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.

Male Template Redraw Progress

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!

Inochi2D Export

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 or NIKKE. 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. 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.

Various Other Improvements

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.

Video Tutorials

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).

Other App Developments

A few months ago, we made Puppetstring, 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.

Economics

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, Etsy, or Ko-fi.

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!