Just entering 2022, the virtual person industry ushered in the first wave of boom. Jiyuan Mei, Liu Yexi, LingLing, AYAYI, A-SOUL, XiaoYi, Xiaoice and other avatars emerge in an endless stream, and investment institutions and Internet manufacturers have also invested in the bidding.
What can a virtual person do? It is no exaggeration to say that it is sufficient to perform all the functions of real influencers and celebrities. Take photos, sing and dance, shoot short videos, live streaming, brand endorsements... The image of the second dimension has been smoothly integrated into the entertainment scene of the third dimension. According to data from the Head Leopard Research Institute, the current virtual digital human market size has exceeded 200 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 270.3 billion yuan by 2030.
The industry is rapidly moving towards specialization. In order to make better use of entertainment resources for virtual people, MCN companies for virtual people have emerged.
Snow Claw Technology is a company focusing on the incubation of virtual human IP, which has established the Palm World Virtual Lab (iLab). Palm Labs is a digital KOL brokerage for virtual IP, known as the "MCN Company of Virtual People".
Artists in the palm of the hand include Long Tao Entertainment's virtual trainee SALUTE Serru; the "resurrection window puppet", the girl Gina who is engaged in fashion; the dark country tide rock virtual band 844; the forest girl Ou Xin from nature; the blue girl An Hai Lika from the ocean; and the cargo master Gao Tiancang inspired by the Eight Commandments of pigs.
AnhaiLika
Europa Core
Xu Yihong, CTO of Snow Claw Technology, introduced that these roles are all supported by Snow Claw Technology in terms of technology and design, and the Palm Laboratory is responsible for all operations, promotion and business operations.
Take the hyper-realistic virtual person Gina, for example, her character is an "abandoned window puppet", who entered the fashion circle after being awakened and became a trend matcher. The Palm Lab adds so much detail to her to give her a unique personality. Because the window model changes every week, Gina's memory is only seven days. Gina also has a slightly longer reflex arc, a peculiar physique that is prone to dislocation, complete desensitization to discharge, etc., all of which are derived from her innate puppet properties. Xu Yihong said.
Gina
Born as a window model, Gina has a natural commercial scene. In the past two months, Gina has cooperated with Bailian and Vanke, and this avatar shuttles between Bailian Life Plaza and Vanke Plaza's fashion and clothing stores, bringing a unique sense of technology and futurism to the offline consumption scene.
Gina at Bailian
Persona and beauty are important, but that alone is not enough. Xu Yihong introduced that from a technical point of view, Gina is a realistic style virtual KOL of true 3D technology, focusing on the quality of CG special effects movies through full 3D characters in short videos. It is not a realistic 3D head changing technology that is popular on the market.
"Now many popular virtual people use 'head-changing technology', and if people wear VR devices to see them in the future, they can only see one head and no body." Xu Yihong said. "But Gina's skeletal muscle binding is completely done in 3D models, so it's also a complete person in future 3D scenes."
In terms of efficiency, a Gina social media content production usually includes the shooting of live-action materials, the production of 3D software, the fusion of animations, and the final rendering of the film. Gina's production team was able to compress the process to less than two weeks.
Snow Claw Technology hopes to package this set of production processes and provide services to customers as a digital human operation platform. This is also another piece of Snow Claw's business in addition to MCN – based on the Daber digital human system to provide SaaS services to enterprises that want to develop their own virtual people. The Daber platform can not only customize the intelligent avatar, but also provide data analysis and marketing services to help enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Snow Claw Technology was established in 2018, and has achieved profitability in the digital human business in 2021, and will deepen the commercial operation of its virtual MCN and improve the industrial service capabilities of the digital human middle office this year. At present, the team has about 70 people, mainly technical and operational personnel.