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This would be ridiculously awesome, though... seriously. It would be a total quantum leap for visual novels if a tool like this was readily available. (Of course, being in English helps...)

As an artist whose primary training is in 3D, this looks like it would be perfect for fusing my two skill sets. I'd love to see this become a standard for VNs. It looks to be a great middle-ground allowing for more animated and expressive sprites without ballooning time and costs like full 3D models would.

Interesting Question: Do you think that if this gets implemented, any artists would be wlling to work with the software, assuming I provided them a licence and adequate bonus compensation?

Because for us non-artist developers, this is meaningless unless artists are willing do do Live2D commissions.

No, this isn't a tool for artists. This is a professional tool - which means tasks are divided. Artists draw, Modifiers animate, and Programmers implement them.
I'm an artist and a programmer, but I'd hire someone if I need to implement this (maybe an artist. and I'd focus on animation and programming)
I never hear artists do animations unless what they're making are personal woks. When artists drawing, there are someone who don't have any tasks. This is a tool for that someone.

There are artists who've made visual novels that have a sort of 2.5D animation style, like Tinklebell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht7U1Y4JVYw

Tinklebell does all their games in flash though, using 3D models for reference and drawing cells to animate the scenes.

This is a bit different from Live2D, but it's similar in trying to have a hybrid of 2D artistic style, with animation that can be done by small teams. I think that the real question is if Ren'py supports animation in it's sprites, and it sort of does, but I'm not sure to what extent, because so far I've not seen anyone try to do something like this in Ren'py.

Afaik, the only animation Ren'py supports is frame-by-frame animation like a movie, not something rendered in-game like this one is. To use this type of animation, the engine would have to make the character idle seamlessly with their other animations, not just play back pre-recorded animations at certain times. It would also need to separate the sprite into different pieces that moved separately, like the hair, eyes, head, etc. You can make Phoenix Wright-style animation in Ren'py, but not something like this where it's always animated.

Making a commission that works in Live 2D would be simple - just keep each piece on a separate layer and combine them in the Live 2D program. Then export the file format, the engine reads it and shows the sprite in real-time.

I would make all of the art for a 2d/3d type of thing like that. :3 Looks pretty awesome.

Not sure if anyone's interested, but WifeWithAKnife and I translated some of the main menus, buttons etc. Images can be found at http://imgur.com/a/FIQCe

You'll need to view full size to read them, especially the 6th image.

The quality of editing is low, but as far as I know this is the only translation on the interwebs, and I got bored pretty quick while editing.

TrickWithAKnife wrote:Not sure if anyone's interested, but WifeWithAKnife and I translated some of the main menus, buttons etc. Images can be found at http://imgur.com/a/FIQCe

You'll need to view full size to read them, especially the 6th image.

The quality of editing is low, but as far as I know this is the only translation on the interwebs, and I got bored pretty quick while editing.

Thanks, as far as a rough translation goes, this isn't a bad start. Though someday it would be nice if a full translation of the engine was released.

As far as using Live2D to make animations for Ren'py goes, that would be awesome, but even if you were to find a way to import the animations into Ren'py, I imagine they'd still be very limited in terms of how they would move. According to every game I've seen that incorporates the use of Live2D animations, the sprites seem to move randomly to give a sense of realism and the character's mouth flaps are in-sync with their voices.

I recall somebody was planning to create a script which allows for lip-flap/voice syncing in Ren'py many years ago, but I don't know if they ever went through with it.
If I'm wrong and they actually are still developing it, please let me know.
^_^

ZeroQ wrote:

TrickWithAKnife wrote:Not sure if anyone's interested, but WifeWithAKnife and I translated some of the main menus, buttons etc. Images can be found at http://imgur.com/a/FIQCe

You'll need to view full size to read them, especially the 6th image.

The quality of editing is low, but as far as I know this is the only translation on the interwebs, and I got bored pretty quick while editing.

Thanks, as far as a rough translation goes, this isn't a bad start. Though someday it would be nice if a full translation of the engine was released.

According to their Facebook page, they have plans to announce English language versions of the tool and documentation here soon.

ZeroQ wrote:I recall somebody was planning to create a script which allows for lip-flap/voice syncing in Ren'py many years ago, but I don't know if they ever went through with it.
If I'm wrong and they actually are still developing it, please let me know.
^_^

Do you mean >>this one<<?
Though I don't know if it's adjusted to voices.

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Gosh, Live2D would be wonderful, really.
(Even though I'm to stupid to use it. Downloaded it a few days ago but when stated they... want something from me. Do I need to register or something?)

- En.

RangerDanger wrote:According to their Facebook page, they have plans to announce English language versions of the tool and documentation here soon.

They were apparently in the process of translating it into English in April 2012 too.
I got bored of waiting.

Endorphin wrote: Do you mean >>this one<<?
Though I don't know if it's adjusted to voices.

No, although I have seen this one before. But it's not written to sync with voices.

I believe this is the one I was talking about. But as you can see, it's very old.

Sorry for Necroposting, but...
Now that Live2D is mostly in English and has a very generous fee for indies ($0) and we know a bit more about it, can anyone say for sure if there could possibly be ren'py support? o:

hello i am interrested in this too!
the game i'm working on uses live 2d sprites, but since i don't know how to export a whole animation to renpy i ended up saving each expression alone in a still file (which is exactly the same result if i drew them by hand, only more wasted time )
there are several new things now that the topic has been revived
1-live 2d cubism is updated
http://sites.cybernoids.jp/cubism-edito ... oad-editor
it is now easier to import the sprite and animate it, all you have to do is open the PSD and apply a ready template of expressions. but using the free version means you can only export your image at 640 x 450 or something close to that (which is much smaller than my HD sprites)
i think that can be solved for one project by finishing all your sprites, then you click on the pro version and export all your game sprites in one day with the original size.
but what if after the trial days you want to make a different expression? you'll either resize all the things or pay ><


2- there is a live 2d cubism viewer
http://sites.cybernoids.jp/cubism-editor2_e/viewer
it extracts the sprite and all the settings and animates them life in the viewer (i don't know if that could be replicated into renpy) but if it was possible to have the viewer change expressions in the renpy game window it will change visual novels forever!
something like:
character1 "that is what i meant!"
character2 surprise "really?! i didn't know that!"
(and then the viewer executes the 'surprise' event in the list inside of renpy, so it's a fresh animation every time in case you changed clothes or position of the head towards left or right)


3- there is a competitor program named emofuri
http://emote.mtwo.co.jp/
it is free and has an SDK to export the sprite movement like Live 2d Cubism
i tried it and it is simpler but the result is not reliable. there is no way to make the pieces animate at exactly the way you set them inside the program, when exporting, the program somehow changes the physics and that breaks the animation (hair out of place, face moving differently, too many duplicate frames etc)

if the developers (or anyone really) are willing to look into this i'll draw you a sprite to leave for the public domain to try on emofuri or cubism and all my files to test it out, maybe Eileen?

(there is a little bit of difference between the two programs in means of parts of the eyes when blinking, so tell me if you want both or only one, once i figure out how to do the eyes for cubism i can easily provide the same paper doll for emofuri)