Tutorial [ILLUSION] HS2 Studio Neo|Chara Maker - (Help & guides Thread)
- Thread starter hun hunter
- Start date
- May 13, 2020
- 7
- 0
Can anyone offer quick advice for HANMEN skin shaders? I have em all installed and used them frequently but all of a sudden pressing (F5) doesn't bring the menu up now? Tried reinstalling to no avail. What the heck can I do?
- Dec 21, 2020
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F5 is a graphics mod. Check that you have it enabled in the InitSettings.
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- May 13, 2020
- 7
- 0
That's the weird thing I have it checked in initsettings and when i boot game you could tell its active, I just cant get my F5 menu to pop up.
- Dec 21, 2020
- 1,526
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Check your plugin settings -- if the graphics mod still has F5 as its shortcut. You summon the plugin menu via F1.
- Oct 16, 2020
- 171
- 373
Have in mind that you could go beyond the standar sliders measures just by tiping directly the number you want in the appropiate box, may it helps.
- Dec 21, 2020
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Bodypainting your talent
Scene here: https://f95zone.to/threads/illusion...o-neo-scene-sharing-thread.85125/post-6003621
1. Download and extract tutorial textures - there is a shirt, a skirt, a pantyhose.
2. Start up the character maker. (We apply the textures via Material Editor. The Material Editor works in Character Maker and in Studio Neo.)
3. Let's start off using the default chara - here is her card just in case. Skin Type 1, as vanilla as it gets.
4. Open up the Material Editor: Body -> Overall -> Material Editor (Body)
5. Locate cf_m_skin_body_00 and press Copy Material.
6. Scroll down to locate newly copied material. It will show up as cf_m_skin_body_00.MECopy1 somewhere halfway through the scrollbar:
7. Change the material shader on the newly duplicated material to AIT/Clothes Alpha True.
What was a copy of skin becomes clothes:
8. Change the main texture in the MainTex setting slightly below by clicking on corresponding ImportTexture button.
In the open file dialog locate and open the file with the shirt texture. Almost immediately the chara will be sporting a bodypainted shirt:
We'll adjust the shirt's color in step #10.
9. Repeat the same steps for the pantyhose and the skirt: copy original material cf_m_skin_body_00, locate its new copy, change copy's shader, then change its MainTex.
You'll have:
Here is the chara card to compare the results:
10. Color settings
The bodypainted materials are largely affected by four settings. Here are settings and recommended values to start at:
CarvatureStrength 0.5
ExGloss 1.8
Float0 0.5
Transambient 0.01
Scene here: https://f95zone.to/threads/illusion...o-neo-scene-sharing-thread.85125/post-6003621
Scene here: https://f95zone.to/threads/illusion...o-neo-scene-sharing-thread.85125/post-6003621
1. Download and extract tutorial textures - there is a shirt, a skirt, a pantyhose.
2. Start up the character maker. (We apply the textures via Material Editor. The Material Editor works in Character Maker and in Studio Neo.)
3. Let's start off using the default chara - here is her card just in case. Skin Type 1, as vanilla as it gets.
4. Open up the Material Editor: Body -> Overall -> Material Editor (Body)
5. Locate cf_m_skin_body_00 and press Copy Material.
6. Scroll down to locate newly copied material. It will show up as cf_m_skin_body_00.MECopy1 somewhere halfway through the scrollbar:
7. Change the material shader on the newly duplicated material to AIT/Clothes Alpha True.
What was a copy of skin becomes clothes:
8. Change the main texture in the MainTex setting slightly below by clicking on corresponding ImportTexture button.
In the open file dialog locate and open the file with the shirt texture. Almost immediately the chara will be sporting a bodypainted shirt:
We'll adjust the shirt's color in step #10.
9. Repeat the same steps for the pantyhose and the skirt: copy original material cf_m_skin_body_00, locate its new copy, change copy's shader, then change its MainTex.
You'll have:
Here is the chara card to compare the results:
10. Color settings
The bodypainted materials are largely affected by four settings. Here are settings and recommended values to start at:
CarvatureStrength 0.5
ExGloss 1.8
Float0 0.5
Transambient 0.01
Scene here: https://f95zone.to/threads/illusion...o-neo-scene-sharing-thread.85125/post-6003621
Last edited:
- Jun 30, 2020
- 1
- 0
- Oct 16, 2020
- 171
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Just a little trick to share...
As most of you probably knows, there is an option in Studio that lets you save your own poses and retrieve them for further use. It is under Animations -> Kinematics -> Pose, you select the desired character, click on Save, give the pose a name and you will find it there anytime you open the Studio, ready for to use.
Well, that is a good idea, specially if you have been struggling for hours with the FK/IK to get a desired pose, but as many Illusion things, it has also obvious (I was tempted to say stupid) lacks. First at all, you can only save one character pose so, if you are interested in save an intercourse pose, forget about it. Second, and most important maybe, you can only see the name you give it when you saved it, no image allowed until you load the pose, which begin to be a problem when you have, let's say, over twenty poses saved. Of course, you can take pictures and save them in a separate folder to use as reference, but this is an added job to do.
I found (and probably most of you too) a better method to achieve the searched target, you can save the poses you want, even that of a complete group of characters as a "little" scene, eliminating all the undesired elements of the original scene (map, items, etc...) and leaving only the characters, with their gimmicks and sometimes, some lightning elements. You can rename the scene at your will (the impossibility of directly name your own scenes when saving is another of the mentioned lacks I told) and put them in a folder that can be arranged in categories also, if you want.
This way, you can have a look of all the possible poses to use in a scene at a glance and choose one quickly. Also, you don't need to have your scene poses folder inside the game folder (consuming memory and loading time): since the load mod has the option to refresh content at anytime, you can copy the pose(s) required into the scene folder of the game if needed and use them on the fly. But beware, to use the pose you must Import the scene containing it into the current scene, not to Load it, because it will substitute one scene for another.
Hope this could be of help for somebody.
As most of you probably knows, there is an option in Studio that lets you save your own poses and retrieve them for further use. It is under Animations -> Kinematics -> Pose, you select the desired character, click on Save, give the pose a name and you will find it there anytime you open the Studio, ready for to use.
Well, that is a good idea, specially if you have been struggling for hours with the FK/IK to get a desired pose, but as many Illusion things, it has also obvious (I was tempted to say stupid) lacks. First at all, you can only save one character pose so, if you are interested in save an intercourse pose, forget about it. Second, and most important maybe, you can only see the name you give it when you saved it, no image allowed until you load the pose, which begin to be a problem when you have, let's say, over twenty poses saved. Of course, you can take pictures and save them in a separate folder to use as reference, but this is an added job to do.
I found (and probably most of you too) a better method to achieve the searched target, you can save the poses you want, even that of a complete group of characters as a "little" scene, eliminating all the undesired elements of the original scene (map, items, etc...) and leaving only the characters, with their gimmicks and sometimes, some lightning elements. You can rename the scene at your will (the impossibility of directly name your own scenes when saving is another of the mentioned lacks I told) and put them in a folder that can be arranged in categories also, if you want.
This way, you can have a look of all the possible poses to use in a scene at a glance and choose one quickly. Also, you don't need to have your scene poses folder inside the game folder (consuming memory and loading time): since the load mod has the option to refresh content at anytime, you can copy the pose(s) required into the scene folder of the game if needed and use them on the fly. But beware, to use the pose you must Import the scene containing it into the current scene, not to Load it, because it will substitute one scene for another.
Hope this could be of help for somebody.
- Dec 21, 2020
- 1,526
- 3,596
AI Girl
where is the mirror mod, smartphone mod and apartment mod needed for this scene to work, i mainly want the mirror mod
- Dec 21, 2020
- 1,526
- 3,596
AIS BR 9.1 has mirror by default -- see attached.
Smartphone use mod gifplane/monplane that sits deactivated in the following folder "[OPTIONAL] Mods\Gifplane v0".
I don't know the mod name for the apartment map.
Hey Guys. I wanted to ask if any may know how do i install or where do i put the IL_MapIntegrationPlugin-master ?
- May 12, 2021
- 202
- 230
For HS2. right...?
I'm up to date with my mods from sync.. I only have a MapController Plugin.
I found 1 item with that search term.
You must be registered to see the links
You must be registered to see the links
last update was Oct 2020. And it seems like it was more targeted for AI Girl because it didn't have Rooms. I want to say.. truth is I don't know.
Lastly, if you have it as a .zipmod you could put it in a higher level directory like (!My_ZipMods) or (!Orginal_Files) and use the KKManager to "install a sideloader" and use the navigation tools to select the directory dive down into it and select it it should work? Asssuming IF it's a valid format or something that HS2 needs. (I must say HS2 studio and main game does alot of "ignores because it's for AI-Girl" in console log messages. it might not actually DO anything.
By default, I want to say that MapController is already pre-bundled aka all the extra maps from the big extras already make use of it. The orginal copy is still inside [OPTIONAL] Mods. I haven't looked at it yet... Probably will have to if I want to integreate Animations into main game. But I understand the easy way is to use the VGNE for anims..
Last edited:
It certainly helped me, only I wished I read it a little sooner or found it out myself. It's gotten tiresome to shuffle references.
- Oct 16, 2020
- 171
- 373
[Guide] First steps with VMDPlay plugin or how to import MMD (Miku Miku Dance) animations into HS2
For sure, there must be out there people who, like me, likes to see pretty girls dancing. Speaking about 3D world, Miku Miku Dance (or MMD) is a well known free program that let's you edit dance animations I won't say easily but , at least, with an affordable effort. Due to this, there is a lot of animations in the public domain that can be used for anyone. The files containing this animations bears the extension .vmd. (But beware, not all .vmd files are dance animations, I clarify that later).
Despite HS2 comes with a lot of dance animations too (thanks to their creators and the never enough acknowledged Screw This Noise and his repacks), one have never sufficient of them, so the idea of import MMD animations into HS2 which multiplies the available number of dances is indeed a great idea, and hence, the VMDPlay plugin. I don´t know at this moment who is the author of the plugin but, if you are interested, I'm sure a quick search will give you the answer.
However, as many things with HS2, the plugin management can be discouraging at first since it looks complex (and, if you dig enough in it, it is), but a simple use is not that complex and (again as many things with HS2) you probably only need a little guidance into the first steps to be able to manage it for yourself. That's the intention of this my first tutorial (well, kind of).
First thing you need, of course, is to install the plugin. You can find it into the optional plugins folder in HS2 and I assume you know how to install it. Second thing to have is some .vmd file if you want to animate something. They are not very difficult to find if you google it a little, though I miss some kind of repository where one can find them reunited... At the end of the tutorial, I will include some address where you can download some (I wish to include one as an example, but the .vmd extension is not allowed here to attach files).
Once installed, remember that you can access the plugin settings by pressing F1. It is not necessary to change anything by now, but later maybe you want to tune some things there. At this time, what you need is some character to animate, so load one into Studio right now and select it. The .vmd files (or the plugin) make no differences between boys and girls, so it's up to you.
And now, we invoke the plugin (as if it was an ancient god) by pressing the magic combination ctrl + shift + v, et voilà. An UI (user interface) box must have appeared in the left side and you will see the name of your character there, this is the configuration box. Also you can see a bottom line with the main controls of the plugin (this line could be made to autohide), including a button to close the UI box when you are ready.
In the box, you find three tabs named Character, Camera and Sound, but, for reasons that I will explain later, we will work just with the first tab. First at all, we must click on the button "Off" to get our character enabled (to me, it looks a little strange to mark Off to get the things On, but the plugin is a little tricky in some aspects... just my opinion). Now, we have access to a lot of options but, don't panic! we will use actually very few of them. The most important is, of course, the input box labeled VMD, there you must select the .vmd file you are going to use, so it's time to search for it in your hard disk using the button "..." beside the input box. Find it and select it.
Once you see your .vmd file in the input box, is mandatory to press the "Load" button: the plugin is not smart enough as to guess that, if you selected that file, is that file which you want to load... Then you will see your character adopt the most basic pose, with the arms open wide, the "T" pose, that means that she knows already the choreography and is ready to dance. The last step now is to press the play button and the dance will begin (commonly after a few seconds). By the way, you can chain more animations using the button "+".
Note: Besides the "On/Off" button there is another button labeled (All) that alterns between All and Face. This is because you can control also the face animation, apart from the included in the animation file, which could be useful if you plan to take close-ups of the animation. In the BepInEx -> Plugins -> HS2_VMDPlayPlugin folder you will find some examples of how to do it.
And this is the basic, with that elements you could begin to enjoy with your characters movements. However, there are a lot of warnings and advices I must mention. Surely, you must miss something important: the music. What is a dance without the music? Well, if you remember, there is a tab in the IU called Sound, if you go there you will find another input box where you can search for a music file in your hard disk the same way you search for the .vmd file (don't forget to press Load after you select it!). However, the plugin only admit files in the .wav format which is not very common out there (since it is a non compressed format, the .wav files are way bigger -around ten times- than the equivalent .mp3, so they are not favourited for distribution), of course, you can convert .mp3 files (or whatever format) to .wav, there is a lot of free programs that does it, but it is a job which I sincerely thinks doesn't worth: there are better options, IMHO. By the way, if you try to use the sound option from Studio you will face the same problem, with the add-on of the lack of sinchronicity.
My best advice at this point is to export a video with your dance and edit it by adding the music later with a video edition program. It's easier and, anyway, also doesn't worth to open the Studio and load the animation every time you want to see it once you have it finished, it consumes a lot of time usually. And another thing I have learnt is that, altough the right thing is to use the song that animation was made for, actually there are a lot of songs that fit quite well with any animation you find, check it if you don't believe me. (And have in mind that you can manipulate the speed of the animation as well as that of the music). All this, obviously, unless you are a professional of the dance in which case you can call me heretic.
Another point. If you look under the input box in the character tab you will see two sets of buttons "Play" "Pause" "Stop" and yes, you guess it, it is possible to have as many characters dancing as your computer can handle, hence the words (Player) - only the character selected- and (All) -everybody-.
However, beware, you must repeat the complete process explained up there for each character you want to add, which is a little annoying, I know (you must use the couple of arrows beside the character name to do that). In exchange, it gives you the interesting option to combine several choreographies in the same scene.
I said before that .vmd files are not only dance animations, and also that there is a tab in the config UI named Camera. And yes, sure you guess it right again: .vmd files can contain also camera movements to play togheter with the dance animation. These camera movements are built separately from the animation and are the result of the artistic conception of the author, something like the work of the director in a TV program, so you can find as many camera files as artists are out there. An easy way to tell apart animation files from camera files (if it is not indicated in the name), is the size, usually camera files have a very little size, about 2-3 kb, while animation files are considerably bigger, from 50-60 Kb to several Mb. You can load camera files into the Camera tab, and it will works... but not works, actually. The reason is that camera movements are designed for a particular stage or surrounding so, when you include them in your scene they doesn´t fit at all and use to be useless.
A last warning. It is important to know that animation files interferes with FK/IK of the character without it is been reflected in the Studio -> Kinematics tab. The consecuence is that, after the animation ends, you won't be able to assign any pose or animation to your character until you deselect it (now you must click "On" button) in the UI box.
And a bonus track: you can pause the animation at any moment, save the scene (better with only the character/s) and Import it later to use it as a static pose at any other scene.
That's all, folks, I hope that you could find all this useful and, please, excuse my limited English. Also, I wish to encourage you to explore beyond and turn back here to explain us all what you find out.
Some sites to get .vmd files (the first one is a little outdated, so many links are broken):
For sure, there must be out there people who, like me, likes to see pretty girls dancing. Speaking about 3D world, Miku Miku Dance (or MMD) is a well known free program that let's you edit dance animations I won't say easily but , at least, with an affordable effort. Due to this, there is a lot of animations in the public domain that can be used for anyone. The files containing this animations bears the extension .vmd. (But beware, not all .vmd files are dance animations, I clarify that later).
Despite HS2 comes with a lot of dance animations too (thanks to their creators and the never enough acknowledged Screw This Noise and his repacks), one have never sufficient of them, so the idea of import MMD animations into HS2 which multiplies the available number of dances is indeed a great idea, and hence, the VMDPlay plugin. I don´t know at this moment who is the author of the plugin but, if you are interested, I'm sure a quick search will give you the answer.
However, as many things with HS2, the plugin management can be discouraging at first since it looks complex (and, if you dig enough in it, it is), but a simple use is not that complex and (again as many things with HS2) you probably only need a little guidance into the first steps to be able to manage it for yourself. That's the intention of this my first tutorial (well, kind of).
First thing you need, of course, is to install the plugin. You can find it into the optional plugins folder in HS2 and I assume you know how to install it. Second thing to have is some .vmd file if you want to animate something. They are not very difficult to find if you google it a little, though I miss some kind of repository where one can find them reunited... At the end of the tutorial, I will include some address where you can download some (I wish to include one as an example, but the .vmd extension is not allowed here to attach files).
Once installed, remember that you can access the plugin settings by pressing F1. It is not necessary to change anything by now, but later maybe you want to tune some things there. At this time, what you need is some character to animate, so load one into Studio right now and select it. The .vmd files (or the plugin) make no differences between boys and girls, so it's up to you.
And now, we invoke the plugin (as if it was an ancient god) by pressing the magic combination ctrl + shift + v, et voilà. An UI (user interface) box must have appeared in the left side and you will see the name of your character there, this is the configuration box. Also you can see a bottom line with the main controls of the plugin (this line could be made to autohide), including a button to close the UI box when you are ready.
In the box, you find three tabs named Character, Camera and Sound, but, for reasons that I will explain later, we will work just with the first tab. First at all, we must click on the button "Off" to get our character enabled (to me, it looks a little strange to mark Off to get the things On, but the plugin is a little tricky in some aspects... just my opinion). Now, we have access to a lot of options but, don't panic! we will use actually very few of them. The most important is, of course, the input box labeled VMD, there you must select the .vmd file you are going to use, so it's time to search for it in your hard disk using the button "..." beside the input box. Find it and select it.
Once you see your .vmd file in the input box, is mandatory to press the "Load" button: the plugin is not smart enough as to guess that, if you selected that file, is that file which you want to load... Then you will see your character adopt the most basic pose, with the arms open wide, the "T" pose, that means that she knows already the choreography and is ready to dance. The last step now is to press the play button and the dance will begin (commonly after a few seconds). By the way, you can chain more animations using the button "+".
Note: Besides the "On/Off" button there is another button labeled (All) that alterns between All and Face. This is because you can control also the face animation, apart from the included in the animation file, which could be useful if you plan to take close-ups of the animation. In the BepInEx -> Plugins -> HS2_VMDPlayPlugin folder you will find some examples of how to do it.
And this is the basic, with that elements you could begin to enjoy with your characters movements. However, there are a lot of warnings and advices I must mention. Surely, you must miss something important: the music. What is a dance without the music? Well, if you remember, there is a tab in the IU called Sound, if you go there you will find another input box where you can search for a music file in your hard disk the same way you search for the .vmd file (don't forget to press Load after you select it!). However, the plugin only admit files in the .wav format which is not very common out there (since it is a non compressed format, the .wav files are way bigger -around ten times- than the equivalent .mp3, so they are not favourited for distribution), of course, you can convert .mp3 files (or whatever format) to .wav, there is a lot of free programs that does it, but it is a job which I sincerely thinks doesn't worth: there are better options, IMHO. By the way, if you try to use the sound option from Studio you will face the same problem, with the add-on of the lack of sinchronicity.
My best advice at this point is to export a video with your dance and edit it by adding the music later with a video edition program. It's easier and, anyway, also doesn't worth to open the Studio and load the animation every time you want to see it once you have it finished, it consumes a lot of time usually. And another thing I have learnt is that, altough the right thing is to use the song that animation was made for, actually there are a lot of songs that fit quite well with any animation you find, check it if you don't believe me. (And have in mind that you can manipulate the speed of the animation as well as that of the music). All this, obviously, unless you are a professional of the dance in which case you can call me heretic.
Another point. If you look under the input box in the character tab you will see two sets of buttons "Play" "Pause" "Stop" and yes, you guess it, it is possible to have as many characters dancing as your computer can handle, hence the words (Player) - only the character selected- and (All) -everybody-.
However, beware, you must repeat the complete process explained up there for each character you want to add, which is a little annoying, I know (you must use the couple of arrows beside the character name to do that). In exchange, it gives you the interesting option to combine several choreographies in the same scene.
I said before that .vmd files are not only dance animations, and also that there is a tab in the config UI named Camera. And yes, sure you guess it right again: .vmd files can contain also camera movements to play togheter with the dance animation. These camera movements are built separately from the animation and are the result of the artistic conception of the author, something like the work of the director in a TV program, so you can find as many camera files as artists are out there. An easy way to tell apart animation files from camera files (if it is not indicated in the name), is the size, usually camera files have a very little size, about 2-3 kb, while animation files are considerably bigger, from 50-60 Kb to several Mb. You can load camera files into the Camera tab, and it will works... but not works, actually. The reason is that camera movements are designed for a particular stage or surrounding so, when you include them in your scene they doesn´t fit at all and use to be useless.
A last warning. It is important to know that animation files interferes with FK/IK of the character without it is been reflected in the Studio -> Kinematics tab. The consecuence is that, after the animation ends, you won't be able to assign any pose or animation to your character until you deselect it (now you must click "On" button) in the UI box.
And a bonus track: you can pause the animation at any moment, save the scene (better with only the character/s) and Import it later to use it as a static pose at any other scene.
That's all, folks, I hope that you could find all this useful and, please, excuse my limited English. Also, I wish to encourage you to explore beyond and turn back here to explain us all what you find out.
Some sites to get .vmd files (the first one is a little outdated, so many links are broken):
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- May 12, 2021
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Not going to lie. This is pretty cool..
NOW.. if there was a way to clip quick flick moves into .fbx anim that would be hot..
I mean I have had my cat piss/squirt on my couch.. and it made me upset.. however.. the cat NEVER looked like...
well, you understand.. There are some parts of VMD that need to be clipped because they are important.
p.s. save your triggering.. she is now 35+.. but get retriggered.. she is still pretty and fit.
- Oct 16, 2020
- 171
- 373
First at all, I must excuse myself because of my poor English, due to that, it's hard to me to understand half of your posts... I detect great doses of irony and maybe an special sense of humour, but can't catch many times what you are really trying to say, sorry.
This said, I think there are people working in something related with your wishes, however, for I know, it is still an incipient project and, to me, enough complicated as to dig into it now. Please, take a look at this link, and see if you can get something about it:
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Related to animations editions, I have an idea which could yield interesting results, maybe. I have never done (still) a MMD animation myself, but I know that MMD program let's you make them from the scratch as well as edit them, so maybe it worths
to cut, paste or manipulate somehow, some current animations to select, combine and extract certain passages that you find specially interesting. Maybe I get into it some day, but for now it is not a priority for me... Perhaps, somebody would like to have a look on it.
- May 12, 2021
- 202
- 230
I do not deny that my form of written english in forums is very much a "conversational" one. In fact Machine Translation has difficulty with it means. I'm doing something properly.
If you add on to the fact that computer illiterate (and the non-technical savvy...) are constantly spamming demands from us. In addition to the fact that has nothing to do with if they are if they are in English fluent. Does wear on my pacience. I like to receive nuanced and well detailed explanations in responses. AND... I like provide nuanced and well detailed explanations.
Ultimately it's the chain of events. The process, the tools and the workflow that many users have issues trying to solve. The point A to point B. Now if there derivatives or components that can be used to solve issues (say prevent clipping and better geometry to be formulated) from that "point a to point b" I am familar with a number of tools and ML techniques in use. However sometimes the biggest issue is repeatablity and that "Aahhh, I understand" moment. After all there are rather large rifts in knowledge and application of abilities from something like Studio Neo, Unity, Blender and MS Visual Studio. There is a nice video titled "
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" But... you have to know enough of blender, unity and the way that Studio NEO uses poses, animations and other components.
I would like to mention that Deviant Art has a huge collection of MMD and VMD dances. That some kind soul has managed and maintained. The bundles are VERY comprehensive and large. However, I know little to nothing about dance troupes & musicians in general. (except "Shuffling" those girls are pretty hot.)
That said you have made a very well thought and proper write-up.
Sincerely, My thanks for your contribution.