Lemma Soft Forums

Self-explanatory title. I've got a fully planned story and some characters designs at this point, and so game development itself will start shortly. I'm thinking about using Live 2D technology (or something similar). Can you incorporate it into a game, and if not, is there any plan of making it available? Thank you very much.

I don't know anything about live2d. Is there a link to more information? Is it open?

Hi there. It's a relatively new animation technique where you can make animations based on 2D graphics. Not frame-by-frame, here's a video that shows it:
http://youtu.be/YrLnF7CQ8Ac

Product site: http://www.live2d.jp/
I think there may be other software, but this is the one I know. It has both free-to-use and paid versions, and commercial use is allowed.

http://youtu.be/9Csp_FoDRTY and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28AqBYhSRMw examples of VNs using this technique, though I believe the first doesn't use Live2D itself.

From what I can gather from my very limited Japanese, it seems that this software is not free, and there is no English version as of yet.

I'm playing around with a "free" version of the modeller at the moment, and it has a 30 day time limit.

初回起動から30日間はスタンダード版と同等の機能が使える試用版として動作します。
30日間を過ぎますとフリー版になります。
"For 30 days starting from the first execution, it runs as a trial version with the same functions as the standard one.
After 30 days it becomes the free version."

Even if there is no English version yet, it does exist for free, also I believe similar software is either out or in development by various companies.

I'd be curious if a tool like this could export to a filmstrip or something. If it could do that, integrating it would be simple.

Ahh, I misunderstood.

According to the site, the animations can be exported as either .gif or a QuickTime animation codec (I think), and there are plans to make .avi available, so is there a way to use video or animation as character sprites?

@TrickWithAKnife The trial version still exports images with the logo, though, but there are no size or tool limitations.

Can someone export the animations, please? Especially in the quicktime format. I'd be interested in seeing if I can put together a converter that would let this be used as a sprite.

It looks like the general idea is to take a series of 2D layers, superimpose a polygon mesh on them, and then animate the mesh.

I heard that PyTom is planning to make Ren'Py's rendering pure OpenGL sometime in the future (was it after the next release?) If that happens, some third-party programmer could possibly write a custom displayable that could handle Live2D's file format.

Tom, do you think there would be an "arbitrary OpenGL" displayable in Ren'Py sometime?

PyTom wrote:Can someone export the animations, please? Especially in the quicktime format. I'd be interested in seeing if I can put together a converter that would let this be used as a sprite.

It looks like you create a model out of the 2D image, that has a number of pose sliders for tilting the head, blinking, etc.

It says standard version allows to export filmstrip png in any size. Price isn't high considering it's a pro model. When I done my current developing game which fully animated with ATL (will be done within 2 months). I'd check it and see if I can use it in the future.

Not gonna lie, being able to use this in visual novels would be ridiculously awesome. Sure, the example anime girl they used was a tad creepy, but with a little programming I'm sure she would have been more adorable than anything.

Random and not really useful, but the Tokimeki games have been using that for a while now. I'm not sure what engine they use, but eh.



(And I'm bumping because I'd like to know how to do this, too. *runs away because she has contributed absolutely nothing to the thread*)

Yeah, I actually talked to those guys and was integrating it at one time, but live2d is something made for use with Flash, at least when I was on it. Does look pretty awesome though, and with artists working with it, could bring their projects up to the next level. I'd be very interested in seeing this working with RenPy games.