To broadcast as their own content Her ethereal alter ego, Mai, is a VTuber known as M41H41, he usually had to juggle at least four to seven different programs. However, playing them all at once was mentally exhausting and taxing on their computers, which could lead to them overheating mid-stream. If a program broke, they would have to break character to fix it.
“A lot of times, I don’t actually have to use each program individually,” May told TechCrunch during a Discord call. “So I literally had to say to my community, ‘Sorry, we’re not going to be able to have videos or reaction videos or chat reaction videos today, because I literally can’t get them to work right now.'”
VTuber users – A group of “virtual YouTubers” – you can stream as a 2D or 3D model, instead of revealing their actual faces. This thriving genre has produced wildly successful broadcast programming, but has a high barrier to entry due to the start-up costs and technical skills involved in broadcasting as an animated character.
Obscore, an all-in-one streaming app, wants to make VTubing more accessible by allowing users to create 3D models and interactive environments without technical skills. The company debuted several new features at TwitchCon, including the Character Creator, which officially launched last week. Obskur’s streaming software essentially brings together several different shows into one platform that can easily integrate with Twitch — a huge draw for VTubers like Mai.
Obskur’s Character Creator and User Generated Content marketplace is particularly unique in the VTubing space. Character Creator allows users to customize 3D models by choosing from a selection of free hairstyles, facial features, and body types. Users can adjust features using sliders to change shape and size, and choose feature colors from a color wheel. For further customization, users can check out the integrated marketplace, where artists sell pre-made models and 3D assets such as clothing and interactive backgrounds.
“It has to be advanced enough so that people can create characters that are unique enough to feel like, ‘This is me and my brand.’” But it has to be easy enough that “this is me and my brand,” Andranik Aslanyan, co-founder of Obskur, told TechCrunch. You don’t need to know anything.” “Just like you don’t need to understand rigging or modeling or textures or anything. Just choose a few options and it will feel like a video game. If you can play The Sims, you should be able to use our app.
May said they started using Obksur regularly after testing a demo at TwitchCon. Before that, they used up to a dozen apps to run their streams.
There’s one to power their model, who often wears flowing, seafoam-colored hair, pink butterfly-like antennae and a black top with a frilly collar, and another to improve body tracking. Playing basic animation requires another program; Something as simple as a VTuber making their models cry, for example, or moving their chests to flirt with subscribers, can involve artistry that viewers rarely see behind the scenes. May had to use third-party software for any chat interactions, such as allowing viewers to throw objects at them or spray them with flower petals, and a third-party plugin to integrate those interactions with Twitch’s monetization features. They also needed software to upload their model to a 3D background, which could range from a basic living room to an extraterrestrial planet.
“And that’s before you even think about what kind of content you’re creating that day,” May continued. “And you have to learn how each one of those works not only as an application on its own, but also how it works as an application with other applications that you’re running. I probably had 10 to 12 applications that I downloaded just for different parts of my model.”
Then there is the cost. When Mai first got into VTubing last year, she tried to create her own model using the free software VRoid Studio, drawing with a mouse. They said it was impossible, and “it seemed all kinds of terrible.” They ended up paying another artist $100-$120 (“the absolute minimum” in the industry) for a model. High-quality 2D models can cost up to thousands of dollars, depending on the quality of the original artwork, custom meshes and textures, and various animations. Even 3D models, which are less complex to animate, are still expensive to operate. Supplemental assets, such as new clothes, hairstyles, and backgrounds, cost more and pose a challenge to source. While many artists focus on custom commissions, others sell pre-selected assets on Etsy, Patreon, or other online marketplaces spread across the internet. Some of the larger markets, like Booth’s, are “a complete beast in themselves,” May said, because they are entirely in Japanese.
“Then you have to download those files, and hopefully they’re in the right file format, because if you don’t speak the language, who knows?” May said.
Aslanian noted that the chat interactions were not only an issue to use, they were also visually annoying. On Twitch, users can purchase parts, which starts at $3.00 for $300 and goes up to $308 for $25,000. Twitch pays streamers 1 cent per bit, so streamers usually offer special perks to viewers who spend bits while streaming. VTubers often entice viewers to spend bits by offering certain interactive features. Viewers can “throw” things like digital money at VTubers by spending 100 Bits, for example, or change their appearance by spending 1,000 Bits. Streamers had to manually run interactions on whatever third-party software they were using, while maintaining their personality and engagement with their viewers.
Obskur’s Twitch extension and app makes features like audience interaction smoother for both streamers and viewers. In the app, streamers can set different levels of interactions, which will automatically trigger when viewers spend bits. Obskur takes the standard 20% cut for developers, which is set by Twitch. Aslanian hopes that by making the process more streamlined, monetization opportunities will be more available to streamers.
“The idea behind this is to give your audience a reason to spend less, because when you look at Bit’s revenue compared to things like subscriptions or direct donations, it’s on the lower end,” Aslanian said. “The reason is that there is no real incentive to donate bits.”
It may be easier for streamers to monetize their work, but are artists at risk of losing commissions? 2D and 3D design for VTubers has grown into a digital cottage industry since 2020, and many artists rely on commissions for their full-time income. Neither May nor Aslanian are concerned about Obscore’s character creator firing artists. Instead, they said the user-generated marketplace on the platform creates opportunities for artists to expand their customer base. May described the character creation tool as an “essential” opportunity for absolute beginners to get into VTubing without breaking the bank or learning complex animation.
“I think there is still a lot of desire for specific art styles for specific designs that are unique only to individual artists, who are still performing the craft on other mediums, and I think there will be a lot of artists who will transition to work primarily,” May said. On Obskur because the market allows you to make money from your assets that you have already created.”
If streamers want to use a more complex, highly specific model for their streams, they can import their assigned work into Obskur.
Aslanian added that Obskur took the artist’s feedback into account when designing the character creator. Art director of Obskur, artist known as Theyartgun, known for designing models for Ironmouse, is one of the most popular VTubers in North America. Aslanian said she oversaw the development of Character Creator and participated in the launch of the marketplace.
“The way I look at it from a creator’s perspective is to increase the size of the market,” Aslanian continued. “It’s an individual basis. In our case, you might be able to produce a great jacket, and then in the marketplace, now that people have access to characters pretty much instantaneously, you can sell the jacket multiple times, potentially generating more revenue than you spend.” Three months in the production of a jacket. A character for one person. It is more of a large-scale business than an individual type of commission business.
May is excited that tech companies are finally starting to take an interest in the VTuber industry. They said the market is “underutilized” and is in desperate need of innovation, such as apps that combine multiple programs into one. In the few weeks since they started using Obskur full-time, they’ve seen a significant improvement in their flows.
“We don’t have to worry about opening 15 million programs anymore,” Mai said. “I used to worry about opening the programs, making sure they were running smoothly, and that everything was going together. But now I just start it and bam! It’s all really good.”