Miia n' Mio Devblog

EDIT: Oh yeah btw I added "Requires HF Patch" because apparently some people don't know what that is and since all my cards require it, yeah you should probably get it. Probably a good idea. Make that your resolution: "Get the HF Patch". 

Happy New Year everyone! Er, well, "New" 's kind of a misnomer ain't it. I mean sure they added one new character and some other features but I don't think they're enough to make 2020: Special Edition qualify as a "New" year. 

Jokes aside, let's get crackin' lackin' with Miia first!  (Slide 1) 

While it is true that paint.net has an odd issue where it can make certain colors darker than it actually is, that wouldn't explain why I thought Miia's skin was hot dog colored. For some reason I didn't think that odd despite having issues with NSFW artwork having their characters' skin look like hams. I mean I'm no cannibal or anything, but it's something about the skin gloss and the color that makes me think of hams. I'm not the only one, right? 

Well anyways, not much else to say other than that I gave Miia a general glow up. Some of the stuff I wouldn't have been able to accomplish due to lacking certain mods, but other improvements were due to just having a better eye for things nowadays than before. Like seriously, even in the card preview of the old one you can easily see how lumpy the top of her head looked. 

I believe I got the tail from a different Miia card from Discord which was one of the main reasons why I decided to remake her. The other reason was due to seeing someone using my old ass janky card years later on 4chan and I was like "GodDAMN this thing didn't age well hoo boy I better do something about that." Honestly what kind of surprised me was that even years later despite the amount of popularity she has, there hasn't been a whole lot of cards of her. 

Like even the latest ones were still using the default hair n' face, just now with a better tail. I mean, despite it's lack of quality, she's still my 2nd most popular card up on Pixiv so one would figure that would mean she's pretty popular. Hence more likely to have someone make their own version of her but nope, hardly a whisper. I guess the gacha stuff kind of overshadowed everything eh? Ironic ain't it, that a popular ecchi/borderline H word Goddamn You Patreon Censors  series is a "niche" thing in a H game of all things. 

Or it could just be that, while lamias are great n' all, boy are they clunky as fuck in this game. I mean TBF, this game was built around the idea of a high school filled with normal humans and not mythological beings, much less a British person. So it's not the game's fault it can't handle non-bipedal monster girls. I've heard some talk about a potential lamia mod that would hopefully make them a little less jank, or it could've just been about a reskin of snake tail. Either way the mod ain't here so let's talk about the jank that exists now shall we? 

Well for starters, pretty much any animation that isn't standing up is going to be fucked. I mean, her legs did get chopped off after all. Due to how they were chopped off, (By using ABMX to pretty much shrink the legs into non existence.) you may see these very razor thin long ass stumps that protrude out of where the legs should be. They are quite thin and most of the time you won't notice, but if you manage to catch a glimpse of them that's what's going on. 

I could've used an Alpha Mask (FYI: You can use this to hide body parts. e.g: Nipples clipping through shirts.) to hide them without having to resort to amputation, but the problem is I could only do that through clothing. Trying to do through the body only turned it either pitch black or it only just removed the skin overlay. Either way that wasn't going to work out. 

I couldn't use her clothes to do it as it wouldn't have worked when she was naked. You'd end up with a really fucked up version of the Little Mermaid where she got human legs but they were horribly fused with her tail. Turning into sea foam would be a mercy by that point. Yeah in the original story Ariel fucking dies after getting cucked by some other chick. She super was gonna stab her and Prince Eric too but Andersen, being a massive coward, chickened out and thus denied the world of a yandere mermaid. (actually i think yandere mermaids were a thing way before andersen.) 

Other than that tho, not much else going on. I was considering giving her an alternate outfit based off the gacha game but like, the candidates for alt outfits were like, an apron, some sleeping bag thing??? Iunno it was baggy and I think it had a zipper. Not exactly spoiled for choice there. I mean I could've made her Big Boss outfit she had in the manga but I got lazy/like really with this kind of character who gives a fuck about the outfit. Iunno, what do y'all think. Do you like having a nice variety of alt costumes or do you not care for them? 

TL;DR: Massive overhauls to the face, body, and hair, but not much else. Did experiment a bit with breast colliders to give her a godiva hair look/"Buy the Blu-Ray You Fuck" hair censors but scrapped it when in motion, it caused the hair to flip out like crazy. 

Now, for the real meat and potatoes of this post, let's talk about Mio! 

So, here's a question for all y'all. What do you value more: Visual quality or stability? Stability in this case would mean less jank, e.g: no weird lighting issues, no clipping. Which one would you be willing to sacrifice for the other? 

Well in this case, I went for quality over stability for Mio's eyes.  (S2) Now, I didn't notice when I first started out, but upon closer inspection, Mio has these triangle things that are a part of her upper eyeliner. I thought an eyeliner for that existed but when it didn't, that wasn't too much of an issue. What was the issue was that due to how the model was made I guess the eyeliner could only go so far down before the skin around the eyes blocked it. (Not the whites) 

I tried to get around it by moving the eyeliner to give the triangles some room, but it caused another issue where the eyeliner didn't even cover her eyes at all. Plus I don't think the triangles looked all that good either so scratch that option. I could've declared artist fiat and went without the triangles, but it just didn't look right y'know? So, my only other option was erasing some skin. It totally worked out but now there was a new issue. 

Ever wondered why there was a head accessory? (S3) Well, that's why. You could now see within her skull and discover it was empty all along. Which would be a surprise to no one if this was Aqua, but since it isn't, well, something had to be done. Hence the head accessory which served as a replacement for the missing eye skin. This is all fine and dandy for the default expressions, but when using the cartoony ones, this happens. (S4)

Pushing the head any further would cause it to clip through her eyeballs. I decided to let this slide as this could be easily fixed by just removing the Alpha Mask if you ever needed those expressions. Not to mention this wouldn't ever pop up in gameplay so this was an acceptable bug. Slightly less acceptable is the fact that you could see the whites of her eyes. (S5) However, still tolerable as not this only happens specifically when her eyes are closed smiling and you have to be real close up at a certain angle. Essentially, an issue that most people would never deal with and if noticed, could be easily brushed off. Pretty minor all things considered, but NGL, it still bothers me. Ah well, can't be helped eh? 

Anyways, while we're on the subject of jank and the smoke n' mirrors done to hide it, let's talk about her "wolf" ears. (S6) In actuality, they're fennec ears (Which would be perfect for Polka I guess.) but I liked their shape/felt that they were closest to Mio's ears enough to use them anyways. Problem is, they lacked that little spiked thing the fox ears had. Just making a cut in the ear didn't work either as all it did was reveal that the ears were hollow inside. i.e. you could see inside her ears and that wasn't gonna fly. So, what did I do? 

Make two ears, cut the white part out of one of them to make the spike thing, and then glue it together with the black part of the other one. (S7) On closer inspection, sure you'll notice the ear is hollow, but it's not as readily obvious now. From what I learned from this game and elsewhere, there's quite a lot of bullshit pulled behind the scenes when making anything in 3D. Which is kinda fun admittedly where you can appreciate a really cool shot you made in 3D, while giggling on the inside because you know if you turned the camera just slightly to the right one could see all the clown shoes nonsense that you pulled to get that shot. From the ever wise words of Jackal, "Hey, as long as it works." 

Slightly less janky was that ribbon thing she's got for her ponytail. (S8) Yeah that's her ponytail, her actual tail is wrapped around her leg. NGL up until I had to make her I never knew that. Anyways, I didn't like the shape of ao's ribbon so I replaced it better fitting ones. Problem is, they got this weird shading issue where it's got these weird shadows that just make it look dirty. It's not as noticeable on white, but on other colors it sticks out. My usual method of removing those shadows didn't work so I went for the nuclear option: Fucking around with Another Ramp. Er, well, okay all I did was change the shader to texture but it accomplishes basically the same thing: Uniform color, but no shadows. 

Usually this would bother me a lot when an object didn't darken like the others, but since this was not only tucked away in the back, even with the shading on, it looked like shit. So really not much was lost in the end and yeah I guess it'll stick out a little but honestly not that big of a deal. What was, however, was the hair. Specifically, her front bangs.

 If you've seen my cards before, you can clearly tell I'm fond of flat colors whenever possible because shading is for suckas. More seriously, I value uniformity over shading as it really bothers me where due to how it's shaded, the hair looks like a jumbled up mess. Only in certain circumstances do I try to stick to the default shader, whether it be because I want the eyebrows to be visible through the bangs, or in this case, to have hair gloss. I don't think I ever used hair gloss once for any of my cards but due to how prominent they were on Mio's 3D model, well I couldn't just ignore it now could I? 

Initially, things went off without a hitch, that is, until I went into Free H and discovered due to some fucking reason (And it was only for the front bangs AKA Kokonoe Rin's Hair) instead of desaturating in sunshafts, it stayed the same color. So on maps with those things that part would stick out like a sore thumb. I have no fucking clue as to why that happens and I didn't notice it in the maker as I couldn't test those lighting conditions in there. I tried my best to make it work, fucking around with the Detail Maps n' what not, but for some reason it just refused. In the end, I just had to manually add some hair gloss and in the end it was for the better. (Item shader made sure all the shadows for the hair were uniform. The ones with hair gloss enabled didn't play along too well with the others as while it would darken, it would darken to a different shade. And fucking around with the shadow colors didn't help either.) 

I had some issues with her ponytail due to it's unique shape. I have no idea how "weight" is calculated for hair or how you can figure it out beforehand, so I had to scrap quite a few ponytails due to not syncing up properly with the main hair. Funnily enough, I used the pole dance animation to test for that as it goes fast enough to reveal any pieces lagging behind, not to mention all the head movement n' what not showed what would be clipping at this angle and at that position. Anyways, to my surprise, I guess the weight of Yang's ponytail was the same as Riez's hair or similar enough that when her head moved around quickly, it wasn't flying all over the place and desyncing horribly. Nor was it too slow either. I had to disable the physics on the Riez hair to make sure they stayed together but hey  at least her ponytail flowed somewhat properly. 

There's these stray white pixels that appear in the maker but either they're so tiny that you can hardly notice them elsewhere or they're just there in the maker and no where else. It's annoying trying to figure out which one's are an actual problem and which ones were essentially eye floaters. Oh and another issue was that for some reason saving dark colors in Paint.net made them even darker in KK. Saving them in other art programs such as CSP didn't have that issue. It's not like paint.net changed the color or anything either so like...*shrug* What a mysterious jogo.

Not really all that jank but just a neat trick I found out while bug testing. So for those of you who use any plugins that induce inflation would notice that when the tail is set to either the hip or the back waist bone, upon inflating, the tail would increase in size too. However, setting it to the vagina bone doesn't cause that to happen. This may cause some issues in the cowgirl position where the tail can clip towards the front of the body. This can be resolved by turning it off and on again. (Remove Main +  Add Main) I don't think this was much of a pressing issue for a whole lot of folks, but hey, I have no idea who the hell's using my stuff so might as well attempt to cover all of my bases eh? Also just want to point out Mio's using Korone's tail. Behold, the strength of the bond of Hololive GAMERS. Another trivia thing: Apparently Mio's tail's sensitive, hence why she keeps it wrapped pretty much all the time. Using AccSync, removing the bottom of her clothing will unwrap the tail. Hm, I wonder what's the significance of that... (To avoid leg clipping issues obviously.) 

Anyways, I swapped out that plus sign hair clip thing and fucked around with the uhh...knot of the ponytail ribbon thing?? Iunno what the fuck it is. Minor blooper, but the ribbon is supposed to alternate colors. (So one side is red, the other is white.) Due to the nature of the accessories tho, that wasn't possible. What a shame.

Big shoutouts to ao once again for their excellent work on the overlays. Seriously, they're like, half the card. Makes me wonder if it's possible to collab with other creators like y'know, I make the hair n' bod, they make the outfits y'know? That'd be pretty wizard.

 Onto the next outfit, shall we? The reason why she has Ryuko's uniform is because whether intentionally or not, her color scheme pretty darn similar to that pog champ meme girl. 

...

Didn't that make you die inside a little? smh. 

Anyways yeah that's basically it. I have no idea if her creator meant it as a shout out to Kill la Kill but I figured it would be a neat nod to it. Plus it meant I could be lazy and not have to do much work. :v 

Her gym outfit is a little janky due to her headband. Which in the official artwork has it holding back the center of her bangs while the edges of it overlap. This is fine n' dandy for a 2D drawing, but since I use hair kind of like brick and mortar doing such a thing is bound to cause some weird gaps in her hair. Hopefully not too bad, but yeah, mm. For some fucking reason Patreon think she's naked in her gym uniform. "Implied Nudity" fucking what even. I mean I did end up blurring it just as a precaution, but initially that Miia preview pic? Yeah that had her nipples sticking out and yet somehow Patreon's automatic filter fucking missed that. Like, what even? 

Usually, the swimsuits are the easiest as they're just a bikini, but this was probably the second hardest part of the whole card. (Maybe it was fatigue setting iunno but for some reason this took a lot longer to do.) The maple leaf bra thing was relatively simple actually, all I did was just overlay the maple leaf pattern from one of the base patterns in game on top of each other. Did the same for the shoes too. 

I've reused Alvarna's ALO hot pants thing for Mio but now it's WHITE. The cross stitching overlapped each other weirdly so connecting them was kind of a guessing game at points. Not too tricky thankfully, but just slightly annoying. 

Onto her jacket, so I messed up on the wolf pattern. (S9) It looks a lot grumpier and not as cute looking as it should be. My b. Still, it gets the idea across and like, the margin of error for this thing was kinda tight. Like, add one or two more pixels and suddenly it was way too big. Also I'm pretty sure the wolf patter is only supposed to be on one side, but due to how the jacket was uhh...made? Iunno. Point is, I couldn't make it assymmetrical. But the jacket was the closest fit so you take what you can get. 

Making her ponytail wasn't as big of a hassle this time, but there was still some weight issues. Like I had a certain hair piece in mind but it didn't sync up properly (Either it was too slow or too fast when moving her head.) so I ended up dropping it. The pattern on the hair isn't as clean as I'd like it, but due to how the hair was mapped out there was only so much I could do. Oh hey I finally figured out why this took so long: I got distracted watching the video I meant to use as a podcast. It's kind of a tricky to balance y'know? Y'gotta make sure what you're listening to is just interesting enough to not have your mind wander off and get bored, but not too interesting you just end up watching it wholesale. 

Her idol outfit is a modified version of Pekora's done マキス. Basically I just recolored it, removed the stuff specific to Pekora, and added the bits specific to Mio. Other than maybe making the color a bit more gold bronzish/brass? looking, it's pretty damn great! I mean there is an issue where in it's half off state, there's a stray line of cloth due to how the dress was modeled. There's no separate image file you could edit for the half off state so your choices was to deal with it or try to "mend" them together. Which either screwed up the dress in it's default state or didn't match up properly in it's half off state. Since I was working hours before the new year, well, let's just say I was more willing to look over quite a number of things. 

I was expecting her casual outfit to be really tough, but in the end it was actually pretty easy to make. I mean, for the wolf pattern thing I already made so it was just a matter of slapping it onto the sleeve. (Which were separate this time around so hooray for asymmetry!) I just copy pasted a paw image I got off of google (Which I think is actually a cat's paw. But it was the closest to the original drawing so...) drew some lines here n' there, and then tossed a bucket o' paint in. Initially I wasn't going to make the Hololive zipper due to being on a time limit, but I figured why not how hard could it be. 

Surprise surprise, it actually wasn't for once. Other than the issue of having to zoom in to actually be able to read out the letters, it wasn't even that tough. Well, that's a nice change of pace eh? 

I gave her glasses (Which is optional) and didn't end up making her casual shirt because the shirt would not only clip through the jacket, but also when her top was in the half off state, it would be pretty much gone at that point so like you wouldn't be able to see it anyways. Hooray for tech limitations excusing laziness!

Her kimono was a bitch to do and yeah I super fucking cheaped out in the end what with the shitty pattern. It doesn't even have the right flowers. Also while I know there are long sleeve clothes options, they have no physics to them so they just floating around in the air when she moves her arms. It's like she's got these huge foam paddles stuck to her arm like it's some kind of extreme sports gear/something along the lines of whatever it was Sandy and Spongebob was doing smacking each other with giant ear swabs on top of Millennium Tower. To top it all off it clipped pretty badly too so I had to make do. Yeah the sleeves aren't as long as they should be but hey at least they don't float off her arms right? 

I know her kimono alt uses a different ribbon from her swimsuit one not to mention different hair bangs, but fuck it close enough. Maybe for Mio MK. II I'll do it properly.  (Which hey on that note, did y'all see Botan's new kimono? Neat, eh? ) Her base kimono lacked sleeves but also didn't have an obi/the ribbon thing on the back either hence why I went for it. However I had to use an undershirt to cover up those sleeves and well, you can see it's kind of a slap job as to how I made sure it didn't clip through the kimono. She's probably missing some other details too but by that point I was at the end of my rope so y'know. 

So yeah, that's how this card came to be. It ain't perfect and I think the hair is colored wrong (Like it's very dark green instead of blue/purple.) plus it kinda falls apart if you look at it a bit too hard. But hey, I guess it was good/convincing enough that not long after somebody wanted to use her for their game. Like uh, on one hand, I'm honored I guess? But on the other hand, like, either they assumed this was my own OC, or Cover is VERY lenient with what you could with their characters. It's probably the former in which case yeah hah hah noooooo. Considering the amount of smoke and mirrors involved making her? Yeah this thing would fall apart faster than a greasy hamburger on a Chinese motorcycle. This is why you hire a professional for these kind of things, not some hack off the internet making bullshit through a goddamn gently caressing simulator game. 

Well, that's what goes into the sausage. Hopefully y'all can still hold your lunches after seeing all that. I myself am having difficulty holding my head up so without further ado, see ya!