September Round-up, October, Commissions, and Modding Blogpost

Assuming I remember this correctly, These are the mods released this month:

Patreon related mods:

• Kim Kiyum Wetsuit - Patreon Voted
• Luxury Swimsuit - Commisisoned
• Maid Swimsuit - Patreon Voted
• Senran Yumi - Patreon Voted
• Senran Daidouji - Patreon Voted / Tiebreaker with Mirai
• Two private commissioned mod.
  Quota was exceeded, my private mods are safe (for now)!

Mods Updated:

• Servant Cat - Fixed area around shoulder and crotch.
• Yakuza Suits - Fixed some black textures.

Mods For Fun:

• HS Mechanical Bodysuit - Made for one of my characters, and shared. This takes the mechanical detail for the character body and makes a standalone brushed metal suit version of it.
• T-Pose for Character Maker - For easier accessory placement.

The Current Poll winner in progress is Chun Li's black uniform.
The new poll will go up when I begin the second commision.
If you have an item in mind you want to be put in the polls, you should message me with any method you like. Higher tier patrons have higher priority.

October Outlook

Same as this month. Commissions take priority on a two-one-two-one pattern. If I don't meet the monthly quota of 3 public mods, I release one of my private mods, which I don't have a lot of...

I still have to work on commissions for September, and October's stuff will be stacked on top.

Commissions

I get a lot of private messages about this. Sorry, but I can't take anymore outfit commission until I've caught up.
A non-patron has been in contact with me me for the entire month, so they decided to pay in advance to jump in line despite a 1-2 month waiting time, and to avoid currency conversion.

I don't like doing this, so I'm discouraging other to not contact me about paying in advance, because you may be waiting up to two months.

However, if its simple items, I can probably do weekend commissions that doesn't involve breasts, gloves, or hair.

The Cost of Commissions
The standard commissions is $45 for patrons, however I've done work for less or more outside of patreon depending on how easy or difficult a set of clothing is, but this eats into my time by a lot if I underestimate it, which I have done repeatedly.

If I were to do something from scratch, the pricing would be roughly 100~400 USD for one to three weeks of work, which is close to or less than professional rates. I don't offer this because it takes too much time and I don't have the schedule or safeguard for that at the moment.

A full basic outfit includes: Top, Pants, Shoes, Gloves.
Extra components which may add additional time: Hair, Undergarments, accessories, half off states.

The fastest mod I've worked on is 1 day, converting a basic set of tops which had decent meshes, requiring little to no cleaning. The fastest full set is 3 days per set (Steampunk series).
The longest was three weeks, which was my first complete mod for personal use and practice.
Average time per mod is 1 week. This is assuming the mod is a full outfit.

Modding Blogpost
Let's break down the modding process, assuming conversion only for a full set of clothes.

• Procuring Assets
  If the asset is available, easy. If not, the get it. If it doesn't exist, get something else.
  Time: 1~2 hours for conversion into something usable as well as organizing files.
  
• Cleaning Assets
  Check the meshes for broken vertices and seams. Smooth areas that need to be smoothed, and make hard edges hard. Optimize the mesh enough that it doesn't need to be fixed again later.
  Time: 1~4 hours depending on complexity of the meshes.
  
• Outfitting
  Move the outfit to form fit with the HS mesh.
  Time: 4~8 hours
  Moving vertices around even while using lattices takes patience. Gloves in particular will take the longest especially if the original asset uses a different pose.
  
• Skinning
  Attach the mesh to the HS skeleton. Transfer weights and then fix any bad weights manually.
  Not enough polygons = Blocky and clipping.
  Too much = Difficult Weight Painting.
  Time: 4~8 hours
  Breasts and gloves take the longest, even if there's an asset available to borrow weights from.
  
• Create List Files
  Relatively easy if a ID list is being maintained. 
• Transfer donor assets to asset bundle
  These are assets that are being replaced.
  Time for both: 30 minutes. It's pretty much just copy and pasting. Since I have a library, I don't have to hunt down things to copy over as much.
  
• Unity3D Related Work
  For hairs, accessories, specialized clothes, and setting up materials. This is basically the last stretch to finalization.
• Create Materials Create the basic materials to house all the textures. Also take this time to change the textures to better fit Honey Select's default shader. Making a 2CC variant takes more time since a color map needs to be accurately painted depending on how complex the original texture is.
  Time: 1~3 hours. + additional hour for transparency issues
  
• In-game polish
  Test in game to iron out extremely notable problematic areas.
  Fix textures and test color channels.
  Note which areas need better weights.
  Time: 4~ hours
  Previously it could take an entire day just debugging, but Joan's HSPE plugin has made modders life easier and quicker by allowing us to test updates without having to restart the game.
  
• Final Polish
  Add 10 hour buffer here.
  Everything goes to shit at the end.
  Have you noticed you've made an error after submitting a week long assignment? This is that!

This is only an estimate, but it should cover 1 week.

I've been going to sleep at 2am everyday for the past month because I lose track of time doing polish.
For things from scratch, just multiply everything by 3~4. That seems pretty accurate.