V Tubers and DAZ users

tsroemi

This is really quite fascinating, thanks for a lot of unexpected insights y'all!

ChadCrypto

Faeryl Womyn said:

Vtubing has been around for a few years and it's not going anywhere, it's way too popular. It's not voice actors trying to make money on the side, though they could if they wanted to. Many people don't want to show their real face while streaming or uploading video's.

Nux Taku has been around on youtube since 2014. He has always used an image to represent himself. It has upgraded over time, though has always been used throughout his videos to show emotion or reaction to something. In January he went full 3D vtuber and using it on youtube and twitch.

Overly Sarcastic Productions, a youtube channel that's been around since 2011 I have been following for a few years to help with my writing. They have never shown their faces and relied on hand drawn 2D animations to represent themselves. And there are so many others out there who have been around a while and upgraded from 2D to 3D and from single images or hand drawn animations to full on real time animation.

So to say this is a fad that will disappear is so not correct, it is in fact growing. The majority of vtubers use anime and games as inspiration for their avatars. There is a very small handful that want to use realistic looking avatars, at this time.

I have been very interested in creating a 3D avatar, as I do not want to show my real face in video's or streaming, been scouring all the tutorials and what programs are needed, what tech is needed.  It's constantly changing.

I found this Vtuber named Fofamit, that has some videos with some tutorials. She uses unity at the moment. Though she is moving to UE5. 

https://www.youtube.com/c/Fofamit

Faeryl Womyn

Yes I've heard of using UE and Unity and seen some of video's about it, the results do look very good. My problem with using these game engines is the fact that if you make over a certain amount of money, you have to start paying. I warn everyone to read the TOS very carefully, since free only lasts if you're not making a bunch of money. If memory servers, because I haven't read it since last year, there are two levels that will cost you. The first you pay for the software if you make over a certain amount (the amount keeps changing), the second and only if you make a lot of money(this amount has changed more then once), they want a percentage of your profits, thereby having you pay twice.

I can't remember if this was something in reference to the gaming engines, many are looking at using VR for live streaming and I think it's UE they are trying to do this in. Readily available and actual good VR is not exactly on par with other versions of avatar live streaming, but tech advances quickly.

What I'm really interested in is how to use Blender to stream an avatar, since Daz does not have the ablity to do so. I also want to be able to use a web cam, not a phone to accomplish this. When it comes right down to quality, a phone can't beat an actual camera/web cam/dvd recorder. At least with a camera and dvd recorder, you get multiple uses out of it for the price.

WendyLuvsCatz

it's quite a large income though, but I guess if you are loaded it's indeed a consideration 

when you reach a million 

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq

ChadCrypto

Faeryl Womyn said:

Yes I've heard of using UE and Unity and seen some of video's about it, the results do look very good. My problem with using these game engines is the fact that if you make over a certain amount of money, you have to start paying. I warn everyone to read the TOS very carefully, since free only lasts if you're not making a bunch of money. If memory servers, because I haven't read it since last year, there are two levels that will cost you. The first you pay for the software if you make over a certain amount (the amount keeps changing), the second and only if you make a lot of money(this amount has changed more then once), they want a percentage of your profits, thereby having you pay twice.

I can't remember if this was something in reference to the gaming engines, many are looking at using VR for live streaming and I think it's UE they are trying to do this in. Readily available and actual good VR is not exactly on par with other versions of avatar live streaming, but tech advances quickly.

What I'm really interested in is how to use Blender to stream an avatar, since Daz does not have the ablity to do so. I also want to be able to use a web cam, not a phone to accomplish this. When it comes right down to quality, a phone can't beat an actual camera/web cam/dvd recorder. At least with a camera and dvd recorder, you get multiple uses out of it for the price.

Not sure how unity works. Though Epic Games never asks for any revenue for non game creations. It's always free.

WendyLuvsCatz

I tried using Mimic Live and Shadowplay with Filament

it did Livestream but I have no idea what I was doing

DAZ were too quick to pull the plug on Mimic because fullsceen DAZ studio can be used as a streaming software

if not Nvidia Shadowplay then OBS

WendyLuvsCatz

they made an Ai influencer you can interact with on Instagram and TikTok

FSMCDesigns

LOL, that was funny and interesting to watch. I love CorridorCrew, those guys do some pretty neat stuff

unused account - glossedsfm

I know most of the conversation has been about CodeMiko.  Another vtuber worth checking out is AI Angel, who no longer makes content but still has their youtube channel up with their old videos. Another thing about AI Angel is that the character model is female, voice has a husky feminine quality to it but the person behind it all is a guy using a voice changer.  So this means that it is possible for you guys to get into this too.  But one thing i did notice about AI Angel is that youtube commenters were able to figure out that the guys old youtube gaming account was related to the AI Angel channel, so they connected the dots and realized it was a guy.  So almost half the comments were people going "omg i love you" while the other half of the comments were people going "btw this is a guy" which i thought was a huge distraction to the whole channel.  So if you guys decide to make a female v-tuber persona make sure that there is no way people can connect your irl persona to your virtual one.  Ohh and another noteworthy thing about AI Angel is that a lot of her clothing was Daz3d.  The main model i think was a Second Life model, hair model might have been Daz G2 cause i've seen the hair in some visual novel games on Steam.

csaa

I saw an interesting YouTube clip about VTubers in Japan. At the very least, it confirms that a VTubing is a lucrative form of entertainment worldwide.

Cheers!

 

Cheech Wizard

wolf359 said:

I created a second youtube channel where I am considering doing social commentary but with my CG avatar instead of live video...this will be the future of online media IMHO.

Yup.

wsterdan

There is a fairly quick, fairly easy way to do some of these things without dedicated motion capture hardware or expensive software. Basically, for free.

Back in 2020, just before our city entered lockdown, the comapny I worked for set up every employee with what they needed to work remotely, supplying computers and monitors for those who didn't have them.

The hardest part for me was the "face to face" meetings via services like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. I hate meetings.

Prior to the first meeting, I rendered out a Toon Generation character I'd cobbled together with all of the different visemes and such to create an Adobe Character Animator puppet to appear in meetings for me. A talented artist on Firvrr helpd me set him up quickly and effictiently and I never had to appear as myself, ever.

Though I used a simple cartoon character, it wouldn't be any harder to use a high-end iRay character.

Cost-wise, if you do your rendering before building your Character Animator puppet, you could build the puppet using a trial version of the Adobe software and once that was done, you can use their free player to do your live-action video characters talking for free, using only the camera on your computer to track your facial movements.

I wrote up a quck blog page with a bit more details and two samples showing how it all looked so you can see the character mirroring my facial expresstions and visemes as I talked:

https://sterdan.com/2023/08/animated-me-for-the-2020-lockdown/

I even added a background character with animation and addes some Star Trek console lights updating themselves.

The character that I used to represent me:

-- Walt Sterdan

WendyLuvsCatz

I know you can use many 2.5D solutions fairly easily and of course Animaze etc

and DAZ characters in Unreal and Unity if you have skills and an iPhone

I just think DAZ is missing an opputunity not having a Streaming plugin or app themselves 

BTW since replacing my C drive I cannot even get my webcam to work with any browser so no live streaming for me

wsterdan

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I know you can use many 2.5D solutions fairly easily and of course Animaze etc

and DAZ characters in Unreal and Unity if you have skills and an iPhone

I just think DAZ is missing an opputunity not having a Streaming plugin or app themselves 

BTW since replacing my C drive I cannot even get my webcam to work with any browser so no live streaming for me

I thought that your sample above came out very well, myself. I agree that DAZ might be missing a boat or two, but maybe we'll see some movement on that front once DAZ Studio 5 hits the street.

Good luck getting the drive and webcam back up and running, the world needs a little more Livestream Wendy.

== Walt Sterdan

wolf359

I just think DAZ is missing an opportunity not having a Streaming plugin or app themselves 
 

@WendyLuvsCatz
 

To be fair the Vtuber community already has a well established eco system of tools for content creation.
 In general Vtuber Avatars are overwhelmingly
cartoon /anime style characters and if you check out any of those tutorials you can see they already have software to create& deploy their Vtube avatars for streaming: https://vroid.com/en/studio

for Face tracking:
https://www.vseeface.icu/

For broadcasting:
https://obsproject.com/

Never underestimate the power of entrenched habits and the eco system comfort bubble.

I learned this lesson quite clearly before I abandoned all efforts & tutorials  trying to get the Blender community

to try Diffeomorphic.