Recently, three virtual people appeared on the CCTV May 4th Gala together with many young students on the campuses of Wuhan University and Renmin University. At the same time, relying on Tencent Music's virtual social platform TMELAND, they created a "digital and real fusion virtual music world". Few netizens commented, "It's full of sense of technology, it's really knowledgeable", "It's too high-tech, it uses so much game technology".
Image source: CCTV
Sutu Yuanyu Research Institute noticed that the three virtual people in the show are all from Tencent, Jili from "Peace Elite", Xingtong from QQ Xuanwu, and Tong Heguang, a virtual idol created by NExT Studios and XNOX Studios. Are virtual humans just singing and dancing players? Next, let's take a look at the virtual human industry with the author.
From Lu Ming to Ji Li's appearance, game companies hold up half the sky of virtual people In May 2020, MiHoYo launched the virtual idol Luming. The users of station B with the account number "yoyo鹿哭_Lumi" have only released 20 videos since May last year, gaining 1.37 million fans and 97.45 million playback volume.
Until this year's New Year's Eve party, virtual people appeared in many evenings. From this point of view, virtual people are mainly "singing and dancing players" distributed in the entertainment field. In the recent May Fourth Youth Gala, three virtual people The appearance also made many people think that the virtual human is still in the direction of entertainment, but Sutu Yuanyu Research Institute noticed that the virtual human Ji Li who came out of the game "Peace Elite" recently participated in the UN Women's event to give a speech and became The world's first virtual digital human on the stage of the United Nations.
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It is understood that before that, Ji Li also served as the good affairs officer of Tencent 99 Public Welfare Day, mobilizing tens of millions of netizens to participate in public welfare, helping rural revitalization and public welfare undertakings; during the Winter Olympics, she served as the promotion ambassador for peace elite ice and snow sports; Cooperating with Lawrence Xu, a well-known Chinese high-end designer, to bring the intangible heritage Miao embroidered high-end garments in the deep mountains to the fashion week; cooperate with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and become the cover character of "ELLEidol" fashion magazine.
The appearance of Ji Li also made the public see the attempt of the virtual human industry in the game field. In the eyes of many people, the role of Ji Li may be just a collection of boring codes that can only exist in the virtual world. From singing and dancing entertainment avatars to speech avatars, the uses and image designs of avatars are gradually diversified.
It is worth noting that Ji Li has benefited from the years of game technology accumulation of the "Peace Elite" photon studio behind it. Unlike traditional virtual idols, Ji Li needs to use technologies such as RBF bone binding system and Unreal Engine. The description of facial features by MetaHuman technology, the facial technology of FACEGOOD and the global illumination of Lumen, etc.
In addition, the virtual Xingtong has passed Tencent's self-developed real-time driving technology pipeline, including technology capture, facial drive, lighting rendering and real-time interaction technologies. 3D virtual human for 24-hour live broadcast with Unreal Engine.
Sutu Yuanyu Research Institute believes that in the construction of virtual humans and virtual scenes, game companies have unique advantages. From a technical point of view, many virtual humans include 3D modeling, motion capture, CG technology, real-time rendering and other technologies. However, with the continuous development of technology today, the emergence of the metaverse concept has also led to the continuous integration of technologies. Under the integration of core technologies such as intelligence, virtual humans are iterating towards platformization and specialization at this stage.
Take League of Legends as an example. There are different game stories behind different hero characters, and there are CG promotional videos produced in different seasons . From the perspective of content construction, the content ecology of the game company is also very strong. "Peace Elite" Gilly virtual The application of people also ranges from game characters to spokespersons, and behind them is also filled with game stories, not just "soul-cased people" without souls.
The end of the virtual person is not live streaming, the digital avatar in the Metaverse also needs a "story" At present, virtual humans are widely used in live broadcast delivery. Most companies use "low cost, 24-hour uninterrupted live broadcast" to deploy virtual humans, but what is the conversion rate of virtual humans in live broadcast delivery?
The research report of Guohai Securities pointed out that the popular IP among virtual anchors is "I don't eat for free". In 2021, the GMV (gross merchandise transaction) will exceed 100 million yuan, becoming the top star in the field of virtual anchors. However, data shows that the cumulative sales of "I'm Not Free" on the Douyin platform in the past three months have reached 10.8899 million yuan, and there are 37 related live broadcasts. In the past three months, Luo Yonghao's cumulative sales of live broadcasts were 915 million yuan, with 128 related live broadcasts. From this point of view, the performance of virtual human live streaming with goods is gradually declining.
In the Taobao live broadcast room, Sutu Yuanyu Research Institute also found that during the live broadcast of the WPS flagship store, the virtual anchor continuously introduced the details of the product. When the author entered the live broadcast room, the virtual anchor could insert " Welcome baby XX to the live broadcast room", "Long time no see, welcome to click the follow button in the upper left corner", etc. The voice of the anchor is also relatively flat, without the emotional changes of real people bringing goods, it seems more like a mature customer service system . Perhaps it can be said that the virtual anchor's personality will not collapse, but it is not outstanding in the delivery of goods. To be precise, it is "no merit and no fault".
Image source: Screenshot of Taobao live broadcast room
According to the "2022 Virtual Human Industry Research Report" to be released by Sutu Yuanyu Research Institute, the digital virtual human industry will only see more than 60,000 new virtual human-related companies in China in 2021. In January 2022, there will be nearly 100 virtual human companies The accumulated financing has exceeded 400 million yuan. Analysts at Sutu Yuan Universe Research Institute predict that by 2030, the overall virtual human market will reach 309.5 billion yuan, and the number of domestic virtual human-related companies will exceed 400,000.
Sutu Yuanyu Research Institute believes that virtual anchors like the "customer service" system are no longer favored by consumers. The main reason is that there is a lack of "story" content behind the virtual person to support the virtual person's IP. The head anchor is replaced by an unknown virtual person, how many consumers are willing to pay for it?
Image source: Tencent Youth Science Association
In the final analysis, the content ecology is still the bottleneck for the development of virtual people. However, in this year's May Fourth Youth Gala, TMELAND created a "digital and real fusion virtual music world". Users can customize digital avatars through QQ music and national K songs Entering, that is, the virtual human face, expression, clothing, etc. are selected and matched by the user. CCTV host Nigmaiti also goes online as a "digital human".
According to statistics, this show has a total of 182 hot searches on the whole network, the total reading volume of the topic exceeds 4.5 billion, the total viewership reaches 159 million person-times, and the total network video playback volume exceeds 200 million. The volume reaches 18 million+. It can be seen from this that virtual people, as digital avatars, are loved by many people. In the case of a limited epidemic environment, online virtual concerts have also become a way for the public to immerse themselves in participating in evening parties.
"You, me and him" in the virtual world of the Metaverse, even if they are just avatars in the digital space, still need "story" to attract people. The virtual human industry is gradually developing under the integration of the underlying technologies of the Metaverse. Sutu Metaverse Research Institute believes that content is an important starting point for the development of the virtual human industry. Under the beautiful "skin" of virtual human beings, there is only a thriving content ecosystem. Support can make its "soul" full.
Edmund
