
 

K1T0 & K1TN

New Member
Jan 10, 2021
12
70
thank you i am glad to hear that it could help :). i also will be happy to support you or if i can assist you in anyway using the studio. also that scene image looks amazing, the composition, light and camera angle are very expressive. you guys are very talented, looking forward to see more of it, please share as much as you like (y). btw let me know if you share your mods here or on discord/sideloader database, surely i will give it a try.

i am not a veteran texture artist, my knowledge does not go beyond some simple edits and tests so i will try to keep up to your problem as much as i can. the shaders illusion are using has several textures that layer with each other as you mentioned, the materials are basically are the main tecolor texture (alpha), the bump map tex (just a regular 1 color bump map, 1 color only, not sure if it supports rgb), the detail gloss maps (that can add another detail/gloss map texture layer to an object or part of it, it could work in rgb but i am not sure though. it is usually a tiled image) and several other maps for metallic and weathering/wet textures and a few masks. it is probably more convenient and leaves allot of room for reusing and saves time. if you wish to convert an already existed mod that has a different format as in just a single bump/normal map, then you can just load it in to the bump slot, you also can enhance/add more detail to it using the other slots if needed. also keep in mind that it has to be a 1 color bump map that support alpha, so if your normal map has rgb values you will have to convert them to a 1 colored map and use the other slots to support it.

i didn't get much in to other shaders but i hope this will help or at least give an idea to use your experiences on how to allocate your materials.
Thanks for the props =) We'll give a heads up when we're releasing! Currently K1TN is working on the logo, then we're ready to roll out.

And thanks for the explanation on the bumps =) The RGB channels I mentioned have different effects on the bumps, say for example: a standard normal map you make in Photoshop is blueish. While all the bumps used in HS2 are red (so lower GB values, high R channel value). This might be why my bumps don't overlap well (even when I turn down transparency by 50% and use the blending of blacks and whites. But it's ok, trial and error will get there! Bumps on the other objects that only use one bumpmap work fine, and on that matter.... there might be something you can help with.

I've used the Render Editor allot to change values of objects etc, but I haven't looked yet. As a work around, in this map (which is completely made out of objects from the latest ScrewThisNoise release; I've used a poster item and changed the texture and bump to a 4k cement tex for the floor and walls:

K1T0-K1TN_Perv_Basement_Preview.jpg

Problem is, when I load it on K1TN's PC, my texture isn't loaded. Which means it's not stored in the scene PNG. I've been thinking of work arounds, closest one I've got is to make a zip with the correct folder destinations, so it loads the textures from the root folder along with the scene. But maybe you have a better idea? Lemme know and keep up the great work! =)

PS: I'm not gonna make maps which you can load, but scenes with items that load from the STS releases. Because the scenes I can make interactable. I dislike most maps because of the baked in lights and cubemaps.
 

hun hunter

Member
Dec 30, 2018
194
618
Thanks for the props =) We'll give a heads up when we're releasing! Currently K1TN is working on the logo, then we're ready to roll out.

And thanks for the explanation on the bumps =) The RGB channels I mentioned have different effects on the bumps, say for example: a standard normal map you make in Photoshop is blueish. While all the bumps used in HS2 are red (so lower GB values, high R channel value). This might be why my bumps don't overlap well (even when I turn down transparency by 50% and use the blending of blacks and whites. But it's ok, trial and error will get there! Bumps on the other objects that only use one bumpmap work fine, and on that matter.... there might be something you can help with.

I've used the Render Editor allot to change values of objects etc, but I haven't looked yet. As a work around, in this map (which is completely made out of objects from the latest ScrewThisNoise release; I've used a poster item and changed the texture and bump to a 4k cement tex for the floor and walls:

View attachment 1023095

Problem is, when I load it on K1TN's PC, my texture isn't loaded. Which means it's not stored in the scene PNG. I've been thinking of work arounds, closest one I've got is to make a zip with the correct folder destinations, so it loads the textures from the root folder along with the scene. But maybe you have a better idea? Lemme know and keep up the great work! =)

PS: I'm not gonna make maps which you can load, but scenes with items that load from the STS releases. Because the scenes I can make interactable. I dislike most maps because of the baked in lights and cubemaps.
great job, they are all well made scenes especially the textures you'v made, the lighting is beautiful and eye popping as well. btw is it graphic mod?

about the materials, i also noticed joan's renderer not saving settings some times, but it actually work sometimes, try saving multiple instances of the scene and see if it worked by testing it on another pc while the scene is still open (lots of work i know). was it only the texture edits that id failed to save or were there other material settings like reflection, color and ..etc? have you tried the material editor instead? so far it didnt fail me yet ^^' it will always save the data to cards and scenes successfully. it may doesn't have a nice gui and texture preview like renderer but it will do until the problem is fixed.
 

K1T0 & K1TN

New Member
Jan 10, 2021
12
70
great job, they are all well made scenes especially the textures you'v made, the lighting is beautiful and eye popping as well. btw is it graphic mod?
Thanks! And jep jep, Graphics mod all the way, with Reshade to top it off =) We'll be posting the scenes including the GM preset, Reshade preset and I'm still looking into the cubemaps (all in a .zip file). I can't preview the .cube files in Windows and GM doesn't show filenames. I have 50+ cubemaps, so I think I need to start counting..

about the materials, i also noticed joan's renderer not saving settings some times, but it actually work sometimes, try saving multiple instances of the scene and see if it worked by testing it on another pc while the scene is still open (lots of work i know). was it only the texture edits that id failed to save or were there other material settings like reflection, color and ..etc? have you tried the material editor instead? so far it didnt fail me yet ^^' it will always save the data to cards and scenes successfully. it may doesn't have a nice gui and texture preview like renderer but it will do until the problem is fixed.
Mmmm, readding the texture and bump through the mat editor might be a good solution! The way I know that the textures aren't in the scene is because the file size of the .png doesn't change. When I put in, for example, custom characters with high res overlays, the size of the scene increases to like 100mb (depending on how many chars are loaded in). The texture and bump for the scene items are 40mb, so the scene itself should become 41mb.

Gonna try out the mat editor solution and we'll keep you posted =) Thanks!
 
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K1T0 & K1TN

New Member
Jan 10, 2021
12
70
about the materials, i also noticed joan's renderer not saving settings some times, but it actually work sometimes, try saving multiple instances of the scene and see if it worked by testing it on another pc while the scene is still open (lots of work i know). was it only the texture edits that id failed to save or were there other material settings like reflection, color and ..etc? have you tried the material editor instead? so far it didnt fail me yet ^^' it will always save the data to cards and scenes successfully. it may doesn't have a nice gui and texture preview like renderer but it will do until the problem is fixed.
You were right =) Loading it in with the Mat Editor saved the new tex and bumps into the png! Altough the Render Editor seems to be more kind on how the bumps are integrated and how light affects them, the Mat Editor actually saves them. Thanks again! Beta testing the Basement scene now, gonna post that soon =)
 
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red_faced

Active Member
Jul 23, 2020
767
1,812
This might be a dumb question, but how do you change eyebrow color in the character maker? I cannot seem to find the option anywhere.
 
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