i am so tired of being nice i just want to go apeshit PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VTUBER ARTISTS WHO HAVE NEVER RIGGED BEFORE: ASK A RIGGER FOR ADVICE ABOUT SEPARATION AND LISTEN TO IT!!!! as a rigger and artist i am so fucking tired of having to spend 8+ hours re-separating and fixing all of the bullshit with your artwork that makes rigging a nightmare. AS A BASIC RULE PLEASE...
1: NEVER USE A SPACE IN LAYER NAMES!!! if you use a space in the name of any layers ( i.e. "leg l" "part 1") the name will be switched in live2D to "artmesh" and your rigger will have to RENAME EVERYTHING. if you do this for every layer THIS IS A NIGHTMARE. it's not easy to fix PLEASE use underscores instead of spaces.
2: have ANY KIND of naming system. it literally doesnt matter, as long as it exists and is consistent the rigger will figure it out. don't name one thing "left_arm_1" and another thing "Bang>SidePart" and expect me to be able to easily work with your file.
3: KEEP. LAYERS. ORGANIZED. please please PLEASE understand basic rigging hierarchy and stick to it. If the left eye folder is ten thousand layers below the right eye folder this will be extremely confusing. also make sure the limbs are ordered properly. if the shoulder is in the layer for the jacket and the hand is somewhere floating in the ether i now have to spend time to reorganize the psd.
4: LIVE 2D DOES NOT WORK LIKE A DRAWING PROGRAM. it only allows for multiply, add, and normal layers. no overlay, no screen light, just add and multiply. if I have to clip a layer to more than five other layers the program WILL lag for both you and the person who ends up using the model. Do not just leave a massive multiply layer over the entire model it doesn't work that way.
5: oh my fucking god PLEASE draw EVERYTHING even if it isnt in view. if you have a separate layer for the bang's shading, for example, in normal illustration you just draw what's visible and call it a day. I'M TURNING THE HEAD, MEANING IT WILL JUST CUT OFF. if i have to fix this for every single instance of shading i am taking time away from my work, my whole process takes longer. as a rule of thumb, always draw more than what you think you need.
6: separate more than you need, but not everything. sometimes I work with models that have not enough things separated, and its a pain to work with. sometimes i work with models that feel like the artist just sent me their work file with every tiny brushstroke on a different layer and then I have to spend a day merging and checking everything. use your head while you are drawing, think to yourself "is the thing I'm drawing something that will need to move independently?" try to imagine the model in 3D space as your working, and if you can't do that perhaps study an object in real life and see how turning it in space interacts with the lighting or whatever idk. also: if there are too many separations the model will come out looking blurrier. live2D doesn't just read the photoshop file, it creates a new texture file. imagine the model like a paper doll, it takes every piece of paper and spreads each piece down flat. this takes up much more space and many more pixels then the photoshop document, and the bigger i have to make the texture file, the laggier things become. if i don't want it to lag, everything has to be shrinked down to fit, and thus everything becomes blurry. if I don't want it all blurry, I basically have to spend hours upon hours manually placing every "piece of paper" on another piece of paper essentially playing the worlds most annoying jigsaw puzzle.
I feel like I'm working on a group project and doing half of your work. please, stop making my job much harder than it needs to be.
