To take advantage of modern 3D hardware acceleration, many two-dimensional games are actually rendered in 3D using an orthogonal camera and textured quads — flat rectangles with an image on top. Live2D, from Japanese company Cybernoids, takes this process a step further by allowing artists to use 2D images — say from anime — and transform them into 3D recreations.
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as throwing a 2D image into the system — developed by Japanese tech firm Cybernoids — and waiting patiently for the results. As the video above shows, the user must map the flat images onto a mesh, much like a traditional 3D artist would align texture UVs on a model.
