FOREWORD
What is CLIP STUDIO COORDINATE? It is the FREE and fully functional program in the Celsys CLIP STUDIO software suite for creating new 3D Materials for use in, ultimately, CLIP STUDIO PAINT - also known in the United States as “Manga Studio” (MS) from Smith Micro. So far, however, CLIP STUDIO PAINT (CSP) is the only program in the suite that has been officially translated from Japanese into English and released here. If you don’t know Japanese you’ll need to apply the unofficial language patch in order to make sense of COORDINATE.
CLIP STUDIO COORDINATE (CSC) is the most potentially useful support app in the suite for CSP. It is used to build posable 3D Character Materials, with multiple configuration options such as different facial expressions, accessories, or clothing. It is also used to create Material files for 3D Objects that can be manipulated and offer different styles, and lastly for 3D Scenes (virtual movie sets) with preset camera views and object placements. What CSC cannot do, however, is create the original 3D models. It is not a modeling software, it is a configuration software that creates a single “Material” file with multiple models and textures within it. You have to acquire or build your models elsewhere.
For CLIP STUDIO users in Japan this isn’t a problem. There is a robust online marketplace where users can download, buy, and license 3D and other Materials, as well as upload and sell their own original creations. Unfortunately for those of us outside of Japan who use CLIP STUDIO PAINT (or the rebranded MANGA STUDIO version) there is no such marketplace for new Materials. At least not yet. There are apparently discussions between Celsys and Smith Micro regarding official translations of the rest of the software suite and establishing a similar Materials marketplace here, but as of this writing none of that has materialized (no pun intended. Well maybe a little pun).
To help get you started with COORDINATE (assuming you’ve already applied the aforementioned language patch) you’re going to need some models to play with. First of all Celsys obfuscates Material data. Even in their free download bundle of materials the files within it are already obfuscated, and only become even more-so after installation. I’m sure they do this because, in Japan, original materials can be sold and licensed and they don’t want people to be able to remix or alter the models themselves, so obfuscation makes sure end users don’t receive a model they can edit. Thankfully Celsys does supply, at their Japanese language website, the un-obfuscated source materials (well most, but not all of the source materials) used to build the four default 3D Characters (the two school boys and two school girls). These are provided to show you how 3D Character files are constructed in CSC:
Basic Characters (Girl A, Girl B, Boy A, Boy B) [21.9MB]
Girl A Clothing Sample 01 [17.7MB]
Girl A Clothing Sample 02 [17.9MB]
Girl A Hair Styles Sample 01 [3.0MB]
Girl A Hair Styles Sample 02 [2.9MB]
Boy A Hair Styles Samples 01 [1.0MB]
Boy B Hair Styles Samples 02 [1.7MB]
Girl A Clothing Sample 01 [17.7MB]
Girl A Clothing Sample 02 [17.9MB]
Girl A Hair Styles Sample 01 [3.0MB]
Girl A Hair Styles Sample 02 [2.9MB]
Boy A Hair Styles Samples 01 [1.0MB]
Boy B Hair Styles Samples 02 [1.7MB]
There are also a couple other “sample materials” you can download, both of which are “vocaloids” (3D figures designed for amusing dance animations like those made with Miku Miku Dance, assuming you’re familiar with MMD):
Aoihime Lapis Model: http://www.clip-studio.com/clip_site/download/clipstudiocoordinate/cscsample#02
The “Gumi” model is the potentially useful one in that it includes the original FBX and texture files. The “Lapis” one only has a “c2fc” file, which is a collected, proprietary Celsys format (you can open it in Coordinate, but you won’t be able to edit the models in it or deconstruct it).
This series of posts will cover my own experimentation with building and importing models, trying to find a workflow that works for those of us outside of Japan to get robust new Materials into CSP or MANGA STUDIO. I’m going to cover my experimentation in the order I did it, which means the last part is what I ultimately found to work - so if that’s all you’re interested in skip to the last part. I have been focusing only on the 3D Character creation aspect and have yet to tackle working with 3D Objects and 3D Backgrounds. If you want to know what all I tried and what did or didn’t work? Well, read on…
7 comments:
Hello I'm hoping you can help me I downloaded clip studio coordinate and the program seemed fine however when I go to save my edits of models the saves always turn out to be empty I am at a lost any help would be appreciated thank you.
When you say you're "modifying" the models, what kind of mods are you doing? Are you using FBX model parts or some other format. The "body" will let you import several different file types, but the others really only work with FBX. I had problems with models that mixed FBX and non-FBX parts (pieces of the model would be missing when I reopened Coordinate). Also, are you using "Save" or "Save As" - if you downloaded the sample models to play with and the file permissions are read-only it won't actually save your edits (it also won't warn you the file is read-only).
I've tried fbx files that I've created with blender and I've tried the fbx files that came with the gumi model shown here I've also tried .obj files which in the past about 2 years ago I had the program and converted a couple .obj files without a problem and I've also done .pmd/pmx files but now for some reason although I'm able to import the models in the program when I save the file weather its save or save as the file turns out to be empty I've tried uninstalling the program and reinstalling as well but still the same issue. Its a bit frustrating cause I didn't have these problems in the past so I'm unsure what I've done. Thank you for answering BTW I really do appreciate your help.
Ok, I haven’t had a problem with empty files, so I’m not sure how to troubleshoot that.
The only time I had character files that looked “empty” they still had all the parts, textures, poses, thumbnails, etc. in the panels, but the model area looked empty (it actually wasn’t, the models I imported weren’t using “centimeters” as the units when I built/exported them, so the ended up being a tiny little speck in Coordinate).
You said you’ve uninstalled and reinstalled it, but did you make sure all preference files for it were gone? A lot of times the uninstaller for programs leaves behind user, settings, and preference files that you have to manually trash. If one of those was corrupt and causing the problem it would screw up a reinstallation too.
On a Mac they’d be in:
[main volume]/Library/Application Support/CELSYS
[username]/Library/Application Support/CELSYS/CLIPStudioCoordinate
(“Library” is a hidden folder in the user account)
On Windows I think you’d look in:
C:/Users/[username]/AppData/Roaming/CELSYS/CLIPStudioCoordinate
(“AppData” is a hidden folder)
This is a great post!
3D modeling
hello all. this is exactly what I was looking for and although it seems it has been a while since anyone commented on this I hope I can get some help from you experts.
basically I want to be able to import 3d characters from maya in fbx format to csp and use the pose library.
I read here about Celsis demo girl that one can import to maya and transplant the bones to my custom mesh and bind it to make sure all works when imported to csp via fbx [applying poses from library], but where do I download the Celsys demo girl model?
Also, can I just use a preboned/weights painted model from make human model and match the bone set up required by csp?
in maya I can change names of bones..etc.
So basically Im asking for:
Celsys demo girl mesh/bones
CSP bone hiarchy specs [names n bone set up info]
I would be eternally greatful if you could email me the info here.. I will share my custom models with you if you could help me make models useable in csp.
kandori07@gmail.com
thanks a million in advance
Kenneth C
Kenneth,
The link to get the girl mesh/bones is in the post above. It's in the download of all 4 of the "Basic Characters."
The bone spec hasn't officially been translated to English. I have a Google Translate auto-translation of it HERE with other manuals.
The bone names are in english though, so if you name yours the same way it *should* work. I had issues with mine only partially adopting poses dropped onto them in CSP though, which was why I advocated "transplanting" the bones from the default model since that definitely works right.
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