2D Character Portrait & VTuber Avatar Generator. · By
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!
Hello! I just purchased this and am already well on the way to making a game with the characters I've been able to make with it. That said, there are some things I'd love to see added if possible:
Those are the main ones for now, I think. I'm looking forward to seeing more out of this, it's an absolutely amazing tool!
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 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!
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.
If possible, some options like these would be pretty cool:
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, 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.
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!
This is sooo much better than when I bought it but I still wish it had the ability to bring in our own poses or modify the existing ones and also the ability to add our own clothes. There is so much potential and such good work done on this already and I am hopeful that it will take another leap soon and be the truly awesome tool it deserves to be.
Keep up the great work :)
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!
Hi, thanks for this amazing software, (only played around with the demo (can't buy anything at the moment) but it looks promising!)
I was wondering if you planned on a way for a more customisable haircut (possibility to choose the back of the hair (ponytail, pigtail,long, short...) the front, the side and dome hornemets (braids, additional hairs sticking out...) separatly to form unique and diverse haircuts (kind of what charat have done for it's generators)
And something that I'm sure would be REALLY hard to do but would be awesome: a way of resizing the features and the shape of the face (I'm just tossing ideas that I find cool (but I'm sure you already thought to implement that))
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!
Hey! This might've been answered already but couldn't find the suggestions before:
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!
Hi This suggestion is about the Demo version my suggestion is that the export button is available for the demo version but there's a limited amout of costumes or skirts or whatever you call it in the demo version but you can export(This is just a suggestion and its not any hate against this Amazing software)
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!
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.
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!
Bought the app, love the app! The nightly version looks GORGEOUS! Keep up the great work guys! You mentioned you'll be super busy until around the first week of November, so, as it is currently the first week of November...Updates soon??? Hehe
Crossing my fingers that you'll add custom art support/libraries soon so that I could draw and upload a bunch of stuff for the app. Plus if you go with the approach other devs use of "We'll polish and incorporate the best mods into our own game" that'd be less work for you, tons of new content, and everyone feels all cool and happy. Who needs to draw 5000 different hair styles if ur fans are doing it for you lol. So long as u give us a forum/discord server or something to share them around all will be good.
Small sugestions: It really bugs me that ctrl+mousewheel doesn't zoom in/out. Pls make it control zoom.
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!
Hey, just bought this, and it's looking really good so far. A couple of quick questions/requests though:
1) Will the software update automatically with new versions or will I need to do that manually?
2) I can't get the dress pants to work on female characters, is that something that will be fixed?
3) Is there any chance we'll get some more accessories, like business suit style ties and hats?
Many thanks.
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!
I have just stumpled upon this fine piece of software. I am going to buy it, I am just curious if updates are in the pipeline. I think it needs a lot more resources to be able to create really versatile characters:
So just about everything :)
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!
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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:
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.
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.
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!
The character scaling options are useful, but using them for a character height comparison chart (see here) makes me realize that perhaps basing the characters' origins at the bottom (around foot level) would be better than from the direct center of the "canvas/frame" (the rectangle within which the character is depicted). That being said, there are two ways that the bottom-level origins could be implemented:
This was stewing in my head for a while, but I feel it should be brought up, at least: Adding custom graphics to T-shirt fronts. For example, if you were to make a mascot character for Mannequin, if she's wearing a T-shirt, you could add an AR14 or Mannequin logo to that.
It would definitely have to use PNG files, since they can render transparent pixels, as well as JPEGs. It could open up a wide range of "fictional" cosmetic quality, from amateur (an obvious rectangle from a JPEG) to professional-level (a seamless PNG graphic) designs.
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.
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 AR14,
Thank you for your time and effort in developing this very useful tool. I don't know if its difficult to implement but having another angle view of the models would be nice and would vary the visuals. For example front view 0° and a 45° view... or maybe there is a way already and I am missing it. I d' like to use a view that changes slightly when they speak .
Hi, I've been using this for a couple of weeks now and I think your tool is amazing! One thing I would love to see is the inclusion of different poses when batch exporting. All the characters I'm creating have a number of poses that they use and being able to have a list of poses that are exported (like expressions/hair/outfits) would be a great QoL improvement!
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.
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!
The recent addition of multiple poses to Batch Export got me thinking about combining poses and facial expressions together. As the system stands now, Batch Export can result in about 1440 exported images based on combinations of outfits, hairstyles, expressions, and poses alone. By making poses into a component of a facial expression, that can potentially reduce the export load into a more manageable amount.
I hope I'm explaining this somewhat adequately.
Have you given any thought to batch imports or command line arguments?
First off thank you for creating this! As a developer with zero artistic talent, I am very grateful.
I've taken a look at your file format and its well laid out. thank you for using JSON. it makes these assets easy to version with source control. I'd like to utilize your software as part of the build pipeline. to do this it would have to handle a sort of batch import.
basically I'm requesting that it accepts a set of command line switches that would start the following workflow:
I understand this would probably require a desktop (i.e. its not going to run headless). But making sure that all a projects assets are up to date would be worth running this overnight.
Thank you for your time! and you are doing a great job!
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!
Hi!
Just bough the sofware on steam, because I think it's a very good idea!
I saw that we will eventually be able to have curly hairs (can't wait to have that option to be honest)
Also, I was woundering if we will have the possibility to add facial hairs to the mens?
Like beards, mustaches? Thanks!
Roxy
Just started using it bc I'd love to make actual VNs someday. It feels like it's missing some things, though.
Still, what you guys have so far is great, and I'd love to see it go further!
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! 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.
Hello there! I just found out this software existed and I am extremely impressed so far! I downloaded the free version to give it a try and see if it will work for me, I'm mainly looking to use it for poses but also for some clothing.
As I'm still on the fence about buying the full version, I'm wondering if it has more variety of both male and female poses? That would sell this to me 100%, mainly more male poses.
I was really hoping for a thoughtful hand on the chin pose and also a hand on the back of the head pose, as if scratching the back of the head (embarrassed and thoughtful type poses I really enjoy).
Also, is it already implemented or would it be possible to add choosing each arm's pose individually?
That way, you could choose to have one hand on the hip, but the other raised to the chin.
Under hair options, could I request a shaven headed style or two, please? I thinking so we can do characters with shaven (but not entirely bald) heads, and styles with undercuts. So, like shaven sides and hair on top, swept to the side.
Also, I don't know how feasible this is, but could there be options for hair tip colours as an addition to base colour? For example, a character with black hair, but the tips are red?
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.
Hello! First off, I want to say thank you for making this game! It’s exactly what I need because I’m not an artist at all so a character creator is what I need. And this one fits the bill. But there are some things I'd like you to add at some point down the road. Maybe some of these you were already planning.
Spikey, Shonen esque hair options
Medium or Long ponytails
Muscular male body type (Maybe a slightly muscular female type too for tomboy characters)
Tube tops
The ability for characters to carry certain items in their hands (Swords or food items for examples)
Dress’s
Male Swimsuits
I really hope that you consider these for future updates!
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.
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)
Just found your program today and am very interested! (Will be purchasing full after leaving this message, just checked out free) I've struggled to find a generator for visual novel creation that allows variability in full body portraits. I saw your update about planning to do where you can change body position, arm position etc, separately and that really excites me! Fully behind the further development of this software as it is sorely needed for those of us who want to tell a story visually but don't have the artistic skills. Thank you for the hard work and quality product.
My suggestions would be making sure male and female parts are equal amounts and more fantasy options for clothes would be amazing! Like victorian style clothing~
Thanks again for your hard work!
Edit: just checked out your Trello and see plans for medieval clothing, yay!
Edit 2: Just checked out nightly version for latest. My request would be adding more dramatic poses, like injured or fighting/holding weapon, yelling dramatically/like slightly crouched and looking tense. Nothing totally specific in mind just to generally use in more dramatic scenes!
Great tool! Already enjoying it. I would love to use this for my games. I need a lot more options, though. Here's some suggestions/requests for new features/supporting stuff:
1. Body types and body diversity - I'd love to be able to further customize the body - from normal body diversity into more fantastic and extreme types and parts.
2. Fantasy clothing choices. (Specifically: Togas, Sandals, cotton and leather "adventurer" clothing.)
3. Short term - More Eye types (squarish/sharp.) More Head and Body types. The body's fundamentals are critical for all the finer outfit parts.
4. Descriptive tooltips for items - Since so many paperdoll parts can seem similar to the user, perhaps short descriptions that explain differences in qualities would be really helpful. Tooltips should be everywhere.
5. For scale adjustments and other +/- adjustments - The ability to enter value manually.
6. More basic skin color selections. don't be afraid to make that sub-window larger to accommodate. Perhaps an optional slider on each individual color to lighten and darken from that reference would be great (Sims 4 does this - it's pretty good at extending the basics)
7. Preserve eye color across expressions once set. I had to set eye color for each expression. Not sure if bug or feature.
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!
First I will start by saying this is a wonderful tool, and I very much appreciate that it exists! Thank you for all the love and passion you've put into this creation.
Your most recent post in this topic was helpful for me as a new Mannequin user, as I had the same question about applying customized settings across all expressions. That's very useful to know.
I was really surprised to see a robust selection of poses with a variety of options available to choose from. I thought that was quite helpful to have built into the program. My suggestion, or request if you can call it that, would simply be asking about the possibility of adding some non-standing pose options in the future? This is really more of a "food for thought" kind of thing than a request necessarily.
My only other experience with this sort of thing is using VRoid Studio briefly, and for that program, you are able to export created characters to VRM format. I know of two particular software applications that can then be used with an exported VRM character to pose them in a specific way.
One is called VRM Automatic Photographing (https://matsuvr.booth.pm/items/2223918) and if I'm not mistaken it collects and uses freely available preset poses from other sources? The other is called VRM Doll Play (https://booth.pm/ja/items/1654585) and allows you to custom create your own poses manually by hand for your characters.
You already have just as many, if not more, standing pose variety options available in Mannequin, which is great! I just can't help but wonder if having others like sitting, kneeling, laying down, etc. sorts of poses might make things even more dynamic and interesting. But, I know when you start getting into the more unusual poses, things like physics/gravity start making it more difficult for clothing, accessories, etc. to translate over in a uniform way too.
I'm not sure which would be more difficult on the development side, either implementing additional poses for sitting/laying down/etc. like you already have available, or adding a VRM export option like the existing one for Inochi2D Creator (I'm guessing VRM is more meant for 3D models, so wouldn't really convert easily?) I tried looking into using Inochi2D Creator, but the options were overwhelming, and the complexity level seems to be beyond my current understanding. I was unable to use it at even a basic level. Alternatively, perhaps there is some other existing software similar to VRM Doll Play but that works with Mannequin characters that I'm unaware of?
At any rate, thanks for your time in reading all this, and for all the wonderful features you've already made for everyone!
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!
Great tool, folks. Thank you for putting it out. I like how flexible it is regarding users making new elements for it if they're decent code wranglers, and how button monkeys like me can manually tweak their SVG exports in Inkscape to get any poses we want that haven't been officially implemented yet.
Two requests!
1 - The poses of the example characters shown at the main menu are a nice addition, but when the user 'Open This Sample' the default positioning of features / pose is booted up. I can _kindof_ intuit how to go from Baseline Default to the example shown on the main menu, but it'd be illuminating to have the Sample load pre-calibrated for their more emotive positioning as initially seen.
2 - Do you guys know there's an "AR14GAMES" account on itch? It looks super shady and has a 2022 link to "the demo version of Mannequin". I haven't done a hash comparison or anything, but from the comments about it not running properly I'm guessing someone's using your title to push spyware/viruses.
Hello!