Hello! We have just released a new tutorial video, to replace the ones that was released more than a year ago. A lot has changed since then, with simplified workflow and a lot of new features. Feel free to check it out!

Stable builds have been updated! This is the first step during our final stretch towards 1.0 release. A lot of changes have been happened:

• The reworked male template is now ready to use. Some clothing still needs to be worked as we're targeting all clothing templates to be able to be used with any body templates, but the number of clothing templates that can be used with male template has far bypassed previous version.
  
• Inochi2D export now has simple physics output scale option.
  
• Tongue and inner mouth now can be recolored.
  
• A lot of clothing templates are now rigged for Inochi2D export.
  
• Additional content for paid version is now restructured: Instead of categorization by theme (i.e. 'Summer Collection'), we are now categorizing these items by type (i.e. 'Shirts Collection, 'Polo Shirts Collection', 'Socks Collection').
  
• Various new clothing templates have been added as part of additional content for paid version.
  
• All around bugfixes and performance improvements.

During this final stretch period, there will be frequent small updates as we make various adjustments here and there, so make sure to follow our recommendation to install Mannequin via itch.io desktop app or Steam app!

Hello! It’s the end of 2023 already. Happy holidays! Hopefully all of you will have a wonderful time with your family and friends.

As we have done before, we’re writing some developer log at the end of the year to reflect on what we’ve done and talk about what’s next. Today is no different, except we don’t really have anything new to share regarding the plan for 2024; it will be mostly finishing the male template redraw and releasing 1.0.


So, how’s the progress for the male template redraw? Despite taking longer than expected, it’s actually quite good! In the latest nightly builds, these templates are ready to be used with the male template:

• All existing pants and shorts.
  
• All existing footwear.
  
• Tank tops and tight t-shirts.
  
• All socks and gloves.

Other more universal templates which are not bound by body template, such as headgear or glasses are naturally also ready to use.

With our current pace, hopefully in January we will have already bypassed current stable builds in terms of available templates for the male template, and in February/March we will have achieved full parity: this means by this point all clothing templates can be used without regard of the currently used body template.

Well, that’s about our plans for next year (at least part of it, we will talk more once 1.0 is finally released). Now let’s look back at what we’ve done this year just in case you’ve missed out on some progress that we’ve made!


In February, we finally finished the female template redraw, plus one flagship feature: Inochi2D Export. Inochi2D is an open-source alternative to Live2D currently in beta. We found this project around August last year, and immediately started working on adding Inochi2D format export to Mannequin.

If you have followed Mannequin for a long time, you may know that exporting to Live2D is something that have been discussed multiple times but always faced some difficulties due to Live2D’s proprietary nature. The existence of Inochi2D provides us with a way to do something similar albeit currently with a far less mature ecosystem. This might be a gamble, but if it works out, then all of us will get something special soon.

For now, here are examples of what you can do with Mannequin’s Inochi2D export:

• Use the exported model as a VTuber avatar for livestreaming via Inochi2D’s official livestreaming app, Inochi Session.
  
• Open the exported model in Inochi2D’s official editing/rigging app, Inochi Creator, to tweak your character poses with head and/or body rotation or slight leaning. After that, you can then export your character again to PNG, and use the result in your game development project.
  
• If you have learned a bit more about Inochi Creator, you can also make looping animations with Mannequin’s exported model. After exported to video file, you can use those animations in Ren’Py via its Movie Sprites feature.

In the near future, (fingers crossed because most of this are out of our hands) you might also be able to do these:

• Use your exported Inochi2D models directly in Ren’Py to fully implement animated, programmable character portraits (like Nekopara series, for example).
  
• Other than Ren’Py, the Inochi2D lead developer also have expressed interest to implement runtimes for Godot and Unity, the latter of which is often used in gacha games like Azur Lane[azurlane.yo-star.com] or NIKKE.[nikke-en.com] These game engine integrations (Ren’Py, Godot, and Unity) are officially planned by the Inochi2D lead developer, as stated on their official Twitter account.
  
• A group of Rust developers are working on Rust re-implementation of Inochi2D.[github.com] It’s still missing some features but there are demonstrations of Inochi2D models running in WebGL already made. This means that once this re-implementation is done, you will be able to use your exported Inochi2D models in websites. Usage in HTML5-based game engines, such as Visual Novel Maker, TyranoBuilder and RPG Maker MV/MZ will likely also be possible.

For now, our target is making sure all the templates provided by Mannequin are ready for Inochi2D by the time Inochi2D 0.9 releases, which is the planned start point of their official game engine integration.


Alongside new features like Inochi2D export mentioned above, this year we have also made a lot of improvements under the hood. Rendering performance has been improved by up to 100%, which in turn reduces the time needed to edit and export your character by half, especially in batch export mode.

Memory management is also improved, with reduction in overall RAM usage plus fixes for memory leaks which will make Mannequin more stable when used in a long time.

In terms of character customization, more options have been added (albeit very minor), such as head and ear height. Some UI changes have also been made, like resized color picker and sample character rerolling. New template options which are not bound to body templates, such as hairstyles and face parts, have also been added from time to time.


Shortly after the addition of Inochi2D export feature, we made a short video tutorial explaining how to utilize it for VTuber livestreaming:

Admittedly, the quality of the video isn’t that good, but it’s a tangible output and we are satisfied considering its ‘first try’ status. As both Mannequin and Inochi2D matures more, we will make more video tutorials in 2024. These videos will not be limited to VTuber usage, but also covers various game development scenarios (especially with Ren’Py).


A few months ago, we made Puppetstring,[ar14.itch.io] a webcam face tracking tool designed to be used with Inochi Session. Our objective for this action is two things:

• Providing more value for Mannequin users, due to the extreme lack of more beginner-friendly app for webcam tracking in Inochi2D ecosystem.
  
• Diverting requests/complaints in regards of Inochi2D compatibility with VTube Studio. If you have joined Inochi2D’s Discord server for quite some time (like us), you’ll notice that there have been a lot of potential users walking away from Inochi2D due to Inochi Session’s lack of features and/or usage complexities. This is understandable especially when VTube Studio is the one being used as comparison. By making tools like Puppetstring, we hope that the limited resources of Inochi2D development can go more towards game engine integrations instead, which is something we are less equipped to contribute to.

We will continue to monitor the situation regarding other projects which are highly valuable to Mannequin’s users. If time permits, after 1.0 release we will also look around and evaluate what we can do outside Mannequin itself to bring even more value to all of you, both in game development or general content creation scenarios.


Usually nobody likes to talk about money, pricing, and such. However, most of Mannequin’s users are either game developers or content creators, and these are things that we all calculate at multiple points in our day-to-day work. Therefore, we think that discussing the value proposition of Mannequin is something that is nice to do from time to time.

As planned from the start, Mannequin does not release any paid DLCs but will increase in price periodically as more content and features are added. Alongside other factors (such as the dreaded inflation) as part of the consideration, this year we finally raised our base price to 20 USD.

However, Mannequin does not exist in a vacuum, and being part of the free market, we must always look at various alternatives available in other places. At this point, the closest competitor that we are considering as references are customizable Live2D models available in places such as Nizima,[nizima.com] Etsy,[www.etsy.com] or Ko-fi.[ko-fi.com]

Other things such as VRoid are also constantly monitored, albeit not as much because we felt that the underlying approach of 3D versus 2D is very different. In both game development and VTubing sphere, both are equally valid and there will always be people who prefer the 2D look over 3D despite 3D’s superior flexibility. Mannequin is strictly aimed at the 2D-preferring crowd, with every bit of its strength and weakness accepted.

So, how’s Mannequin value proposition compared to the places mentioned above?

• Based on our quick look at Etsy (using ‘vtuber’ and ‘vtuber customizable’ as search keyword, sorted by top customer reviews), Mannequin is still very competitive in terms of both actual pricing (most are hovering around 25 USD and up) and content (most, if not all of them have less clothing/hairstyle/face parts options, and limited to one gender).
  
• Looking around at Nizima (using #カスタム and #カスタマイズ as search keyword), Mannequin is even more competitive in terms of actual pricing, with lots of customizable models goes past 10000 JPY (~70 USD). Just like Etsy, most, if not all of them are restricted to one gender. However, as expected, the average quality of models available for sale on Nizima is very high.

Despite the extremely competitive price point compared to the amount of content Mannequin provides, we must remember that we are tied to the less mature ecosystem of Inochi2D. There are limited third-party apps/runtimes available still, so we consider the base price point of 20 USD is fair for now. Of course, if you have already supported our project then you don’t have to worry about all these anymore, as we are still committed to our no paid DLC plan.

So, that’s all from us! Again, happy holidays and happy new year to you, and hopefully we’ll able to share our development log again in a few weeks once we have made more progress in the male template redraw.

See you soon!

In the latest stable builds, we have fixed some things and added a bit of new content:

• Bugfix for Inochi2D export, fixing some wrong layer grouping;
  
• Added several furry tails which can be found in the 'Additional Hair Parts' section. Each tail styles has Inochi2D-ready templates.

Some of the newly added tails are available in the Free/Demo version, and the others are reserved for the Pro/Full version. As usual, you can review the additional templates available for the Pro/Full version in our online documentation.​[ar14.works]

See you in the next update!

In the latest stable builds, we have fixed some things and added a bit of new content:

• Bugfix for rendering process, making it more reliable and eliminating glitches like missing layers;
  
• Adjusted some movement tracking behavior for Inochi2D export;
  
• Added new hair accessories (multiple hairbands);
  
• All templates in the 'Skirts/Pants' category are now Inochi2D-ready when using the female template!

As an additional note, progress with the male template redraw is going well with lots of clothing items already redrawn. As usual, feel free to check out the nightly builds to see the progress yourself!

• Fixed some parts causing error when exporting to Inochi2D with Puppetstring as Preferred Tracker;
  
• Fixed some irresponsive UI element in the free/demo version;
  
• Tweaked Inochi2D rigging for long, chest-covering hairs, making those bounce differently depending on chest size.
  
• Improved rendering speed by up to 100% (50% time reduction), depending on current character configuration. This improvement can be seen when changing clothing templates, face parts templates, or changing poses. Export process (especially batch export) should also be faster.

In case you missed it, we made a small app for webcam tracking in Inochi Session,[lunafoxgirlvt.itch.io] called Puppetstring.[ar14.itch.io] This is intended as an easier to use alternative to OpenSeeFace, which some users might be reluctant to use due to its command-line nature. Feel free to check it out!

• Fixed a bug that causes clipping/artifacts with hair wisps;
  
• Fixed a bug that causes error message to be shown at the end of batch export process;
  
• Fixed wrong head position adjustment when using 'Mirror Pose' feature​;
  
• Minor memory usage optimization​​;
  
• Deprecated 'Masculine (Lipsync - AA)' mouth template for Inochi2D export, replaced with 'Masculine (Inochi2D)';​
  
• Added 9 eye styles to 'Face Parts Collection'.

Thanks to DoctorEnigma and Celine The Silly at Discord for the bug reports!​​

Hello! Today we’re back with a new update to Mannequin, which wraps up Inochi2D export features (at least for some time). Shortly after the release of 0.3.17, Inochi2D started implementing some new features that made rigging easier, so we decided to redo the head section of Mannequin’s outputs for better movement range and facial expression. Below you can find more details regarding these changes alongside other new non-Inochi2D related things that are also added in this version:


Using the latest MeshGroup node in Inochi2D we have re-rigged the head including everything attached to it, like hair and face parts. Now the movement range of the head is slightly extended while eye and mouth expression are also improved.

Things to note: some templates have been deprecated and replaced with new ones to implement this change. For example, ‘Lipsync – Aa’ mouth template, which was compatible with Inochi2D before, now does not work anymore. A new mouth template ‘Inochi2D’ was added as a replacement. These replacements also apply to eyes, with ‘Neutral’ templates now deprecated for Inochi2D, replaced with ‘Inochi2D’.

Some hair templates also have new Inochi2D-specific variants. Generally, all primary hair templates and bangs are now ready for Inochi2D export.


Parameters generated for Inochi2D files now are more human readable and grouped to specific areas such as body, eyes, and mouth.

Every parameter group is color-coded, and parameters related to physics are grouped into one and sorted at the bottom of the list.


Visual Novel developers! Do you feel that exporting characters who are constantly looking straight to the front is not very nice? With Inochi2D export acting as an intermediary, you can export your character to Inochi2D first, adjust your character’s pose further in Inochi Creator, then export the result to a PNG image. With our latest update, Inochi2D models generated using Mannequin will include a camera node by default. You can immediately export your character to PNG in Inochi Creator using File -> Export -> Image.

If you want to see a real example of this technique being used, look no further than the welcome screen of Mannequin! Our sample character showcases are exported from Inochi Creator after adjusting their respective poses.


Head and ear height are now adjustable! We don’t use the term ‘Neck Length’ because it doesn’t make the neck longer, so there’s a limit on how much we can raise the head.

Sclera color is now adjustable! When heterochromia is enabled, sclera color also becomes independent between left and right side, same as iris color.


We now have 20 sample characters in total, which will show up in different times depending on your Mannequin’s version. Sample characters in the ‘Free’ category will always show up and only uses template from the default library. Other sample characters in the ‘Pro’ category will only show up when running Mannequin’s Pro/Full version and uses additional templates only found in the Pro version.

Soon, switching to nightly builds will also unlock additional sample characters as we will put male sample characters there first. Since the number of sample characters are starting to get quite big, we’ve also added a button to reroll the sample characters that shows up in the welcome screen.


Some other changes that we brought with this update:

• We have new head templates and nose templates. All these head and nose templates are also ready for Inochi2D export.
  
• More clothing templates are now ready for Inochi2D export. These includes glasses and all skirts, for example.
  
• We have switched the ‘Latest News’ section from Twitter/X to Mastodon. With this change, embedded videos are now able to be played directly within Mannequin, without the need to open externally in a browser.
  
• A long-standing error message that shows up when using Steam Workshop feature is now fixed.

Since this update was a detour, the next step will be going back to finishing the male template. We are aiming to make every clothing template compatible with all body templates (both male and female).

Multiple feedbacks ranging from far back to recent ones have expressed the concern regarding lower number of available clothing templates for the male body template, but the reality is: if we stick to traditional clothing compatibility then male clothing templates will always be fewer. For example, male template can be skipped when we’re adding new skirts, but new pants will obviously need to be compatible with both male and female template. So, the solution to this disparity is just to make every clothing compatible with all body templates.

That’s all for now! Timeline for finishing the male template redraw will be long, but between now and its completion we might still update Mannequin with small new features and new templates outside of clothing (such as new face parts and/or new hairstyles). As always, thank you very much for your continued support and see you again in the next devlog!

• Fixed comedic eyes white parts disappearing when 'Skin Gloss/Shine' is deactivated.
  
• Fixed splitting brows for exported Inochi2D models when 'Thin (Raised)' brow template is used.
  
• Added 'Inochi2D' templates for some eye shapes. These templates provide better expression tracking and will replace the 'Neutral' ones for Inochi2D export.
  
• Preferred Tracker option for Inochi2D now has 3 options: OSF, VTS (Android) and VTS (iOS). VTS need to be split because Android and iOS returns different face tracking parameter names.

Thanks to Yuki (Discord) and ShadyDev (Discord) for the reports!