Live 2D: Cubism - video briefing

[teh_saccade]

Has anyone tried using this kit, called Live2D?

https://www.live2d.com/en/products/cubism3

Seems like it does 2.5D from morphing stuff in parallax slices - seen the effect used in games like Banner Saga.
Think it's exported to unity, but probably can render a few scenes with it to make a movie that might add a bit of flair to a video briefing made from animated stills.

Like the animated comics.

But... the videos and docs are in Japanese...
Looks as if the license is a subscription, also, although there's a free license for indie/non-commercial.

Might be nice to take some screenshots of a scene, place a few models from the game over it and have a 2.5D briefing video to go with a voiceover or text.

Not sure if it's cheaper to get it packaged with this other software called Visual Novel Maker, that is on Steam, in mid-range price bracket.

[freyk]

Very nice to see.

 

Website: English website

 

If you search around you will find some demo movies.

Like this one:

Edited February 16, 2019 by freyk

[demagogue]

That's cool... If it works as well as it advertises.

[jaxa]

Are anime real?

[teh_saccade]

I've installed a free version to play around with in the week.
https://www.live2d.com/en/download <-- there's a trial of the pro version for a few weeks.

Seems much easier than doing the parallax stuff in aftereffects, although its a sequence, rather than faking an explorable environment.
Guess they're both useful for different things.

The assets it (and visual novel maker) come with are all manga things, but I don't see why it has to be like that...

Visual Novel Maker and Live2D together are around 3gb. There's a google drive link to a zip with a bunch of rars with an iso of a repack with a copy dll folder.
Downloads pretty fast. If it proves to be useful, the subscription model for Live2D is a bit of a turn off.
At least there's a free version. TDM is non-commercial, so I guess it'd be fine for animated comic style briefings. Might try to make a short animated comic of Thief's Den to learn it.

// oh cool it has lip synch

Edited February 16, 2019 by teh_saccade

[teh_saccade]

Also thanks Freyk for the video - some reason I got stuck in the Japanese ones or trailers.

[New Horizon]

Nice

[teh_saccade]

I found a playlist of short tutorials from the software makers:

Haven't found anything written down, yet.
There's some dll's around to extend the trial period for the free version, somewhere on the internet.

[teh_saccade]

found a few hours this afternoon - it's fiddly, but it is satisfying when it works.

[freyk]

Nice.

What if you do one of Garret, from the thief 1 and 2 cutscenes?

(or somebody in TDM universe?)

Edited February 28, 2019 by freyk

[teh_saccade]

I was trying to get the TDM thief to try it on him - I built an area of caulk with a mirror wall and have front and side views at the same time, plus a few others, but the guy is a little small - I think it'd be better like you said to take some images from the cutscenes to... uh... cut up for the fake 3d process. The TDM thief ended up looking like a tap-dancing doll.

It's pretty labour intensive to get set up, but after than the animation takes a lot less than stop-motion - it's a bit like flash or after effects, with keyframes on meshes. Only without any anchors to play with.

Think trying to do something with TDM screenshots of characters will be the next project. Not quite sure what to do, so how to do it will be easier when thinking of that.

If you've an idea - that would help
I was thinking of a comic of the mission with creep, but I think that's a bit ambitious now I've had a taste of how the animation is done...

Edited March 2, 2019 by teh_saccade