Any Useful Tutorials/Resources for Learning YL2?

Futatuesday

Not specifically for YL2 but what kind of stuff should I be researching to learn how to better navigate and utilize YL2? For example if the program uses terminology you'd find in Blender or some other program I could watch tutorials on that program and apply what I learn in YL2.

I'm trying to figure out what all I can actually do from template to finished character and I'm not really sure where to begin. Can you sculpt an element? If so how, if not then how do you make X template look like X character on the forums etc etc. Any info is appreciated.

Craket

Not any as of now, but it is actually possible to get a hang of if your playing around with it. When you have the bunny character up, try and click around the different options and see what each of them do, and what elements make her up. There is nothing too complex like creating your own shape and mesh, you have to go into blender for that and import from blender into YL2. That is a whole different story.

There are some prompts around the lower left hand of the screen within a black bar that I manage to catch that gave some very important key prompts.

There is a Help button on the top for SOME tutorial.

But honestly, even I dont know everything, I dont use everything. So at least coming from me, just do what you know and tinker with what you think works.

Styl1sh

The most basic way to create a character, without any external resources, is utilizing masks. In the arsenal, you have radial gradient (a sphere), capsule (two spheres connected together) and linear (a flat surface splitting the space in two). Those masks can then be colored by creating a fill mask layer.
You can create more complex shapes by performing boolean operations on masks. To put it simply, you can specify the behavior of two or more masks intersecting, and use the result as a mask itself. Creating fine details like that could be cumbersome, but you can still do a lot with this: 

The next level would probably be creating masks and decals in external painting programs, like Gimp or Inkscape. With it, you can add custom shape to fluff or iris, put eyebrows on your character, or add small repetitive decals and shapes.

The files that you import as maps can then be fed into the iris shapre, fluff alpha/color, or you can create a decal group to stamp it all over the body, and then paint it the same way you'd paint a mask. Your mask files needs to be a square (same height and width) with length being a power of 2 - the most common sizes would be 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024 and so on. You also want your images to be monochromatic, or at least use only white and black - during import, the file will be split into separate channels by base color (red, green, blue).

Next thing you might want to try is sculpting your own parts, appendages and decorations. Blender gets the job done.

Several things to keep in mind:

• you can export your character in-game and import it in blender to help you scale the parts properly
• if you plan to move the part around the body, move it close to the origin point before exporting it
• the parts you create need to have UVs generated and included in .obj export
• if you intend to paint it later in-game, and have details appear on both sides of the model, the UVs need to have X-axis symmetry
• try to keep the complexity of the model relatively low, high polygon count might impact the game performance, and will definitely cause issues when adding multiple instances of the object within an appendage group