Chapter 89: I’m not bad

After finishing the remote meeting with Kamishiro Rei, Jina immediately sat down in front of the monitor as soon as she took off the VR headset.

Her fingers were itching to implement the ideas that came to mind while talking with Rei right away.

“Anyway, Rei, she was a surprisingly meticulous person.”

While grumbling with a short sigh, a faint smile nevertheless hung on her lips.

For Jina, ‘meticulous’ was like a compliment.

After only hearing “Please do as Jina wishes,” receiving a detailed work guide for the first time in a while felt refreshing.

Of course, if it had been mere stubbornness, her brow would have furrowed, but proactive suggestions for a better stage were always welcome.

The more difficult, the more impossible it seemed, the more Jina’s heart fluttered.

Perhaps this was a developer’s instinct.

Jina first ran the VR editing tool and brought up the virtual space for the concert stage.

Then, she loaded a template avatar and made it float in the air.

“It would have been really great if I could have received Rei’s avatar 3D model separately.”

Unfortunately, she couldn’t receive the VRM file separately.

Naturally, security issues held it back.

Nise Live was extremely sensitive about providing the original avatar files of their affiliated VTubers to external freelancers.

Of course, not having the file doesn’t mean development is impossible.

If it doesn’t exist, she can just make a simple one.

Coincidentally, learning materials were abundant.

For a large corporation like Kamishiro Rei’s, imitating a simple model was no big deal.

After implementing the hair and the flowing celestial robes.

She began to simulate how the fluid should scatter with the wind to look realistic.

“This flight simulation will be a bit more difficult.”

The task of giving Soyul two wings wasn’t very difficult to implement.

It was just creating an ‘illusion’ by moving the surrounding background while keeping the avatar fixed. There was no need to track Soyul’s actions.

But Rei needed a production where she herself flew the stage and interacted with the audience.

This meant more complex and subtle movements had to be tracked and processed in real-time.

Jina adjusted the air resistance values in the physics engine that mimicked the avatar’s skeleton and muscles, repeating tests several times.

Each time a test was run, Rei’s avatar would sway in the wind, or the celestial robes would flutter unnaturally.

But Jina, rather than panicking, calmly readjusted the values as if she had expected this.

“When turning in mid-air, make the hair follow slightly later… and the clothes move a bit more softly…”

Playing the simulation once more, Rei’s avatar floated softly and elegantly in the air, moving vividly.

Movements impossible in the real world.

Were as natural as a dream in the virtual world.

“This should be enough for the initial version of the flight direction…”

Next was the individual viewpoint direction for the audience.

Jina had to implement technology that allowed each audience member to see different scenes depending on their angle and position looking at the stage, using holograms and a multi-camera system.

Initially, she tried to simply place a few cameras around the stage to check the view from the audience’s perspective.

Soon, a complex problem arose.

Because different videos had to be shown from multiple angles simultaneously, the computational load exploded.

It would be different if it were just broadcasting a pre-recorded video.

But in a live stage, latency was a critical issue.

“If I had processed it without thinking, the stage would have been properly noisy.”

After much thought, Jina divided the stage into multiple layers.

LOD (Level of Detail).

She solved the problem by rendering objects close to the audience in high resolution and distant objects in low resolution.

This method not only reduced the video’s computational load but also gave a three-dimensional and realistic effect, like a hologram.

Furthermore.

“Let’s make the audience feel like it’s a special direction just for them.”

Jina muttered to herself and stretched wide.

Her eyes and mind were heavy.

Checking the date and time on her smartphone, dozens of hours had passed by.

“This, I shouldn’t have said anything to Summer-nim.”

Jina slid down from the chair like slime and lay down on the spread-out futon.

“Keueok! M-my back…!”

She started thinking she should move to a place where she could at least put a bed in the room.

Before that… first, change the chair to a decent one.

---

After sleeping soundly for over half a day, Jina crawled back onto the chair like a zombie and sat in front of the monitor.

Now, it was time to work on the system that makes the stage effects react in real-time to Rei’s voice and the mood of the music.

Jina scraped together Rei’s past live videos one by one from YouTube and fan communities.

The quality of AI, as they say, depends on the amount of data it learns from.

In that respect, Rei was a VTuber optimized for Jina’s work style.

From the vast amount of collected data, Jina constructed an algorithm to analyze pitch and rhythm.

Music, in the end, could be considered a combination of waveforms, an expression of formulas.

Expressing that as a mathematical function was no big deal for Jina.

Based on the meticulously designed mathematical algorithm.

Jina densely connected various codes and effects so that the stage lighting and hologram direction would switch automatically.

Every time her fingers tapped the keyboard, spectacular effects unfolded on the screen.

In the soft humming parts, it evoked a gentle and lyrical atmosphere.

As the song gradually built up to its climax, the stage lights shone brightly, sparkling dazzlingly.

It was so vibrant, like watching a living, breathing stage.

The final task was one of the trickiest parts of a VR live concert: natural camera viewpoint transitions.

Of course, audience members could freely manipulate their viewpoints through their controllers, but for important scenes, movie-like camera work had to be provided automatically.

“I need to make sure all audience members don’t miss the key scenes.”

Jina contacted Se-yeon and secured a bird’s-eye view plan of the concert hall.

After extracting data on audience seat distribution and movement patterns.

Based on this, she implemented an AI-based auto-camera direction system.

It was a system that predicted the viewpoints of multiple audience members and automatically switched to the most interesting and dynamic scenes.

After that, through numerous tests, Jina finally succeeded in implementing smooth and natural viewpoint transitions.

The stage, directed like a scene from a movie under Jina’s AI camera direction system, maximized immersion.

“At this rate, I think I’ve roughly implemented what Rei-nim wanted…”

After completing the rough draft of the stage direction to show Rei.

Jina put on the VR headset and meticulously checked the overall stage composition once more.

Checking the result, Jina unknowingly let out a short whistle of admiration, hwiiyu-.

Rei’s avatar, flying around the celestial stage and gesturing.

The lights and holograms on stage, changing mesmerizingly with the music.

Even the camera angles, changing naturally following the audience’s gaze.

All of this harmonized perfectly, creating a fantastical and vivid experience.

“I should send it and then get some sleep.”

Jina sent the work results to Nise Live officials, including Rei and Se-yeon, then headed for the unmade futon.

It was exactly one week since her meeting with Rei.

---

Jina and Rei’s second meeting also took place in a private room in VR Chat.

‘The branch manager and everyone else who attended the meeting gave it rave reviews…’

Just a few hours ago, Jina had an in-person meeting with Nise Live’s art team.

There, everyone, including Se-yeon, was said to have applauded upon seeing the ‘rough draft’ Jina brought.

They apparently shed tears of emotion, saying they never expected such a complete work to be brought so quickly?

‘…I can’t believe it.’

Rei, insisting she had to check with her own eyes, had arranged a separate remote meeting.

Thus, summoning Jina to VR Chat, she displayed the stage draft Jina created in the virtual space and meticulously inspected every nook and cranny.

‘Is there perhaps even the smallest flaw?’

‘Is there anything I can nitpick?’

“…”

The stage, seemingly built on clouds, was dreamlike, mystical, and enchanting.

With a single gesture from Rei, shining particles scattered softly.

A light movement was followed by faint streaks of light.

Even when the celestial robes got tangled in her hair, instead of clipping, the sight of it scattering delicately made her unknowingly exclaim in admiration.

They said being in the VR space Jina created felt like dimension-hopping to another reality.

‘…The rumors were true.’

Rei bit her lip slightly.

This stage, honestly, was too good.

No, it was close to perfection, beyond what she had wanted.

‘Is this really a rough draft? Not already completed?’

Of course, since it was made hastily in a week, the term ‘rough draft’ probably wasn’t a lie.

But even considering that, the quality was substantial.

She hadn’t expected a designer named Jina to be able to perfectly digest her requests to this extent.

She accurately understood the mystical charm of the character Kamishiro Rei.

And even added details Rei herself hadn’t thought of.

However.

“Well… It’s n-not bad.”

One cannot simply reveal their true feelings.