2D Character Portrait & VTuber Avatar Generator. · By
[Before I give more suggestion, can I request that you post more links to this suggestion forum? I feel kinda awkward/selfish since I have only seen my suggestions! XD ]
1.Anyway, can you make a list of upcoming features page (that shows what you already have planned for the next year or so?) so that way no one waste your time by recommending things that you already have planned? For instance, something like this : http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html
2. A some point will you add different body types? Like abs/bigger hips/stronger-looking arms? Also, while this is in the far future , will you add different ages (like child, 25-year-old, old person?)?
3. And lastly, I have posted a couple pictures of outfits I would really like to see :
/revision/latest?cb=20140208202718
I'm currently setting up a Trello board for the milestones of this app. Should be done next week (can't finish this fast because I'm going to visit my parents until the end of this week).
I'll update this thread and the store page with the link when the board is done.
As for different body types, it is something that I'm currently experimenting with. Something like child -> teenager -> adult proportion is already in my mind, but I can't promise anything since, well, it is still experimental (originally planned for releases after 1.0). Might change if the experiments turned out to be satisfying though.
Thanks for your suggestions!
The trello board is now available for public, you can view it here: https://trello.com/b/Q9ZEvVhy/mannequin
Would be nice to be able to adjust the placements of the templates, like, make eyes wide apart or very close to each other. Or, even better but way too much work, add transformers into everything and make everything adjustable.
Other than that I'd like to see:
Well, that's a lot! :)
Thank you very much for your suggestions!
I'm currently working on a new coloring method that hopefully will improve clothing colors whether when you're using light or dark color as the base. It requires a lot of redraws though, so I'm not even sure if I can release the update next weekend. But it's definitely on the way.
Thanks for your suggestion!
Thanks for your suggestions! As for freckles, scars, and moles: Noted :)
For high contrast hair, I'm currently working on it. If everything works out, next time you can manually choose base, shadow and highlight color for hairs.
Disabling expression shades will be added in the next update (which hopefully will be out this weekend).
Cheers!Those requires a large amount of work (because of the details) so it might arrive later than simpler hairstyles, but it was always planned to be in the library :)
Hey there!
Yes, we're still working on it, and it *has* been a long time indeed since the last update, but a new one is coming. You can read about what's coming up in our devlog or our Twitter.
After using the 0.2 nightly build (version 72, Windows 7) for a few hours, here are some suggestions that came to mind. Small things, hope you don't mind, work mode switched on automatically the moment I faced a brand new UI to play with. :)
UI SUGGESTIONS
HAIRSTYLE SUGGESTIONS
CLOTHING SUGGESTION
There are less outfits by far in 0.2 than there were in 0.1.7b demo version. Is this because of the new Advanced color option for clothing? If the advanced color option makes creating clothing much more complicated, consider making the Advanced color clothing available only for a few special items where it really makes a difference (in my opinion it may not be terribly needful for many basic clothes, default shadows and highlights usually suffice fine). Large selection of vastly different clothes is essential for this kind of software, so it should be as easy as possible for you to create more. :)
Keep up the great work!
Hi, thanks for the suggestions!
Glad to catch your interest and hopefully we'll be able to implement these as soon as possible :)
There is, but it's still far in the future. Our focus now is still getting 0.2.x properly released and then populate content.
Our drawing speed are pretty slow so I should say that there are not really a lot of differences between the nightly builds and the demo version (we always tried to push finalized changes to the stable/demo builds as frequent as possible).
That is, unless we're doing a big redraw to our currently available components, in which case you can always see our devlog to get more information about it (it's located in the bottom area of the itch.io store page).
Thank you very much for your interest!
A plain one looks easy, but with prominent textures like this, well, let's see if we can make one that looks nice :)
I think we can add some advanced options to the export preferences sidebar, which contains a checklist of the currently available layers; so people can simple check and uncheck what they want to see in the exported image. Should be useful too for people who want to split the face layer to a different file (seen those in a lot of Japanese visual novels).
Thanks for your suggestion!
Thanks for your suggestions! Those are really good points that we admit we've missed. Will be working on it immediately!
Well, as stated in the description, it's a 2D character generator, so there's no way to 'turn' it like what you might find in 3D apps; but we have plans for adding poses in the 30-45 degree angle (assuming zero degree is straight from the front) since those kind of poses are often used in many existing visual novels.
Hello! I'm sorry for asking this, but have you tried the 'Advanced' coloring mode for the skin? If so, is using that option still produces unsatisfactory results? Or maybe you're looking for better results while only using 'Automatic' coloring mode?
Thanks for your suggestions and continued interest!
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, thanks for the suggestions! We have been thinking of making the newly created face preset (will be called 'expression' in newer versions) identical to the one which is active when the 'Add New...' menu is selected. For your second suggestion, I think we'll try adding options for cropping the result canvas by X percent or pixels from top, bottom, left, and right.
Not yet; we are still in discussion with itch.io dev about the Patreon connectivity mechanism. The actual Patreon page is already live though, but we marked it as NSFW so it's not showing up on search results :)
We'll make sure to let people know when it's ready!
Haha, we understand that it's one of the most requested feature :)
Unfortunately, implementing that on a 2D-based generator like this is quite problematic. The solution that we'll be using in the future is providing a set of pre-defined sizes, such as small, medium, large and so on.
A bit clunkier than a slider, perhaps, but it'll be a start until we can implement something better.
Thanks for your support!
I am very excited to use this, for I just purchased it. However, I would like a bit more variety with hair styles. Perhaps different layers for back, front, and additional things like sideburns. Also, I'd love to see more ear and teeth shapes.
Dude below has some of the things I like. I really appreciate you opening ideas up for discussion.
Hello there, thank you very much for your support! We're currently working on retouching hairstyles, and will add some new ones in the process. If you're interested in more frequent updates on this, you can follow us on Twitter.
Custom hairstyles with manual selection for each part (front/bangs, sideburns, and back) is also planned. We'll write it up on the devlog and our Twitter account when it becomes available!
As for teeth/fangs, let's see if we can work something out. Currently we're still on the fence whether this should be a different parameter (can be toggled) or we'll just make a set of templates for it.
Again, thank you very much for your support!
Any chance we could get an adjust glasses pose? Something akin to the picture below.
Again I really appreciate all the hard work you've put into this and I can't wait to see what it'll become!
Noted. This should be simple enough since it doesn't need many redraws. Maybe we'll use it for our first downloadable extra contents (which is free of course, it's just that we want to separate specific themes like fantasy and/or sci-fi so the default library is kept compact in size).
Thanks for your suggestion!
More customizable haircut is something that we've been thinking on for quite a while. We have some plans going for that.
Face shape though, is quite a bit harder. We're still seeking whether we can really implement this nicely or maybe just let it go and manually provide a lot more shape templates to compensate for that. We'll be sure to give some updates when some big changes are implemented.
Thanks for the idea, glad you're interested in the app!
Every clothing is drawn to fit each body template, so in order to make all clothes universal, we'll have to redraw everything for every available templates. We... don't have any plans to draw skirts for male body templates for now, but I'll let you know if we can find something as a solution for that.
Thanks for your interest!
I don't know about old, but we do plan on adding more templates with diffferent height and body shapes. And if you check on the 'Preferences' tab, you can see a 'Custom Library Location' option which is not functional yet... but should be able to function as a way to add custom templates when it's completed.
Hope this clears everything up, and thanks for your support!
Hello there!
- We have plans for custom templates, but it might be not as simple as just clicking-and-browsing for a SVG or PNG file. Currently in the nightly build we already have an option to import a background image which can be resized/moved manually, though. Maybe we can build the feature from this existing function.
- Yes, those are in the plans. For now, modern clothing is first priority; then fantasy/sci-fi templates will be released as content packs to prevent bloating the default library.
- We can't say for sure right now. We definitely like the idea, but the focus for now is trying to output layered PSD that can be used in Live2D, or maybe even better if we can output a Live2D from the app directly. Please note that this is 2D though, so the amount of movement is very limited compared to 3D.
Thanks for your interest!
We don't really understand what is 'significant' for you (because every people has different expectations) but 0.4.0 is coming soon, realistically in about ~1 month. You can check our Twitter account which is more active due to our decision to scale back regular posts in response to more demanding day job conditions. It will bring a much more refined art style and new functionalities.
Thanks for your interest!
Hello there! There's actually some plans for that as we're approaching a more mature version of the app. In the next release, demo will be changed to 'Free', with the paid option changed to 'Pro'. Free users will be able to export PNG files, whereas Pro users will be able to export to all currently available format options (PSD and SVG for now), and use downloaded content.
Thank you very much for your suggestion and interest!
Yeah, as we continue to develop the app we did realize that we need to add more control for hairstyles and expressions. We have plans for splitting hair into at least four parts: Front/bangs, back, and side (left/right). Eyes and mouth will also be reworked to enable changeable iris (not only color, but also style) and gaze direction.
Due to the recent development of PSD exports though, we want to check live2d first before doing all these updates. Based on the tutorials and how-to videos that we saw regarding live2d, a good planning on how we draw face/hair parts can yield to amazing results and overall easier time for users to animate the output character image.
So for now, we're focusing on finishing the male template first, and after that we'll share a more detailed plans about how we'll tackle these issues.
As always, thanks for your support and feedback!
Hello, thanks for all the support and feedback!
The custom library support will be enabled very soon, right after the reworked male template is completed. In the nightly version, when browsing clothing/hair templates, you can already see a drop-down menu in the top left corner of the library window; and in the Preferences tab, the functionality to add/edit the list of folders to scan for custom libraries are already functioning. Just a little bit more, we also can't wait for it to be finished!
As for the Ctrl+Mousewheel, it sounds simple enough and we can't see any problem with it except maybe the rendering performance. Let's see if we can add the functionality around this weekend.
Again, thank you very much for you support and suggestion, and hopefully the app will be more useful to you as it grows!
Hello, thanks for your support and feedback! Here are some answers regarding your questions:
1) To enable auto-update, you need to install the app using the itch.io desktop app which can be obtained here.
2) Yes, that is something that will be fixed (in fact, dress pants for female template is already usable in the nightly build, but the male template is still undergoing a remake of some sorts).
3) Yes, of course!
Feel free to ask more questions if there's still any problems left. Again, thank you very much for your support!
All of those is of course in the plans, but since we're only a small developer it might be relatively slow to come, depending on your perspective. If you're still unsure, just follow us here and on Twitter. We're planning to release a big update this/next month which will have miles ahead of progress compared to what is available right now in the demo, so it is very recommended to check that out when it becomes available!
Thank you for your interest!
Thank you for your suggestion! Both should be simple to add. Copying one preset to a new one seems obvious, but is there any real need to rearrange the preset list?
Note: this is a capture of the current stable build, not of the nightly build. I'm placing this here to make an example, and perhaps provide some ideas for execution.
This is one character file's list of 9 Outfit presets, created in order. Let's say, for the sake of argument, I wanted to create a "Formal 3" preset. That results in the following:
At this point, if I wished to move "Formal 3" to between "Formal 2" and "MG Attire", I would have to delete and remake "MG Attire". That means one preset's worth of data is potentially lost (unless the user took extensive screenshots or even filled up a notebook page with all of that preset's information).
Yes, it's inconvenient, but mildly so, and it's fairly excusable in the long term. This next example, however, is potentially more disruptive.
Let's say that I wanted to make a "Uniform - PE" preset, and that I wanted to place it between "Uniform - Soccer" and "Casual 1". That involves manually recording the data of, deleting, and remaking six whole presets just to set this new preset where I would want it.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Uniform - Cold Uniform - Warm Uniform - Soccer Casual 1 Casual 2 Casual 3 Formal 1 Formal 2 MG Attire Uniform - P.E. | Uniform - Cold Uniform - Warm Uniform - Soccer Uniform - P.E. |
I can think of at least two ways to give the user more control over the order of presets on the list:
Hopefully this will prove helpful.
Hello! A previous feedback has suggested that we need drag-and-drop system similar to what you've described. Now that two people has requested it, we understand that this is an important thing to have. We'll try to implement it soon!
Understood. Exporting/importing clothing/face presets will be very useful indeed. Eyes and mouths are in for a rework soon after the male template is redone; we have looked at some live2D tutorials and it seems like the ideal way is to split eye into at least four parts: eyeball, iris, upper eyelid/lash, and lower eyelid/lash. Doing this will also opens possibilities to enable gaze adjustment.
Thanks for your suggestions!
'Faking' at least 5-15 degree head turn should be possible with Photoshop or Illustrator. The PSD/SVG output has all the layers exposed and split.
No special tool is used, just free transform and other transform variants (perspective/distort/skew/etc). This is done manually.
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?
It's alright. We'll try to work on it based on the provided reference. Thanks for the suggestion!
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.
Theoretically it's possible; let's try to add it in the nightly build.
A little bit of warning though: The way Mannequin works with clothes is more complex than common dress-up games, with deformations and layer optimizations based on what clothing that are used. So while exporting is just a matter of whitelisting what layer ID that will be rendered, stitching the result back together might be not quite easy for the more complex clothing combos.
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!
Thank you for your feedback! We'll try to add more parts that will aid to a more diverse expressions soon after the default male template is reworked.
That is surely interesting and we can't say that it's impossible, but we'll have to think about deformations and such if we wanted to add some customizable graphic on the t-shirts. We don't have any clear choice in mind right now about how to implement it (from the technical side), but we'll talk about it as soon as we got something that's viable.
Thanks for your feedback!
The app currently has limited numbers of clothing 'layers', body - underwear - base clothing - middle layer - and outer layer. Every layer has strict thickness rules to prevent clipping on the edges as much as possible. Both tights and leggings are placed in the same underwear layer, but the rules is any accessories will appear over other clothing items with the same layer level. That's why we also added yoga pants, which has almost similar appearance but placed in the base clothing layer, and therefore can be used for replacement for this case.
We haven't looked into it too much before because standing straight like that is a bit unnatural so the pose is mainly used for reference purposes, but if there's interest we can explore it further. We can see this 'stiffer' pose being useful to portray a more rigid/formal body language.
I was doing some work with the program the other day and was trying to get some more facial expression.
So i found a few that i think i could be added if possible.
By the way love the updates. Keep up the great work.
Thank you very much for the suggestion! We'll make sure to take a closer attention to it when we rework the expression templates (which should happen soon after the default male template is ready).
The current default male template is indeed modeled after a full-grown adult body. Maybe next time we will add other which is designed towards teenager body shapes.
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?
We'll see. Thanks for the suggestion! We do understand the underlying reason of wanting a similarly 'aged' templates. We'll try adjusting what's exists here and there, but we think providing multiple templates will be the best option in the end. Some wanted the male template to look younger, and others wanted to make it look older. Some wanted a shounen manga aesthetic, and others wanted shoujo manga aesthetic (with tall, skinny, beautiful guys). We'll try our best to accommodate each of those aspirations.
Hello. Thanks for the suggestion. It's still unavailable for now, but 3/4 view poses are already planned, and we'll add it as soon as possible after the default male template is done.
Hello again! Since I'm already in love with this software, I'll submit some ideas I got.
Thanks for reading all of this, and I obviously know that it's not possible to add most of this since you must already have a lot of work by correcting bugs and improving the software!
Hello! Most of these features are already planned for future updates, but one thing that we would like to comment more is explicit details (such as nipples and genitalia).
Our stance regarding those is that we wont provide any official support, ever. It will be possible to make it yourself and integrate into the app using custom libraries and components (the tutorials for making those will be available in the near future) and we can't stop anyone from doing that. We won't provide those items by default, though.
Thank you very much for your suggestions!
Created a funeral outfit out of the new 0.3.8 content, and I'm wondering if there are any upcoming plans to add more formal attire?
Edit: added image to post.
Of course! The initial target for the default library is covering the school setting, then formal (office) setting, and eventually most modern daily attire. Fantasy, sci-fi and other more specialized themes are set to be separated on DLCs. What do you have in mind?
Yes, that will definitely require further research. Weddings seems okay as it's a commonly depicted event in manga/anime, but for funerals we'll have to scour for more references. You'll know when we add it to the library!
Yeah, this is part of what we're planning for the next revamp of the face templates. Eye will be split into eyeball, eyelash, eyelid (upper and lower), iris and eye gloss/reflection. It's gonna be a big change and probably break compatiblity with older versions when the update is applied, but it should provide more options for makeup and face colors (dark eyebags included). Thank you very much for your suggestions!
We do understand the concept. A more advanced batch export selection settings might be more appropriate, with users able to define exactly what combinations they want to export. At the time being we imagine it will involve a lot of checkboxes, but let's see.
Hello! Thank you very much for your suggestion. Indeed, at this point the app cannot run properly without a desktop. Accepting command line switches and outputting return codes after an automatic processes, however, is something we can do. We'll let you know if this feature has seen some progress in the future!
Hello! Thanks for your suggestions! We can implement an 'apply to all' for size modifiers just like the 'apply color for all expressions' button which is already available. Regarding library view, we have to evaluate further first. As content grows, displaying a lot of items all at once can be detrimental to performance; but at least we can say that displaying all of the content from all of the available libraries makes a lot of sense for search result.
Thank you for your suggestions! We'll try to add more option for shorter and shaved heads in the next update. As for hair extensions/streaks, we think it's already possible with the current structure of 'Additional Hair Parts'. We already has plans for something like this, just haven't been able to execute yet.
Request/Suggestion: "Remove" and "Reset" buttons for "Hairstyle" items
Currently, there are no quick way to remove something for hairstyle items, only for additional parts.
One complexity I would see if a hairstyle would not have a "None" default, like "Default hairstyle" has a "Bold" option instead.
However, for some items there is a clear "None" option.
It would be great to keep things consistent and have "Remove" button for hairstyle items, like "Beard", "Bangs", "Sideburns" etc that are non-essential and have a "None" option available.
More body type variations are currently in the works for the next update. We do not have any plans for age slider specifically, but we have plans for skin complexion/wrinkles which can be used to similar effect.
We're planning for a DLC pack for existing clothing templates but with added accent stripe, stripes and plaid patterns (might separate each of those, for example plaid patterns will be contained into a single DLC pack). Manual texture overlay is also planned, but we are reserving it for future update.
Yes, there is. In the latest nightly builds we can already switch body part sizes; this feature will be in the next update.
We only have it here and on Steam. You can also get Steam key from your itch purchase, however. See more info regarding this here: https://itch.io/docs/buying/already-bought (see 'How to download the game, or get your activation key' section)
As a note for expressions and batch exporting: This is a very powerful tool, but I'd like physical features/colors to be preserved across expressions (even with just a toggle for it). Having to define the character's already-chosen colors for iris/brow/lashes/lipcolor/etc across every expression before exporting the batch is tedious and could be automated since physical features like shape and color are usually consistent across expressions.
Looking forward to continued improvements! Work hard!
Hello! Thank you very much for your kind words.
I think for something that's easily poseable like VRoid, you should always seek for 3d-based apps like VRoid itself, or Poser, or maybe Koikatsu (for something anime-styled). Due to the nature of being 2D, there's actually no magic involved in Mannequin; every pose, every clothing, every face parts and hairstyles, are drawn manually. More poses are planned for future versions of course, but because everything is done manually, expect it to take quite a long time.
For more pose flexibility, we have nothing planned in the short term; in the future we might add Godot and/or Unity 2D character export with rigged bone system, but it's still a long way to go.
Well, hearing that the poses and all the assets are all created by hand makes the content already in Mannequin seem that much more impressive to me, if anything!
Thanks for the detailed reply! I did play around a bit with Koikatsu Party a few years back, but per the terms of use restrictions, users are not allowed to take creations from the software and use them in their own creative endeavors. Available choices are a bit more limited, but I prefer options that allow more creative freedoms by default. It's another thing I appreciate about Mannequin!
Again, there is already plenty to work with in terms of poses and assets and flexibility, more than what I have seen in other tools by a long shot in some cases, so thank you again for everything you've already added into the tool!
Hello!
Thank you for the suggestion! All noted.
itch.io is actually the best way for everybody if you want to buy and already convinced to do so, except if you are living outside first world countries (where Steam's regional pricing will essentially give you a discount). Buying Mannequin Character Generator on itch will also give you a Steam key, which you can use for yourself or gift to someone.
