Written by: 0x21, Rhythm BlockBeats

HypeBear, this is probably the most ironic meme recently, even if you don't know this project, you should have seen this emoticon pack.

Not long ago, the blind box of the NFT project HypeBearClub was opened, the quality was far below expectations, and the community was wailing. Among them, HypeBear, numbered #3436, became the leader. Because of its "weird" appearance, it was directly made into an emoticon by the community .

Since the second half of last year, 3D NFT has become a hot spot. After experiencing Loot, NFT pledge mining and other games, MekaVerse led the upsurge of 3D avatars. Clone X and Prime Ape Planet fueled the flames and put the word "exquisite" In front of many NFT players. At that time, everyone seemed to have felt that 3D avatars were gradually opening the door to the Metaverse.

But now? The 3D NFT market is miserable. Bored Bunny ran away before the public sale, OxyaOriginProject was called "photo cheating" by players, and Monster Ape Club "Blizzard Monkey" released "shocking" pictures. Even the recognized "dark horse" HAPE's floor price was "cut in half" . In addition to Clone X, which is supported by RTFKT and Nike, and has successfully broken through the "10E" mark in the current market, other 3D projects, no matter whether they are sophisticated or not, seem to be "not one that can be played."

In terms of picture quality alone, 3D is an advancement of 2D, but why is there no market for 3D NFT? Or, why don't we like 3D avatars?

Sophistication and Personality

Tracing the history of surfing the Internet, from looking for "convergence" in chat rooms at the turn of the millennium to "seeking differences" on social platforms today, there are objective factors of rapid social development and psychological reasons for ideology to encourage individual independence . On each of our avatars, the image business cards in this social network reflect the changes in social needs and self-expression in a certain sense.

20 years ago, I was still a pixel penguin of OICQ. I dialed up the Internet for half an hour, and all I saw were the same avatars as myself. text), change the color (for a member to become distinguished red), the request is "This is me, don't admit it wrong."

Behind dozens of simple avatars are hundreds of millions of netizens. Obviously, this can no longer meet the needs of all GGMMs. What follows is the long-awaited custom avatar and QQ show. Everyone needs these rare accessories to define themselves and show their uniqueness in the virtual world.

The NFT avatar is both a self-endorsement and an asset endorsement. On the social level, it actually meets our current requirements. It not only "expresses self" but is not completely real, it not only shows assets but does not "bluff the market" to attract people's suspicion. Suddenly, the fact that spending money can have both worlds makes NFT avatars the best choice for upstarts.

But the exquisite 3D avatar seems to deviate from the original intention of the NFT avatar.

Light and shadow and "texture"

3D graphics can easily simulate real lighting and scenes because of physically based lights and materials. Therefore, many images that are closer to reality can also be created. Some 3D models based on engine rendering, whether it is a cartoon image or an anthropomorphic image, the most attractive thing is the texture brought by light, shadow and material. At the same time, this texture has become a double-edged sword, which can be seen at a glance. .

The huge contrast between HypeBearClub before and after opening the box makes it reasonable for the price to plummet, but the quality and details of C01 as the "king of introversion" are really amazing, and in a community with 200,000 people, the popularity is comparable to 3D orangutan HAPE, but it is unavoidable The price fell off a cliff after opening the box.

C01 presents a very high level of 3D, and the texture of the character's skin can be said to be difficult to distinguish between real and fake. But the same problem as MekaVerse reappears. All the NFTs in the series are highly homogeneous. It is difficult for players to find a real "rare one" from these characters, but each one is extremely sophisticated. Such NFTs are not so much "avatars". ”, which is actually more like a “photograph”.

The process of generating 3D avatars is much more difficult than that of 2D, and the generation method is not mature. In the general 2D avatar NFT, only the overall effect needs to be considered during the generation process, and different attributes are made according to the original position, such as eyes, mouth, hairstyle, clothes, etc. That is to say, the random combination of these elements determines the degree of differentiation of 2D avatars.

In the process of generating 3D images, overall factors must be considered. A character's facial muscles, line outlines and facial features are strictly bound together. The single rendered eyes and mouth are not suitable for any facial basis. Therefore, the 3D avatars that seem to be randomly generated are actually very few factors that can be truly random. Because facial production is the most time-consuming in the production of the whole character.

Some project parties eager to release can only lock the distinction in the clothes and accessories of the characters, or some elements that are easy to change but do not affect the main body. This has resulted in a lot of 3D NFT avatars, with only minor changes in the faces of the characters, and the distinction is completely reflected by clothes or props. In this way, the whole series will basically give players a feeling of "changing different clothes with the same image". The lack of uniqueness naturally makes players lose their enthusiasm for being an avatar.

flaws and strengths

At the moment when NFT projects are flourishing, 3D avatars have become an attempt and an exploration. We seem to have seen the impact on traditional painting in the era when the camera was just popularized. In the end, both items survived, and the paintings became more and more real, and makeup was required before taking pictures.

Avatars are one of the social capitals of people today, and every player hopes to show their personality, attitude, and value as much as possible in the avatar frame that occupies less than one-tenth of the page. Twitter also recently opened the NFT avatar authentication function of the "Hexagonal Photo Frame" for members of Twitter Blue. In addition to a certification, distinctive features are the basic guarantee for a "valuable" NFT avatar.

image description

(Enlarged and reduced C-01)

The attention of the human eye is from point to surface and then point. The 3D image is too complicated and detailed. It is difficult for the human eye to find the focus at the first time. The attention slips from the smooth surface, and the finger slides to the "next". In the 2D image, it is simple and intuitive, but there are defects, as if drawn by hand, and hand made is more time-consuming. In the manufacturing industry, this represents the length of labor time, the intention of the project party, and the small The artistic value of the avatar, or the use value is even higher, and hand made also represents defects, such as misaligned grids, exaggerated necklaces and small bodies, what kind of elements in the picture are formed by the "change" and "contrast" a unique collision.

3D is not wrong, nor is it ugly, but 2D avatars and 3D avatars have different functions at the moment. The traditional social media of Web2.0 is still the mainstream channel for people to voice their voices. SandBox and Decentraland are still unable to support high-precision real-time rendering of models. Ar and VR are still popularizing visions to the public. The lag of hardware and software makes it inappropriate for 3D NFT avatars to be "hot", but this is also a part of the process of flourishing in the NFT market. With the development of technology, from social capital to metaverse identity may be the best destination for 3D NFT .