How does one create new character generator parts from scratch?

[XVoid]

Basically what the title asks. I have an artist who draws bust shots for the major characters in my project and edits their sprite art (but it takes a really long time to edit sprites for her, and it's really inefficient), but she has no idea how to create custom generator parts which could be used in the generator, and the design of the last protagonist kind of requires that she create her own resources that I can use in the generator, specifically for the hair and the clothing. Could someone please explain how to do this to me so I can link her this thread as a tutorial of sorts?

Thanks in advance! By the way, once she does get the hang of creating her own resources, I'll probably end up sharing them here with her permission, so that other people can make use of them as well.

 

[Dirge]

I've never done it for MV but if it works like any of the other character generators I've used (which I'm sure it does), here's what I did:

Take a base sprite for a template, no hair or whatever, just naked. On a separate layer, draw the new generator piece, for each frame, right in place. Then just get rid of the base sprite and presto, there's your nicely-formatted generator piece.

 

[XVoid]

I've never done it for MV but if it works like any of the other character generators I've used (which I'm sure it does), here's what I did:

Take a base sprite for a template, no hair or whatever, just naked. On a separate layer, draw the new generator piece, for each frame, right in place. Then just get rid of the base sprite and presto, there's your nicely-formatted generator piece.

Pretty sure that isn't how it works. The generator parts I've seen are composed of approximately five static images per part... and somehow the system can manipulate those so that they move to match the sprite's pose.

 

[Dirge]

A quick Google gave me this link, which seems to have a very in-depth breakdown of how to add parts to it. I'd suggest digging through the folders it indicates and using the images in there as templates for layout.

 

[XVoid]

A quick Google gave me this link, which seems to have a very in-depth breakdown of how to add parts to it. I'd suggest digging through the folders it indicates and using the images in there as templates for layout.

I know how to add parts, I just don't know how to create new ones... I don't know if there's anything special you have to do to the images, for example.

 

[Dirge]

Right, but again, if you follow the folder path into the generator parts, you'll find all the examples you need. For example: One of the male front hair pieces. Which is formatted precisely as I described in my first response - according to the base sprite. All the generator does is overlay the pieces on top or below the base sprite body image. You could do the exact same thing just by importing them as layers into photoshop/gimp/whatever.

 

[Rhino]

You might find this video helpful?

The five static images you're referring to might be the folders Face/SV/TV/TVD and Variation? As Dirge has said, in each folder (apart from Variation) there's a Body/naked sprite. Your artist will need to arrange the pieces to line them up and fit with these if you want it to work correctly.

The Variation is the icon/what you actually see in the generator as you're looking through pieces.

The only 'fancy' thing you'll need to do is split the face graphic up and create colour masks for the sprite pieces, assuming you want them to be colourable in the generator. How to do this is all explained in the video.

The hardest part of modifying the generator (apart from drawing the pieces) is just making sure you get the name right. If you're missing pieces, it's not going to work.

My best suggestion for you/your artist is to just look at the default pieces. Explore all the folders, see how they've been arranged and named. When I'm making pieces, I basically work ontop of something that already exists, and when finished, just change the part numbers (pXX) to follow on from the previous piece.