This is the ultimate pngtuber app! Veadotube Mini is a wonderful Unity-made app with PNGtubers in mind, and is designed to help you make a PNGtuber without Discord. It works just like the Discord Streamkit that detects audio input and swaps between 2 image states (Idle versus Talking) but this program also has slots for other ‘states’. This is for different “speaking states” which are emotional states or poses your character will take, and have their own slots for Idle and Talking images! It is possible to make multiple Streamkit sources to toggle between ’emotional states’ with hotkeys etc, but Veadotube helps immensely with streamlining this process.
Veadotube is the ultimate answer to having a reactive png without discord, combined with easy state-swapping with hotkeys. Make your own live talksprite easily with a few png images!
Let’s take a look at the Veadotube Mini layout:
The left side has settings for the Microphone input, as well as a way to save your Veadotube project. Across the top, we can put in the main “Idle” and “Talking” images for the character, Blinking versions of those, and change “Motion” settings to add animation FX to the character. There are 7 Motions for Idle and Talking, as well as a “Jump on Talk” effect for a transition. The top right corner has options for Hotkeys to use with the “States” on the right. The top middle area is where we mainly work to add both Idle and Talking images, we cover the basics of this in our other pngtuber article.
Mainly add your Idling image, and separate Talking image into the two slots at the top. Blinking is optional, as you could animate that into your Idle or Talking art, but Veadotube Mini will handle that for you if you have the separate frames. The white squares in the top-middle area are for Motions, so your character can have a generated animation when they are idling or when they’re talking. This can be combined with States, so that you might have a Happy State that has a “bouncy” Motion so it’s always moving onscreen. This can save you time so you don’t need to animate the art or even code your own animations at all. It’s the ideal way to make a sound reactive png without Discord.
One not-speaking image, one speaking image per state. Just make sure they’re all the same size!
On the left side of the screen, watch the microphone inputs while testing with your microphone. If you have a lot of local noise, you might need to adjust the sensitivity. This part is much more personalized so you mainly just need to test your inputs!
Veadotube Mini is a great base, but its best benefit are the States that allow you to add other poses/ emotions and hotkey them. There is one main rule to start: Make sure all of your talksprite art is the same size!
As you begin to work with Veadotube Mini, prepare your images by making sure they are all the same proportionate sizing, and cropped to match! We can see in this example that the alien gets smaller when I activate the “Crying” state, so I need to crop the Crying .gif image to make sure it matches my Idling animation. Crop your images by lining up all of your layers on a Photoshop type program or photopea.com so every image has the same alignment. This can definitely take a bit of work to get them aligned exactly, but the “Motion” settings could help with animating your character and making the transition less obvious too.
The main talksprite is the torso, but with a transparent .png you can use photopea.com to place the shirt onto your base talksprite. If you make PNGtubers in Procreate, you might want to Duplicate your canvas so you have some copies in Stacks to make iterating easier! Planning your character art in layers always helps so that you can animate the pieces, as well as helps you plan for alternate States of your character emoting or posing. The final image needs to be one file, but using layers in your art program can give you a lot of control.
Te’anos on the left is demonstrating how the main talksprite can be accessorized with all sorts of fun things.
In closing, make sure your main talksprite is made of 2 same-sized images, either .png or .gif files. One for Idling, one for Talking. You can add other pairs of images as States, so make sure all of your art is the same size. Differences in image sizes will cause visual jitter issues. If you keep your poses simple (or maybe separate your character’s head as the talksprite?) you can get creative with OBS Sources and layer them to add outfits and other fun things to your PNGtuber. This is really the simplest way to make a reactive png without discord! Download Veadotube Mini here (donations recommended!)
