I thought about creating something, I'd like some feedback

Pikachuk(SeleDreamsP)

Teto is love, Teto is life (Rin too)
Defender of Defoko
I noticed a kind of issue that I never really found a fix to in the UTAU community voicebanks wise.

The kind of big lack of standards.

I'll explain what I mean.

There's a huge amount of ways to do voicebanks, to share them, to update them etc, and it's good, however, it makes all of it confusing, not only for people who make UTAUs (They have to watch tons of tutorials, infos etc from tons of websites due to how much knowledge is required, like finding the right reclist for what we need, learning how to oto, learning the different styles of recording, organizing everything etc)
and for people using the utaus, there's a big problem of the way utaus must be used (when it comes to all the types of vbs, the differences between vbs for the vb specific differences etc and the BIGGEST problem I personnally encountered are the highly incomplete TERMS OF USE, often not even included with the UTAU and often completely blurry on what we can and can't do with the vbs because they're written by people inexperienced in the field)

I know one program that made it a bit easier to make vbs, OREMO, which is pretty good, but I noticed that there's still a big lack of a standard solution to make and share vbs in a simple and complete way

That's why I got the idea of creating a software focused on it, the software would allow with a simple interface to chose the language of our UTAU and the recording style (such as CV,VCV etc), (more recording styles etc will be added with updates because I'll try to find the most complete reclists possible and ask to the authors the authorisation to use them in the software one by one, it would contain a choice too between "Complete" and "Minimum" recording to know if it should only include the strictly necessary recordings or include all the optional recordings to have a more complete vb, it would be added to the description of the utau for the end users to know EXACTLY what works with this utau by watching the documentation of the software giving the list of all the sounds usable with a specific reclist and mode for all utaus made with it)
then the software would automatically create a standard oto.ini and would allow to record the necessary recordings for the vb a bit the way oremo does it but would automatically associate the oto to set the files associated to each sound (even with vccv etc), and once it's done the user will be able to edit the oto.ini to set the preuterrance,overlap etc and it will have a page to edit the image of the utau, the description, and will have a whole MANDATORY section dedicated to the UTAU terms of use with simple choices to make for instance between "Non commercial use only" "Limited commercial use (Only allowing commercial use of the voice but not the character)" and "full commercial use (allowing to use the voice and character for commercial purposes)"

there would be stuff too like if the creators doesn't allow the utau to be used in lewd,violent stuff etc

and a system allowing the creator to add custom terms of use on top of the mandatory ones, I really want to make the whole terms of use process simple and intuitive for the creator while still making it clear for the end user

then at the end there would be a version system that would allow to set easily the version of the voicebank and package it for installation


I think adding a kind of voicebank manager with a system of voicebank update could be interesting too thanks to the automatic version system

I think this system could be useful for both creators and end users, it would make creating and using UTAUs a more standard process with less learning to do creator wise without having the end user to always learn the differences of each vb and not knowing what we can do with the UTAU or not


I'd like to know what you all think about this idea, would you like to have a software like this?
 

Pikachuk(SeleDreamsP)

Teto is love, Teto is life (Rin too)
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
It sounds like a good idea, but what about people with custom reclists, custom voicebank types? It sounds good on paper, but there is one issue I have. I feel like this sort of idea would be brilliant, but certain aspects of it could encourage elitism, and as someone who's dealt with elitism in the community, it's not a good thing. Standardising everything would be good, but UTAU is very diverse so how are you aiming to cater to that?

The project will be open source and people will be able to add themselves custom reclists and indicate the standard oto.ini

they could officially ask me to implement them to the software too, in this case the reclist choice would be for instance for a custom CV reclist be named
"[Author's Name]'s CV Reclist"

It would though be mandatory to add the documentation of the custom reclist since the whole interest is making it easier for end users and creators
 

VocAddict

The Voice Within Us
Defender of Defoko
A really ambitious project, I wish you luck with that. A software like that would be great for UTAU users. The one thing I would say is don't overwork yourself. I wouldn't mind giving some of time to help out with this project if you need the assistance.

In relation to the terms of usage, there's a generator for voicebanks here. It's pretty comprehensive and works pretty much how you expect it to.
 

Pikachuk(SeleDreamsP)

Teto is love, Teto is life (Rin too)
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
A really ambitious project, I wish you luck with that. A software like that would be great for UTAU users. The one thing I would say is don't overwork yourself. I wouldn't mind giving some of time to help out with this project if you need the assistance.

In relation to the terms of usage, there's a generator for voicebanks here. It's pretty comprehensive and works pretty much how you expect it to.

Honestly, I don't think it will be that hard and it will be a good exercice since I wanted some practice.
Because I know programming but I never worked a lot with user interface programming, so I needed to find a way to practice it while making something useful for the community, so I got the idea to make this

when it comes to the terms of use generation, yeah I planned a similar system to the one you have posted, but I'm really planning to make it as complete as possible


I'm wondering too if it could be useful to directly integrate an UTAU database to the software that would contain a kind of often updated list of the available utaus and allow to directly download them from the software ( even though UTAUs could still be installed without it )

the only requirements for the utaus to be on the list would be the creator's approval and the fact it was generated with the software (not to lock people not using it but just for compatibility to allow it to check the version to allow easy updates and install it automatically and remove it with a simple click too, I will make it easy to convert an existing utau anyway to the correct format)
the downloadable utaus would have their own page with a way to check the versions we want to install (if for instance we only want the CV or VCV or if we want a power version or a whisper version etc) and it would display everytime an update to a downloaded vb if available

(the way to check updates would be simple, instead of downloading only the vb, it would download a really small text file too that contains basic infos such as the version of the utau, the version of the software used etc that allows the software to check updates and compatibility)
 

VocAddict

The Voice Within Us
Defender of Defoko
Honestly, I don't think it will be that hard and it will be a good exercice since I wanted some practice.
Because I know programming but I never worked a lot with user interface programming, so I needed to find a way to practice it while making something useful for the community, so I got the idea to make this

I'm wondering too if it could be useful to directly integrate an UTAU database to the software that would contain a kind of often updated list of the available UTAU and allow to directly download them from the software ( even though UTAU could still be installed without it )

(the way to check updates would be simple, instead of downloading only the vb, it would download a really small text file too that contains basic infos such as the version of the utau, the version of the software used etc that allows the software to check updates and compatibility)
Yeah, UX can be frustrating sometimes. Doing the database shouldn't be too difficult, since it's just server side you will have to worry about maintaining and it shouldn't get too big.

Downloading directly from the software though is another story since most links creators give out for their banks are the direct link to the file itself and even then, those links expire frequently overtime or because of the amount of clicks. So it might be easy to just keep to version checking and direct the user to the given link or something like that.
 

VocAddict

The Voice Within Us
Defender of Defoko
Hmm, do you think it has enough features to be considered a proper "toolkit"?
 

Pikachuk(SeleDreamsP)

Teto is love, Teto is life (Rin too)
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
Hmm, do you think it has enough features to be considered a proper "toolkit"?
well I'm planning to make it a kind of centralized management software allowing to create vbs, installing vbs, remove vbs, update vbs, install plugins, resamplers etc and more features will probably be added in the future, so I feel like to be future proof, utau toolkit would be a good name since even though voicebank creation is the primary goal, it won't stop there
 

VocAddict

The Voice Within Us
Defender of Defoko
well I'm planning to make it a kind of centralized management software allowing to create vbs, installing vbs, remove vbs, update vbs, install plugins, resamplers etc and more features will probably be added in the future, so I feel like to be future proof, utau toolkit would be a good name since even though voicebank creation is the primary goal, it won't stop there

Hmm, what about "UTAU Manager"?
 

Pikachuk(SeleDreamsP)

Teto is love, Teto is life (Rin too)
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
Hmm, what about "UTAU Manager"?
It would be correct but a manager sounds more like something made to install and uninstall stuff only, not to create new utau for instance, that's why I thought about toolkit, since it's not for a specific use and made for a lot of various tasks
 

Pikachuk(SeleDreamsP)

Teto is love, Teto is life (Rin too)
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
1546891663-unknown2.png


I have started programming the software, atm it's only a basic console app because I want to program the features first before making the UI (It's easier to make the UI of a program already working properly than making the UI and the features at the same time)
 

Pikachuk(SeleDreamsP)

Teto is love, Teto is life (Rin too)
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
If I didn't post any news in a while it's because I've some things I must take care of and since this isn't my top priority project, it will progress slowly, but I'll post here everytime there is progress on it
 
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sceryp0

Momo's Minion
I noticed a kind of issue that I never really found a fix to in the UTAU community voicebanks wise.

The kind of big lack of standards.

I'll explain what I mean.

There's a huge amount of ways to do voicebanks, to share them, to update them etc, and it's good, however, it makes all of it confusing, not only for people who make UTAU (They have to watch tons of tutorials, infos etc from tons of websites due to how much knowledge is required, like finding the right reclist for what we need, learning how to oto, learning the different styles of recording, organizing everything etc)
and for people using the UTAU, there's a big problem of the way UTAU must be used (when it comes to all the types of vbs, the differences between vbs for the vb specific differences etc and the BIGGEST problem I personnally encountered are the highly incomplete TERMS OF USE, often not even included with the UTAU and often completely blurry on what we can and can't do with the vbs because they're written by people inexperienced in the field)

I know one program that made it a bit easier to make vbs, OREMO, which is pretty good, but I noticed that there's still a big lack of a standard solution to make and share vbs in a simple and complete way

That's why I got the idea of creating a software focused on it, the software would allow with a simple interface to chose the language of our UTAU and the recording style (such as CV,VCV etc), (more recording styles etc will be added with updates because I'll try to find the most complete reclists possible and ask to the authors the authorisation to use them in the software one by one, it would contain a choice too between "Complete" and "Minimum" recording to know if it should only include the strictly necessary recordings or include all the optional recordings to have a more complete vb, it would be added to the description of the utau for the end users to know EXACTLY what works with this utau by watching the documentation of the software giving the list of all the sounds usable with a specific reclist and mode for all UTAU made with it)
then the software would automatically create a standard oto.ini and would allow to record the necessary recordings for the vb a bit the way oremo does it but would automatically associate the oto to set the files associated to each sound (even with vccv etc), and once it's done the user will be able to edit the oto.ini to set the preuterrance,overlap etc and it will have a page to edit the image of the utau, the description, and will have a whole MANDATORY section dedicated to the UTAU terms of use with simple choices to make for instance between "Non commercial use only" "Limited commercial use (Only allowing commercial use of the voice but not the character)" and "full commercial use (allowing to use the voice and character for commercial purposes)"

there would be stuff too like if the creators doesn't allow the utau to be used in lewd,violent stuff etc

and a system allowing the creator to add custom terms of use on top of the mandatory ones, I really want to make the whole terms of use process simple and intuitive for the creator while still making it clear for the end user

then at the end there would be a version system that would allow to set easily the version of the voicebank and package it for installation


I think adding a kind of voicebank manager with a system of voicebank update could be interesting too thanks to the automatic version system

I think this system could be useful for both creators and end users, it would make creating and using UTAU a more standard process with less learning to do creator wise without having the end user to always learn the differences of each vb and not knowing what we can do with the UTAU or not


I'd like to know what you all think about this idea, would you like to have a software like this?

please do it for android:love:
 

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