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Maybe this is actually already possible and I'm just not understanding the settings, but one feature I'd like to see would be to be able to copy other settings to all of your expressions besides for their colors.

For example, say you decide a character's eyes should be a little bigger, but you've already made a bunch of expressions for them. Going through each expression to adjust the size one by one, while not necessarily a difficult task, can be time consuming (especially if you have more expressions/characters to consider), but being able to copy the size settings the way we can colors would be able to cleanly get past that in one swoop.

Another thing that might be good to add would be different filters for outfits and such? As is, your average user might not think to click on "default library" to discover there are Christmas and Halloween options- What if, instead, the "default" actually included everything, and then you organized all of the clothes into smaller, separate libraries like the Christmas and Halloween ones already are?

Hello! I'm on the newest version of the software, and I've been having this issue with the comical eye set:

I've tried changing the backlight/skin glow settings, but none of that seems to put the eyes back in where they should be. Any suggestions?

AH also, I'd forgotten about this one, but while I'm here: when I try to open up old .mqn files, my characters get...well, beheaded?

Changing settings on the female body don't fix it, and when I try to change to the male to see if I can't change back (at least having some settings kept this way), it just pops the default male body out right from the start.

Perhaps even more bizarre, while I can't reattach her head, I CAN still change the settings on the body all I like! They just do, well, this:

For now I'm opting to remake the characters from scratch, but as far as bugs go it's pretty wild.

Going through some other outfits to test it out, and it does seem like there either isn't a highlight color at all or the ability to change it isn't working for whatever reason. 

Do some outfits only have two colors being used in "Advanced Coloring"?

A lot of the new outfits are pretty flat looking as far as their shading, so I was trying to tweak the shadows and highlights to see if that couldn't help that a bit, and I noticed that the highlight just...doesn't seem to exist anywhere on this outfit- possibly for others as well?

Hello! I'm guessing this is how you're layering things, but I'm finding that the "untucked tank top" still ends up tucked in with most pants/skirts and such.

If I could suggest something off this, I think it would help if the default face for the male character better illustrates this intention? Because the default face is pretty boyish compared to the body, and the male expressions don't particularly give an "adult" impression on their own.

With the previous art style the defaults looked roughly the same age, but when the default female is a young high school student at best, I think it's understandable folks would assume the male is intended to be the same since there doesn't seem to be anything suggesting otherwise.

So, hrm. Possible solution: Maybe make the default hairstyle balding or something?

Interesting! I'll try it out later today and see what kind of results I get. Thanks for adding it so quickly!

Looking at the PSD files where all the clothes were labeled "clothing," my thought was exporting without the bodies would just be exporting only the "clothing" labeled layers, so I'll let you know soon how it actually turned out once I've tried it with some outfits!

Awesome! Thanks for considering them.

Hello again! This just crossed my mind as I was working with the latest nightly build: 

Would exporting only clothing layers/outfit sets for PSDs and SVGs be possible? 

One of the ways layered images can be put together is by swapping out outfits - meaning you don't actually need to have a full body every time, just the body parts that show and then the different pieces of the outfit (like interchangeable puzzle pieces, basically).

Right now, my current process is to have my layered images only apply to faces and expressions, but this still means I have files of each outfit in each pose in the game. If I could just have the pose body parts and then the individual outfit parts, this would cut down on a user's file size by quite a bit - so being able to directly export the outfits separate from the body in the future would make the process much more efficient in that respect.

Heyo! Just encountered a weird one: For whatever reason, when I tried to export a PSD "without face," Mannequin was having none of it. It stayed on "0% exported" and just froze up. When I tried to force the program to close, though, I was able to export a full PSD after I got the "do you want to close without saving?" message (I told it no and the program was working fine again after that).

Hello again! First, I apologize in advance - this post has probably been at least coming for a year or two given how long I've been working with the program, so forgive me for listing so much all at once.

Bodies: I think I mentioned this elsewhere, but one thing I'd like to see is the ability to change a sprite's height or width individually instead of just scaling the entire thing up and down. If this could even extend to different portions of the body (legs, torso, etc.) down the road, that would be fantastic, but at the very least, being able to change sizes this way would be a huge help.

Facial Features: Options for extra facial features would also be nice! Some examples of what I mean are different eyebrow sizes and shapes, beauty marks, scars, and so on! Different types of pupils (though I could be here all day linking references) would be another great addition, along with perhaps a single fang we could toggle on and off.

Expressions: I think the different expression types we have now give you a lot of options, but having worked with Mannequin sprites on my visual novel for as long as I have now, there are definitely a few that I've found myself wanting enough to just make for myself. These include:

• More "comical" styled eyes, such as ones like the half-closed one we have already, but tilted to express anger or sadness. Other "comical" eye types we could use include various types of horizontal-line based ones for tired or mellow looking expressions, your standard >_< X_X and I_I eyes, and so on. Here are some examples.
• Speaking of the comical eyes, some mouths to go with them would be nice too! Some examples of possibilities include a playful cat mouth, a mouth that's got a little drool leaking from tiredness or hunger, this ever important face, a half pout, a full pout, all kinds of exaggerated expressions like this, blowing a raspberry, a playful teehee going one way, and one going the other :9.
• As far as more normal expressions, one I've basically had to make for all of my characters over again is a downward wink - where the eye that's being closed is closed downwards, basically, so you can use it for more exasperated and tired expressions. I've also mixed the Frantic eyes around with other ones to create different types of wounded expressions and so on, though others' need for this type of face might not really warrant that.
• Other blush types and facial effects would be cool as well

Head and Face Wear: More accessories for a character's face are fantastic ways to make them easier to recognize and more unique! Some of the ones I'd personally love to have access to include baseball caps, baseball caps turned around, visors, headbands around the forehead, foreheadbands but tied on the side, goggles, maybe even helmets!?, or helmets?!?!, hairbands with ribbons on them, caps of varying shapes, round beanies, pointed beanies, cat ear beanies, puffball beanies, straw hats, sun hats, this hat, tippable hats, and punching hats.

Hair Styles: Besides the one I suggested from my previous comment (here is another reference), there are a few other styles I've had a real hankering for using Mannequin.  The side-ponytail and side-parted bangs being able to be reversed to appear in the opposite direction would be another nice feature. The current ponytail (the basic one) is fairly limited as well. It could be longer, bigger, wavy, thin, curly, and more, such as-- Raised/upwards curved bangs, thicker twintails, thing long twintails, low set drills, swirly drills, big drills, full drills, etc. Adding variations of hair with Hair Intakes to the existing hair styles would also be a fun alternative. Some of the bangs have something similar to this, but they're not emphasized quite enough.

Accessories: Balls, bows, clips with different shapes, watches, and rings. I've got a lot of sprites like these in particular, some of which you can see here! Different accessories for other parts of the body (backpacks on the back, purses and schoolbags over the shoulder, etc.) also would be fun.

Clothes: A track suit, jackets and/or coats, and a hoodie jacket, ideally with options for these to be opened and closed each. For the button up shirts, being able to have characters with only one side tucked in (so they can appear sloppy or rushed) would be a big help too. This is pretty easy to make manually, though.

And that is... all for now!

Apologies again for the huge dump of suggestions. Here's a gallery that includes all of the linked images.

Thanks for taking it into consideration!

If it helps, here are some pictures of actual characters with the sort of style I was going for.

Whoa, neat! Which tool does that? That's really well done.

It's been a long time since anyone mentioned haircuts, but there are a few I'd really be interested in seeing if at all possible. In particular, there's one I've actually been trying to draw myself (as well as recreate by tinkering with the existing styles):

This is what I've made so far (my drawn attempts on the left with sprite manipulation on the right), but I imagine you would be able to more properly implement what I'm going for here.

Would it be alright to post some references to hairstyles like these here?

Would it be possible to ask how to do that exactly in more detail if you know how? That sounds like something that would be really useful to be able to do before the feature is fully implemented.

I have the backlight set to off, and the color was never changed from the default white.

A big quality of life feature I think would be nice would include being able to save/load character/outfit/etc. templates into the program without having to load up entire characters themselves each time. You can sort of do this if you alter the default character in settings, but being able to save your own set of default outfits/bodies would be useful.

In the more long term, being able to separately scale height and width of sprites, or even being able to separately scale the different parts of sprites someday would be amazing. Sprites' eyes being able to "look" in different directions would also be nice. Being able to have different types of eyebrows/eyelashes, or reshape/rotate  the ones we have now, is another idea too.

I generally only go as high as 150%, and this was that. It seems like what happens is that it lets you save the file before it actually finishes exporting the last layers properly, maybe? I'm not quite sure.

While I'm here, I'd like to ask another question: Is this supposed to do this (hair gaining its own darker shadow on exporting)?

Sounds good! Thanks for being so quick.

Another bug that just seems to happen intermittently is exports not finishing: With PNGs and SVGs in older builds, parts of the image/layers just wouldn't load, but it looks like with PSDs it just prints out entirely black layers instead.

Thanks so much! I bet that would be a great help to long time Mannequin users who will be carrying characters over like myself.

All of these updates look fantastic! I'm really excited to get down to checking it all out.

I'll be getting to experimenting more later today, but I wanted to ask: You wouldn't happen to know what settings (X/Y) would allow for the new sprites to get as close as possible in size to the old ones, would you?

It seems like the backlight feature has made the loading times increase by a lot compared to before. The separate backlight on the hair also seems to be confusing the program? Right now it feels like I'm just fighting with the program to get the same setting across the board - for example, I've got it set to "on" on both right now, but it won't come back on the hair. What's more, it also ESPECIALLY makes loading up files from older builds a massive problem.

Would there be a way to set everything to "off" as a default, maybe?

Some things regarding the latest updates:

The Christmas DLC appears as options to choose once I put them into the mannequin folder (and this is the brand new updated version), but they don't appear on any of my characters or new ones.

This set of bangs keeps having this weird problem where it will turn into this floofy blob. I have to keep changing things around for it to turn back to normal. It doesn't seem to just be an in-program bug since even exporting it has it looking like that.

Also, this is less a bug and more a comment, but I can't help but feel like there really is something off now with how advanced coloring works in the latest version? 

Here's what I mean: These are the same character, with the same hair settings (as far as colors), but it just.. kind of looks, well, icky in the new version?

Obviously things will change from version to version, but it feels like something got thrown out of whack with how it distributes the colors, if that makes sense? I dunno.

In any case, thank you very much for the continuous updates- Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year as well!

Happy to help! Good luck.

Hi again! So I've figured out what seems to be causing it- Are/Were you exporting scaled svgs? I've been exporting larger ones from the start, so I hadn't thought to try them at 100%. I was just trying out the latest update, and lo and behold, exporting at 100% had no problem, but scaled up, the problem appeared again:

Hi again! So it looks like the SVG optimization has done the trick for the most part, which I really appreciate! With some clever resizing and rearranging, I've been able to mix some of the new stuff with the models from the old build now that the image quality is closer together, and it's turning out pretty well!

That said, this bug seems to keep rearing its head when I export:

Any ideas? If it helps at all, from what I can tell from looking at the SVG file myself, it looks like what's happening is some of the chest clothing parts seem to move up forsome reason when it exports, since it seems like if you just move some of them down, it fits together just fine (line this):

It doesn't do this when I export to PNG though, so it looks like it's just an SVG-related problem.

Regarding haircuts, have you thought about splitting up the "haircut" section similarly to how expressions are split up?

Like, instead of having a bunch of prebuilt hairstyles, you could just have us manually pick from different menus what bangs, hair length, etc. we wanted?

From there, you could also include options for extras, like different ahoges and so on, that could function like accessories, but for hair.

From looking at how the files are split up as SVGs, I think this should be possible - at the very least, when customizing characters myself, I'm able to switch this stuff out with relative ease myself.

Another thing I'd personally like to see would be different coloring or shading styles, if possible? Working between the new nightly build and the old, old stable build, I can't help but feel there's something sharper and cleaner in at least how the older build handled hair.

Beyond that, I suppose a big one would be more eyebrow, eye (shape and pupil), and mouth variations. Right now I'm taking to customizing all this stuff myself now that I can dig into the SVG files, but having some more built in stuff would be nifty too.

Thanks!

I'm not sure if this is related, but I'm also noticing that the top part of some of the hair is really transparent- enough so that you can basically see through to the scalp, like this:

(and the image quality is still kind of pixely compared to in the stable version)

Hello again! So there's a new bug in the latest nightly build that wasn't there in the one I was using prior:

Simply put, the hair does not fit on "Head B" anymore. Switching to A fixes it, but back to B gives you this again.

I'm not sure if this is related to the previous one, but I get this issue with the cropped hoodie near the waist. I tried to put in a shirt to see if it would go away, but that somehow made things worse.

Awesome, thanks!

So I'm working with the nightly build now, and I'm noticing that if you just change the nose placement (it may even be this way for the default), export an image in each pose, then flip through them (by putting them all on separate layers and toggling visibility for example), you can see how even the nose is changing positions. I don't know if that information might help any, but I thought I should mention since I'm working with it right now.

They do! When there aren't any changes, it doesn't seem to happen, but even little things (how far eyes are from the bangs/ears) crop up, and when you work with the sprites for long enough they start standing out.

I haven't had a chance to try out the eyebrow adjustments from the latest version, but this has pretty consistently been a thing. From what I can see in the current stable build, it seems like there are two "groups" of faces: ones that match Standby, Hands on Hips, etc., and then ones that match up with Both Hands Raised, One Hand Raised, etc. When you take a face you've customized more from the former group and change its body to one of the ones in the second, that's usually when I've gotten that to happen.

If you want I can boot up the stable build and put some other examples together for you!

Also, on an unrelated note, there seems to be a minor bug with the SVG exporting:

I exported about ten expressions individually (not as a batch- it got through five expressions in a batch export then froze up and stopped working) but they all seem to have this same visual error. The image quality also seems to have suffered a bit compared to the stable build's SVG exports.

Oh wow, yeah, this is working so much more smoothly now!

Now that I'm actually able to get my old files loaded into the new version proper, I am noticing one issue that was really prevalent in the old one still around: When you switch poses, the faces can get... squished, I guess? Here's what I mean in both the new build and the current stable build:

On the left is the expression I made, and on the right is how it looks just by changing the pose to another one.

Hello! I saw the Nightly version updated and I'm checking it out now, and here are two things I've noticed so far:

- When exporting, it will sometimes decide to just... keep exporting over and over, even if you press cancel, try to close, whatever. You have to force the program to close to get it to stop.

- You can click SVG for exports, but this just makes the character disappear.

Actually, a third- I seem to be experiencing the same issue TGK is with some of the poses:

Hello! Very excited to see an update to the program, or at least the nightly version. Unfortunately, there are some hiccups I want to report:

For starters, whenever I try to hit "new" character, I get this error. It will not open a blank character, I just get this or the program crashing. For that reason, for whatever reason, I'm not able to start a new character from scratch.

On the other hand, it does seem like I'm able to load up characters I've made in the current stable build... but what I get as soon as the image loads is this, and upon trying to change clothes I just get more like this.

After some experimenting, I did finally get something that wasn't ripping through parts of itself like this, but from what I can tell it looks like the bodies are now shaped differently than some of the clothes/poses, so some things just don't sync up like I suspect they're supposed to. From what I can gather, this means carrying over characters from previous builds won't work out well, if at all, as they'll end up shaped differently or be missing clothes that were previously available.

On the bright side, I noticed there were some new options for male characters added! But, well, this is all that would show up of them.

All that said, I do like how everything looks smoother now, and I love all the new pants options! Unfortunately for me, I think I'm so deep into my current game using characters from the previous stable build that I'd basically have to start everything over from scratch from the looks of things.

Not sure if you want to take the plunge and download the demo? Maybe Miss Hino can help you decide!

If possible, some options like these would be pretty cool:

• Unique pupil types: Stars, flowers, hearts, squares, slits (for reptiles), etc.
• Different ear types. Ear shape is an option, but there's only "Ear Shape A" right now. What if in there there were options for elf ears, wing-ears, no ears, as well as options there to add cat ears, dog ears, and so on on top of the head?
• On that note, maybe you could add options for other body additions like horns, antenna, tail, or whatever in the body menu as well.
• Multiple accessory slots. I don't know if this is a bug, but I've found that you can't put on glasses and a ribbon at the same time.
• Speaking of clothes, a hat option would be really cool to see. Baseball caps, baseball caps on backwards, caps, swimcaps, goggles, goggles on hats, all kinds of hats and head accessories!
• The option to color segments of hair individually. We've all seen Yu-Gi-Oh characters, right? Imagine being able to color specific streaks of hair like that and make some really unique characters that way!
• Pants for girls. For some reason putting them into the pants they have just... gives them the belt and nothing else.
• More options in general for male characters.

That all said, I've gotten a lot of use out of this tool already and am well into development of a game thanks to it, so whatever can be added would be great really. Keep up the great work!

Hello again! Sorry for the belated response. I wanted to keep messing with the character before I replied.

With that said, now I've gotten something that I think works for the time being, what we've still found is that the settings seem to be tuned more for lighter skinned characters if that makes sense? And that the same shading for darker skin can come off as somewhat awkward. It's doable, and the advanced settings make a whole lot of difference though! I have gotten something I can use now, but I think it could use some more fine tuning is all.

Hello again! So I've been loving this tool, and am already making a game with it as we speak. However, I do think some sort of contrast options or alternative/enhanced skin options for darker skin characters would be welcome, as while what is available now does work more or less for lighter skinned characters, it can appear awkward (or worse) in other cases.

Anyway, keep it up!

Thanks!

I've actually found that while turning on Gloss/Shine brings the teeth back, for whatever reason, with this character the inside of her mouth is all black instead of featuring the usual that you see with other characters. It's quite odd.