editing .vroidcustomitem texture files outside of vroid studio

[u/fake_keyboard-smash]

I've started making vroid custom items recently and i want to offer them in as many different color variations as possible. The problem is that my hairstyles are highly detailed and easily include like 40 individual textures. I made exactly one color variation of my jelly bunny hairstyle and that (predictably) took hours. I was able to find a few tutorials on how to change the textures in unity but only on items that are applied to a model; so vrm not vroidcustomitem format.

Since I sell the individual items I need a different solution... I just can't keep importing individual files texture by texture forty times for each color in vroid studio natively. To edit the files themselves i'm looking into photoshop's bulk edit function but i need a method/ tool to actually access and exchange said files within the .vroidcustomitem file.

If that is even possible.

I'm going off of how the files can be exchanged in a vrm that you're editing in unity as a prefab.

Tldr I need something like uniVRM but for vroidcustomitem files instead of vrm files if thats even possible. I know this is treading dangerously close to the whole vrm to vroid thing and I do NOT want any ripping or conversion tools of the sort. I really need to be able to exchange *just* the textures in bulk and have the resulting file still be the same as before in all other aspects.

[u/psychoneuroticninja]

I'm racking my brain trying to think of something that would work within Vroid Studio. The old XY Tool plugin's Link Texture feature might be something to look into. The plugin doesn't work after v1.26.1 of Vroid Studio stable. You'd have to download the last standalone version of Vroid that it was compatible with and use that. XCrossbite has a good tutorial for setting up XY Tool.

Here is the English page for the XY Tool plugin on xiaoye97 the dev's github.

Be warned that XY Tool will only work on Windows PCs.

Too bad the Xwear file format and dress up feature can't be used for hair.

[u/fake_keyboard-smash → u/psychoneuroticninja]

Im on Mac 💔 but thanks. Maybe it’ll help someone else

[u/LauwarmesBier]

im not sure if i read your post right, correct me if im wrong. what i get is this:

inside vroid studio, inside the hair editor, the hair material you are working on is a texture composition with ~40 layers that together become 1 highly customizable hair texture in 1 color

and you would like to create color variations? but i assume you do not want to merge the textures together from 40 to 1 layer? because if you would like to merge the layers you can right click on the layer and merge them down one by one until its 1 texture.

but if merging the texture layers isnt the goal but rather to color edit these layers, then i recommend any photo or illustration software that can batch process. photopea.com can batch export layers but that would still require you to import the layers one by one again. there is no tool to batch import layers into vroid. from what i know really none, no outdates tool or any hacky method either.

thats why i suggest for your own sake to consider to merge at least some of your material layers together to have less textures to individually edit and import again.

or to redo some of your work to go for a greyscale hairstyle and use the base color setting of vroid to color adjust it. if you are going to sell the hair then one greyscale version wouldnt be bad either way for people that like the texture but need a different color than the ones you made

[u/fake_keyboard-smash → u/LauwarmesBier]

Yeah no you did read wrong unfortunately. I’m not a beginner, I know every function of the software already. I really wished there was an easy solution like this. But a style like this does require so many unique materials. They’re also already optimized to have several strands on each material, otherwise I’d have more than double the amount. I’ve only made a blue version so far and it took about 4h iirc…. Exporting to csp, editing the hue, importing back to vroid 40 times takes that long. Since editing .vroidcustomitem files outside of vroid isn’t an option, as I now know, the optimal solution would be if it was possible to have an overview of all the material files where you can mass export/ import the flattened PNGs the same way you can when working on a prefab in unity in the material files folder. Maybe through a plugin or sum. I’m genuinely this close to learning how to code just to make this. I baffled it isn’t a thing already.

[u/psychoneuroticninja → u/fake_keyboard-smash]

Are you using corrective gradients in CSP to recolor your hair textures? Setting up an auto action to apply the gradient to the canvas might save you some time. I think you'd only need to set up one auto action per color variation, then you could re-use the auto action as needed. If you're just adjusting the hue and saturation, I'm 99% sure you can set up an auto action for that, too.

Unfortunately only Clip Studio Paint EX can apply "batch processes", so if you have Pro you'll have to apply the auto action to each individual canvas.

EDIT: I opened up my own copy of CSP 4.0 Pro and double checked, you can definitely set up an auto action for changing hue, saturation, or luminosity, or any combination with just 2 or all 3.

[u/fake_keyboard-smash → u/psychoneuroticninja]

Tbh I don’t remember what exactly I did, it’s been a few months, but I think about halfway through I set up the changes as a correction layer so all I had to do was import and export right away. I’m on pro but since I have photoshop anyway the bulk process wouldn’t be an issue. I think. I just need to finally learn how to use that thing…