DV8
A virtual K-pop-inspired girl group, performed live as a hologram with a synchronised light show at De Oosterpoort in Groningen.
A virtual band that only exists in Unreal Engine, brought to a real stage.
DV8 (pronounced “deviate”) is a virtual girl group inspired by K-pop. We made it in one semester as a Hanze Game Lab project in our second year, for SPOT Groningen’s CrossWise programme, which researches what live performance could look like when the artist is digital.
The band has four members: a main vocalist, a visual, a rapper and a dancer. Its message is simple: stay true to yourself, even if that means going against the norm.
How we made it
- 01
Music and sound
We came up with the genre mix ourselves and wrote and produced one original song for the performance, blending trap, hip-hop and dubstep to keep the energy high. The vocals were recorded in a studio session.
- 02
Characters and motion capture
The four members are Unreal Engine MetaHumans, each with a costume that matches their personality, like the rapper’s snake-inspired jacket and the vocalist’s wolf-themed fur. Animating a full dance by hand was not realistic, so we recorded the choreography with Xsens motion capture suits and retargeted it onto the characters. Every movement you see was performed by a real person.
- 03
Hologram and light show
With a tight budget and limited access to equipment, we built the hologram ourselves: a transparent screen on stage with the band projected onto it. Around it, we programmed a light show in grandMA3 that runs in sync with the music, so the projection and the stage lighting work as one performance.
The show
DV8 premiered at De Oosterpoort in Groningen on 2 June 2025 with one live song, for more than 100 visitors. The project won the award for Best Sound at the Hanze Game Lab and was covered by RTV Noord and SPOT Groningen. We made DV8 under our former team name, NeoSpectra, and are still developing it in the background.