Chapter 2 : OBS and Live2D

Chapter 2

Monday came unexpectedly fast. After some self studying during the weekend, Hiro returned back to the dilapidated office. And before him laid the office worker all wore casual clothing. Hiro tilted his head a bit at the casual style.

“Hmm? New guy?” A passerby office worker greeted hi.

“Um… Yes. Mr. David said I was going to be trained for the work I was going to do— “ARGGHHH!!!! DAMN YOU ALL!!”” A scream resounded from one of the rivate room this office had. Hiro stared at the door agaped.

“Is the door not closed properly?” The office worker sighed and a janitor hurriedly scampered toward the door and closed it with a thud.

“Wait, wait. Wait a minute. Why is that girl screaming?” but, before Hiro asked further, a petite girl with a bob cut hair opened the door and apologized with an embarrassed smile.

“Sorry everyone. I just lost a mario kart tournament. Please don’t mind me.” She said and closed the door properly this time. Her bell like sound betrayed her death metal scream earlier.

“Ah. Hirojimi Tanaka? This way please.” Marie said as she welcomed him from behind. Hiro came at noon. He frowned a little at the work ethics of the CEO’s daughter as she brought him to her office. It was an empty room with a computer, 2 monitors, a headset, and a mic. It was pretty similar from what he expected from a youtuber’s setups.

“So, first of all, welcome to Veeidol Coprorations. I am Marienne, your fellow Vtuber senior working in this company. First of all, Log into your account and there, you will see your status.”

“Ahh, I see. But there are a lot of empty field here.” Hiro asked his first question. He finally realized that Marie is not related at all to david. Idol was often recruited young. In fact, Marie was already a bit too old for registering in idol industry. 

She must be a former idol or something. That’s why she was hired despite being young. Hiro thought to himself finally getting rid of his thought that Marie was a spoiled CEO’s daughter.

“Yes. Since you are new, we have not made your avatar yet. Please think of a lore for your characters. You will be trained using our default practice live2d program named Yui.” She booted up her computer and turned on the camera located on top of the monitor. It showed Hiro’s ugly and obese picture which made him retch.

However, the image soon turned into a cute anime girl. The software incorporated inside the computer read Hiro’s facial expression and using the data, it molded the live2d anime facial expression into matching ones to hiro. When he moved his head, the female character also moved its. 

“Live2d tracked head, eye, and mouth movements. With it, we could create anime expression in real-time. That is the foundation of what we do.” Marie continued on with her customer service explanation. Her voice devoid of emotion. She didn’t like Hiro. However she knew her prejudice was simply because he was ugly and fatso. His very being is an anathema of what an idol is. But, she didn’t like being prejudice herself, so she tried to present herself as an impartial professional while people might said she was cold, Hiro respected her impartiality.

Hiro was flabbergasted at the anime character in front of him. He always thought the anime character showed in YouTube was scripted beforehand with 3D models such as MMD or blender. However, this program could make his female character moved without much training.

“Ah, but how do I broadcasted it on youtube? The character is inside the monitor.”

“With a program called OBS, it can either capture a specific application, or your entire screen. Here, let me show you. First, you chose an image or a video as your background. Then put it inside a source tab beside the scene tab in in your OBS.

“then, in the settings, you can chose youtube service for streaming. You need to put a streaming key into it. But, since we have yet to make your channel, we shall skip that for later. By the way, we did not exclusively stream on youtube. There are twitch and discord as well.” Marie explained to him as her hand deftly maneuvered the mouse. 

“Understand?”

“Yes. I understand.” Hiro nodded. Marie looked at him surprised.

“Good. You are a quick learner. Could you test it?”

Hiro did exactly as she showed him. Computer was his forte as he had spent more on it more than outside world. He smiled in glee as new knowledge were poured out into him. This time, what he learned will directly influenced his real job. Unlike those scamming school where he had spent over twenty years in it and still came out jobless in the end. He silently cursed his school and college as none of those knowledge they gave him helped him at all in this new job. 

“Alright. Nice work.”

“But, what about this green screen behind the character?” Hiro asked.

“You can remove them with chroma key. Select the image inside OBS and then put a filter on it. Then put chroma key to remove the filter. Or, you can delete the background directly from the live2d app itself. It was made compatible specifically with OBS.”

“Ah, thank you.” 

https://youtu.be/QVIAkPV6VqY

Hiro moved his head, opened his mouth and winked. His fugly face drove a stifled giggle from Marie as she watched him warmly. After several minutes playing around, Marie continued with her lecture.

“So, Hiro. What kind of vtuber do you want to be? Ah, by the way. I ddid not ask you to answer something abstract like ‘I want to bring smile to everyone, or I want to bring happiness to my audiences.’ but I want something more concrete. What do you plan to present to your audience?”

Hiro was silent. He got a job just yesterday and while he did his homework and watched several vtubers from VeeIdol corporations. He never thought he was going to be asked such questions.

“Our company currently have four english vtuber and ten japanese vtuber. Have you watch some of our vtuber?”

“Yes. I have watched Ruru Rirulia, Sherlie Watason, Ana, and Justina Bitterly. Sorry but I haven’t watched the Japanese one due to language barrier.” He replied.

“I see. Good. so, what kind of impression do you get from them?”

“Well, Ruru has that sweet voice but that deathly metal scream when she loses a game. Ah! Was that one Ruru?”

“yes.” she smiled.

“Then Sherlie focused on chatting. Most of her stream was just chatting with her viewers.”

“Then Justina has that sexy voice with big boobs.” 

“And, what about Ana?” Marie eyes sparkled as she mentioned her name. Little did Hiro knew that Ana was Marie and he stupidly gave honest answer.

“She is normal I guess….” HIro said. He could not pinpoint anything bad about her and neither he could pinpoint anything good about her. She was a normal idol. She is good at singing but not as good as ak47 group idol. If he had to take not of her is that she is the most senior member of the group.

“Ugh… so what if she is normal!! is it bad?” Marie lashed out. She has taken a critical mental damage due to Hiro’s honest report. “Ahem. Sorry. Continue on. As you can see, these members all have their own persona that they project into their viewers. Did you know that they also have their own lore? Did you know for example that Ruru was a vampire for example?”

“Well, their species was never mentioned outside of their introduction. But yes, I know them.”

“And that’s what I want you to think about starting now. Envision what kind of vtuber you want to be. Start out with your lore.  The faster you did this homework, the better because that means more time for the artist to draw your model.” Marie concluded their orientation.

“Alright. Please come again tomorrow. Your homework for today is to design your background and work on your vtuber persona.” Marie sent a message to Hiro about what he should do for tomorrow. It looks short since it only consist of background design and character’s lore, but the abstract wording made Hiro raised an eyebrow. Hiro never design anything in his life. He was an inexperienced engineering graduate. However, in the world of engineering, designing was all about safety.  Aesthetics and UI was alien to him. When Hiro was about to go home, Marie called out to him.

“One more thing Hiro. There is an explicit taboo in this industry. You must, under any circumstances, tell anyone else about your identity as a vtuber nor tell anyone else about other’s vtuber identity. This is an ironclad rule. Violation about this rule could lead to severe repercussions.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Well, the persona we presented to our audience is like a second life to us. It would be a massive spoiler to let audience knew that the persona they saw was just a normal human, right?”  Marie smiled. But she strained her voice to emphasis on the importance of this rule.

“Okay. I will keep that in mind.” Hiro replied. He didn’t got home immediately. If he got home, he felt he wouldn’t do his job and played games or watching animes instead, so he chose to sat on the open office lounge and stared into his work sheet.

“Ah you didn’t go home?” Marie asked. Her blouse was neat and tidy. Now that he was relaxed, he appreciated how nice her fashion sense is. Unlike her, Hiro wore a formal suit, so he didn’t look out of place except for his physical appearances. but when he looked at her, he knew how large the disparity of their social life is.

“I felt like doing the homework here.” he replied.

“Good. Nice attitude. We allow our talents to work from home. But, working here is better since they would lend you their computers.” Marie answered.

“Hmm? Aren’t they supposed to provide us with the equipment anyway?”

“Yes, but you may not bring them home. Are you in having trouble with providing the equipment at home? To ensure smooth streaming, we require some high end computer after all.”

“It is fine. I still have some gaming laptop. I see the computer’s specification in your room. My laptop was about the same. It is enough.” Hiro answered. His laptop was I5 gen 9 while the one the company use was I3 gen 11.  He assumed his was better but he did not want to belittle the company on his first day. All that he need to buy was another monitor, or maybe he could just plug in his old tv at home to become his second monitor. Some of his old tv had HDMI or VGA port which means it can connect to his computer.

“That’s good.” Marie smiled genuinely this time. She was impressed by his work ethic. 

Hiro then contemplating about his vtuber characters the entire day and what he wanted to show.