Netflix joins Japan’s VTuber trend

[Kisai]

18 hours ago, RILEYISMYNAME said:

get me off this planet

Sorry, you're stuck, just wait till a vtuber runs for office.

[Kabraxis]

On 4/27/2021 at 8:58 AM, SorryClaire said:

Meet Holostars. And there's a lot of male vtuber talents out there beyond the cover's confine, like Kentama (voiced by Austin Evans Camera Guy), Taka Radjiman from Nijisanji ID, etc.

Thanks, beat me to it

[SorryBella]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

Sorry, you're stuck, just wait till a vtuber runs for office.

Amelia Watson for UK Prime Minister?

[Brooksie359]

On 4/27/2021 at 10:19 AM, JLO64 said:

The fact that we're seeing even Netflix jump onto the vtuber bandwagon does make me think that the space is starting to get a bit crowded and that this might become a trend that will fizzle out. The sheer amount of vtubers out there is just staggering and whenever I see ads for new talents I can't help but wonder if they're going to make it in the long run. That being said, they're all literally just streamers with a gimmick so as long as streaming is a thing there will (probably) be a decently sized vtuber community even if there's a dip in popularity similar to what happened in 2018.

Yeah honestly I personally don't think its any different than any other streamer. What makes streamers fun to watch are generally the same regardless if they have an avatar or not. Sure some might be drawn to the avatars but unless the streamer is entertaining then people won't stay and watch and tbh the vtuber could likely get away streaming without an avatar and keep 99% of their fan base as its mostly just a stream at the end of the day. 

[Fnige]

On 4/29/2021 at 3:34 AM, RILEYISMYNAME said:

get me off this planet

can i come with you?

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Yeah honestly I personally don't think its any different than any other streamer. What makes streamers fun to watch are generally the same regardless if they have an avatar or not. Sure some might be drawn to the avatars but unless the streamer is entertaining then people won't stay and watch and tbh the vtuber could likely get away streaming without an avatar and keep 99% of their fan base as its mostly just a stream at the end of the day. 

 

Not exactly.

 

Vtubers don't get judged on their appearance and voice like real life streamers do. Some people just want the avatar so they don't need any preparation to stream, others want it because gives them some anonymity.

 

There isn't pressure on vtubers to be good at a game like a reallife streamer is, and it's also possible to just be completely awful at a game and still be entertaining. 

 

However vtubers need a fairly expensive rig. A Live2D avatar can easily eat 25% of a high end CPU and GPU, depending on resolution. A VRM (3D) avatar can kneecap a low end GPU part if the model is too complex.

 

That's the keyword. Complex. Both L2D and VRM models can be substantially more complicated than a conventional game avatar. VRM's are typically 10x more detailed than a typical high-end model in a MMO game and 3D models that aren't based on common templates (ev Vroid) can even be detailed enough to crush a high end GPU.

 

Which means there are consequences for streaming. A vtuber may desire to have two computers, or use consoles (PS5, Switch, etc) as their gaming input because their streaming PC is also doing the vtube avatar, audio mixing, obs compositing, stream redeems, etc. It's all a question of how much you want to put into it. 

 

A real life streamer, doesn't have much need for a two-pc setup because their entire input stream comes from a camera.

[Bitter]

On 4/28/2021 at 12:34 PM, RILEYISMYNAME said:

get me off this planet

Sorry buddy, the hive-mind has spoken. You'd better get comfy in a green spandex body suit with mo-cap balls everywhere.

[s3riouscat]

On 4/27/2021 at 5:55 AM, WereCatf said:

I've never seen even a passing mention of a male vtuber - character, they're seemingly practically all pretty, young girls.

That's not true. I believe the top earner at Nijisanji is a male vtuber. It's Hololive that's had problems getting their male branch over.

[Arika]

52 minutes ago, s3riouscat said:

That's not true. I believe the top earner at Nijisanji is a male vtuber. It's Hololive that's had problems getting their male branch over.

which is sad.

Winning son and MVP/DILF are very fun to watch

[Brooksie359]

21 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

Not exactly.

 

Vtubers don't get judged on their appearance and voice like real life streamers do. Some people just want the avatar so they don't need any preparation to stream, others want it because gives them some anonymity.

 

There isn't pressure on vtubers to be good at a game like a reallife streamer is, and it's also possible to just be completely awful at a game and still be entertaining. 

 

However vtubers need a fairly expensive rig. A Live2D avatar can easily eat 25% of a high end CPU and GPU, depending on resolution. A VRM (3D) avatar can kneecap a low end GPU part if the model is too complex.

 

That's the keyword. Complex. Both L2D and VRM models can be substantially more complicated than a conventional game avatar. VRM's are typically 10x more detailed than a typical high-end model in a MMO game and 3D models that aren't based on common templates (ev Vroid) can even be detailed enough to crush a high end GPU.

 

Which means there are consequences for streaming. A vtuber may desire to have two computers, or use consoles (PS5, Switch, etc) as their gaming input because their streaming PC is also doing the vtube avatar, audio mixing, obs compositing, stream redeems, etc. It's all a question of how much you want to put into it. 

 

A real life streamer, doesn't have much need for a two-pc setup because their entire input stream comes from a camera.

I would say there is about the same stress about a streamer being good at a game as there is a vtuber. Not every streamer is good at the game they play. I would say there are actually quite a few who aren't and people simply watch them because they are entertaining. The same is probably true of vtuber. Sure there are some technological things involved with having an avatar but that has little to do with what makes a good streamer. I watch alot of streamers and alot of them don't have a face cam and the reason why I watch them isn't because they are some pro gamer but simply because they are fun to watch. 

[porina]

On 4/30/2021 at 3:17 AM, Kisai said:

Some people just want the avatar so they don't need any preparation to stream, others want it because gives them some anonymity.

Or both. If I feel like streaming I just turn on the streaming computer, fire up the software and I'm good to go. My friend who uses a camera, she spends time on her appearance and also the streaming environment (what you see behind her) before she can start.

 

On 4/30/2021 at 3:17 AM, Kisai said:

However vtubers need a fairly expensive rig. A Live2D avatar can easily eat 25% of a high end CPU and GPU, depending on resolution. A VRM (3D) avatar can kneecap a low end GPU part if the model is too complex.

Look at the Live2D models, even from long established high profile VTubers like those from Hololive JP. They're really not that complicated and will run pretty easily on any PC that isn't a total potato. If they're designed to be too complex, that's a design problem. My streaming PC is currently a 7920X with 1080Ti. It does take a little CPU but I have excess cores anyway. I'd think even 8 core PCs will be plenty, only using what I have since it was spare at the time. There is a small GPU impact although I don't recall the number right now. Since most streaming is 1080p or lower, even a 1080Ti has plenty of spare performance.

 

I don't have much experience with 3D avatars, but the sample models with software like FaceRig (now Animaze) don't seem too demanding. For 2D avatar I started off with FaceRig but moved to prprlive for better overall functionality, without the Animaze paywall. Also see Vtube Studio doing a very similar thing to prprlive but I can't use that without some updates to my model.

 

On 4/30/2021 at 3:17 AM, Kisai said:

Which means there are consequences for streaming. A vtuber may desire to have two computers, or use consoles (PS5, Switch, etc) as their gaming input because their streaming PC is also doing the vtube avatar, audio mixing, obs compositing, stream redeems, etc. It's all a question of how much you want to put into it. 

 

A real life streamer, doesn't have much need for a two-pc setup because their entire input stream comes from a camera.

I think if a streamer wants to go two PC or not is somewhat irrelevant to running the avatar software. The performance impact is not that significant unless you're doing something really complicated. The reasons for going two PC are for separation of the streaming operations and gaming. My biggest pain point is getting the game hooked into the streaming software reliably - different games behave in different ways, especially if you have multi-monitor which you generally will. Running a 2nd PC with a capture card means I'll never have to worry about that again.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, porina said:

Or both. If I feel like streaming I just turn on the streaming computer, fire up the software and I'm good to go. My friend who uses a camera, she spends time on her appearance and also the streaming environment (what you see behind her) before she can start.

Streaming a game with no interaction or personal input beyond the gameplay is a different experience.

 

Just streaming a game requires little or no creative input. Vtubers have more in common with wrestling, where the character itself is what you came to see. Not the game. I don't watch wrestling, but the analogy made sense, because while the "character" isn't always a real person, the lore and mythology is a driving factor, particularly between multiple vtuber avatars. To that extent even VRChat streamers are Vtubers even if the "story" they are driving is inside VRChat rather than between them and other vtubers or the audience.

 

4 hours ago, porina said:

Look at the Live2D models, even from long established high profile VTubers like those from Hololive JP. They're really not that complicated and will run pretty easily on any PC that isn't a total potato. If they're designed to be too complex, that's a design problem.

I'm literately speaking from experience. Live2D is an entirely software-rendered setup, it runs on mobile devices, on game engines that have no 3D in them. It's up to the actual vtuber puppeting software (in this case Vtube Studio, prprlive, or facerig) to go beyond the L2D SDK and render it in 3D. Most L2D rendering is done in Unity because that's the only game engine supported by Live2D that operates in 3D. If I wanted to use Unreal, I'd have to reverse engineer the entire L2D SDK to use it. 

 

4 hours ago, porina said:

My streaming PC is currently a 7920X with 1080Ti. It does take a little CPU but I have excess cores anyway. I'd think even 8 core PCs will be plenty, only using what I have since it was spare at the time. There is a small GPU impact although I don't recall the number right now. Since most streaming is 1080p or lower, even a 1080Ti has plenty of spare performance.

 

A Quadcore is the minimum you need for a streaming PC, and the more compositing stuff you do on the PC (eg collabs easily square the performance requirements if every additional model requires another video decoder overlay, and most nvidia GPU's only support 2 hardware decoding threads without being a Quadro.)

 

Likewise you will only get 1 4K stream out of a Pascal or Tesla nvidia part if you were streaming to youtube in 4K. Not that I'm aware of anyone doing so. You also need significant video memory for higher quality streams. So that cuts directly into your gaming performance.

 

If you use StreamFX in OBS, that will consume substantial amounts of GPU performance for certain effects. So don't handwave "it consumes almost nothing", because at no time is that true. vtubers have not been able to stream high end PC games like Cyberpunk 2077 on even RTX 2070's, because the GPU hit by the game doesn't permit the vtuber's avatar to function. 

 

Likewise anyone with a 60fps+ monitor who run games at vsync (eg 144hz monitors) have found that the Live2D puppeting programs absolutely crush their game performance without strictly limiting the framerate of the puppeting tool.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, porina said:

I don't have much experience with 3D avatars, but the sample models with software like FaceRig (now Animaze) don't seem too demanding. For 2D avatar I started off with FaceRig but moved to prprlive for better overall functionality, without the Animaze paywall. Also see Vtube Studio doing a very similar thing to prprlive but I can't use that without some updates to my model.

 

The sample models are low-poly, they are designed as DX9 models and designed for 720p streams. So they will never use more than one cpu core on the rendering thread. All the various programs use software-based face landmark tracking (eg VSeeFace and VTS both use openseeface, which will just consume one CPU core regardless of the cpu performance or video input) So you simply can not play a game on a dual core system while having the puppeting software using a webcam, because the entire processing capacity on the cpu is taken up just by that part. Now add in the software encoder if you don't have a hardware decoding path, and a quadcore is no longer even sufficient.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, porina said:

I think if a streamer wants to go two PC or not is somewhat irrelevant to running the avatar software. The performance impact is not that significant unless you're doing something really complicated. The reasons for going two PC are for separation of the streaming operations and gaming. My biggest pain point is getting the game hooked into the streaming software reliably - different games behave in different ways, especially if you have multi-monitor which you generally will. Running a 2nd PC with a capture card means I'll never have to worry about that again.

 

The performance impact is more than "just a webcam" which is the point I made there. Someone with an elaborate setup may need an entire quadcore PC with a mid-tier 8GB GPU just for their streaming/vtuber setup, where as another person might get away with a 2012 macmini for a 720p L2D stream with an iphone input device.

 

There are three typical setups:

1. iphone/webcam + VTS/VSeeFace, face-only

2. iphone/webcam + VSeeFace+VMC if you want to use a 3D avatar with your VR tracking kit

3. iphone/webcam + VSeeFace/Luppet/VMagicMirror+Leapmotion, which lets you use a leapmotion device for hand movement without expensive VR trackers.

 

There's also VDraw which lets you use a VRM avatar and your input devices (Eg tablet or game controller), and VMagicMirror, which lets you combine a game controller/midi/keyboard/mouse input with an iphone or webcam input.

 

The iPhone can't be understated enough. The iPhone blows away all Android devices for Vtuber kit. It's often more useful to use Android devices as a pc webcam than to actually use is to use ARCore. ARCore is functionally useless and nowhere near where ARKit on iOS is.

 

There's no doubt some Hololive performers were using potato's of systems.

The Hololive English, she's using a Ryzen 3 3200G + GTX 1050Ti laptop. Streaming at what is basically 720p.

 

Polka was using a GTX 960 on a i7-6700 with 32GB ram. And she has "the worst" system of the hololive members.

 

Which lead to this conversation between the two girls with the worst streaming pc specs:

 

 

[porina]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

Streaming a game with no interaction or personal input beyond the gameplay is a different experience.

In case of ambiguity, I do use an avatar when streaming, although I don't consider myself exactly a VTuber in that I'm totally inconsistent in my online persona. The avatar is my main character in FFXIV although I use it for (m)any games. Like many starting out on Twitch, most followers are people I know already in some way so chat is a mix of in character and IRL, so that breaks the 4th wall. I want to stay in character but RP was never my strong point.

 

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

I'm literately speaking from experience. Live2D is an entirely software-rendered setup, it runs on mobile devices, on game engines that have no 3D in them. It's up to the actual vtuber puppeting software (in this case Vtube Studio, prprlive, or facerig) to go beyond the L2D SDK and render it in 3D. Most L2D rendering is done in Unity because that's the only game engine supported by Live2D that operates in 3D. If I wanted to use Unreal, I'd have to reverse engineer the entire L2D SDK to use it. 

I don't claim to understand the whole implementation but as far as I can see, in reality the 2D models are essentially depth layered with shifts and deformations to give that 3D illusion. There is no 3D. I had a lot of trouble getting my model behaving well, so it was more surprising when I saw the exact same problems in many of the Hololive JP models. On tracking, I see Gura has eye tracking problems early on which I also had, although I've not kept up to date with her to see if that has been resolved since.

 

The move to 3D models I see as something separate.

 

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

If you use StreamFX in OBS, that will consume substantial amounts of GPU performance for certain effects. So don't handwave "it consumes almost nothing", because at no time is that true. vtubers have not been able to stream high end PC games like Cyberpunk 2077 on even RTX 2070's, because the GPU hit by the game doesn't permit the vtuber's avatar to function. 

I'm curious enough to try this out with my own setup, which I can easily move between systems. What else would you consider a high end PC game as I don't have 2077 and don't intend to. Recently I got Watchdogs Legion which has an interesting benchmark mode for example, and it seems to support all the latest features in GPU tech. I'm interested enough to test a few scenarios such as:

1, game only (best case performance)

2, game + streaming

3, game + streaming + VTuber avatar

 

This would be more interesting for example on a weaker CPU system, so I'd want to try it on my desktop gaming system (8086k + 2080Ti).

 

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

Likewise anyone with a 60fps+ monitor who run games at vsync (eg 144hz monitors) have found that the Live2D puppeting programs absolutely crush their game performance without strictly limiting the framerate of the puppeting tool.

Since I think Twitch doesn't support beyond 60fps I just cap the game to 60fps, although I actually choose to stream in 30fps since it helps with consistency. This is an area where I think 2 PCs would also help. I rarely get situations where the stream  output lags yet what I see locally is fine. The virtual camera in prprlive I think can be set to whatever fps you want, so it also makes sense to make that sync to everything else. I don't recall what setting I put mine on.

 

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

So you simply can not play a game on a dual core system while having the puppeting software using a webcam, because the entire processing capacity on the cpu is taken up just by that part. Now add in the software encoder if you don't have a hardware decoding path, and a quadcore is no longer even sufficient.

If you have a dual core system I think that's a different problem to resolve first. While it is not a requirement by any means, every streamer I know uses nvenc and not CPU encoding.

 

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

The performance impact is more than "just a webcam" which is the point I made there. Someone with an elaborate setup may need an entire quadcore PC with a mid-tier 8GB GPU just for their streaming/vtuber setup, where as another person might get away with a 2012 macmini for a 720p L2D stream with an iphone input device.

I didn't say no impact, just that it was not a significant impact on a "typical" system, whatever that might be. Hell, I could even try my laptop which is a 4c4t Intel with 1050. This struggles with modern demanding games at 1080p low already so would be about the lowest you could consider a 3D gaming PC.

 

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

The iPhone can't be understated enough. The iPhone blows away all Android devices for Vtuber kit. It's often more useful to use Android devices as a pc webcam than to actually use is to use ARCore. ARCore is functionally useless and nowhere near where ARKit on iOS is.

The iPhone isn't something I looked at using personally but I understand it has good 3D tracking for those who want to use it as such. I'm using an ancient 720p logitech webcam.

 

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

There's no doubt some Hololive performers were using potato's of systems.

Thanks for the links. I only loosely follow them so I missed those.

[Kisai]

8 minutes ago, porina said:

 

 

I'm curious enough to try this out with my own setup, which I can easily move between systems. What else would you consider a high end PC game as I don't have 2077 and don't intend to. Recently I got Watchdogs Legion which has an interesting benchmark mode for example, and it seems to support all the latest features in GPU tech. I'm interested enough to test a few scenarios such as:

1, game only (best case performance)

2, game + streaming

3, game + streaming + VTuber avatar

 

This would be more interesting for example on a weaker CPU system, so I'd want to try it on my desktop gaming system (8086k + 2080Ti).

 

Probably Doom. FFXV and GTAV both bring my system to a crawl, so streaming those on my  existing hardware is out of the question unless I run them below 1080p. Neir Automata is also known to crush nvidia GTX 10xx parts and older ones, just like Neir: Replicant does. 

 

Like Minecraft, unless you run raytracing shaders on it, will literately run on anything as it was written in Java, and Java itself is the bottleneck. The draw distance can be dialed back for the non-Java and Java version to run on weaker stuff.

 

8 minutes ago, porina said:

 

The iPhone isn't something I looked at using personally but I understand it has good 3D tracking for those who want to use it as such. I'm using an ancient 720p logitech webcam.

An X will work but an SE (2020)/XR will also work, and anything newer than XS is overkill. So there is a secondary market for iPhones here as long as the camera and screen digitizer work (since you need to be able to unlock and open the software.)

 

 

8 minutes ago, porina said:

Thanks for the links. I only loosely follow them so I missed those.

I don't know about all of Hololive, but Nijisanji all use iphones. (Link's are to PC specs)

 

[Kamina]

I guess with Netflix this would only help me get onboard of the vtuber train but damn good luck because it is really competitive out there in the vtuber world.

[s3riouscat]

On 4/29/2021 at 9:34 PM, Arika S said:

which is sad.

Winning son and MVP/DILF are very fun to watch

I think the Hololive plan is flawed when applied to the male stars. The audience is not gonna care about a male "idol." or curated anime character. I mean when's the last time anyone simped for male Shonen protagonist... Nijisanji's streamers comes off as more of just a streamer with an avatar and it's easier to relate to the male streamers that way. 

[s3riouscat]

On 5/1/2021 at 3:48 PM, Kisai said:

 

I don't know about all of Hololive, but Nijisanji all use iphones. (Link's are to PC specs)

Hololive software is based on iphones as well. Started on iphone X.

 

[s3riouscat]

On 5/1/2021 at 6:13 AM, Kisai said:

Streaming a game with no interaction or personal input beyond the gameplay is a different experience.

 

Just streaming a game requires little or no creative input. Vtubers have more in common with wrestling, where the character itself is what you came to see. Not the game. I don't watch wrestling, but the analogy made sense, because while the "character" isn't always a real person, the lore and mythology is a driving factor, particularly between multiple vtuber avatars. To that extent even VRChat streamers are Vtubers even if the "story" they are driving is inside VRChat rather than between them and other vtubers or the audience.

 

But that doesn't that apply to all streamers regardless? There's only a small percentage of successful streams where you would have someone with very little personality (speed runners or top e sports players for example) Talented artists/musicians can also get by, but those areas inherently still require a little bit of audience interaction. 

 

I think the only difference is vtubers shifts the entertainment and persona onto a designed appearance. If they didn't have an attractive or distinct/memorable appearance, they could now modify it, and use their voice/audience engagement to draw people in. I see so many new "vtubers" that slap an avatar with no other changes. Still boring and not worth watching.. Except now they are out a larger amount of investment.

[DeScruff]

On 4/27/2021 at 8:55 AM, WereCatf said:

I've never seen even a passing mention of a male vtuber - character, they're seemingly practically all pretty, young girls.

HEY! There's my winning son! Roberu!

Yeah male vtubers are a lot less popular. Unfortunately not as many people clip them, and a lot less of those clips get subtitles compounding that.

[Kisai]

9 minutes ago, s3riouscat said:

But that doesn't that apply to all streamers regardless? There's only a small percentage of successful streams where you would have someone with very little personality (speed runners or top e sports players for example) Talented artists/musicians can also get by, but those areas inherently still require a little bit of audience interaction. 

This is the difference between Twitch and Youtube. Twitch is very interactive, and if you're not interacting with the audience, you're likely at the bottom of the algorithm's recommendation. Youtube on the other hand, has no weighting to the chat, and often discards the chat from streams entirely. On Youtube, the chat is just a way to throw money at the streamer in a very visible way. That's why Hololive and all the Japanese vtubers are over there.

 

Twitch on the other hand has a dozen different ways to interact with the streamer, from throwing bits at the streamer to playing sounds (if enabled) or other various integrations with games.

 

9 minutes ago, s3riouscat said:

I think the only difference is vtubers shifts the entertainment and persona onto a designed appearance. If they didn't have an attractive or distinct/memorable appearance, they could now modify it, and use their voice/audience engagement to draw people in. I see so many new "vtubers" that slap an avatar with no other changes. Still boring and not worth watching.. Except now they are out a larger amount of investment.

Then you haven't really watched any vtubers. I'd say at least half the vtubers on Twitch are within 3-degrees of separation of Ironmouse, who is someone who regularly has 5-8k viewers herself. Discovery on Twitch is insanely poor, and the only way you start getting discovered on Twitch as a vtuber is by being followed and raided by other vtubers. The most popular (by viewers) vtuber I've seen on Twitch is CodeMiko who hovers around the 8000 viewers. 

 

People don't pick a vtuber design because their real life appearance. Quite the opposite, people pic vtuber appearances to reflect their own personality and entertainment priorities. It's a lot easier to ignore trolls who come in to comment on your appearance to stoke their ego when you're a cute anime-styled avatar. At that point the person is just being unnecessarily cruel.

 

 

"No. Please No" ... really? That's extremely rude. 

[Gaires]

On 5/2/2021 at 1:48 AM, Kisai said:

I don't know about all of Hololive, but Nijisanji all use iphones. (Link's are to PC specs)

Spoiler

Reddit has made pretty detailed image about Hololive members PC's. Although the image is little old by now, since at least Korone and Pekora has upgraded their specs.

[darknessblade]

are they using 2 different VA's?

 

since i can hear a clear difference between the english and japanese.

Like one has been tuned with autotune