This panel was presented at Nan Desu Kan on 2 September 2023! Hear Jacob and Cody recap the history of VTubers, give a tech demo of VTube Studio, and speculate on where the industry might be heading next.
Follow along with the slideshow here: https://ndk2023-vtuber-panel.nots.co
A blog post covering this panel can be found here: https://mountains.moe/vtubers-the-culture-and-business-ndk-2023-panel
---
Join the Nerd Club: http://nerdclub.nots.co
Official website: https://nerdonthestreet.com
Discord server: https://discord.nots.co
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Facebook page: https://facebook.com/NerdOnTheStreet
Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/NOTS_Network
E-Mail: jacob@nerdonthestreet.com
Follow along with the slideshow here: https://ndk2023-vtuber-panel.nots.co
A blog post covering this panel can be found here: https://mountains.moe/vtubers-the-culture-and-business-ndk-2023-panel
---
Join the Nerd Club: http://nerdclub.nots.co
Official website: https://nerdonthestreet.com
Discord server: https://discord.nots.co
Subreddit: https://reddit.com/r/nerdonthestreet
Facebook page: https://facebook.com/NerdOnTheStreet
Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/NOTS_Network
E-Mail: jacob@nerdonthestreet.com
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00Thank you guys for coming out to our piano here, we got it started, it's like, it's time to turn it back on.
00:07We're here tonight to talk about VTubers.
00:09I'll turn it off.
00:10You can just start it off.
00:12Is your mic on?
00:13I don't think the mic's on.
00:14It's not.
00:15It's on.
00:16It's on.
00:17It's on.
00:18It's on.
00:19It's on.
00:20It's on.
00:21It's on.
00:22It's on.
00:23It's on.
00:24It's on.
00:25It's on.
00:26It's on.
00:27It's on.
00:28It's on.
00:29It's on.
00:30It's on.
00:31Hey, we got our VTubers and then we're going to go on.
00:34Not a VTuber without his gaze sign.
00:37Okay, so show of hands, who here doesn't already know what a VTuber is?
00:44Is there anyone who came in here in line who doesn't know?
00:50A couple other groups of you guys, I think the slide you went on, the specter of shorts
00:54with the wings out there.
00:55Yeah, the slide was made more than two weeks ago.
00:57You better go on.
00:59Alright, Pete.
01:01Let's just take it on.
01:03How many people in the room regularly watch YouTubers?
01:07Okay, so like maybe half.
01:11So, we're going to be talking about YouTubers
01:13sort of from an audience perspective.
01:15Either of us are YouTubers ourselves right now.
01:17I am an online content creator.
01:19We're both just YouTuber fans
01:21and we wanted to talk about some of the stuff
01:23that goes into
01:25putting the talents out that
01:27people don't necessarily see or think about
01:29when they're just watching streams every day.
01:31So, it sounds like everybody kind of already knew,
01:33but just to go over briefly what a YouTuber is,
01:35it's a virtual YouTuber.
01:37So, it's sort of like a regular streamer,
01:39but instead of streaming using a camera
01:41or with no face at all, they're using a virtual avatar
01:43to sort of express
01:45what they're feeling and everything they're saying.
01:47And, yeah,
01:49they're usually live. They can be on websites like
01:51Twitch where they're live. They can be on YouTube
01:53where they're live streaming, but YouTubers can also make
01:55pre-recorded videos just like other content creators can.
01:59So, just a couple of examples here.
02:01We've got YouTube and Twitch.
02:03And what do YouTubers do?
02:05Once again, a lot of the same things that regular
02:07IRL streamers do.
02:09They do a lot of gaming just because that is
02:11an easy thing to work in the YouTuber format.
02:13They do chatting with their audience
02:15is obviously an easy thing to do with any format.
02:17They can also do things that IRL streamers do
02:19you wouldn't necessarily think that a virtual avatar
02:21would go off, like cooking is a physical thing.
02:23A lot of them sing,
02:25which isn't necessarily physical, but
02:27YouTubers have some limitations
02:29that IRL streamers don't, obviously,
02:31and they've also got their advantages
02:33that we'll get into in terms of
02:35what they can do
02:37in their streams.
02:39So, one of the aspects of YouTubers that kind of sets them apart
02:41sometimes from IRL streamers is that they
02:43often have sort of characters to them.
02:45And those characters can have backstory
02:47or unique traits to differentiate them from
02:49regular streamers.
02:51A lot of times a streamer, a YouTuber
02:53will have an avatar that's based on maybe a certain
02:55animal, just a certain
02:57character archetype, and they'll kind of try to
02:59carve out a niche around that.
03:01It's a little bit easier to do that
03:03when you can control
03:05the visual aspect of what your character
03:07looks like versus having to do that
03:09in front of the camera.
03:11A lot of times character traits are more of a starting point.
03:13YouTubers don't always stick to the same
03:15character traits that they start out with
03:17that they view, and they've got a backstory.
03:19They might keep some of the backstory references from time to time,
03:21or they might just throw it out
03:23depending on how their content evolves.
03:25And a lot of times the character traits that
03:27YouTubers have, they're some of the same
03:29character traits the person playing that YouTuber has
03:31the real person behind it, but they
03:33typically exaggerate those character traits
03:35into something that comes across a little bit more
03:37in content and can be more entertaining
03:39and just make a bigger impact
03:41than regular people and how they would
03:43regularly talk and stuff.
03:45Another bandage to
03:47YouTubers and streaming is the
03:49anonymity aspect. Some people want to get them streaming
03:51online, but they don't necessarily want their face out there.
03:53Or they might not even want their
03:55name out there, depending on who you are
03:57and what kind of environment you work in.
03:59You might want to have a
04:01safer space where you can go online and stream
04:03and not have to worry about people attributing
04:05your words to you
04:07exactly. A YouTuber provides
04:09a way to
04:11still connect with people visually,
04:13but still be able
04:15to have a little bit more of a filter
04:17before people can figure out
04:19who you are when it comes to
04:21things that you're saying and things like that.
04:23Now there are some caveats to that.
04:25Established creators that then turn into
04:27YouTubing, they're often recognized anyway
04:29even if they never reference their IRL
04:31personality on their YouTuber channel.
04:33People figure it out based on
04:35their voice or based on stories that they tell.
04:37A lot of times once a couple people figure
04:39it out, algorithms on YouTube or Twitch
04:41start recommending the IRL channel
04:43to people who watch the YouTuber or vice versa.
04:45That can be broken and you still want to be
04:47careful about that if you already have an online presence
04:49before you get into this.
04:51The other caveat there
04:53is that if you're going to be trying to make money
04:55with YouTubing, which a lot of people do
04:57successfully, then you
04:59are going to need to provide companies with your identity
05:01just for tax purposes. Somebody out there
05:03is going to know who you are.
05:05Obviously, YouTube and Twitch, they normally don't have
05:07data breaches, but it's a consideration.
05:09If you want to be 100% anonymous, it's probably
05:11just going to stay a hobby and you probably
05:13won't be able to make much money with it.
05:15We're going to go over
05:17just briefly a history of
05:19YouTubers and sort of how the industry got
05:21to where it is today. These are
05:23some of the earliest YouTuber-like
05:25personalities online that we're aware of.
05:27Do you want to talk about them a little bit?
05:29On the left, we have Supersonico.
05:31On the left,
05:33we have Supersonico, who is a mascot
05:35for whatever. There's a lot of people who don't know
05:37who Supersonico was. She was used
05:39as a facial movement.
05:41It was just basically
05:43a jade egg with a voice behind it.
05:45But these are the avatars of the original novel.
05:47On the right, we have
05:51someone who was only used by too much.
05:53Same thing, jade egg and voice, whereas Luke
05:55used to do a lot of
05:57basically a lot of YouTube.
05:59Some of the earliest
06:01examples of things that were sort of like
06:03YouTubers, they're similar to what we call PNG
06:05YouTubers today, which is a YouTuber that doesn't
06:07have a rigged model. They're just streaming
06:09with a face. Maybe they've got a couple
06:11different expressions they can switch between, but it's not
06:13animated. Even today, that's
06:15still a sort of cheap and low-budget
06:17option to get into VTubing. If you don't have the
06:19money to commission a rig to
06:21animate your character, if you can commission
06:23just a sprite, then you can take that
06:25sprite with you that way if you've got a good personality
06:27and you've got to find it.
06:29The earliest examples were really
06:31just single sprites, and then
06:33they started adding different character expressions
06:35and it got more fluid over time
06:37and eventually we started actually having animated characters
06:39which are closer to what we have
06:41today as VTubers.
06:43Here we have a pretty primitive early
06:45VTuber who did vlogs, and the production
06:47behind this particular one was very different
06:49from VTubers that we know today.
06:51This was a VTuber named
06:53Ami Yamoto, and she
06:55was a vlogger. She would actually do
06:57IRL vlogs, and then the company
06:59doing this, they would, in post-production,
07:01they would put an avatar over where
07:03she was standing all the time and interacting
07:05with people. She was able
07:07to actually not have a lot of restrictions
07:09people have working with our current
07:11typical VTuber tools by doing that, but
07:13it was a lot more post-production work
07:15making sure that
07:17that covering up worked properly when you're
07:19filming and making sure you're blocking it so that's possible
07:21and all of that.
07:23That was sort of
07:25still getting closer to what we have today, but not
07:27quite what VTubers are currently known for.
07:29These are some of the earliest
07:31VTubers that we currently think of when we think
07:33of VTubing, and the one on the left
07:35is Izuna Ain, and
07:37she was the first
07:39big VTuber. Do you want to talk about her a little bit?
07:41Yeah.
07:43Izuna Ain's backstory is basically that
07:45she was the first actual
07:47way in as a VTuber
07:49and they used her as an idol
07:51type character. She was owned by
07:53a company, and she was actually replaced
07:55by multiple voice actresses because she was
07:57a mascot.
07:59That used to make an idol who never ages.
08:01Yeah, the company behind this, Activate, their goal
08:03was something within
08:05Japanese idol culture is
08:07idols sort of
08:09they age with what they're doing
08:11and eventually they're expected to sort of stop their activities
08:13when they get too old, which is inconvenient for
08:15the idol and it's also inconvenient for fans
08:17who like those idols, but it's just
08:19part of their culture. We could do a whole separate panel on just
08:21idol culture if you can, but
08:23it has referenced a lot
08:25or it has influenced VTubers
08:27quite a bit. So the company that made
08:29Izuna Ain, they were imagining
08:31let's make an idol that doesn't age
08:33out, that doesn't have to graduate.
08:35Now it's sort of ironic, back in
08:372022 she had an online concert
08:39where it was kind of her final concert
08:41and she went on indefinite hiatus.
08:43I don't know what the company
08:45did that for because
08:47theoretically they could have replaced the voice actress
08:49like you said, or they could have kept going
08:51somehow, but even though she could have
08:53theoretically gone forever, she ended up stopping
08:55fairly early. She is still around though, she's
08:57still actually uploading a video here
08:59or there every six months, so she hasn't
09:01disappeared entirely even though she's graduated.
09:03About 90%
09:05of Izuna Ain's content
09:07was pre-recorded uploads.
09:09So she wasn't doing as much live streaming, she was kind of
09:11before that development took place
09:13on her channel.
09:15So she had 993
09:17pre-recorded videos on her channel
09:19and only 112 live archives.
09:21About 90% of Izuna Ain's content
09:23was pre-reported, just to
09:25demonstrate that.
09:27Another early-ish VTuber is Tokino Sora
09:29and she was the founding member of a Japanese
09:31company called Hololive, which is
09:33now one of the largest VTuber companies in existence
09:35and when many people think of VTubers or many people
09:37get into VTubers, Hololive is often one of the
09:39first groups that they come across.
09:41And
09:43Tokino Sora started
09:45when
09:47she started out doing some of the same general blogging
09:49content that Izuna Ain did.
09:51As you can tell, their designs are fairly similar
09:53and the idea was initially similar, let's make an idol
09:55that doesn't age.
09:57And they were actually so similar that sometimes they would actually
09:59do videos on each other's channels
10:01impersonating each other just for fun
10:03and seeing how much the audience caught on.
10:05But with Hololive,
10:07Tokino Sora kind of moved things
10:09into more of the live streaming
10:11area. Hololive used to be
10:13a video game company, development company.
10:15They started out doing VR video games
10:17so they had a lot of 3D experience and they went into
10:19the VTuber market and they were looking
10:21to sort of optimize how to
10:23print that content out. And they found
10:25eventually that doing live streams,
10:27you don't have to worry about post-production at all
10:29and you do have to worry about a little bit more preparation
10:31to make sure your live streams go well.
10:33But they found that they could get a lot more hours of content
10:35out and be more successful
10:37doing live streams than just doing all
10:39pre-recorded content.
10:41As of earlier this year, Sora
10:43had 174 pre-recorded
10:45uploads and 652 live stream archives.
10:47She still did some pre-recorded uploads.
10:49Sometimes it's just more convenient
10:51to do that, but she definitely helped
10:53move things in the direction of live streaming
10:55that people typically associate with VTubers now.
10:59I was the first big VTuber
11:01in the synth of that word and then
11:03Sora brought that over, the live streaming.
11:07And that's probably why the term VTuber
11:09suggests live streaming today.
11:11Talking about more VTubers than just
11:13those two, continuing
11:15on though with the Hololive thing that Sora started.
11:17These are the two biggest VTuber companies
11:19that are online and in the world right now.
11:21Sora is part of Hololive, which is owned
11:23by a Japanese company called Cover Corporation.
11:25Hololive has 75 active members
11:27plus a couple that have left over the years.
11:29The VTuber with the most VTuber subscribers
11:31in the world, named Dargura,
11:33she is part of Hololive's English branch.
11:35It's interesting that she holds that record title
11:37but the English branch is actually fairly small.
11:39Hololive only has 10 English members.
11:41They have...
11:4315 as of now.
11:45I was going to say, I've been
11:47VTubing at the end of July.
11:49So it is 15 now
11:51and it's 12 in the main accounts.
11:53But they've got a lot more Japanese.
11:55As you can see the number of people on the screen
11:57and this is not a fully up-to-date family photo
11:59but these are semi-up-to-date family photos
12:01for both companies.
12:03It's kind of funny, the Hololive one,
12:05they're all just thrown up there
12:07and then the Nijisanji one, it's like they're standing
12:09in front of a school.
12:11But yeah, related to
12:13that, so
12:15over on the Nijisanji side, that's owned by
12:17a Japanese corporation called AnyColor.
12:19And yeah, they've got
12:21a lot more talents. They go for a little bit
12:23more quantity than Hololive does.
12:25Nijisanji also holds a VTuber called
12:27Kuzuha, who is the most subscribed male
12:29VTuber in the world. So they've got that title
12:31right now. Sort of related to that,
12:33that corporation has another subunit called
12:35Holostars, which is sort of a male branch of Hololive.
12:37Hololive itself is technically
12:39all girls and Holostars is all guys, at least
12:41in terms of the characters they're playing, not necessarily
12:43the people behind them, the voices.
12:45But they do interact sometimes
12:47and they both appear in promotional materials
12:49together for Hololive and for Kami Corporation
12:51but they do have sort of a superficial
12:53split there, just to uphold. Hololive is more
12:55into that Japanese idol culture thing.
12:57Nijisanji is a little bit more
12:59co-educational.
13:01They do split up the male and female groups
13:03a little bit when they debut
13:05but they are much more
13:07used to collaborating
13:09with each other and stuff without having to worry
13:11about it being as much of an event.
13:15Both of these companies are
13:17very large right now. Hololive has
13:19over 70 million YouTube subscribers with all of their
13:21talents combined. Nijisanji has over 60 million.
13:23Hololive is ahead by a tiny bit.
13:25What I've heard is that Nijisanji
13:27is actually more popular in Japan
13:29but Hololive is more popular worldwide
13:31and that's what gives them that sort of
13:33global numbers edge.
13:37Both companies are
13:39starting to have appearances in other
13:41media. We'll talk about
13:43that a little bit later too.
13:45Both of these companies are currently listed on the
13:47Tokyo Stock Exchange.
13:49As of today, AnyColor
13:51was trading for $24.21 per
13:53share and Cover was trading for
13:55$15.95 per share. So these are both
13:57public companies that have actual
13:59investors paying into them now.
14:01This was a sort of recent development.
14:03Earlier this year was just when Hololive
14:05got approved to go on there.
14:07That's been continuing to develop and
14:09we'll see how that affects the content
14:11in terms of having
14:13public investors
14:15have some sway
14:17over what the company is actually doing.
14:19If we invest enough money
14:21we can put Vesper back.
14:23It's all pooled money together.
14:25We can win back Vesper and Magni.
14:27It won't cost that much, boys.
14:29That's so cool.
14:31She's a Vsaucer. She's $2.40.
14:33We can still do that.
14:37If we buy Hololive, we all buy Hololive.
14:39We can win back
14:41Usio also. I'm sure that here in Denver
14:43we can take over the Japanese community.
14:45We'll do it.
14:47We'll bring them all here for ADK next year or something like that.
14:49As people pointed out earlier,
14:51just a couple weeks ago, we wanted to talk
14:53about some of the newest talents in both of those companies
14:55that we're talking about. Hololive,
14:57EN, Gen 3,
14:59Advents, they debuted. This is their promotional
15:01image. I wanted to
15:03also show you an image of their sprites
15:05together. The reason for that is it's very
15:07interesting. Hololive typically
15:09debuts generations in groups of
15:11five. They've got five individual people on five
15:13channels. With this latest generation, they
15:15actually have two people.
15:17They go by Fuwawa and Mokotoro.
15:19The two blue and pink
15:21dog characters there.
15:23They're actually sharing a channel.
15:25Hololive debuted these two talents on a single
15:27YouTube channel. That was really interesting
15:29for me to see. I've actually been watching
15:31a pair of Twitch streamers for
15:33many years. They do the same thing.
15:35They're two friends who share the same channel.
15:37These two are actually twin sisters,
15:39so it's very convenient for them to
15:41always be in the same space for streaming and stuff.
15:43It's been
15:45sort of a development because
15:47other streamers, other people, even in
15:49Hololive, when they want to play a two-player game,
15:51they have to go and find somebody to collab with.
15:53They've already got two people.
15:55It's also a lot easier to fill up
15:57dead space in a stream
15:59when you've got more than one person.
16:01It'll be interesting to see.
16:03It's cool that the technology has evolved
16:05this far to where they can actually be sitting next to each other
16:07and the camera's tracking them each
16:09separately for
16:11their individual avatars. It'll be interesting
16:13to see how much that sticks and spreads
16:15to other talents and other
16:17groups. We also have the latest
16:19Usagi Ian
16:21here, and it was totally a crisis.
16:23We've got three people
16:25here who were debuted,
16:27and then there was a fourth one who was supposed to be debuted
16:29and then didn't. The interesting
16:31thing about these VTuber companies,
16:33they are very professional. They actually handle
16:35things very professionally, and so you don't always
16:37hear about the things that go wrong behind the scenes.
16:39This was a case where he just thought
16:41to put out a promotional video on Twitter
16:43that had this fourth character in it. He never
16:45had a name, and something happened behind
16:47the scenes where he never ended up actually debuting.
16:49They just sort of retconned him out,
16:51and they debuted the other three by themselves.
16:53When you're
16:55talking about these VTuber companies,
16:57especially the Japanese companies, all their public
16:59statements are always very sanitized, and we don't really
17:01have a full story behind what goes on
17:03in those particular companies. It's something to
17:05consider if you're thinking about joining a VTuber
17:07company versus going solo or joining a
17:09Western company versus
17:11trying to join one of the Japanese companies.
17:13Sort of that work culture that you're going to be
17:15in and the culture that your fans will be
17:17getting information about you through.
17:19Yeah.
17:21Yeah, the company
17:23has the rights.
17:25Some other companies that are out there are
17:27up here, and these are just a
17:29small selection of current ones.
17:31There are a lot of companies out there. There are
17:33Japanese companies. There are Western companies. There are
17:35also companies that have gone defunct.
17:37One of the very
17:39first Western VTuber company was
17:41Suberia. They debuted
17:43their first talent in June 2020, so that was the first time
17:45anyone not in Japan decided
17:47to try and get into this VTuber thing as a
17:49professional company thing.
17:51They worked pretty well with their talent
17:53in terms of talent relations, but they had some
17:55mismanagement. They had some
17:57funding issues. They had issues
17:59with their merch going out of stock
18:01too quickly and not making all the money
18:03they could from their
18:05talents. They ended up closing down.
18:07They also
18:09lost some of their talent due to just poaching and leaving
18:11for other companies.
18:13The companies don't always
18:15survive, and that's something to consider. Once again, if you're
18:17going to join a company that's lesser known or if you're going to
18:19try and strike your own,
18:21it doesn't always work out, but you can always try again
18:23or join someone else.
18:25I also wanted to mention there are defunct
18:27branches and subsidiaries of other
18:29companies that are still around too. Sometimes they spin off
18:31portions of
18:33themselves to protect the rest of it.
18:35The example for that one, Hello Life
18:37CN, Hello Life China,
18:39used to be a branch. Like I said, Hello Life has
18:41their Japan branch, their Indonesian branch,
18:43and then their global English branch.
18:45They used to have a fourth one in China,
18:47but they ended up having to
18:49shut that one down due to political issues
18:51that were occurring and sort of affecting the rest of their
18:53talents.
18:55Once again, when you get into multinational
18:57corporations, weird things can happen
18:59and there's risks involved in doing that.
19:01In addition to that, I think you saw
19:03closing down their Indonesian branch
19:05because it was originally used as their
19:07English branch, but with the English branch
19:09they have no use for the Indonesian branch anymore.
19:11Now the Indonesian branch needs to
19:13shut it down completely.
19:15The Hello Life Indonesian branch
19:17is a very interesting position because
19:19they speak typically all their
19:21Indonesian talents at some level. They speak
19:23Indonesian, obviously, but they also speak Japanese.
19:25Most of them also speak English pretty
19:27well, so they're sort of competing with all
19:29the other branches. I can kind of
19:31see how the design would have arrived at that.
19:35Of course, we're talking a lot about
19:37companies, but you can also just do
19:39VTubing yourself. You don't need to join a company
19:41right away or at all to get into this,
19:43whether it's as a hobby or if you want to try and start your
19:45own company. Just a couple of examples
19:47of indie VTubers. Tawai Kiwami
19:49is one that I personally know online.
19:51On the right, we've got Riz TV. She was
19:53at another anime convention in Indore recently.
19:55Both of these are examples
19:57of VTubers who, they are doing their
19:59thing. Some of them are
20:01smaller, some of them are bigger and more popular,
20:03but you don't necessarily have to join a company right away.
20:05We've got more examples of that over here
20:07with popular indie VTubers. Do you want to talk about some of those?
20:09Yeah, Cyclone is the most
20:11popular VTuber on Twitch.
20:13It was his year.
20:15He has about 1.5 million followers on Twitch.
20:17Can you get your mic closer?
20:21Like, closer.
20:23I don't know. I don't use mics.
20:27It's 2023.
20:31Onigiri is a famous
20:33cooking VTuber.
20:35That's what she's known for.
20:37Cooking.
20:39Soro, he's the most popular
20:41indie male VTuber. He has around 1 million
20:43Twitch followers as well.
20:45Then we have Shiroi UI.
20:47She's actually the artist of a few
20:49Hololive talents, but
20:51she also streams both Hololive
20:53and Nijisanji, which is very
20:55rare for those companies to stream
20:57indie VTubers.
20:59That's a great segue into, once again,
21:01just because you're an indie VTuber, you're not necessarily
21:03even capping your own popularity or your connections
21:05with other VTubers. In her case, the fact that
21:07she was an artist for some of the VTubers in bigger
21:09companies probably helped give her those connections.
21:11The people in front of companies do collab
21:13with independent people when they feel
21:15like it. It's an industry.
21:17You go out and network
21:19just like any other industry.
21:21With Onigiri, with the cooking thing, a lot of
21:23VTubers these days are getting into this
21:25mixed stream where
21:27you've got the virtual avatar on screen
21:29but then you've got a camera pointed at your hands
21:31usually wearing gloves
21:33to cover up any identifying features
21:35and preserve the...
21:37Preserve the feeling
21:39that you're watching
21:41this virtual person.
21:45Onigiri was one of the first
21:47VTubers who did that. She did that as an independent
21:49and she started this trend that's now penetrating
21:51into big companies.
21:53If you're looking to get started as an independent, maybe you can take
21:55a look at what is something
21:57that currently VTubers aren't able to do
21:59or what's something they haven't tried doing
22:01but IRL people do. Can I come up with any creative
22:03solutions to do that?
22:07This is one more
22:09VTuber. We were talking
22:11about the technical evolution. VTubers
22:13a lot of the time, and we'll talk about in-depth
22:15in a minute, but a lot of the time they've got
22:172D tracking, sometimes they have 3D tracking.
22:19This is an independent VTuber who has
22:21very good 3D tracking for
22:23an independent VTuber.
22:25This is
22:27an example of what she can do
22:29in terms of her tracking.
22:31She's wearing a motion capture suit
22:33right now. It's sort of like a virtual reality
22:35gaming setup. She can actually do
22:37full flips. She's not wired to anything that would
22:39prevent her from doing that. That's kind of where the tech
22:41is getting. She's also got some
22:43acrobatics skills.
22:45It doesn't always
22:47go perfectly.
22:51She's doing flips so she doesn't fall down.
22:53Yeah.
22:55Once again, if you find something
22:57and if you just push the tech a little
22:59bit or you push the medium a little
23:01bit, it can really set yourself apart.
23:03She's very popular. She is an independent
23:05VTuber, but she's got 2.1 million subscribers
23:07on YouTube and a million followers on
23:09TikTok.
23:11It can get you very far.
23:13Talking about how this actually works
23:15a little bit behind the scenes.
23:17Most people know the basics for this.
23:19With regular streaming, you're in front of
23:21a camera that goes into a piece of software
23:23that is taking your camera and encoding it.
23:25An example of that software would be
23:27OBS Studio. There are other options too.
23:29Then you're streaming that with that
23:31piece of software to YouTube or Twitch or
23:33whatever other website you're streaming on. With a
23:35VTuber, it's almost the same process.
23:37You're just adding an extra step in the middle
23:39and that is somehow you are taking that
23:41camera feed or whatever other visual
23:43you can substitute that out with more
23:45accurate motion capture or things like that.
23:47You're taking that physical recording
23:49and you're translating it into a virtual avatar
23:51somehow.
23:53When it comes to setting that up,
23:55this is a graph. I put it on here. It's got a lot of
23:57words. I just thought it was funny because it's got
23:59so many words. It's basically just saying
24:01the more money you spend, the more you can do.
24:03Which is kind of intuitive.
24:05You can get started
24:07for quite cheap regardless of that.
24:09Just talking about some of the popular
24:11and most commonly used applications out there.
24:13Live2D Cubism. A lot of people
24:15just call it Live2D for short. That's the name
24:17of the company that makes it.
24:19This is the software that people commonly use
24:21to create the VTubers.
24:23What this is doing is you go and you paint an artist
24:25or you draw yourself if you're an artist
24:27your sprite. Then you go into
24:29Live2D and you tell it where you're
24:31going to stretch that sprite, where you're going to
24:33fold it. You're basically making that sprite
24:35animatable so that you don't have to
24:37manually switch between every single frame
24:39or draw every single frame
24:41to show different expressions and movements.
24:44Then you're going to take that
24:46rig that you get from
24:48Live2D and you're going to put it into software
24:50such as VTube Studio. That's actually
24:52going to take that rig and it's going to track what you're
24:54doing in real time in front of you
24:56and it's going to apply it to that rig.
24:58That's how you get the actual expressive movements
25:00and real time tracking that VTubers use.
25:02Something like VTube Studio
25:04is going to output a virtual
25:06webcam to OBS
25:08or whatever other stream software
25:10you're using. Instead of adding
25:12it on the webcam in there, you would add the output from that.
25:14VTube Studio is not the only option.
25:16There are cheaper and other
25:18alternatives. Vup or VirtualVup
25:20is another option that does basically the same thing
25:22as VTube Studio. There's
25:24all kinds of even cheaper options out there.
25:26Not everything is free. VTube Studio is actually
25:28free to use with a watermark, but you have
25:30to pay to not add a watermark. Even if you're
25:32on the lowest budget,
25:34if you go on Steam and just search
25:36VTubing programs, you'll come up
25:38with some very obscure
25:40options. Obviously, the more popular a program
25:42you use, the better and easier of a time you'll
25:44probably have when it comes to setting things up.
25:46There are a lot of cheaper programs out
25:48there too that you can get into.
25:50We did just want to show you, I've got
25:52a computer here with VTube Studio on it.
25:54We're going to demonstrate how that actually looks when you're
25:56controlling it.
25:58We'll switch this.
26:00Hope that doesn't break everything.
26:10Got it.
26:12Alright, perfect.
26:14This is Steam Rank here
26:16and VTube Studio that I've installed
26:18as a Steam app. I'm not going to show you Live2D
26:20Cubism today.
26:22It's a very
26:24complicated program, Live2D.
26:26Getting your rig, that's why a lot of people
26:28commission their rigs. You pay someone who's
26:30a professional at that to do it.
26:32It's possible to do it yourself.
26:34What I'm going to show you is once you've got your rig,
26:36you're going to bring it into VTube Studio
26:38and this is how you're going to
26:40control it.
26:42We're loading it up here.
26:44Just for reference,
26:46to commission
26:48the art and to get it loaded up,
26:50it's going to cost around $1,000.
26:52But you can do it
26:54by yourself.
26:56That's one of the reasons why a lot of VTubers out there
26:58are artists, because they've already got at least half
27:00the cost covered by being able to do their own art.
27:02There are
27:04barriers to entry, but
27:06there can be no barriers, but it's going to be harder
27:08because you've got to do it yourself.
27:10Here at VTube Studio though,
27:12once you've got your rig and everything,
27:14you can select your background
27:16here. This is a default
27:18avatar, so if you install VTube Studio,
27:20there are some free ones you can use. It's not going to be
27:22very uniquely identifiable because it's
27:24included with the program. Lots of people are able to use it.
27:26We can go in here
27:28and take a look at how
27:30this can work.
27:32In our second page of settings here,
27:34one of the ways you can do this is just via
27:36webcam tracking. You don't need complicated
27:38hardware to do this. If you've got a computer with a webcam,
27:40I'm going to turn this on
27:42right here.
27:44It's letting me know watermarks are going to be on screen
27:46because I haven't paid for it, but once again,
27:48there might be some parts of it that you need to spend money
27:50on to get started, but
27:52other parts of it, if you want,
27:54you can.
27:56Okay,
27:58I'm going to have to break the microphone here.
28:00You're seeing the dots there,
28:02and you're seeing how
28:04the system is tracking what I'm doing.
28:06Now, this is not an optimal setup.
28:08It really got your dick a tan.
28:12This is not an optimal setup. Obviously,
28:14most people, if you've got a microphone
28:16for streaming, it's not going to be set on a tripod
28:18like this, and you're not going to be at an angle talking to
28:20an audience, but as you can see,
28:22it is tracking my lips, and it is at least
28:24moving the mouth. I really don't know what's going on
28:26with the eyes. I can't.
28:28Also, most people use
28:30iPhones, because iPhones have good face recognition,
28:32so that's another thing that you can use.
28:34That's the other option here.
28:36If you scroll down a little bit farther,
28:38you can make
28:40cool content.
28:42Yeah.
28:44I'm just going to get sad every time I leave the frame.
28:46Down here,
28:48under the virtual webcam config, this is where you can figure
28:50what's going out of your program like OBS.
28:52You can do that a couple different ways.
28:54Like Cody said, you can do this
28:56with an iPhone, and that way you can have a mount
28:58maybe on your microphone, and it will be much
29:00more seamless than this.
29:02A lot of the bigger VTubers, it's known that
29:04like Hololive, they've got proprietary software
29:06that they use since they're a development company,
29:08and that's how they started, but they
29:10do use iPhones for their particular
29:12setup. You can also do this
29:14with an Android phone. I've done it.
29:16iPhones have ARKit, which is
29:18part of their Face ID recognition system.
29:20It's got lasers and IR sensors
29:22that it uses beyond just the camera
29:24processing. With an Android device, it would be
29:26more similar to what's going on here, which, as you can see,
29:28has limitations.
29:30Aside from that, though,
29:32let's turn that off
29:34because that's distracting.
29:36You can also, obviously,
29:38set up expressions and poses
29:40for these characters that you can use manually.
29:42A lot of VTubers do this anyway,
29:44even if they've got really good tracking,
29:46especially when you're sitting at a desk.
29:48The webcam can't always pick up
29:50your full expressiveness, or maybe you want to be more
29:52expressive than you're even being IRL
29:54with these very
29:56expressive anime-style characters.
29:58Especially if you're wearing glasses.
30:00Yeah, and things like glasses that can
30:02prevent it from seeing properly when you're
30:04blinking or closing your eyes and stuff.
30:06You can go in here
30:08and set up
30:10expressions. We've got an expression editor here.
30:12I'm going to create
30:14a new expression just to take a look
30:16at what that looks like. We're going to have all of the
30:18different parameters that this model
30:20has had rigged in a program
30:22like Live2D.
30:24The Live2D cubism step from earlier,
30:26that's going to limit what is or isn't available here
30:28in terms of options.
30:30Let's say I want to make a
30:32sad expression first.
30:34And I'm going to...
30:36Why am I doing what? Making her sad?
30:38Because I'm going to make her happy later.
30:42Let's see.
30:44We've got different positions. We can actually move her down
30:46a little bit when she's sad.
30:48I've got...
30:50I've got important ones, but
30:52they don't work as good if you make them yourself.
30:54Lower her face a little bit.
30:56We really need to find the ones for
30:58her face.
31:00Here we go.
31:02Mouth form, we can turn that down to
31:04a frown.
31:06That's not nice.
31:08It happens.
31:10Don't mess with the eye visibility
31:12there. Eye shock
31:14visible.
31:16Just going through all the different options that we've
31:18got here. Tears movement
31:20we have. We're going to add a little bit
31:22of tear overlay
31:24over her eyes.
31:26Pull down.
31:28Under shock.
31:30Under shock is tears.
31:32I see.
31:34That's even more obvious.
31:38And...
31:40We can control, actually, with this default rate,
31:42we can control the angle of the eyebrows
31:44to make her...
31:46You can just go in and fine-tune as much as you want to.
31:48I'm just going to save that
31:50for an example. And then I'm going to create another
31:52one real quick. I'm going to call it happy.
31:56So that Cody gets off my case about
31:58making her sad.
32:00We're going to bring her maybe a little bit higher.
32:02She's just standing a little bit taller. Normally you don't see the feet
32:04in a normal
32:06framing for your screen chat.
32:10Grab her angle of her head.
32:12Turn it up a little bit too.
32:16And we're going to
32:18make sure her mouth form is
32:20smiling and have that on.
32:26And then you can just hotkey these
32:28so then you only have to hit one button.
32:30Yeah, I'm going to do that in just a second
32:32so we can see what that looks like.
32:34So I'm just going to make sure that all those things
32:36we applied on the sad one aren't applied
32:38on the happy one.
32:40We've actually got an eye smile
32:42right here.
32:48Eye shine I think is what I was looking for.
32:50Yeah, so you can
32:52control that sort of light that you get in anime
32:54characters.
32:56Let's
32:58just go back and
33:00edit the sad one one more time.
33:02Yeah, and then let's go grab that.
33:06So you see this is why
33:08people spend that money on that game.
33:10Yeah, because you've got all these nice options
33:12and if you just rig it yourself
33:14super lazily you might not have very many
33:16options besides just the
33:18breathing default animation.
33:20But now we can come down here and
33:22I'm just going to delete a bunch
33:24of these hotkeys.
33:26I'm going to add a hotkey.
33:28I'm going to say hotkey action
33:30will be
33:32will use set
33:34on set expression. Expression is
33:36going to be sad. And for that
33:38expression I'm going to say whenever I hit the
33:40numpad
33:42one on my keyboard she's going to be sad.
33:44I'll do the exact same thing right below it.
33:50I'm going to set on set expression
33:52happy.
33:54And that one is going to be numpad three.
33:56So now
33:58if I close this settings
34:00page then I can hit one to make her
34:02sad and three to make her happy.
34:04She's kind of getting out of frame here.
34:06And obviously these are
34:08a little bit exaggerated.
34:10You wouldn't want your character shifting around that much
34:12very quickly obviously when you're streaming.
34:14But you can go in here and that's sort of how
34:16you can do this. Now I've actually got
34:18a few different states here. I've got
34:20the sad animation applying.
34:22I've got the sad animation not applied
34:24but the happy one's also not applied.
34:26I hit the happy one she goes up even higher.
34:28And so the expressions can
34:30mix together is the point of showing you
34:32that if you've got say an annoyed
34:34expression but then you've also got like a throwing your
34:36arms up expression you can activate them both.
34:38The annoyed and throwing your arms up.
34:40If you get really frustrated
34:42with something in the game.
34:44But yeah,
34:46this also mixes in with
34:48the tracking if we want to
34:50try and bring that on again.
34:52The new V2 tech
34:54provided to the, they
34:56usually add stickers to showcase even more.
34:58So if you're frustrated or having
35:00that enemy bracket
35:02like that. Or if you have tears
35:04it'll actually add that tears.
35:06So it's been evolving.
35:08This is just a cheap version.
35:10I wanted to set it up from scratch
35:12just to show you how you might get started if you install
35:14this on your computer later.
35:16It's free to install on Steam.
35:18And yeah, this obviously isn't perfect.
35:20Like I said, her eyebrows
35:22I set them in sad and didn't set
35:24them in happy so now they look kind of sad
35:26even though she's in her happy expression.
35:28But you go through and you tweak all of that
35:30and that's how you get your rinked up VTuber.
35:32So that will conclude the tech demo for now.
35:46And so the last thing
35:48I wanted to touch on is what might be next for the
35:50VTuber industry. A lot of people in this room
35:52are already fans of VTubers and obviously we're all
35:54excited about where they're going.
35:56And so we're going to talk about
35:58some of these. Some of these have their own slides.
36:00I want to talk about
36:02augmented reality and also virtual reality.
36:04The differences between those, I think
36:06augmented reality is bringing VTubers
36:08into the real world where you can
36:10interact with them
36:12IRL. And then virtual reality is
36:14where you as a viewer are going to be going into VR
36:16putting on a headset and experiencing
36:18interacting with them that way.
36:20Yeah, our web has an app where you can
36:22basically take a picture of the VTuber
36:24that VTuber is inside.
36:26The app is on the left here. It's called Hollowly.
36:28It's still pretty limited, but you can install it right now.
36:30It'll kind of composite
36:32Tokino Sora in front of you
36:34in a location and you can sort of
36:36interact with her in a basic way.
36:38Obviously the actual streamer isn't on a video call
36:40with you when you're doing that.
36:42It's just happening right now.
36:44So they're all of you.
36:46It gives you things that you can do
36:48while she's not streaming and it can sort of
36:50increase your level of
36:52connection with her and then you go and watch her streams more.
36:54I guess that's the idea behind that.
36:58Now on the right here,
37:00Hollowlife has been doing something really cool the past couple years
37:02and that is their concerts that they've been doing.
37:04This is a short
37:06clip of their
37:08third concert that they did.
37:10So it wasn't their first concert, but it was the first
37:12one where they had this live 3D
37:14compositing of the models on top of
37:16a stage. This was a physical stage in Japan.
37:18They filled up a theater with 9,000 people.
37:20Unfortunately, this particular
37:22one was during COVID, so foreigners couldn't get in
37:24through the border to watch this.
37:26It was exclusive to Japanese people.
37:28They had a live band playing songs and they had
37:30the voices and
37:32they had their dances there.
37:34The people in this room
37:36were actually watching a flat screen
37:38on the main stage. They did have
37:40the cool 3D shots showing up on the side screens
37:42in that venue.
37:44It's similar.
37:46It's got the same limitations
37:48as Vocaloid stages right now too.
37:50With Vocaloids, you can try to make
37:52robots or androids up there, but that can look really
37:54creepy and not work well.
37:56Or you can do this kind of thing, but if you're
37:58actually there in person, it's not going to look as cool.
38:00I think the next big breakthrough
38:02we're one breakthrough away from actually
38:04being able to see these people live and that's
38:06creating some kind of 3D holographic
38:08technology. We don't have that right now. It's really hard
38:10to display light where there's nothing.
38:12You need a media that can smoke or water
38:14and you need ways to make the light actually stop
38:16and go towards the viewer.
38:18That's not in development as far as I know.
38:20VTubers might be part of what pushes
38:22that technology forward.
38:24I was very impressed
38:26by this. This concert
38:28was what made me start to think of
38:30VTubers as a larger industry, not just
38:32a cool thing that one jam
38:34was doing online.
38:36Like I said, it's pushing technology.
38:38It's pushing the bounds of it in some way.
38:40How about Ian just sold out a concert
38:42in that over July, I think it was?
38:44Yeah, they did one over the summer
38:46in LA. It was in California
38:48and it was just the English branch.
38:50They had some guests from the Japanese branch.
38:52They had started doing this in the States too
38:54for us, which is nice.
38:5610,000 sold seats.
38:58Going back to virtual reality
39:00and VTubers.
39:02On the right there, Hololive also sometimes
39:04does concerts where optionally
39:06you can plug into VR and you can
39:08go in there and watch their stage.
39:10This is much easier on there and
39:12obviously it increases the
39:14barrier to entry for viewers.
39:16If you need to buy a VR headset, that can be expensive
39:18or not everyone has space for it or not everyone wants one.
39:20If you have one,
39:22you can go in and watch those concerts live.
39:24Then you are there
39:26unlike watching flat screen in real life
39:28in that venue.
39:30The other thing that they're starting to use
39:32virtual reality for is actually virtual sets.
39:34This might actually end up
39:36wrapping its way back around to pre-recorded content.
39:38A lot of VTubers
39:40nowadays do regular old
39:42live streams all the time.
39:44With virtual sets,
39:46you can basically not have to
39:48worry about construction
39:50or makeup on your talents or a lot of different things
39:52you have to worry about when you're making just films
39:54and stuff IRL.
39:56Some people are doing that.
39:58Artificial intelligence is another big one.
40:00On the left here is not
40:02an AI VTuber, but it's a VTuber who
40:04she's interesting. She didn't want her real voice
40:06online, so she actually used a
40:08speech-to-text system to capture what she's
40:10saying and then a text-to-speech system to
40:12play that back out with a synthesized
40:14voice. That way she's
40:16able to talk and not have her voice
40:18connected with her character at all.
40:20On the right, we've actually got a full AI
40:22VTuber. She's named NeuralSama.
40:24She's fairly new, like the past year or so
40:26I think.
40:28The developer is a turtle down there
40:30in the bottom right. He streams with that avatar.
40:32He's
40:34basically making this AI that responds to
40:36stimuli on screen.
40:38She can play video games. She can look at pictures
40:40and comment about what's in the pictures.
40:42The AI can scan that and come up with
40:44comments about it. She's done collaborations
40:46with many other human VTubers,
40:48and she responds to what they're saying.
40:50A lot of the earlier VTubers
40:52have had characters where
40:54their fictional character is an AI, so you don't
40:56have to think about the fact that there's a human behind it.
40:58We're getting into that space where now we can
41:00actually do that.
41:02The last
41:04main slide here is just some terminologies
41:06for fandom, just for anyone who is new to fandom
41:08and sounded like most of you guys probably know
41:10most of this.
41:12Oshii is basically just your favorite
41:14VTuber. TSKR,
41:16kind of a complicated, nuanced thing in terms of
41:18why that Japanese is used, because it just means
41:20something helped, but it basically means
41:22you like something.
41:24Kusa
41:26is the
41:28Japanese character for grass.
41:30They use that for lol because to them, typing lol
41:32looks like grass.
41:34Mama
41:36is sometimes used to designate an artist
41:38who designed or drew a model.
41:40Hapa is the model's rigger
41:42sometimes. Sometimes they just use the genders of
41:44the actual people who did it, but sometimes they
41:46categorize it like that.
41:48Titin is precious
41:50in a sense, cute.
41:52Zatudan is just a miscellaneous talking stream.
41:54I'm going through this really quick because we're almost out of time.
41:56Kaiganiki is us,
41:58that's overseas fans.
42:00Akasupa is just a red super chat
42:02for $10 or more USD.
42:04Anti is a toxic hater.
42:06Not just somebody who doesn't like VTubers,
42:08but somebody who's actively disrupting, so y'all can be late
42:10with that.
42:12That gets us through the presentation. I know we ran
42:14up on the end of our time here, but
42:16thanks everyone for coming out. You can go to this URL
42:18or scan the QR code if you want to look up
42:20any of the characters we're making. Thank you.