PSO2 Shape Studio 1.4.1

What's new

• The demo lighting preview now lights the character the way the NGS
  character creator does: the same material handling and lighting as the
  game's renderer for costumes and skin, the creator's own lighting
  environment, the point light on its camera, its glare and its tone curve.
• Characters stand on their soles. The viewport measures the feet after
  every pose and places them on the floor, so high heels, boots, bare
  tiptoes and full-body suits no longer sink into it.

Improved

• Outfit colours are composited in sRGB space, the way the game builds its
  textures. Skin shows its blush as in game, and dark garments stay dark.
• Model files opened directly (the file dialog, drag and drop, the command
  line) now get the same colours and footing as outfits found through
  Model Search. They are looked up in the model catalog by their game-data
  hash or by an extracted file name.
• The viewport background keeps the chosen colour under demo lighting.

Update notes

• Demo lighting has no shadows or screen-space ambient occlusion, so it
  can still differ from the game in creases and under overhangs.
• Opening a model file directly does not load its linked innerwear or
  outerwear; use Model Search for that.
• No model catalog rebuild is required.
• This is a self-contained Windows x64 package; a separate .NET installation
  is not required.
• PSO2 game assets and character files are not included.

Validation

• Release tests: 120 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• Release build: 0 warnings, 0 errors.
• HDR and real-model OpenGL rendering smoke tests passed on the packaged build.
• Ground contact checked on 42 outfits across NGS, classic and full-body
  suits: every one stands on its lowest foot vertex.
• SHA-256: 14C669639AD7B9688285E5E7D77CBD537D9B47DF2C309C567B512BD64B9DF5AB

Full changelog: v1.4.0...v1.4.1

PSO2 Shape Studio 1.4.0

What's new

• Added an optional studio-lighting preview with HDR tone mapping, making skin,
  gloss, and surface detail easier to inspect under fixed lighting.
• Character files now apply their muscle value to the base and muscular skin
  texture sets.
• Added NGS-style viewport controls:
  • Left-drag rotates the camera.
  • Right-drag rotates the character against the fixed lighting.
  • Ctrl-drag moves the camera vertically.
  • Middle-click resets the camera and character rotation.
  • The mouse wheel controls zoom.

Improved

• Muscle mask and normal textures are blended according to the loaded
  character file.
• The floor guide and lighting remain fixed while the character is rotated.
• Updated the viewport instructions in all supported languages.

Update notes

• Load a supported character file to apply its muscle setting. Without one,
  the preview uses neutral surface settings.
• Wet and dry skin rendering is still being implemented and validated. Its
  current preview may differ from the game.
• Studio lighting is a preview feature and does not reproduce PSO2's complete
  renderer pixel-for-pixel.
• No model catalog rebuild is required.
• This is a self-contained Windows x64 package; a separate .NET installation
  is not required.
• PSO2 game assets and character files are not included.

Validation

• Release tests: 117 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• Release build: 0 warnings, 0 errors.
• HDR and real-model OpenGL rendering smoke tests passed.
• SHA-256: DA23DD84C8EBFEBCD2FF5F8C945D70AC87933FF71ADC23B2EB667AB3A2A12FF9

Full changelog: v1.3.5...v1.4.0

PSO2 Shape Studio 1.3.5 hotfix

Fixed

• Some outfits failed to load with "Object reference not set to an instance of
  an object" - the N-Bunny Suit among them, and mods built on outfits like it.

  A vertex set can be shared by several meshes, and the loader splits it so
  each mesh gets its own. It was doing that for every NGS model on the strength
  of the version number, but some are already stored one set per mesh, and
  splitting those wrecks them: meshes vanish and the vertex list gains empty
  entries. The loader now checks whether the sets are actually shared.

  Nothing was wrong with the affected files. Round-tripping one through Blender
  made it load only because the re-export happened to produce a layout the old
  check handled - that workaround is no longer needed.

Update notes

• Nothing else changed since 1.3.4; no cache rebuild is needed.
• This is a self-contained Windows x64 package; a separate .NET installation is
  not required.
• PSO2 game assets and character files are not included.

Validation

• Release tests: 111 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• Forty outfits sampled across the NGS range all load.
• SHA-256: 45F446376147C50DD34FBBE006D9967E459A0B3ECB17348AFEDDAFE38E7F9F5B

Full changelog: v1.3.4...v1.3.5

PSO2 Shape Studio 1.3.4 hotfix

Fixed

• Selecting the game data folder in a way that ended with a separator - for
  example ...\pso2_bin\data\ - sent every game-file lookup one level too
  deep, into data\data\win32. The cache refresh then found nothing and
  claimed the character-making index was missing on installations that had it
  all along. Reported by a player whose files were complete; the fault was
  ours, not the install's.

  A path already saved in settings repairs itself on the next launch, so there
  is nothing to redo by hand.

Update notes

• If you worked around this by pointing at pso2_bin instead of its data
  folder, either choice now works.
• Nothing else changed since 1.3.3; no cache rebuild is needed.
• This is a self-contained Windows x64 package; a separate .NET installation is
  not required.
• PSO2 game assets and character files are not included.

Validation

• Release tests: 110 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• SHA-256: FA3ED55FBDB4B46AB3D7F71E0B5ABA3A465DC678563FB9A4265A766836E4E9E3

Full changelog: v1.3.3...v1.3.4

PSO2 Shape Studio 1.3.3 hotfix

Fixed

• 1.3.2 blamed a cache-refresh failure on a missing classic PSO2 installation.
  That was a wrong guess: the character-making index also holds the NGS parts,
  so an NGS-only installation ships it. The message now names the exact file
  that was looked for and where, instead of guessing why it is absent.

If a cache refresh still fails, the path in the message is the file to check.

Update notes

• Nothing else changed since 1.3.2; no cache rebuild is needed.
• This is a self-contained Windows x64 package; a separate .NET installation is
  not required.
• PSO2 game assets and character files are not included.

Validation

• Release tests: 108 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• SHA-256: CD915A88692E774F2604B940131A3FEBE599CA10917A42BA4A56D42DD0A537A4

Full changelog: v1.3.2...v1.3.3

PSO2 Shape Studio 1.3.2

What's new

• Added a Hand slider that resizes the whole hand. PSO2 does not pass a
  parent's scale down to its children, so enlarging a hand only inflated the
  palm and left the fingers behind. The slider now drives the same 43 bones
  the game's own hand size uses - both palms, all 38 finger joints, and the
  forearm twists, which follow on thickness only.

Fixed

• Refreshing the cache on an NGS-only installation failed with "Object
  reference not set to an instance of an object". It now says what is actually
  wrong: the character-making index ships with the classic PSO2 data, and
  model search needs that data downloaded. Missing item-name text no longer
  stops the catalog from building at all.

Update notes

• No cache rebuild is needed when updating from 1.3.1.
• This is a self-contained Windows x64 package; a separate .NET installation is
  not required.
• PSO2 game assets and character files are not included.

Validation

• Release tests: 108 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• SHA-256: 2700D428270EE8057D426D8D4A980034191BCE3006EEF7B4F66357F189BF0AB8

Full changelog: v1.3.1...v1.3.2

PSO2 Shape Studio 1.3.1

What's new

• The spinner buttons beside a numeric field now match the direction the value
  moves: the down arrow is on the left, the up arrow on the right.

Update notes

• No cache rebuild is needed when updating from 1.3.0.
• This is a self-contained Windows x64 package; a separate .NET installation is
  not required.
• PSO2 game assets and character files are not included.

Validation

• Release tests: 106 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• SHA-256: 45D121DE54E37565B02316A3BAD02BF524AA7D38D81B675CD5CBDBB386647CFE

Full changelog: v1.3.0...v1.3.1

PSO2 Shape Studio 1.3.0

What's new

• Added support for male character files (.mdp, .mnp, .mhp, .mcp) and
  their unencrypted variants. Every gender and race combination now opens, and
  male characters use their own body proportion table.
• Characters now stand on the floor instead of sinking into it. The game folds
  a footwear-dependent factor into body_root that is not part of the slider
  table; without it a heeled outfit sat up to 9 cm below the grid, and the
  error is now about 2 mm.
• Added an acknowledgements section, in all five languages, to the projects
  this tool is built on.

Internal

• Replaced the borrowed Blowfish implementation with the standard cipher from
  BouncyCastle, verified byte-identical against the code it replaced. This is
  why the download is about 4 MB larger than 1.2.0.

Update notes

• The model catalog schema changed. The search cache rebuilds automatically on
  the first launch after updating, which takes a few seconds.
• Ground contact applies to outfits loaded through the model search, where the
  catalog supplies the value.
• This is a self-contained Windows x64 package; a separate .NET installation is
  not required.
• PSO2 game assets and character files are not included.

Validation

• Release tests: 106 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• SHA-256: B76C44B29BAE6BC28928FBE6B8288A453C285E2D01E36CB42B95D5B00A7728E4

Full changelog: v1.2.0...v1.3.0

PSO2 Shape Studio 1.2.0

What's new

• Scene updates now keep textures on the GPU: toggling model visibility,
  changing character colors, or adding a model no longer re-uploads every
  texture in the scene.
• Faster BC7 texture decoding through block copies, with a regression test
  pinning the decoded pixel layout.
• Added a step-by-step readme guide for applying a saved _sa.aqm in game,
  covering the Zamboni repacking workflow and mod-manager installation.
• Search results and the loaded-model list show their source file path as a
  tooltip, so the outfit's ICE archive is easy to locate for repacking.
• The save dialog now suggests the outfit's original ..._sa.aqm entry name
  instead of a generic file name.
• Added Simplified Chinese (简体中文) interface support. Windows language
  detection selects it automatically for zh-CN and zh-SG systems.
• Added Simplified and Traditional Chinese readme translations, linked from
  every readme.

Validation

• Release tests: 95 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• Windows x64 self-contained package.
• No model-cache rebuild is required when updating from 1.1.0.
• SHA-256: C2115633BD79BA73BF725C614546F75DC13DF78438F593BC8335AEBDF21BAB12

Full changelog: v1.1.0...v1.2.0

PSO2 Shape Studio 1.1.0

What's new

• Added visibility controls for supported Basewear Ornament 1, Basewear Ornament 2,
  and Outerwear Ornament meshes.
• Added Traditional Chinese (繁體中文) interface support.
• Moved interface translations to contributor-friendly JSON files under locales/.
• Added automatic language selection from the Windows UI culture. English remains
  the fallback language.
• Added runtime discovery of additional locale JSON files, allowing translations
  to be tested without recompiling the application.
• Added a localization schema, completeness checks, placeholder validation, and a
  contributor guide for translation pull requests.

Validation

• Release tests: 90 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped.
• Windows x64 self-contained package.
• SHA-256: C0092CD6FB78D5400FE908816F4065A4EC2B6025EEB860E07E306687618F7CB1

Full changelog: v1.0.5...v1.1.0