tech note ‐ character.yaml

This is a sample of the current version of character.yaml format. Note that it is still a work in progress and may change.

The example is based on 闇音レンリ・連続音Ver1.5.

About character.yaml

• character.yaml is the file used to store extra info that OpenUtau needs that cannot be captured by the traditional UTAU voicebank file set.
• The best way to edit character.yaml is from OpenUtau "Singers" dialog.
• If you manually edit it, note that this is a YAML file. Make sure you create a valid YAML file, especially you need exactly one space after ":". You may try to use a web YAML editor like this one.
• Every field is optional at the moment.
• The reason portrait size is scaled by its height (portrait_height) is because portrait images are usually longer than they are wide. Width scaling will be relative to height. Portrait images taller than 800px will be scaled down regardless of value.

Encoding

text_file_encoding: shift_jis

The encoding used to read character.txt, prefix.map and oto.ini. The character.yaml itself and all the yaml dictionaries in the voicebank (such as arpasing.yaml), should always be utf-8.

Character Info

name: 闇音レンリ・連続音Ver1.5
singer_type: utau
image: renri.bmp
author: ゆずり
voice: ゆずり
version: 1.5
web: https://renrivoice.wixsite.com/renri-voice/utau

These are similar basic character info in character.txt. If not present, info in character.txt will be used.

Localized name

localized_names:
  en-US: Renri Yamine VCV Ver1.5

This will display localized names for the user's selected singer name display language.

available language codes: en-US, de-DE, es-ES, es-MX, fi-FI, fr-FR, id-ID, it-IT, ja-JP, ko-KR, nl-NL, pl-PL, pt-BR, ru-RU, th-TH, vi-VN, zh-CN, zh-TW

Portrait

portrait: portrait.png
portrait_opacity: 0.67
portrait_height: 0

• A image file located in the voicebank folder can be used to display a portrait on Piano Roll. A relative path like "images\portrait.png" works too.
• Unless portrait_height is defined, the image is currently displayed in its original size unless the image is more than 800 tall, in which case will be resized to 800 tall. 0 means it will use the default values (this is so that smaller images don't scale up to a height of 800px by default, unless manually defined).
• If you edit the file when OpenUtau is open, go to singers dialog and click "..." -> "Refresh" to reload it.

Sub-banks (Voice Color)

• 闇音レンリ・連続音Ver1.5 is a multi-pitch, multi-color bank.
• This voicebank has 3 voice colors: Normal, Whisper and Clear
• This voicebank has 4 tone ranges: A3, D4, G4, C5.
• The 3 voice colors and 4 tone ranges form 12 different subbanks in total, each has a different suffix.
• It also has some extras, notably ↑, Edge. These are simply mapped to full tone range.
• Therefore in total 14 subbanks are specified in character.yaml. The suffixes visualized in table looks like:

	C1-C#4	D4-F#4	G4-B4	C5-B7
(main)	A3	D4	G4	C5
Clear	CA3	CD4	CG4	CC5
Whisper	WA3	WD4	WG4	WC5
Edge	'	'	'	'
↑	↑	↑	↑	↑

• To apply the above configuration. Go to Tools -> Singers -> Edit Subbanks. The final result should look like:

Full Example

name: 闇音レンリ・連続音Ver1.5
localized_names:
  en-US: Renri Yamine VCV Ver1.5
singer_type: utau
text_file_encoding: shift_jis
image: renri.bmp
portrait: portrait.webp
portrait_opacity: 0.67
portrait_height: 0
author: ゆずり
voice: ゆずり
version: 1.5
web: https://renrivoice.wixsite.com/renri-voice/utau
default_phonemizer: OpenUtau.Plugin.Builtin.JapaneseVCVPhonemizer
subbanks:
- color: ''
  prefix: ''
  suffix: C5
  tone_ranges:
  - C5-B7
- color: ''
  prefix: ''
  suffix: G4
  tone_ranges:
  - G4-B4
- color: ''
  prefix: ''
  suffix: D4
  tone_ranges:
  - D4-F#4
- color: ''
  prefix: ''
  suffix: A3
  tone_ranges:
  - C1-C#4
- color: ↑
  prefix: ''
  suffix: ↑
  tone_ranges:
  - C1-B7
- color: Clear
  prefix: ''
  suffix: CC5
  tone_ranges:
  - C5-B7
- color: Clear
  prefix: ''
  suffix: CG4
  tone_ranges:
  - G4-B4
- color: Clear
  prefix: ''
  suffix: CD4
  tone_ranges:
  - D4-F#4
- color: Clear
  prefix: ''
  suffix: CA3
  tone_ranges:
  - C1-C#4
- color: Whisper
  prefix: ''
  suffix: WC5
  tone_ranges:
  - C5-B7
- color: Whisper
  prefix: ''
  suffix: WG4
  tone_ranges:
  - G4-B4
- color: Whisper
  prefix: ''
  suffix: WD4
  tone_ranges:
  - D4-F#4
- color: Whisper
  prefix: ''
  suffix: WA3
  tone_ranges:
  - C1-C#4
- color: Edge
  prefix: ''
  suffix: "'"
  tone_ranges:
  - C1-B7