Game Character Hub: Portfolio Edition

It's good for what it is.

I got sued for using Assets created here :D

As of right now id suggest sticking to the basic generators and Aseprite. This program lacks basic common functions like importing any images or sprites outside the basic rpg maker sprite sizes without going through a bunch of bull. Sadly i am posting this review some years after getting it with no major improvements to it at all.

Very stable product useful in a variety of game character formats and platforms like RPGmaker series. If you are looking for more customization than is available in the Maker series this is the product you need and with the simplified import/export process DLC and the like can easily be added to your personal library of creation tools.

I bought this thinking it was just like the other version I have and used with ease. This one is just horrible. I am having so much trouble just creating my first character where I jumped right in with the other version with no issues. It's basically the same thing as the character generator that is already in RPG Maker MV/MZ. Yes, I have 3 hours on this because I was trying to figure things out since I purchased it last month. Now I'm stuck with this in my library. I do not recommend this to anyone. Just use what comes with MV/MZ and use the DLCs.

This is an amazing tool I find very helpful, and diverse enough to at least come pretty close to what your looking for.
I still us RPG Maker XP and this has been great for generating character faces for battlers and such.
It lets you mix and match from all the categories available so you can end up with some very unique characters.

Lacks a simple means to add assets but that's mainly because of how Degica designed the character system. Overall GCH is the best tool for the job. Degica should buy it from Sebastien Bini and include it in RPG Maker.

It's fine, it's just a glorified RMMV Character generator,
One thing doesn't work though, converting 2k3 charsets to other formats.

Even though a bunch of other free substitutions work the same. this product works well if your having trouble with the frames and size. 10/10 reccomend

I was a little annoyed at first, because I used the basic version for a long time and this one's interface was slightly different, which effected my work flow initially. Once I got used to it I realized the perks of this edition. This software is great. There are a few small bugs but they are rare and they are outshined by the overall usefulness of this program. Easy to use and very forgiving. It seems to keep unsaved files for a very, very long time. That has saved me on more than one occasion. It's not as powerful as big name programs but it's solid and I use it for at least 80% of my pixel art and editing. Very thankful to whoever made this.

Not sure how crappy this was when it first came out, but at my time of writing this I've been stuck on it 4.7 hours, and it gets the job done. Works well with RPG Maker MZ, the interface i think is laid out pretty simple a 5 year old could use it, another great feature i love about it is the walk through tutorial that pops up the first time you jump in it. Don't sleep on this, it has some really great features and it makes life so much easier to just jump in, create and not have to worry about all the technical shit like grid and placement of your sprits... I love PhotoShop as well, but lets be real that program will make you wanna pull out your hair creating pixel art and importing to MZ......
So if your someone who doesn't want the same crappy ass characters everyone is stuck to use in RPG Maker then i advise this, that way you can make your own crappy ass characters no one else has, and you can give your game some uniqueness lol. For 25 bucks its worth getting a jump start, Create a base, then manually using the draw mode to fine twink everything. Saves freaking hours, if not days.

I got this game for some big discount (I think it was $6 and something cents, and I wouldn't recommend this for the life of me. If you have literally no experience with actual art programs and just wanna do minor edits to sprites or whatever, sure. Whatever. But if you are an artist and wanna make your own assets, don't. This is the worst investment I ever made and it leaves me seething. Literal MS Paint is better than this. There's no mirror/symmetry tool. It takes forever just to figure out what you are supposed to do. The whole palette thing and changing colors is abysmal, and literally any other program is better. Get Pixel studio instead or you can even use free programs like Firealpaca and Ibispaint X on your phone. This just isn't worth it for $6, let alone $20-whateveritis. It was literally the worst couple hours of my life using it and if I had to choose between this or drinking an excess of milk and letting Satan himself destroy my anus for 2 hours; I'd go with the latter. It is not user friendly like most art or pixel art programs and just to confirm it wasn't me being an incompetent, biased brain-wedge, I asked my sister who is also an artist and does primarily digital art to test out the program. The program wasn't user friendly at all. I hate it with a burning passion and I literally such small things would make the program so much better and less annoying. Just not worth it. Get literally any pixel art or regular art program and google the templates you need to pop your character in instead, then pop those in. So much less tedious. This program makes me want to eat my own ass and weep, this program makes me wish I knew how to code just so I could make a better program to spite it or fix all the horrendous inconvenient things about it, it makes me want to ask whoever made this god-forsaken program what they were thinking when they made this. How is this program literally worse than paint, literally how.

Game Character Creation Hub Portfolio Edition is really helpful if you want to make RPG Maker games as well as other 2d stuff. I recommend this if you have some free time to make an RPG Maker game or something similar. It's also a fun way to start animating.

I have read many reviews before purchasing this software oh-so-long ago, and still read them once in a while.
At the time of writing the review I have a little over 300 hours on the software and I have used it extensively "for my game creating purposes".

Edit December 3rd 2020: There is now an option to easily use MZ resources. This solves the only few problems I've had with the tool. I no longer have complaints.

Rating: 5 stars - Wonderful for simple character creation.
The -1 star would be for complexity, but also would add it right back for the same reason.
This is a very robust tool for what it is.

The good: Makes your life easier creating characters in a more complex way than the standard MV.
The Bad: It helps you do RPG maker item management, but it does not give you any new tools. However, I did not expect new items, so it works for me.
The Ugly: The tool is very complex and if you want to do anything "non-standard", it is pretty tough. That being said, with over 300 hours, I am yet to do many non-standard things.

@ This tool should have been in core MV, XP, MZ etc.
Two separate people/companies. Asking for one to be a part of the other is like giving skateboards a negative review because they are not the new Tesla car... because you are not adult enough to drive a real car, but can skate. In other fords - foolish.

@ This tool does not have extra items
Correct. There are a ton of free items online that you can add to the tool.
This tool is made to help you use the existing items, not give you more free stuff. _Make_ your game, not compile it together from something else someone made.

I was hesitant about getting this software because the reviews are so mixed, but I'm really glad I did. I only use MV and not any other versions of RPG maker and I did not own the previous version of this software, so I can't speak to its usefulness for other versions or compare it to the original. I love it for making MV characters. I quickly got bored with the limitations of MV's build in character generator and was looking to get a little more creative. This generator is much more flexible and gives you more control over how your characters look without requiring you to learn how to draw all your own characters yourself. Could you technically do most of it with the built in generator? Probably, if you were prepared to make a whole lot of new generator parts. But it's much easier this way. I've gotten a few hundred hours of use out of it already and expect to get plenty more. Overall, I've found it really useful and worth getting, especially if you pick it up when it's on sale.

The program is useful if you only use default generator parts and supported dlc parts. But when you import custom parts they don't catogorize properly, this is a nifty little program but with bugs like that it's hard to use. So until it's fixed a little better i wouldn't recommend this software

I purchased the previous Game Character Hub. I was disappointed by the license restrictions, and gave it a negative review, I took a lot of time before trying Game Character Hub: Portfolio Edition.

What I leave here are first impressions but I can already say that the developer made a LOT of improvements and efforts in the exact direction we would like it to be.

THE GOOD

* Well displayed and arrayed software, a clean tool.

* Many features are there and work perfectly for our needs; fast and easy layering, pixel editing, an even the animation preview itself are all very important. Other "deep" features are the possibility to customize generators and adjust all tilesets.

* The software is made with complete "open features" that you can adjust for your needs for other games; changing the tile layout is very easy, everything is pretty clear.

* I had no bugs so far; some people had some, I did not!

* The description is more clear regarding RPG Maker license contents

* It now has a few (well, too few) license-free content, with "Second Story" DLC; this one does not have much, really! But we may use it as base and customize it to use it in any 2D game. Which is GREAT.

* The Steam Workshop is there and has many fine categories

THE BAD

* ... and the steam workshop looks quite empty! Why why why? :O

* RPG Maker also has less but very nice character customization features. So people always have to compare the two. Here you have nice layering, nice animation preview (which is essential), multiple options to adjust tilesets for other games too. But not many graphic assets for other games, even with the DLC Second Story.

* The developer must support it for the tool to continue being useful; and certainly NOT make another Game Character Hub to sell, but upgrade this one.

CONCLUSION

The software itself is the greatest sprite and sprite animation editor I've seen and used so far.
It seems the developer has finally got there.

I find it a much better, complete and faster tool than regular photo editors or pixel editors, for that purpose. Photo editors have plenty more features and effects, but not this ease of use. This software delivers on its target of sprite creation.

Unfortunately for the developer, RPG Maker proposes a number of features already for character generation. This splits the community and the pricetag can fend some people off.

I hope the developer will continue releasing license-free contents.
I give him a thumbs up for these efforts!

My go-to for pixel art. A lot of times I'm not even using it for game-related content.
I'd break it down, but it'd be easier for you to check the artwork on my profile. All of it was done in this software, including the full-arts that are posted.

I have over 2,000 hours of use in this for a reason.
I would buy this software 10 times over.

Bought for a very overpriced $30 just for RPG MV. Something that was supposed to come with the regular, cheaper GCH. Would still rather use the regular GCH compared to this garbage which costs MORE! My budget is incredibly tight and this was a very difficult decision, one I deeply regret now.

Buggy, keeps lagging, freezing and nearly crashing. Can't copy over sprites to a new frame. Not to mention that all of the things that you get with it are already in the Character Generator in RPGM:MV. Not a single thing new. Lazy program and greedy developer!

Looking into how to get a refund now. Simply wanted a way to make more customized sprites and more fun with RPGM:MV, was wanting to get back into making games again but this has totally ruined my motivation. Could not recommend that you DON'T PURCHASE more! Better yet don't purchase any of their products until they learn that this is NOT the way to do things.

I've experienced better from free things. Shameful.

Thumbs up for this program. It's a good character generator:
- It is faster than RPG Maker MV character generator because it offers an option to any amount of characters in one click (for instance, you can ask the program to generate 200 random white elf female MV characters, and it will generate each sprite for the 200 characters in the folder you want).
- It is also more flexible than MV generator: you can build your character manually part by part, by picking character parts from the "library". Each part is added as a layer which can edit as you please (recolor, resize, rotate, draw over it, add noise, change opacity, blending options, etc...). It adds more versitality to the characters we can make!
Once the work is done, it's easy to import the character to MV: the program exports each sprite into its own PNG file. It's then easy to move them into your MV project folder.

This software, regarldless of pricing, regardless of anything that may have been said or done that make people angry, this software is helping me finish a dream. I am not charging for my game. It is completely for fans, and I would spend $40 or even $50 for this program because it helps me build my dream. It helps me tremendously. I love the software. It's easy to use, it uses layers (layers are amazing for spritework!), and it's just overall simple. I cannot draw whatsoever. BUT I have made many characters with this software and the with the previous software, and dare I say it looks like I know what I'm doing. My sprites look professional, and I cannot thank the developer(s) enough for finishing this software regardless. Guys, if you want to make RPG Maker games, and you want some sprite editing software that's easy and enjoyable, use this. Use Game Character Hub: Portfolio Edition.

I'd like to give neutral review but yeeaaaa...
what
When I saw this for the first time I was like "YAY!!! GCH for RMMV is finnaly out! I'm going to make A LOT of awesome characters like never before!" and then...
Well...
All parts are just same like in RPG Maker MV generator. There in only few differences:
- You can edit parts in-generator.
- You have more color options.
- You have more layering power.
- There's an animation preview.
That's all, I guess?
But hey! You can import own parts! That's the thing i needed all the time! :D
I saw some additional parts in RPG Maker MV Season Pass DLC so you can copy and paste them into generator if you want to get more parts.
Still, no extra parts hurts me.
...but thank you for this awesome app! ^^

EDIT: I am waiting for updates, there is no way of converting multiple images into one part for every character style (Face, Walk, Battler, Damage), so adding own parts is a bit messy for me. In normal GCH there is that option but GCH doesn't support RPG Maker MV (which I personally use) parts like Portfolio Edition.

...So I am just waiting for that update to make my library bigger! :D