Live2D is a graphics rendering technology used in games. The technology was developed by Cybernoids, Japan, to generate a two-dimensional image similar to a three-dimensional model through a series of continuous images and character modelling.

One of the big advantages of Live 2D over 3D animation is that it saves money. In modelling, modelling in a 2D environment, such as texture drawing, “grid” editing, “skinning” and other operations are much simpler than 3D models, easy to get started, and less time spent. The effort spent on animation editing is not too bad.

Another advantage of Live 2D is that it can get a hand-drawn style that is closer to 2D animation, which is very friendly to those players who love Japanese anime and otaku culture.

So Live2D Cubism is truly a 2D, without any 3D technology. But Live2D Cubism does have improvements and innovations over previous 2D animation software, and it also incorporates some of the ideas of 3D animation software. For example, the model is managed in a tree structure, and operations on the upper control grid affect all other parts of the grid.

To sum up, I think the advantages of Live2D Cubism over pure 3D animations are lower thresholds, less money plus time, and better results (non-realistic rendering effects). Ideal for mobile games with short development cycles and fast paced production.

 

We all know that VR technology is a hot topic in the game industry in recent years, not to mention there are many immersion rooms such as Otherworld  London are becoming more and more familiar with us, and the VR technology has to make a huge profit for the industry, based on the statistics, the Digi-Capital tracks startups company raising more than $6 billion in AR/VR in 2018. The largest number of AR/VR transactions by category in 2018 are core technologies, games, photos/videos, solutions/services, businesses and smart glasses.

But you might never hear about the Walk Again project, Today’s virtual reality technology has quietly changed the lives of some people – not to let them take risks in the illusory world, or to become invincible heroes. On the contrary, the virtual world just allows them to understand how “walking” is feeling.

In recent years, a project called “Walk Again” is using virtual reality to help paraplegic patients recover their lower limbs. According to the results of the publication, the eight patients who participated in the study received some changes.

According to the researchers, they found that when these patients were imagined walking, they could not find any signals in their brains—which suggests that the concept of walking has been eliminated and removed in the brains of these patients.

In order to regain their athletic ability, the researchers put VR devices on these patients, let them learn to use brain activity to control their role in the virtual world. By the time the brain regains the concept of walking, the patients can rely on the exoskeleton to try to restore the nerves.

In the documentry《our digital selves》, a cerebral palsy patient, he can’t move his arm. When the researchers put on the sensor on his feet, he excitedly waved his virtual arm with his foot.

“My Avatar is Me.”

This makes me start to think, the game technology can be applied in some field other than having fun. This technology can really improve our lives, like the above example from the Walk again project, the VR simulation of walking is a very bland experience for most of the people because that is what we have been doing every day. But for those who have been imprisoned for many years in wheelchairs, this is enough precious.

 

reference：

Neuro.duke.edu. (2019). How VR Is Helping Paraplegics Walk Again | Duke Neurobiology. [online] Available at: https://www.neuro.duke.edu/research/research-news/how-vr-helping-paraplegics-walk-again [Accessed 19 Jun. 2019]

Our Digital Selves. (2018). [film] Directed by B. Drax. USA

 

combination of 3D rendering and 2D sketch.

As a 2D artist, where can 3D help us?

Overall, 3D can help us optimize colour, light, texture, structure, perspective, and painting efficiency and completion. 3D production of the image its completion will be higher than the normal picture, the colour is also clean, light and shadow perspective are well grasped.

3D software can help us to build a solid light and shadow shaping, AO maps have a great influence on the degree of solidity. 3D assist can help us solve AO problems easily.

(AO technique)

3D assist can help us with complex lighting and material problems, 3D modelling will make your picture shape solid, 3D will help you solve some complex materials and light and shadow problems. Sometimes artist having colour control problems such as to colour bright or too dirty. There is no problem in the 3D software, and the colours are in the simulation of real light and shadow.

here is my own experience, which my working pipeline is:

DazStudio (posing + character) → C4D (adding on the light blub+ octane rendering the texture and material)  → Photoshop paint over.

also in addition: If my character has complicated outfit, I might also using MarvelousDesigner to adding the cloth and replicate the wrinkles.

after thought: Using the Unreal4 engine realtime lighting for the envronment might save even more time. (if we don’t have to build the envronment in C4D)

In 3D software, the degree of completion will be improved, you can look at the picture rendered by the software – the completion of the hand-painting is like this. The advantages of 3D painting: It is possible to draw 10 hours in the beginning, but in the case of the same character and the same scene, using the  3D:2D method may take 2 hours to complete, it can save a huge amount of time for the artist.

I believe in the next few years, 3D may become the standard skill for entry the concept.

 

 

 

Since Facebook began supporting the 360-degree format, more and more people have participated in the panorama (360-degree) painting, which I will introduce to the steps required to start panoramic painting in PS.

The first thing we need to do is create a new canvas with a 2:1 ratio, which means it should be twice the width. Friends may want to make the file size as large as possible (although more or less depending on your focal length).

In this case, let’s use a 10000px x 5000px canvas.

Then we can use the Spherical Panorama menu to fold the canvas into a spear shape.

or we could download the grid canvas from the Internet. this gives you the perspective of the drawing.

then just like doing normal concept art illustration, drawing while you rotating the canvas.

I was playing this new game which released by Square Enix in mid-2019, I was wondering why this old style 16 bits pixel game I will be a huge success, which ranked 9.3/10 by IGN. Also, I’m very choirs to know why Square Enix decide to work backwards when other game company trying to make AAA high-resolution games.

Therefore I would like to find out, research about the octopath traveler’s success and try to explain this phenomenon with my knowledge of understanding.

The HD-2D style:

The game uses 2D character modelling + 3D scene interface expression, 2D character modelling gives a retro feeling, and the hand-drawn 3D background is more refined than the foreground characters, also the game uses Unreal 4 engine to build up the level, by using Unreal 4’s lighting and real-time rendering, whether it is the shadow of the forest or The sparkling water surface is perfectly presented in the game scene.

 

The narrative and interactive ability:

The second advantage is the interactive nature of the game, each character has their own story and can interact with Orsterra’s residents on their own journey. I hope that players can learn about the past of NPC. These stories are sad and happy.

Although each character in the game has an independent story, it will intersperse with other characters and eventually end up in the same ending.

This technique is often used in films (not sure if this technique called Montage?), a simple example of the film Love Actually (2003).

The combat system:

The combat system of the game is definitely my favourite. It reconstructs the familiar 16-bit turn-based/ATB system. You need to find the weaknesses of each enemy and use the power, abilities and props of each character reasonably. The process is very interesting. It uses the attribute design of “Rock-Paper-Scissors” in the traditional RPG game, and on this basis, the player needs to constantly try and try, and pay attention to timing and skill.

conclusion：

It is a JRPG that I dream of. The game’s combat system and art style pays tribute to the SFC era and has made exciting innovations. This is not just a retro work, but it is really inventing new ideas from the old design. Although I think it would be better to connect the 8 characters to the story, I am ready to get through the storylines of all the characters, explore the various regional areas, challenge the bosses, and unlock the final true storyline!

No wonder such a game can making a huge success.

 

reference：

IGN. (2019). Octopath Traveler – IGN. [online] Available at: https://uk.ign.com/games/project-octopath-traveler [Accessed 22 Jun. 2019].

Octopath Traveler，（2019），Steam [game], SquareEnix

 

 

 

 

The console game has developed for more than half a century and has reached a very high standard. The mobile phone game is just getting started, flourishing and even exploding.

But thanks to advances in technology, there are already many excellent games on the mobile phone platform. For example, the Reckless Racing by Pixelbite, MOBA game king of glory by Tencent,  Onmyoji and so on. Not to mention that there are many excellent and characteristic games, such as [Monument Valley]

Some people think that the quality of the games that can be played on phones is different from the quality of the console games. For example, the picture quality is not as good as the end, or the accuracy of the operation is not as high as the end.

But take a look at some examples that I found below:

game: YuanShen

game: Sky

The graphics quality of mobile phone games is similar to PC/console games. (eg: when you compare YuanShen and Zelda: breath of the wild.)

Game:Zelda and YuanShen

The popularity of mobile phones ensures that mobile games can be made up of a large player base. People don’t leave the phone anywhere, so players can open mobile games anytime, anywhere, which ensures user activity. But this also makes the mobile game more casual and simple.

In the end, my conclusion is:  The development of future games should tend to be the same game cross-platform, a game, I can interoperate in ios, android, pc, etc., both mobile and console, such games And break through the limitations of geography, you can play when and everywhere you want. Currently steam has been working on the SteamLink project, which enable players to play steam games in PC and mobile platform but based on my own experience, the game control is very uncomfortable, I hope in the future that people can have better gaming experience.

reference:

Yuanshen[Game], (2019), MiHoYo Co Ltd

Sky[Game],(2019), NetEase, Inc

 

Is video game really a “hardest hit” for sex discrimination?

Recently, Kotaku published an interview entitled “Sex Discrimination in the Riot Games” with the theme of gender discrimination in the company of Riot Games. From the interviews of employees, the discrimination against women within the Riot Games is very serious, especially in language.

（original article：https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483）

According to a female employee named “Lacy”, her manager often expressed intentionally or unintentionally that Lacy’s position was exchanged for appearance. A few months ago, a male supervisor publicly stated at the meeting that Lacy’s family would miss her while she was working, suggesting that women are more suitable to return to the family than to enter the workplace.

During a few months of interviews, Kotaku spoke with 28 in-service and retired female employees, many of whom said they had similar experiences with Lacy. Three of them said that they were receiving promotion training. As a result, they were “cut off” by several male colleagues and lost their promotion opportunities. Their females were also excluded from the core players. In addition, this leads them to often encounter obstacles in their work.

Double standards for men and women are also common. For example, if the same problem is raised by a male employee or a player, the Riot Games will respond quickly; but if it is proposed by a female employee, the chance of getting a response is obviously reduced.

Coincidentally, another media polygon also published a long-form report on the various discriminatory phenomena in the game circle. Unlike Kotaku, the polygon report is more oriented to players than the industry.

（original article：https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/25/17593516/video-game-culture-toxic-men-explained）

The report interviewed a number of experts and professors in various fields and discussed issues such as gender discrimination, racial discrimination, and violence. The content is very intriguing. One of the quotes is impressive: “The video game culture has long been a male club.”

According to statistics from a well-known data company Statista on the number of male and female players in the United States in 2006-2018, the proportion of the two in a 12-year period is in a balanced trend. The proportion of female players has increased from 38% in 2006 to 45 % in 18 years. The overall change has not been large but has been growing slowly.

But combined with the reports of the two media for players and industry, it can be seen that although the number of female players is increasing, developers are more willing to tailor games for male players’ preferences, such as adding a lot of violence and materializing women. The element of the class.

In other words, female players are not important to them, as long as they can please male players. For example, in many Japanese games, female characters are often symbolized. Most characters are designed to highlight the woman’s chest and legs, and let them dress as less as possible.

Therefore, many game developers, like the Riot Games, prefer male employees when they are recruiting because they are “harder, more knowledgeable, and more versatile.”

In the report of the polygon, “disgusting female disease” is a frequently occurring word. Several experts from different fields explained that misogyny women often appear in lower-level men with lower social status. They feel threats from women in competition, especially the threat of their own privileges.

For example, in traditional adventure stories, the image of a hero is often played by a male. With the rise of affirmative, more and more female characters in the game are beginning to take the lead, which will make some men feel uncomfortable and even disgusted.

More extreme examples such as “Grand Theft Auto” often show scenes where players manipulate game characters to beat and even kill sex workers and also record the process as a video upload to Youtube. Some people may think that this is not a virtual character, not too true, but this behaviour reflects the player’s subconscious violence, disgusting thoughts, perhaps even they have not noticed.

This type of prejudicial role design benefits from the participation of more and more female game developers. For example, “Tomb Raider” and its sequel “Tomb Raider Rise” wrote the script’s chief screenwriter Rhianna Pratchett, “Mirror‘s Edge” producer Sara Jansson and so on.

In general, I believe reducing gender discrimination still has a long way to go. More empathy and more regulations to protect women’s rights may make our loved industry better.

 

 

 

Live 2D Keyframe setting type

In addition to moving parameters, keyframes can be entered by entering a number beside the parameter.

You can also hit a keyframe by clicking on the timeline while holding down [Ctrl].

Holding down [Ctrl] allows you to hit at the parameter level, or clicking on the green bar allows you to hit keyframes collectively for all parameters.

 

You can delete keyframes by clicking on the keyframe you want to delete while holding down [Ctrl], or by selecting a keyframe and pressing [Delete].

 

Also, multiple keyframes can be selected and moved together or deleted.

As you drag on the timeline, the selected part becomes light blue.

In this state, when the mouse is put on the key frame, an arrow is displayed next to the mouse, and you can move the key frame by dragging horizontally in that state.

You can also copy keyframes with [Ctrl + C] and paste keyframes with [Ctrl + V].

You can delete all at once by pressing [Delete] in the selected state.