Custom Don-chan guide

Text-based guide on creating your own Don-chan, by Saharan Cellphones(#9833)

Things you need to have in order to follow these steps correctly:

- A computer capable of running CEMU (Wii U emulator) and capable of recording lossless 720p video.
- Recording software (I use OBS).
- A game dump of one of the 3 Taiko no Tatsujin titles for the Wii U (I will not provide these, find them yourself).
- paint.NET (Picture editing software).
- Various paint.NET plugins (Exporting your paint.NET layers as a .zip file, and an outline object plugin).
- Bulk Rename Utility (To rename your frames).
- VLC media player (To export your frames from the recordings).

This guide assumes that:

- You have the following software installed:
					- paint.NET (https://www.getpaint.net/)
					- Bulk Rename Utility (http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php)
					- CEMU (http://cemu.info/)
					- OBS (https://obsproject.com/), or your recording tool of choice
					- VLC media player (https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html)
- You have the these files: https://mega.nz/#!EBZ0kDbb!UVbWwnfopzMyf_vGlzvTg31YhgRdQB4QDvzp-AvAwtQ
- You are capable of basic image editing.
- You have patience (Creating a Don-chan from scratch took me about 3-4 hours).
- You do not lack the brain cells to thoroughly follow a written tutorial.

Let's begin.

All the Taiko no Tatsujin titles for the Wii U have a feature that lets you take a screenshot of your customized Don-chan
and post it on Miiverse. Funnily enough, the menu for this has a green background, which ends up working like a green screen
for our needs.

Skip step 1 if your Taiko Wii U game of choice is the first one to be released.

1: Replace your corresponding Taiko no Tatsujin Wii U game of choice's animations with the files provided below. Be sure to
	read the given .txt file in every folder (drp, xml). Please note that within the contents of the "animations" folder
	many example videos can be found, in case you manage to fuck up and get lost.

2: Now that you've replaced the animations boot up CEMU and create your Don-chan of choice, and enter the screenshot menu.

3: Make sure that CEMU is running at 1280x720p60 without stuttering one bit. Once you've confirmed this, also make sure that
	your recording software of choice is recording at 720p.

4: Record your animations. This will take a while, as there are a few animations to be recorded.

5: Once you've recorded all of your animations, open any recording you want to start with with VLC media player. Find the exact
	moment where your animation begins, and start taking screenshots (with VLC! If you don't know how to, Google it). This
	step will be a bit more difficult with the gogo time animations, as they're a perfect loop and it's hard to find out
	where it starts and where it ends.

6: For gogo time animations, take more screenshots than needed. Afterwards, put them all into https://ezgif.com/maker to be able
	to correctly find which frames you need. Note that you're not really making a gif, but rather just using the site's features
	to "pick and choose" which frames you need. Once you've figured it out, delete the screenshots you don't need and move on.

7: Pick any animation to start with and import all of your screenshots into paint.NET. Using the pictures provided, copy and paste
	1.png into a new layer, then select it with the Wand tool (with as much tolerance as you can before the selection covers
	the entirety of the screen) and go to Image → Crop to selection on the top menu bar.

8: Now that you've cropped all of your frames, proceed to use the Wand tool (with the same tolerance you used in the previous step,
	mine was always set at 75) to select and delete the background off of every single frame you took.

9: Using the Outline object plugin provided, proceed to create an outline in each of your frames of 1 or 2 pixels (whichever looks
	best for you) to recreate any part of your Don that might have been accidentally deleted while using the Wand tool.

10: Now that you've removed the background of each frame and cropped them all into the size of 1.png, go to Image → Resize... and
	resize the image by percentage (69%). Then, go to Image → Canvas Size... and increase the Width of the image to 500px.
	Remember to set the Anchor to the middle of the image at the bottom of the Canvas Size... menu. Once that's done, remove
	any white bars at the left and/or right of your image to restore transparency.

11: Assuming you have resized your frames to 69% and increased the Width of the image by 500px, copy and paste 2.png onto a new
	layer. Do the same thing to this black rectangle: select it with the Wand tool at as much tolerance as possible and then
	go to Image → Crop to selection.

!!! When creating gogo time animations (the ones that make your Don look kind of yellow) go to "Adjustments" and click "Levels..."
Configure the window that pops up exactly like this: https://i.imgur.com/3nHW0ZX.png and apply the filter to every frame of your
gogo time animation to add that yellow shine effect to your Don.

12: Using the "export as .zip" plugin for paint.NET, export your frames as a .zip anywhere you want. Open said .zip and extract it
	somewhere you want and delete any leftover files (such as thumbnail and the actual zip, as well as a text file that is
	generated by the plugin).

13: Now, using Bulk Rename Utility, set "Name" to "Remove", and add your desired prefix (So if you're doing the normal idle animation,
	your prefix would be Normal_ or if you're doing the clear animation, your prefix would be clear_). Once that's out of the way,
	find your frames using the browser and select them all. In numbering, set "Mode" to "Suffix" and "Start" to the value "0". Click
	"Rename" at the bottom right hand corner and voila, all of your frames have been named correctly for use with TJAPlayer3 ver. 18.
	Now, just replace the default frames with your Don frames in your System/[name of skin] folder in your TJAPlayer3 installation.

If you notice any skipping or jumping during gameplay, you'll have to configure your Config.ini. Open your .ini and scroll all the way
down to where it begins to list off things about your "Chara", like so:

; キャラクター画像(β版)を有効にする(ズレがあるのでまだβ)
Chara=1
; キャラクターの画像数
CharaMotionCount= (This is the value for your "idle" animation. If you have, say 6 frames, set it to 6).
CharaMotionCountGogo= (This is the value for your "drumming" animation. Set this value to the number of frames you have for it).
CharaMotionCountClear= (This is the value for your "clear" animation. Set this value to the number of frames you have for it).
CharaMotionCountMax= just follow what u did above
CharaMotionCountMaxGogo= just follow what u did above

; キャラクターのコマパターン
CharaMotionList=0,1,2,3,4,5,5,5,5,5,5,4,3,2,1,0 (Leave this one default, unless you have more or less than 6 frames as idle animation. In that case, tinker with the values until it works).
CharaMotionListGogo= (You will have a set number of frames here, starting from 0. If you have more or less frames than the ones displayed here, accomodate for that. If you have 27 frames for it, add the numbers until 27. (ex: 0,1,2,3...15,16,17))
CharaMotionListClear= same as above
CharaMotionListMax= same as above
CharaMotionListMaxGogo= same as above

Configure these values with the tips given.

That's it. You've successfully created your first set of frames for one of the many animations needed. As of ver. 18, you'd need to do these
steps for 5 or 6 more times to create all the necessary animations that TJAPlayer3 ver. 18 needs.

As long as you follow this guide thoroughly and read every .txt file located inside "files for custom don-chan.rar" you should have no problems.
However, if you end up messing up something, you're more than welcome to ask me on Discord (Saharan Cellphones#9833) or Twitter (@ahrizona).



Credits:

Seirogan, who is the one who came up with Don-chan customization in the first place
Saharan Cellphones, for wasting his life and writing this guide
The Taiko no Tatsujin Discord, for existing so that I can have an outlet for my drumming needs

Thank you and good night.