Japanese developer Cybernoids has been working on some brilliant new graphics technology in the form of Live2D Euclid.

Featured above, you can view a walkthrough demo of the tech via DigInfo. While their graphics engine was first developed back in 2009, the latest addition to the graphics suite is Live2D Euclid, which enables the artists to take a 2D image and render it fully in 3D space.

The key thing here is that the original 2D artwork isn’t being changed at all, it’s simply broken up into pieces that are rendered in 3D space. While games and graphics technology previously would be made up of polygons that tried to look similar to 2D artwork, this takes the actual 2D art and makes it into 3D visuals.

Tetsuya Nakajo, Live2D’s CEO talked up the software in the above video:

“Imaginary, creative ideas unique to 2D, where you can draw freely, couldn’t be reproduced in 3D. For example, you couldn’t make the corners of Astro Boy’s hair look good from all angles. My vision is to make Live2D into a tool that enables even movies to incorporate things that couldn’t easily be done by hand or in 3D, like the ink-drawing touches of the manga Vagabond.”

You can see the difference from their earlier versions of Live2D:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixVANQPzhmY

Originally, Live2D could only do 30-degree viewing, but with Live2D Euclid you can now view the 2D artwork at a full 360-degrees. The goal is to have not only a full horizontal viewing ability, but having full vertical viewing as well, providing a full range of viewing.

As for the implementation of the Live2D Euclid technology, you’ve already seen it in various games and transmedia. Cybernoids has contributed to Hatsune Miku projects before, as well as some of Bandai Namco’s releases. You can view an entire list of the projects they’ve collaborated on here, as well as view more information for Live2D over on their official website.