New Song Released Using Beta Version of Miku’s English Voice Bank, “Nice Age”

 Posted by at 1:55 pm  English Miku, Hatsune Miku  8 Responses »
Jul 312012
 

Today on July 31st, just one month before Miku’s 5th anniversary, we’ve been treated to another song that’s been created using a beta version of Miku’s English voice bank. Because this is still the beta version, this does not reflect any changes that would be present in the finished product.

The song is titled “NICE AGE”, and comes from HMO a.k.a PAw Lab. The music was done by Yukihiro Takahashi / Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the video was done by y0c1e. There’s far too many other credits to list here, so be sure to read the video’s description here.

The song itself is honestly not too bad. I see many people complaining about the accent, but this is something that had been confirmed by Crypton as a feature well over a year ago at Anime Expo 2011. It’s an English voice bank coming from a Japanese company using a Japanese voice actor, so there will be some accent to the voice. I personally think it adds to her character.

My only real complaint is that the song could have been mastered better. The music suffers from some heavy crackling, static, and loss. This makes it hard to enjoy, and also makes it hard to hear Miku at all in some areas of the track.  Have a listen for yourself, and let me know what you think. Be sure to also express your thoughts on the video on youtube.

EDITED 8/10/2012: A newer version has been uploaded with better audio. This one doesn’t drown out the voice as much.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2zzy5-R5g8]

Augmented Reality Hatsune Miku Created Using Xbox Kinect

 Posted by at 1:50 am  Hatsune Miku, Other  7 Responses »
Jul 312012
 

I’m not really late to the party with this one, I just never thought of making a post about it when I first saw this (however, I did post about it two weeks ago here). But it’s exploding in popularity, even to the point where the official Hatsune Miku facebook page posted about it. It is rather neat though, so I’ll add it here for those of you who haven’t seen it yet. This will teach me a lesson to not let even seemingly small Vocaloid gadget videos slip by.

So a man in Japan has managed to create a system that projects a 3D image of Hatsune Miku onto the surrounding environment using a special pair of goggles equipped with a Kinect sensor. The system manages to work quite well at keeping track of Miku’s position, even when you’re not “facing” in her general direction. For the most part she seems to follow you around where ever you go, and doesn’t seem to do much interaction-wise. However, the creator did add in some reactions and physics for when you try to “touch” the character.

You can move her tie, pat on her head, and even try to grope her (but she wont be very pleased with this). The only downside to this system seems to be the somewhat poor image detail. This is likely attributed to either the Kinect’s low resolution camera, or the low processing power of the system that needed to be small enough to make it portable. Overall, it’s a very interesting idea that will likely lead other people trying to create their own versions of the mod.

So even though I’m horribly late with this one, enjoy the video below if you have not yet done so.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jpWiTVR0GA]