Financial Associated Press | Blockchain Daily (Beijing, special author Yang Bing) news, in 2021, the meta-universe is on fire, the fire is a mess. From the listing of Robles at the beginning of the year, to byte's acquisition of VR company Pico in August, to Facebook's name change, the "frequent attacks" of big factories have continuously ignited the fire of the virtual economy to new heights.
As one of the core elements of the virtual economy, virtual people are even more popular. Film and television, public relations, short video, real estate and other companies have launched virtual people, and a kind of "full of virtual people" has emerged for a time.
However, virtual people are not the product of the past year or two.
In 1982, Lin Mingmei, the heroine of the animation work "Timeless Fortress", became the world's first virtual idol with her moving singing voice and pure real person setting, kicking off the prelude to the virtual person on the historical stage.
After that, in 2007, Chuyin Future was born under the Vocaloid speech synthesis technology, the rap superstar Tupac Music Festival in 2012 "resurrection", and the 2013 Jay Chou and "Teresa Teng" concert on the same stage... all let everyone witness the style of virtual people.
However, the bustle of the past was limited to the ornamental nature of technology and did not really catch fire. Until the moment when the metaverse exploded, the virtual person had more ways to open.
01 The three major genres of virtual people
Nowadays, whether it is CCTV director Xiao C, Tsinghua virtual college student Hua Zhibing, or virtual beauty talent Liu Yexi... Virtual people are constantly emerging.
There have been many genres around virtual people. For example, the functional school that takes the functional and practical route, such as Xiao C and Hua Zhibing, and then such as the fen faction, like di li reba's virtual image Di Li Lengba, Huang Zitao's virtual image Taosman and so on.
The most popular virtual people are the following three factions:
First, the virtual person who takes the fashionista route - fashion faction
This genre is the most popular and socially concerned genre of virtual people. At present, due to its high-simulation and fashionable characteristics, it is easier to form social influence, so it is also the most favored by brand parties. Ling, who cooperates with Tissot watches and Nesher's tea, and IMMA, which appears on Watson's drinks, are typical representatives of this genre.
In addition, there are AYAYI, Jihara Mi, Aki, etc., as shown below:
AYAYI is Ali's number one digital employee, and after releasing the NFT of the Mid-Autumn Festival Universe, it "appeared" in the Alipay Tiger Year Collection And Blessing Event. Jiyuanmei has carried out image cooperation with brands such as Mengniu yogurt and Heytea. Ah Xi cooperated with the German watch NOMOS and Zhong Xuegao.
Second, the virtual people who take the singing and dancing route - the song and dance school
Speaking of the Song and Dance School, it is necessary to mention Luo Tianyi. Luo Tianyi has done a lot of development and optimization in song and dance, and is still among the leaders in China.
In addition, there is also the virtual spokesperson of QQ Dance, Star Pupil. Star Pupil can be said to be the most mature virtual idol IP in China alongside Luo Tianyi, and has also accumulated quite a lot of popularity.
(Left Luo Tianyi, Right Star Dawn)
This wave of virtual idols of the song and dance school that has arisen from Japan's Hatsune Mirai and Trip Love is developing rapidly and evolving in China, and there is a high probability that there will be more moving song and dance schools in the future.
Third, the virtual person who takes the image + story + industrial route - the short drama school
In 2021, douyin rose by 2.3 million fans in 3 days, and Liu Yexi, who debuted at the peak, is the representative of this type of virtual person. It is more like a character coming out of the play, whether it is the scene setting, or the shape, makeup, it is more designed.
In a two-minute video by Liu Yexi, we see the ceiling of TikTok content. It has a cinematic picture texture, plot, post-effects, and introduces beauty elements and metaverse concepts, perfectly showing the collision of reality and science fiction. After watching her videos, some beauty artists even called out that they didn't want to do makeup anymore.
It is undeniable that Liu Yexi is one of the very high-quality virtual characters that can be seen on the Internet in recent years.
02 Virtual people are in high demand for occupations
How to create a high-quality virtual person?
The production of virtual people involves rendering modeling, motion capture surface capture, AI technology, XR equipment manufacturers and other technical parties, and their technical implementation degree is directly related to the quality of virtual people. If it is too false, it lacks the human soul, which is an indirect collapse.
The virtual person stands in front of the stage brightly, but the pillar behind the stage is the key.
However, the consolidation of technical barriers to competition is inseparable from the input of a large amount of upfront costs. It is understood that the capital investment of a 3D virtual idol can reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan. Ordinary small enterprises generally do not have such strong funds, in comparison, the head of the Internet enterprises than small and medium-sized technology manufacturers have more capital and resource advantages, with more possibilities.
Although the virtual person industry has developed to a certain extent in the past two years, the current situation is that even if manufacturers are willing to invest money, they are helpless to lack talent. Not long ago, CCTV Finance reported that with the popularity of the concept of virtual people, software and hardware engineers in related fields have become hot jobs.
"Blockchain Daily" reporter looked at the relevant data of the recruitment platform and found that the general salary of virtual human software and hardware engineers is 50-80K/month (14 salaries), and some are as high as 60-90K/month (14 salaries). The salary of the position related to the virtual person is roughly between 12-110K/month, of which the minimum operation of the virtual person with no experience requirement is 12-20K/month (13 salary), while the virtual person technical expert can reach a maximum of 80-110K/month (16 salary).
According to public information, there is also a huge gap in technical and artistic talents related to virtual people. For example, animators, three-dimensional character binding engineers, special effects designers, etc., such positions require both understanding of technology and art, and at the same time being able to communicate and collaborate with programmers to solve technical problems in art, with salaries ranging from 20,000 to millions per year.
It really responds to that sentence, as long as you have talent, money is not a problem!
In addition to these relatively "pre-existing" professions mentioned above, there is one to mention a "icing on the cake" professional role around the virtual person - face pincher.
In some popular games, there is a function to pinch the face of the character. In the face pinching system, the details of the character's face and body can be adjusted; thus, the face pincher came into being. These face pinchers combine technology and art skills, and are also rare talents.
In the past, face pinchers existed more in large-scale online games, but with the rise of the metaverse, face pinchers have more room to play and gradually become the most needed profession in the virtual world. Because it is more difficult to change your own appearance in the real world, customizing a perfect image for yourself in the virtual world of "appearance is justice" is the yearning of every player, especially the current main consumer force - Generation Z.
At present, around the popular games, the original face pinch price ranges from 10-100 yuan. If it is a customized face pinch, the selling price is about 800-2000 yuan, depending on the difficulty requirements. Related reports show that some high-paid part-time face pinchers earn nearly 45,000 yuan a month.
Recently, the face pincher has been successfully selected as one of the top ten unpopular professions in 2021, which has attracted more and more attention. (PS: If you have a passion for this, maybe a face pincher is a better career direction.) ）
03 The virtual people of the big factory move frequently
The virtual person has just arrived, and the runner has already taken the lead. According to tianyancha data, there are more than 288,000 related enterprises in the mainland that are "virtual people" and "digital people". From 2016 to 2020, the compound growth rate of newly registered enterprises in 5 years was nearly 60%, and the industry entered an explosive period.
Among them, there are Internet head enterprises with a keen sense of smell, on the one hand, they create their own virtual people related platforms, increase the introduction of virtual people production technology team talents, on the other hand, they are also constantly increasing the capital layout.
Not long ago, Baidu released the digital human platform - Baidu Intelligent Yunxiling, hoping that in the past two years, through the opening of Baidu Intelligent Yunxiling Platform, everyone can achieve digital human freedom.
ByteDance launched the immersive virtual social platform Pixsoul, and also invested in the company that owns the copyright of the virtual idol group A-SOUL, and acquired the VR startup Pico to lay out the upstream and downstream of AI virtual interaction. In January 2022, ByteDance participated in the angel round financing of Hangzhou LiWeike Technology Co., Ltd., with an exclusive investment of tens of millions of yuan.
For the layout of virtual people, NetEase's strength is not only very large, but also the layout is quite extensive. NetEase Capital, a subsidiary of NetEase, has a number of virtual person-related investments from 2019 to 2021.
In 2021 alone, NetEase participated in 5 financing events related to virtual human company, including avatar technology company Genies, meta-universe social platform Imvu, Maestro, a live broadcasting company that creates virtual interactive concerts, Beijing Red Cotton Xiaoice Technology Co., Ltd., the parent company of "Microsoft Xiaoice", and Sub-World Culture, a virtual human ecology company.
NetEase's investment can be said to run through the entire virtual person industry chain, involving both front-end research and development scenarios and extending to virtual human terminal business scenarios. Can't help but sigh, NetEase this chess game is quite large.
In addition, Internet companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and iFLYTEK are also actively deploying, racing in all aspects of technology and industry chain ecology.
04 Conclusion
The year 2021 is known as the meta-universe year.
This year, the role of Gen Z consumers who grew up with the Internet was highlighted, and their new needs provided new markets and new occupations. Life in the metaverse is rich and colorful.
This year, large factories and small factories competed on the same stage, intending to "attack the pool" in the world of the metaverse.
This year, with the explosion of the meta-universe, it also gave birth to the sub-industry of virtual people, so that various virtual images were active in front of the stage.
In any case, we saw a group of people on stage and party together. There are real people, there are virtual people, there are workers with a skill, and there are also big factories that are thirsty for talents. Together, everyone showed the infinite charm of the intertwining of virtual and reality, and achieved a "utopian" victory.
Looking forward to the future, as a virtual human track for meta-universe infrastructure, the growth space has left a lot of imagination for the outside world. A curtain has slowly opened around virtual human luck. Wonderful follow-up