normalizing assets

lots of nuance + complexity, but we're on it

to render BYONFT emotes, we need to normalize input assets so After Effects can process them consistently and effectively. prior to official integrations, we have to do lots of magic for “flat” assets, like Axies, to normalize (will bore you another time/blog post with the details there)…

Neo Tokyo Outer Citizens are an interesting proof of concept proving out the potential of layered artwork. these NFTs are specifically distributed as layers – seen when loading any NTOC on opensea (here for example). not only was this input process worth sorting out for the sake of pitching our partnership to Neo Tokyo, but it also has laid the groundwork for moving forward with other collections

most collections do not make their input layers publicly available, yet nearly all popular NFT PFP collections were created with some sort of asset generation script like HashLips. through official partnerships and integrations with these collections, we hope to gain access to their layered artwork – which would enable us to specifically prep inputs for our BYONFT emotes to make them look as polished as possible

seen in our initial three of BYONFT emote concepts, each requires a different set of inputs. “Yee” removes the standard mouth so the dinosaur mouth fits better; “Party Parrot” needs the weapon and the head loaded separate than the body; “Elmo Fire” attempts to separate the arms from the body (although “arms” are not an official layer available). all three remove the background

to make matters more complex, not all NTOCs have the same layer types, or even count of layers – and some will have multiple layers for the same category (example: two weapon layers; one falling behind the body, one falling in front of the hand)

the flow chart below (click to enlarge) shows the actual implementation identified to effectively normalize this vast collection in a predictable and usable way. you can check out this functionality in our Discord server by using our bot to attach any NTOC to one-of-a-kind generated BYONFT emotes, live now!