#emofuri tutorial

Okay! Because someone requested an exploration of expressions, here it is! This is just an overview sort of, but it might have some information you didn't know. So to start, this is where the facial expression controls are.

This is the translation of what each of those controls is. And to kick things off, the eyes! As always, make sure you have checked how everything looks and fixed any problematic pieces or adjusted to your liking after your initial import.

The eyebrows can be tricky to line up the transition pieces. Make sure you go through ALL the options and try to get the transition eyebrows between steps to match as much as possible.

This is the diagram I grabbed from the Emofuri Motion Manual. It shows the path Emofuri takes between eyebrows. It's not a straight through like with the eyes.

Here are some quick expressions I whipped up with Sekan.

The full body template (which has more expressions) has a blush option, actually. There are buttons for 4 blush options and 1 for no blush.Here is where those buttons are in Emofuri:

And here is where the layers are in the PSD:

Hey there, everyone! This is a brief "tutorial" that is just going over what the menus are when adding in additional pieces to your imports. I figure I should go over this as many tutorials will be related to that and it's easier to explain all this first instead of every time in every tutorial. It's all fairly straightforward, so here you go!

Emofuri's Motion Manual, as mentioned above, can be found here. Google Translate should automatically kick in if using Google Chrome, and if not there is a translation button next to the bookmarks star you can click that will bring up the prompt to translate. It's very broken English, but it's better than nothing and helped me out a lot.

Today we are talking about chest movement and men. It's something that seems like it'd be straight forward enough, but for the cautious or creatively blocked I figured I'd go over it. So as a fun fact: men's pectoral muscles DO in fact move. Just like a woman's chest bounces when she runs, sometimes men's chests do too depending on how they are built (and sometimes people, like actors/football players Terry Owens and Dwayne Johnson, can make them move independently much to the amusement of others). Anyway, let's get started. Meet "Super Sekan." He's much more built than Sekan is normally. Sorry about my terrible inability to draw abs, by the way.

Not much need for extra explanation this week. Like I said it's all pretty straight forward. It's just kind of a focus study for those who might need or appreciate it. And here are some extra gifs on how the movement I set affects Super Sekan. Up/Down: 

Left/Right: 

Today we are dealing with eyes! Going over some basics of PSD layer setup and then on to how to add in new irises! The title gifs are some examples of what you could do. The reason there are 2 "evil cat eyes" is because 1 has the eye highlight underneath the new iris, and the other has it above. They create slightly different looks, and is an example of things you can do to change things up with the same pieces.

Fun fact: I misspelled "sclera" as "scalera" in all the pictures. It's a small thing that I am too lazy to fix at this time, so just be aware of it for now. Doesn't terribly matter unless you try to Google "scalera" though, as you will not get results relating to eye anatomy.

As I said, to start, here is a quick run down of what the layers on the Basic and Introductory templates look like. Again, I am working in Photoshop CS6, and have used the process described in my first tutorial (here) to make the actual art for the eyes.

The reason you can't have a partially open "Happy Closed" eye (such as when you smile and your cheeks partially close your eye) is because the Emofuri program negates the sclera, iris, eye highlight, and iris mapping layers when in either of the Closed positions. It does not matter if you add them in to your import, the items won't appear. You will end up with a creepy looking empty eyelid. If I ever figure out how to get around this, I will make a tutorial.

Sometimes you have a character that is creepy or grumpy or for whatever reason, has eyes that are "permanently" half open. Below I've used one of my characters, Virokketh, as an example as he has that kind of eyes. His scleras ("whites of the eyes") are also black, just as a heads up.

You may want to make the faux eye lid for the Introductory template bigger than what I did. I was playing quickly when I made that and even I would go back and make it a little bigger. Just to cover my bases.

Onward to adding in additional irises! This makes for interesting characterization as color changing irises are cool, or if you just want to be able to have a character's pupil's dilate or constrict. Or maybe disappear all together. The art made for the new irises is done the same way as you would the original irises.

Step 1: Add in the new pieces to your import. I definitely suggest going through the process of importing your PSD as per normal, making all the necessary tweaks you would to make it move smoothly, and only then going in to re-import your PSD to add in the new pieces. You can re-import a PSD and keep your movement adjustments from before. The ever helpful user tea-desu made a post about it that we have reblogged here as well.  This step can be a bit tricky because there are lots of menus to go through. I haven't gone through how to do this with the Introductory Template yet, so maybe I'll do that and go over it on Friday.

First you have to add in a new part and find your new piece's layer.

Then you have to tell the piece what it should adhere to, and how it should function.

Here is where I would say add one set of new irises FIRST, get them all adjusted and set, then do another re-import with the second, third, etc set (if you plan on having more). This will make it easier because you can just copy the placement grids from the first set onto the other ones, without all of them being in the way. Take my word for it, it's terribly annoying. Also, if you have multiple new irises, make sure you set them onto different fade controls. Step 2: Adjust the new irises' placement in Emofuri.

Even though it's adhered to the pupil, because it is supposed to fade in/out, it is given extra bounce/wind movements. Make sure you get rid of those! The character isn't wearing weird contacts...

After that you should be all set! Go play with the new eyes fading in and out!

I have tried this method with the sclera of the eye, but I haven't quite figured out how to get it to work with the blinking animation and also have it be able to be turned on and off.

So here is the first tutorial in the series of tuts to come! Gotta start with the basics! Now I won't tell you how to draw or sketch or anything, because that's up to your personal style. This tutorial (and future ones) also assume you know the basics of Photoshop and know how to Import a PSD in Emofuri. If you don't, there are lots of tutorials reblogged here to get you started!

I am using Photoshop CS6 but I do not use anything that even a version as old as Photoshop 7 wouldn't have. So if you have that, or Photoshop Essentials, or CS3, or whatever you have, you should be fine. I do not know anything about Sai unfortunately. I am using the "basic" forward-facing template that Emofuri provides. I really suggest using that instead of the introductory one as it makes for more detailed portraits that move and deform more cleanly with more options overall. Plus, the more you do at the start, the less you have to do or redo later. You can find the template here for download. It's the 5th option down.

~~~Let's get started!~~~

Step 1: Get that sketch down! I draw a circle for as a head guide, then draw half of the body and head up to the vertical guide, duplicate the layer, then do Select All and a Horizontal Flip. This will mirror the entire canvas, not just the drawn potion, which means it will mirror flip across that vertical guide. Things look a bit off? Tweak them on one side then duplicate and flip again until it looks right. Keep your layers organized however you would like, here you can see how I do mine. I'm kind of a control freak so I like to be able to go back and edit things later. She's got asymmetrical hair, and that's not a problem. I just don't flip that part!

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Step 2: Get that lineart done! However you draw that is fine. What's important is keeping track of layers and which pieces go to what. What I do (as explained below) is hide ALL of the individual pieces of the template. Then I find the head (I always start with the head because the focus is going to be on the face and I want to make sure I get that right) and make it visible. I delete the template head, make a new layer, and draw half of the head on that new layer. The reason I work with a new layer is because I don't know Japanese and it's easier for me to find "Layer 1" than it is the Japanese layer name (I also only make 1 part visible at a time so that I always know what piece I'm working on and don't become confused). Then I do the mirror trick to make it symmetrical. If you don't feel the need to have it be precisely mirrored, then don't do it. I just like doing it this way. When your head's lineart is done, merge the new layer you drew it on and the official head layer. I do a Merge Down (Ctrl+E). It will keep the layer name of the lowest layer, so if the Japanese layer is that bottom layer (as it should be) then you're all set!

Repeat that with all the other body parts.

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Step 3: Color! Coloring can get a bit tricky because of multiple color layers. If you like using lots of layers to color, that's okay. It's why I have 2 save files for my Emofuri projects. 1 with all the color layers separate from the lineart layers, and 1 with them merged. It lets me edit them more easily later if I want to.

For small additions (like another set of eyes) you can just copy the lineart from the original PSD, paste it into the merged PSD, then color in some new irises and save the merged PSD for re-importing. For bigger additions, like a scarf or big hair bow or wings, I might work in the original PSD then just remerge everything and resave the merged PSD again. It's a bit tedious, but I feel more comfortable that way (again, I'm a bit of a control freak). But if you don't feel like saving multiple PSDs, don't sweat it. Do what you feel best suits you.

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Step 4: Merging Layers Whether or not you chose to make a secondary file just for the merged layers, you're going to have to merge the lineart and color. I always have my color layers underneath the lineart (that's just how I learned it and what makes sense to me) so if you do too, then just follow the instructions on the picture. If you set your color layers on top of your lineart, then just merge down. Tip: Only leave the layers for 1 body part visible at a time, and then rehide them when you are done merging those layers together. Otherwise you may accidentally merge 2 body part layers together, and getting those Japanese layer names back can be a pain if you didn't notice you did it and can't undo it. On the right side you can see all of my layers for the body.

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Details about Eye Layers

Details about Chest Layers (for girls AND boys) For Sekan's chest I used the chest/breast layer, but only did enough to cover the sides of the arm close to the torso, and blended it into the shirt. In Emofuri I turned off all the jiggle physics. If you have a character with massive pectoral muscles,  you may want to keep them on. I will be making a tutorial about characters with big pecs later on, though.

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Step 5: Starting your Import! Open up the template file that you used as a base. All the templates come with a .mmo file for Emofuri. open that. This tutorial assumes you know where the Import button is (as a refresher, it's the first Menu option, then click the one that says PSD next to a bunch of Japanese [File > Import PSD] ). Import your merged PSD. Otherwise you're going to have a whole bunch of line art with no colors!

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Step 6: Checking your import and getting rid of unused layers. Make sure you go through the options on the left side of the import screen to make sure everything is where it's supposed to be. If it's not, there are some tutorials here explaining how to fix it. I will be making a tutorial soon on how to refind lost pieces, but for now this assumes everything went smoothly. How do you know everything is where it's supposed to be? Go through each item on the left side list and hover over the layer selection button to make sure all your pieces are there. You may have not used all the pieces provided in the template. I sure didn't. Those layers I left alone though, with the template pieces still there so that I wouldn't forget what they were later if I wanted to use them. This is how you get rid of those pesky things though.

As an example, I started with the leftover arm pieces.

The button I mention in this picture is the layer selection button I mentioned earlier.

For parts with multiple pieces or variations (like the eyes and mouths) it's a little different, though basically the same. The piece used in this example is the eyelid skin shading. I didn't bother with it initially for Prim or Sekan, so I just hid all those pieces.

Additionally, if you accidentally get rid of one of your pieces that you wanted, just click the same buttons and go through the menus til you find your piece. The layer group names and individual layer names are all the same. I'll have a tutorial with menu explanations of that later.

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As an added bonus, here's what Prim looks like in a size comparison to the template. I drew her iddy biddy because it greatly reduces the size of the GIF exports later, and I don't have any issues working in that size. Also my palette layer is still visible, don't mind that. Any extra layers in your PSD that have all English names will be ignored by Emofuri.

I hope this was useful! I know it's not a perfect tutorial, but again this is just the basics. They will also improve in quality as I get more familiar with remembering what to put down and know what people are confused about. The key to any Emofuri project is to take it slow and take it one step at a time. Learn the basics and what things do what, then modify them. Otherwise you're going to get all flustered because you can't figure out how to instantly make a ridiculously epic thing. Also, taking it slow will allow you to better adjust to having to stare at Japanese characters you don't know (and I sure as hell don't either) and allow you to memorize where things are and what they do.