LIV For Beginners - What Is LIV?

If you’re new to the world of VR content creation, you may have heard of us before but maybe aren’t really sure what it is we do. Let this guide be your start into how we can make content creation easier (and more fun) for you!

What is LIV?

LIV is an all in one VR software for creators. With it you can record mixed reality, become a VR vtuber, see chat inside your headset, and stabilize those shaky first person headset views. LIV is completely free and you can snag it on Steam. 

Now let’s break down all these useful features:

Mixed Reality

Mixed reality is probably what most people think of when they think of the LIV app. If you've ever seen people streaming *inside* Beat Saber (Naysy, lstoast and tnybeats are good examples of this), there's a good chance they were using LIV. Mixed reality basically puts you inside a VR game using a camera or webcam. You will need to have a green screen setup or you can try some auto background remover tools. We cover a few options on this blog post here. 

Not every VR game can have this style of compositing however. If the game is on Steam, the game's developer would need to add the LIV SDK which is completely free - for Quest native games they would need to add Oculus's mixed reality capture capabilities which LIV's Quest solutions will then hook onto. If there's a game you want to have LIV support, let them know on their social media accounts!

If you have a Quest 2 headset you can either use the PCVR option to use a Steam game with LIV (connected to your PC using something like Airlink or Virtual desktop) or you can try Quest on PC which works with some Quest native games. We’ve broken down how this all works with a Quest 2 in this blog post here. 

You can find a full list of supported games here. 

Avatars

If you don't want to be your real physical self in VR, whether that's due to lacking space, equipment, or self esteem, LIV also offers an option to be represented as an avatar instead. This is a fantastic way for vtubers to get their personas into VR games.

LIV can use any avatar that is .VRM or .avatar file format. LIV also supports full body tracking with no limits to the number of trackers, and also supports Vive face trackers if you have one!

We use virtual cameras so you can make sure you can capture all your best angles. You can adjust them real time in space but also fine tune any adjustments and FOV with sliders.  

Similarly as with mixed reality, avatars won't work with every SteamVR game, the developers need to add the LIV SDK in order for it to work.

However, don't let that fact discourage you. If you don't want your avatar to necessarily be in the game but would like your avatar to be on a transparent source to be placed over the game layer, we offer that as well! This will work with any SteamVR game, with or without the LIV SDK.

StreamerKit

StreamerKit is LIV's solution to being able to read Twitch or Youtube live chat while in VR. Recieve alerts and notifications without ever having to take off your headset! Customize the chat window’s size, shape, color and position to your hearts content, and create profiles based on certain games so your chat window is where you want it every time.

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First Person Stabilizer

The first person stabilizer - while a little self explanatory, smoothes out shaky first person footage. 

Unlike mixed reality and avatars, it does not require developers to add an SDK in order to use it,  so it should work with most SteamVR games as long as they don't use EZ AntiCheat or OpenXR.

You have several settings to choose from such as dominant eye or both eye viewing options, window shape and resolution, roll lock (which keeps the horizon level), and of course you can customize the zoom and smoothing to your liking.

Developers

If you are a game developer interested in adding our SDK to your game, we have it available for both Unity and Unreal - and like the LIV app for creators, our SDK is completely free. You can find the download links for the SDKs as well as proper documentation here. 

Help Guides and Support

If you want detailed guides on setting up each individual feature, you can find absolutely everything you need right on our helpdesk at https://help.liv.tv/. Feel free to join our Discord as well in case you have any questions, comments, or feedback! 

Additionally, keep an eye out on our Youtube channel for more tutorials, and while you’re at it check out TougeVR and AtomBombBody’s tutorials as well! 

We’d love to see what you’re working on! Feel free to tag us over on Twitter or Tiktok and until then, LIV on creators!

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