General Discussion for Virtual Youtubers / Vtubers / Chuubas - it's okay to be a simp for 2D, just don't thirstpost.

Deluxe said:
From the details that Kson has revealed in her streams and WIP posts, it looks like she has chosen the Unreal Engine + XSens consumer mocap stack which is the same setup that CodeMiko uses.


The tracking quality that these enormously expensive suits can deliver is as high as it gets for consumer grade hardware but integrating it into something you can stream is not anywhere near as easy or as cheap as it is with the most common vtuber full body mocap stack which is built on VR tech instead of specialized mocap tech (Unity + VRM + Vive Trackers stack that Cover and Anycolor both use).

I don't want to hype it up too much because in the end, Kson is still just an independent vtuber but the amount of money and resources she's pouring into this makes me feel like this is just a initial investment into something bigger like a 3D studio. It doesn't make sense to order expensive hardware and hire programmers to build software for just one person.

At the very least I'd expect face and eye tracking which is something neither Cover nor Anycolor have been able to do* for their 3D events yet.

Cost breakdown
XSens Link suit: $15k
Manus gloves: $6k
Some type of face rig hardware: at least $1k not including the camera itself
Computer hardware: $lodsofemone
Studio space: $lodsofemone
Army of assistant directors and staff to make sure everything goes as planned: $lodsofemone

Kson either bought a studio or is working with an established one. Either way, it's cool to see some return on that gachikoi dosh.

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* Pure speculation on my part, but I believe the reason why big corpos are still on last-gen VR centric 3D tracking is more of a cost issue than anything else. There are indies that have fully functional face tracking but it's very finicky to work with and the more performers you add simultaneously, the more complicated and expensive things get. It's one thing to get eight girls dancing in real time while wearing VR headsets and body trackers (maybe a couple thousand dollars for each person) but another to get eight girls wearing motion capture rigs doing the same, especially when mocap tech isn't really designed to scale like that.

Then you have the cost of hiring experienced Unreal developers and experienced motion capture experts to write software, then add the cost of having to maintain highly specialized hardware that fucking breaks all the time.


In this ancient video from 2018, you can actually see that Cover can actually use head mounted Iphones for 3D face capture, but seems to have chosen not to, probably because dancing with a front heavy helmet on your head is impractical.
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Kinda confused why they need the super expensive suit. Live 3D tracking can be done for relatively cheap if you are willing to nigger rig some stuff. The devs of Hellblade for example made all their mocap and facial capture stuff out of cheap ass stuff from Ikea, Ping Pong balls, and old cameras to save money. Granted they probably have an advantage since they have Andy Serkis on speed dial but with a little futzing around the average person could probably figure it out for streaming without breaking the bank.
 
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Avokado said:
How is immigration situation in Japan right now?
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All the usual visa routes are open but visa-free entry isn't allowed, you've got to do the old-school apply-to-the-embassy routine. I think tourists may need a sponsor and to pledge to wear a mask etc.. There's also a cap on the number of arrivals per day applied at the airline level. So there are no hard barriers any more, but it's still harder work than usual.
White Stone said:
I have always been wondering about this fact .Those who keep shitting on Cover for not getting their talents to Japan, do they have a firm understanding on Japan's entry process? Do they know how easy/hard exactly for someone to get in? I have zero idea about this so I usually hold myself from shitting from them, but I guess I could share a few of my thoughts (more like questions actually) on the matter.

Aren't the girls considered as contractors? Would they even be allowed Work Visas?

Are "vtubers/internet streamers" even considered as proper occupations by the Japanese government? With how backwards they are I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is no.
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Digital nomads have never been welcome in Japan. You can come to work for (or run) a Japanese company, or you can come for tourism/business but not work (which streamers would definitely be close to the line on). The standard wealthy person trick is to set up a company that you can be the manager of, which requires 50 million JPY in capital and two Japanese permanent employees, which I'd think the Holos could afford if they wanted to, but may not be worth it to them.
However there's also an entertainer visa that seems like it would apply, and there's even a fast track for internationally known entertainers.
White Stone said:
Calli seems to be able to leave and renter Japan as many times as she likes. I know she already stopped her "scythe-swinging" lesson long ago. So they somehow able to procure a Work Visa for her? She is still a US citizen right?
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Hmm yeah she's not an employee and she hasn't been here long enough for permanent residence. Clearly she's on a spouse visa via the welshman.
EliteDoragon said:
Wtf was Keeki even doing for a job before becoming the Chicken? If she was properly employed then maybe she was doing what Calli is currently doing to extend her visa with her previous employment.
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Working holiday, which gives you very broad freedom (pretty much the same as the table 2 visas IIRC) but is strictly limited to 1 year.
Rezza said:
ID  is centralized on one area, despite what the ID members' Opsec want you to believe. The problem is, Indonesia doesn't have any appetite for Mocap, yet. So building a Mocap studio is not only going to be expensive in material and labor cost, but it's most likely going to sat unused for most of the time it's going to bleed more money to maintain
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A lot of game art already gets outsourced to ID for the cheap labour, a mocap studio there could be a very lucrative investment. (But a Japanese company won't have the balls for a big bet like that.)
 
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kukkia said:
I'm far from a Zen fan but lets not act as if VShojos are the only vtubers who go on breaks, vacations, buy nice things, etc with simp money.
If you are struggling to pay for fuel, don't give your money to vtubers. Zen has a lot of fans who give him money, for whatever reason, acting as if him spending it is insulting because of "economy bad" is kinda silly.
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Your Trolling right, you sound like a typical Vshojo simp, a basement dweller oblivious to the world around them because all they do is spend their mommy and daddy money on trannys Vtubers.
 
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Titos said:
Kinda confused why they need the super expensive suit. Live 3D tracking can be done for relatively cheap if you are willing to nigger rig some stuff. The devs of Hellblade for example made all their mocap and facial capture stuff out of cheap ass stuff from Ikea, Ping Pong balls, and old cameras to save money. Granted they probably have an advantage since they have Andy Serkis on speed dial but with a little futzing around the average person could probably figure it out for streaming without breaking the bank.
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You can't nigger rig a proper production. Equipment and software need to be reliable enough to work even when the developers aren't there in person to put out any fires. The savings from having a custom made solution starts to not look so good when things break and you can't just google it or call the manufacturer.

With video game production you can do as many takes as you like, edit it in-engine and clean up the IK to your liking. Also you already have programmers at your disposal to translate that motion data into something usable. Doing things in real time adds a lot of complications.

In the end it's way more sensible to just make a glorified VRchat private server, which is what most 3D vtuber productions are in essence. All the hard work is already done for you. The only real con is having to wear a heavy headset and having to have to manually set your own expressions, which vtubers are already used to doing.
 
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Sevatonius said:
Keeki was using a Work Holiday Visa which is a year long visa where someone can go on holiday and work if they need to and it's valid for up to a year. As Rainwater said it was for the Olympics.
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she wanted to try to land a gig as official cosplayer for something.
But I didn't want to give up, so after working in a hotel for 5 years, saving up money and preparing as much as I could, I finally came back to Japan on a 1 year working holiday!
This time is a working holiday, so I want to try many different things.
So this is my goal for this year!
I want to become an official cosplayer!! Really, really!!!
If I can't make this come true, I won't go home. (laugh)
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the olympics would've been in the same time period as her visa had they not been cancelled like everything else. She joked that she came to japan to be the olympic torch. I think this is where it was mentioned first 44:14
 
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Sponsored outfit of Korone from this stream

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Deluxe said:
You can't nigger rig a proper production. Equipment and software need to be reliable enough to work even when the developers aren't there in person to put out any fires. The savings from having a custom made solution starts to not look so good when things break and you can't just google it or call the manufacturer.

With video game production you can do as many takes as you like, edit it in-engine and clean up the IK to your liking. Also you already have programmers at your disposal to translate that motion data into something usable. Doing things in real time adds a lot of complications.

In the end it's way more sensible to just make a glorified VRchat private server, which is what most 3D vtuber productions are in essence. All the hard work is already done for you. The only real con is having to wear a heavy headset and having to have to manually set your own expressions, which vtubers are already used to doing.
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The way they have it set up it doesn't require a bunch of shit, it actually works pretty much how vtubers typically work. You just wear the suit with some ping pong balls, and I guess for facial capture it does require a helmet, but the helmet they use is just a bike helmet with a few cameras attached basically.

All the models and stuff actually are appearing and doing actions the same time the actors are doing them. Obviously for the game they tweak facial animations but for the most part it's the same stuff. The only thing a vtuber probably couldn't do is the moving camera. The cameras they use outside the moving one are pretty mediocre 200 dollar cameras and for a vtuber they wouldn't need a bunch of them most likely. Some of this stuff might not work as much with a more anime art style though. Here's a video showing how it pretty much works.

 
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Titos said:
The way they have it set up it doesn't require a bunch of shit, it actually works pretty much how vtubers typically work. You just wear the suit with some ping pong balls, and I guess for facial capture it does require a helmet, but the helmet they use is just a bike helmet with a few cameras attached basically.

All the models and stuff actually are appearing and doing actions the same time the actors are doing them. Obviously for the game they tweak facial animations but for the most part it's the same stuff. The only thing a vtuber probably couldn't do is the moving camera. The cameras they use outside the moving one are pretty mediocre 200 dollar cameras and for a vtuber they wouldn't need a bunch of them most likely. Some of this stuff might not work as much with a more anime art style though. Here's a video showing how it pretty much works.

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That one head rig that she's wearing costs atleast a couple hundred. Not the camera, just the rig. They're using optitrack hardware which costs over $4000 to get started according to their website. Looking up the equipment I recognize in the video, what they're doing has to cost at least as much as a xsens suit setup.

Also, the biggest hidden cost that Kson mentioned: software licensing.

(unsubbed japanese clip but she goes over some of the reasons why 3D is expensive)

What Ninja Theory is doing IS cheap by video game developer standards but still inaccessible to almost everyone.

damn is that Tameem from DmC? I haven't seen that guy in a while. that punk's got some nerve showing his face.
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Deluxe said:
That one head rig that she's wearing costs atleast a couple hundred. Not the camera, just the rig. They're using optitrack hardware which costs over $4000 to get started according to their website. Looking up the equipment I recognize in the video, what they're doing has to cost at least as much as a xsens suit setup.

Also, the biggest hidden cost that Kson mentioned: software licensing.

(unsubbed japanese clip but she goes over some of the reasons why 3D is expensive)

What Ninja Theory is doing IS cheap by video game developer standards but still inaccessible to almost everyone.

damn is that Tameem from DmC? I haven't seen that guy in a while.
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That is indeed him, the whole debacle with DmC seems to have made him very much not want to talk to press as much, understandably so. Outside an interview where he confirmed he has the tism, which makes alot of things make more sense.

To my knowledge they mainly used Vicon stuff, which is more expensive than I thought, I was mainly speaking of the other cameras when I mentioned $200 shit. They did apparently get the suits from Xsens which I think I got mixed up with a bunch of other stuff they nigger rigged liked their material scanner and eye scanner which was made from a toilet plunger IIRC. I bet Ame and Cover/Anycolor could afford most of that shit for EN talents though. To my knowledge they didn't actually have to pay the full price of the equipment for the games development, just reached out to the company and they gave them a bunch of stuff. Cover would be dumb not to reach out as well, if they haven't already. Could save a few thousand shekels.
 
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