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

[Herbmetaru]

Rookies guide to texture-mods. MetaruGuide .


I thought it is time for an updated guide about creating mods for HS2, since the one, most are pointing at is written 2018 and updated 2019. It's focus was Koikatsu and though not much has changed, it still leaves some gaps for those, that are completely new.
So I started to write that guide and noticed, it became more of a workshop, then a simple guide. It takes some time to follow it, but even if you are not new and skipping parts, because you have your method allready, it might be worth to skim-read it and still find something new.
I divided it in 3 parts, basicly backengineering the mods in the sample, with part 3 focussing on creating a texture with Gimp and add it to a mod.
If you have the patience, then I'd suggest to start with reading and follow the steps instead of directly diving into the samples and paint.

Note: if you use the samples: please do not spread mods as 'yourname'

edit: small fixes on part 2 and added part 4, that also covers those changes.
edit 2: part 5, textures for nipples, pubes and brows


MetaruGuide

 

[Velcrofly]

Here's a basic tutorial made by Countd360, who worked on both MMDD and VNGE (lots more related tutorials on that channel). Enable subtitles:

You must be registered to see the links

MMDD comes with BetterRepack, but you might have to press F1 in Studio, search for MMDD and activate it or something.

It is designed for making music videos, but you can skip past the motion file and just add sound files. Note that you can play VNanime clips from inside MMDD (making custom keyframe animations start/stop at whatever timing you want) as well. It's kind of an all-in-one "director" plugin.

MMDD is in Optional Mods, so you need to copy the relevant content in the relevant drive - normally just a case of a .dll file or two being copied into a Bepinex subdirectory. Then you may need to activate it via F1 / Options then Plugin Settings and search for MMDD.

 

[HardcoreCuddler]

As my profile says, I'm a newby. Is there any resource or tutorial so I can see or learn how to make this possible on my VNGE scenes? Thanks in advance.

Check the other relies above this one you are reading now please
Other than that, in VNGE's interface you can get into the Clip Manager area where you can animate.
You can get the hang of it by simply doing it yourself rather than having someone else explain, as the whole thing is kind of convoluted

 

[drowsy]

So, I've been researching Reflection Probes in StudioNeoV2. I really think they're important for creating good-looking scenes.

Since I haven't seen this elsewhere, here's a very introductory tutorial:

To enable them, in Studio, use the Graphics plugin. First, put on some sort of Environment Skybox, giving you a background to work from. Then, go to Settings and, under Rendering, check Realtime Reflection Probes. If your hardware is limited you can put on a Pulse, which means reflection updates just once every x seconds. Or you can just check Realtime Reflection Probes and uncheck Pulse, which is more draining but means it updates constantly. Important if you want to reflect moving objects.

Then, go to Lighting. Here you will see Reflection Probes, which are the probes currently placed in your scene. If you've opened up a fresh scene there will probably be a Default Reflection Probe here already. (If there isn't, NYAACHO has Reflection Probe items you can place manually; place one at coordinates 0, 0, 0. You will want several probes if you have a larger scene, but start with one.) Its Importance should be at 100, Intensity at 1.0, Blend Distance at 1.0, Box Size: 100, 100, 100. These settings are important to adjust if you have multiple probes, since they decide priority over what should be reflected where, but leave them as is if you only have one probe in your scene. I check HDR and put Resolution to 2048.

Now, to see what the probe does, place a Sphere or some other basic white shape in your scene, on coordinates like 0, 10, 0. Then, go into its Material Editor. I tend to switch shader to Hanmen/Item Cutoff. Then, first set its DetailMetallicScale (which should start at 0), set it to -1. This is gives the Sphere a diffuse reflective look. If you have a skybox that is, f.ex. green, the Sphere will now be green. If you switch skybox you can see the Sphere change color accordingly. But still, it doesn't give much of a reflection? Well, to make it mirror its surroundings, under Material Editor set its Glossiness to 1.



Now the Sphere is now a perfect mirror, even reflecting moving objects. Try placing other items around it and giving them an animation.

Note that the Reflection Probe is like a 360* camera of its surroundings, and the picture it takes is plastered onto every reflective object in its Box area, including the Sphere. So, if you were to place the Sphere on top of the Reflection Probe (probably on 0, 0, 0 coordinates), it should become pitch black, since it blocks the Reflection Probe from taking its pictures. It also blocks every other object inside the Box area from receiving/throwing reflections (including the Sphere). If you need an object (e.g. the Sphere) to be in that spot you should set its shader to Alpha rather than Cutoff.

So, you can now create mirrors, but, you ask - other than that - what is the point of all this? Well, in real life things are reflective, to a greater and lesser extent, even when they're not full mirrors. When clothes, skin, hair, walls, floors, etc. reflect things around them more accurately, the scene looks a lot more realistic. And, with control over Reflection Probe(s) in your scene, you have more control over this, especially when combined with editing the glossiness and reflectiveness of surfaces using Material Editor or Character Creator.

If you want more info you can look up Reflection Probes in Unity, since StudioNeoV2 with Graphics plugin works similarly.

 

[Mr-Fox]

So, I've been researching Reflection Probes in StudioNeoV2. I really think they're important for creating good-looking scenes.

Since I haven't seen this elsewhere, here's a very introductory tutorial:

To enable them, in Studio, use the Graphics plugin. First, put on some sort of Environment Skybox, giving you a background to work from. Then, go to Settings and, under Rendering, check Realtime Reflection Probes. If your hardware is limited you can put on a Pulse, which means reflection updates just once every x seconds. Or you can just check Realtime Reflection Probes and uncheck Pulse, which is more draining but means it updates constantly. Important if you want to reflect moving objects.

Then, go to Lighting. Here you will see Reflection Probes, which are the probes currently placed in your scene. If you've opened up a fresh scene there will probably be a Default Reflection Probe here already. (If there isn't, NYAACHO has Reflection Probe items you can place manually; place one at coordinates 0, 0, 0. You will want several probes if you have a larger scene, but start with one.) Its Importance should be at 100, Intensity at 1.0, Blend Distance at 1.0, Box Size: 100, 100, 100. These settings are important to adjust if you have multiple probes, since they decide priority over what should be reflected where, but leave them as is if you only have one probe in your scene. I check HDR and put Resolution to 2048.

Now, to see what the probe does, place a Sphere or some other basic white shape in your scene, on coordinates like 0, 10, 0. Then, go into its Material Editor. I tend to switch shader to Hanmen/Item Cutoff. Then, first set its DetailMetallicScale (which should start at 0), set it to -1. This is gives the Sphere a diffuse reflective look. If you have a skybox that is, f.ex. green, the Sphere will now be green. If you switch skybox you can see the Sphere change color accordingly. But still, it doesn't give much of a reflection? Well, to make it mirror its surroundings, under Material Editor set its Glossiness to 1.

View attachment 2186675

Now the Sphere is now a perfect mirror, even reflecting moving objects. Try placing other items around it and giving them an animation.

Note that the Reflection Probe is like a 360* camera of its surroundings, and the picture it takes is plastered onto every reflective object in its Box area, including the Sphere. So, if you were to place the Sphere on top of the Reflection Probe (probably on 0, 0, 0 coordinates), it should become pitch black, since it blocks the Reflection Probe from taking its pictures. It also blocks every other object inside the Box area from receiving/throwing reflections (including the Sphere). If you need an object (e.g. the Sphere) to be in that spot you should set its shader to Alpha rather than Cutoff.

So, you can now create mirrors, but, you ask - other than that - what is the point of all this? Well, in real life things are reflective, to a greater and lesser extent, even when they're not full mirrors. When clothes, skin, hair, walls, floors, etc. reflect things around them more accurately, the scene looks a lot more realistic. And, with control over Reflection Probe(s) in your scene, you have more control over this, especially when combined with editing the glossiness and reflectiveness of surfaces using Material Editor or Character Creator.

If you want more info you can look up Reflection Probes in Unity, since StudioNeoV2 with Graphics plugin works similarly.

Awesome stuff drowsy! Could you perhaps post a continuation of this tutorial with example scenes showing different typical
use scenarios such as creating a poster or headshot photo and previews of a character or outfit etc?

 

[drowsy]

Awesome stuff drowsy! Could you perhaps post a continuation of this tutorial with example scenes showing different typical
use scenarios such as creating a poster or headshot photo and previews of a character or outfit etc?

Alright, I'm learning too so it seems worth it. So if anyone here is familiar with Daz and other 3D software, in those software they often use "mesh lighting" (lighting with actual 3d objects in the scene), or lighting with "primitives" like spheres and cubes, to light up scenes. In StudioNeoV2 or Honey Select 2, it seems we're limited to Directional, Point, and Spot Lights. The "Emission" property doesn't do much in Studio, Right?

Wrong! Using Reflection Probes, we can to an extent light up scenes with actual shapes or objects in the scene. We just need to change the Emission property of the objects we want to serve as lights, and anything reflective around the Reflection Probe will be lit up from it. The following is just a Skybox, a character, and 2 lights. One Directional light (from the direction of the sun in the skybox, back to the left) and a Spotlight (from the right, in front of the character).



Looks decent (thanks Rembrandt), but it's dark right? The shadows are really harsh, so we don't see the features of her face well. If only we had some sort of shape in front of the character softly lighting up her face while also giving some shape to the reflections in her eyes... Well, voila:


This can be made better looking by tuning the emission/reflectivity; this pic is for illustration only. If you look closely you can see the shape of a big ring in her eyes. That is because, if we zoom out, the scene is as follows:


I've made the shape pretty huge here to make it obvious, but smaller ones and different shapes might look better (they function like those reflective umbrellas used in a pro photo studio). What I did was just create a Shape: Circle, place it near the Reflection Probe along with the object to be lit, then go into the Material Editor. There, I again changed the shader to Hanmen/Item Cutoff, and changed its Emission Color to bright yellow/orange, then increased its EmissionStrength to over 1. You can do the same with objects in your map/scene: increase lightbulb Emission (or place Sphere objects on lamps with that Emission), etc.

Lots of other tutorials could be made on those topics, and I might get back to it if I feel confident and have the time.

Edit:
I should add that, as of now, it seems only the Default Reflection Probe (which is the one that comes automatically, not an object added to the scene) runs realtime reflections. For some reason other probes don't update in real time, you have to e.g. change the environment lighting for them to update. This is annoying, and I would be interested in whether anyone has some solution to it.

 

[osnoflax]

Hi...
Is there any way to save the images for the imageboards along with the scene file?
I think I remember to saw it sometime, but maybe it was only in my dreams...

 

[turbofox]

Hello, can anyone point me towards how I would make bra's undersized. So if the gal's boobs have gotten bigger and she hasn't purchased a new bra yet, how would I go about scaling down a bra so there is some overflow? There is a similar concept demonstrated with the following tops from the repack but I am a newb and don't know how they did it. "GDCslightbra" "GDC_Midiumtightbra" and "GDC_Supertightbra" all demonstrate this effect. The last bra is one I would think would be a good candidate to shrink down to the red line and have her boob overflow the top of the bra.

 

[Herbmetaru]

Hello, can anyone point me towards how I would make bra's undersized. So if the gal's boobs have gotten bigger and she hasn't purchased a new bra yet, how would I go about scaling down a bra so there is some overflow? There is a similar concept demonstrated with the following tops from the repack but I am a newb and don't know how they did it. "GDCslightbra" "GDC_Midiumtightbra" and "GDC_Supertightbra" all demonstrate this effect. The last bra is one I would think would be a good candidate to shrink down to the red line and have her boob overflow the top of the bra.

They are just special bras, included in the repack as mod

 

[turbofox]

They are just special bras, included in the repack as mod

View attachment 2188782

Do you know of any tutorial to replicate or make my own?

 

[Mr-Fox]

Do you know of any tutorial to replicate or make my own?

You need to edit the mesh, no texture edit will cut it.

You must be registered to see the links

Fair warning. It is a lot more work and effort than you might think.

 

[Blacktearss]

Hi everyone! I'll go straight to the point, update hs2 to R9 and I think many fuck poses have disappeared, I remember when I had R7 there were too many and now there are very few, does anyone know how to reinstall this?

PS: Photo only for attention

 

[Velcrofly]

Hi everyone! I'll go straight to the point, update hs2 to R9 and I think many fuck poses have disappeared, I remember when I had R7 there were too many and now there are very few, does anyone know how to reinstall this?

PS: Photo only for attention View attachment 2192620

Worth noting that the latest version is v11.
I'm not sure what you are referring to as Fuck Poses so I'll answer for whether you mean Positions within the game itself or Poses within the Studio as those are the 2 I can think of.
When you install a newer version it is worth copying over your User Data folders so you have the same characters, coordinates, scenes, poses, etc. Also within User Data is a Save folder. If you copy that over it will open up your scores within the game and therefore the options available including some Positions.

 

[Blacktearss]

Worth noting that the latest version is v11.
I'm not sure what you are referring to as Fuck Poses so I'll answer for whether you mean Positions within the game itself or Poses within the Studio as those are the 2 I can think of.
When you install a newer version it is worth copying over your User Data folders so you have the same characters, coordinates, scenes, poses, etc. Also within User Data is a Save folder. If you copy that over it will open up your scores within the game and therefore the options available including some Positions.

Thanks a lot! I apologize, I don't speak English and I use a translator, with the poses I was referring to the sexual poses. Apologies

 

[Velcrofly]

Thanks a lot! I apologize, I don't speak English and I use a translator, with the poses I was referring to the sexual poses. Apologies

That is not a problem. So, the sexual positions should not (to my knowledge) have changed although some are locked at the start of the game and unlocked through winning "experience points" (apologies, I can't remember the actual term used).
My guess is that, if you haven't copied over your save files, then some positions that you had unlocked in an earlier version are now locked. For instance I think threesomes (and maybe lesbian) positions are locked at the start.
If you have more specifics and maybe add a screenshot it might help pinpoint the problem so we can identify a solution.

 

[osnoflax]

I just update my BR 9 to BR 11 and I am checking it now for changes. I made a complete and clean installation and follow the known protocol (by Sykosis?) to migrate.

Of course, there are more maps, more static poses, and more items. Also a newer version of VNGE (though it doesn't solve my old problems still).

BUT: Animations by Hooh (last folder in old Animations menu) has dissappeared, and they were a lot and good ones. The same for many old mods and items, so I am getting now a lot of missing warnings where I hadn't before. Also the translation changes are a little annoying for me, though I guess I will get used to them.

That's what I saw at a first glance. Now I wonder which will be better: to port my old mods, etc... to BR11 version or, on the contrary, to port new additions to my old good BR9 version...

Maybe there are more interesting things in BR11 that I overlooked?

 

[Velcrofly]

I just update my BR 9 to BR 11 and I am checking it now for changes. I made a complete and clean installation and follow the known protocol (by Sykosis?) to migrate.

Of course, there are more maps, more static poses, and more items. Also a newer version of VNGE (though it doesn't solve my old problems still).

BUT: Animations by Hooh (last folder in old Animations menu) has dissappeared, and they were a lot and good ones. The same for many old mods and items, so I am getting now a lot of missing warnings where I hadn't before. Also the translation changes are a little annoying for me, though I guess I will get used to them.

That's what I saw at a first glance. Now I wonder which will be better: to port my old mods, etc... to BR11 version or, on the contrary, to port new additions to my old good BR9 version...

Maybe there are more interesting things in BR11 that I overlooked?

I always get the new version working first including all the plugin settings and optional mods.
Then I copy all my old mods over, then user data including character cards, coordinates, scenes, poses, overlays, game save data, etc (I'm sure there are some more)
That way you get all the improvements plus everything you know and love

 

[osnoflax]

I always get the new version working first including all the plugin settings and optional mods.
Then I copy all my old mods over, then user data including character cards, coordinates, scenes, poses, overlays, game save data, etc (I'm sure there are some more)
That way you get all the improvements plus everything you know and love

Thanks for the advices. I know that copy my old User folder is basic and it was done for the first. I also replace Bepinex\config folder by my old one to save me from go adjusting all my old settings through F1 once again.

What I was not sure is if its worth to copy all the disappeared mods into this new edition, and hence my question. Well, I did it right now and, to my surprise, nothing changed, including vanish of Hooh animations... So I search manually for the old mods I port and they are all right there... What's happening?

Finally, I think I got the clue: the new BR11 has some of the Sideloader folders splitted (at least, mine one). I mean, there are two 'Sideloader Modpack - Studio' folders, one into the mods folder (as usual) that only contains 4 files from Hooh and other (with all the rest, including most Hooh's) just in the root folder. I try moving this last to the 'mods' folder and, voilà, all is working correctly now.

I don't know if this was intended in this version and it happens to everyone or it is just a strange thing in my installation, but I share it for the case it could be of some help for somebody. By the way, the 'Sideloader Modpack - Maps' is also out of 'mods' folder and I don't know if it will give me any further problem, anyway, I think the solution would be the same.

 

[Noa69]

Hi guys , is anybody know how to make the penis wearing condom? i'm already try to rigid condom mod from Futaboy mods into "dan" bones but its not work well when the sex animation begin . I've read on BP plugin change-log, there say something about "texturing condom", but how?

 

[AmaNo04]

Hi guys , is anybody know how to make the penis wearing condom? i'm already try to rigid condom mod from Futaboy mods into "dan" bones but its not work well when the sex animation begin . I've read on BP plugin change-log, there say something about "texturing condom", but how?

Just use scripted dick?

Edit : Sorry, I should at least clarify that you are talking about Studio right?