I released a new song with a 360° music video

I released a song like this.
The vocals are by the UTAU voicebank "☔". This time, I also used the COEIROINK version for some short spoken lines.
Also, since a separate version of the vocal bank is currently in production, I labeled this song as "Ver.UTAU". I plan to make a version with the new voicebank as well.
…Honestly, I wrote the song for that purpose, but I couldn't wait and released it anyway, haha.

What to do about the video?

When releasing on YouTube, you need a video, so I was wondering if there were any good ideas.
In the midst of that, I suddenly remembered I had bought a 360-degree camera.

So, I thought it might be interesting to make it a 360° video.

But when I checked if I could edit it with my current setup, I found that DaVinci Resolve supported it.

I was able to create it using Fusion, which I had barely touched before.
Using 3D-related nodes, I made the 360-degree footage the background by mapping it onto a sphere. I processed it quite heavily, but the original footage is of a park.

I used Planes for the floor and characters, and Cubes and various other things for the lyrics.
I placed them within the screen and it was finished.

It won't become a 360° video

I struggled with it for about an hour, but I managed to solve it.
I needed to add metadata to make it recognized as a 360° video.
To add it, I used the
Spatial Media Metadata Injector
https://github.com/google/spatial-media/releases
, and applying this to the video after exporting from DaVinci worked.

Additionally, there were various detailed rules, such as needing to set the rendering camera to "SphericalCamera" to get the correct source video, and the resolution needing to be 2:1.
Combining each asset was also quite tricky, with some cases where alpha worked and others where it didn't, and issues with stretching depending on the original video's aspect ratio.

I think the alpha issue changes depending on whether you specify the original image's alpha or transparency, but since I used a lot of templates for text output, those alpha processes were a black box and I couldn't do anything about them... I might have been able to remove them with luma keying or something.
Also, when I left areas without text empty, mysterious black holes appeared, so I solved this by placing tiny "・" characters throughout, which was a workaround that didn't quite make sense logically.
There might be a smarter way to do it.

Exporting is tough

The video was about 5 and a half minutes long, but it took 3 and a half hours to export.
I made one revision, so I spent a total of 7 hours.
I exported the first one while I was sleeping, so it was effectively zero cost, but when I saw it in the morning and thought, "I have to do this again...", it felt a bit heavy.
Since my main PC runs at full power, I can't do any other work. I also have to do my weekly podcast editing work, and although I thought, "Should I wait until before I go to sleep again...?", I decided I could do it once and exported it.

Although there are parts I want to fix, this kind of time cost is quite severe.

But it's fun

There are various things, but personally, I'm very satisfied.
I don't care about demand!

Oh, right, I bought an acrylic stand of "☔" herself, so I photographed that and used it.
I removed the background (I intentionally left the transparent acrylic part), made her jump around or spin to the music in YMM, changed her outfit, and exported it with a black background. On the DaVinci side, I removed the black with a luma key and added movement and rotation to achieve it.
So, visually it's completely flat, but I think it doesn't feel too out of place, partly because the acrylic stand-like quality remains.
It was good to have her walking around on the screen, as it added an accent to the space. It's an element that makes you want to move the screen.

I actually like the ceiling part too.
If you look straight up, it's a simple lyric video.

Released as a standard version on Niconico

Since Niconico Douga doesn't support VR videos, I didn't originally plan to release it there, but
I decided to release it as a standard video with added camera movement since I went to the trouble.

This is actually nice because I can add effects to it. I've applied vignette and film-look style effects.

I realized that unexpected horizontal expansion is possible

I originally bought the omnidirectional camera, the 4K VR360, because I wanted to do photogrammetry.
Like 3DGS and such.
On my YouTube channel, I introduce cameras, cars, music, other gadgets, and things I've experimented with, and since those genres are all different, I thought it was a bit messy. Although I ask people to subscribe, if they do, they'll get a lot of content they aren't interested in, and I've wondered about that, but above all, I've been doing it without worrying about it, prioritizing 'sharing the things I like' first.
That said, cars and cameras are relatively linked, so I was able to make a video showing what kind of lenses I use to film car videos.
Also, toy digital cameras and peripherals can be introduced as gadgets.
But well, only the music-related stuff felt out of place... That, at least, was something else entirely.

However, while there isn't really any crossover in terms of content this time either, I personally feel very happy that those 'things I like have intertwined' on my end.
The footage I used this time is heavily processed, and honestly, it might not have been much of a problem if I had used a normal video as the source material. But it was essential for the idea of 'Oh, I have that omnidirectional camera footage.'

I want to continue enjoying myself while touching on various things I like. The end.

Please give it a listen if you'd like.