The State of the Startup-Community in Osaka

Japanese startup culture and high-tech ventures are very much focused on Tokyo - as is the Japanese tech industry in general.
Almost all of the accelerator programs are run in Tokyo.
When your friends find a new job, it's in Tokyo.
When you find talent, they're living in Tokyo.
To talk to investors, you often have to go to Tokyo, which can be payed for either through an expensive Shinkansen ticket or a night of sleep on the 夜行-Bus.
But Osaka - or rather the general "Kansai" area including Kyoto and Kobe - is far from dead. It surely has it advantages to be here. And it's not just the food.

The annual Yodogawa firework.

Cost of doing business is lower, and since the community is smaller, it is also more closely connected. Often it is not even apparent which company people belong to, as they walk in and out of each others offices and freely recommend you to who would technically be their competitor.
The city actively tries to support new businesses to the point where you can get free consultation from a lawyer for hiring people.

A disproportional large amount of the talent are immigrants. This is often attributed to Japanese Culture. Foreigners find it harder to gain recognition in established Japanese corporations and the culture favors a stable job at a large corporation over taking chances and chasing dreams.
Then again, I often hear that Silicon Valley also has a large share of immigrants.
Maybe it is not that the county pushes people out of traditional employment roles, but rather that immigrants are more likely to be risk takers  and dream chasers - else they would have stayed at home.

The Osaka Innovation Hub many events, meet-ups and seminars to help budding entrepreneurs to get off the ground.

In December, it held the Regional Innovation Weekend Pitch Contest. MARUI participated in the contest and was thus chosen to represent Osaka in the Global Finals. Which, of course, was held in Tokyo again...

The biggest event though is Hack Osaka, which was held just last week.
It features keynote speeches, panel discussions, speed-dating with investors and booths to present your tech. It also attracts students from the area who are open to the idea to start working in a startup after graduating.
Of course there is a Pitch Contest and of course MARUI did it's best to represent Osaka.
We won the Bronze Price and were awarded a generous travel budget. Now we don't have to worry about financing our trips to Tokyo anymore.

Also, the world famous accelerator program 500StartUps has it's own chapter in Kobe, accepting promising ventures from the region. The next batch is scheduled to start in April. We're excited to see what new businesses will spring up in Kansai.

Starting a Company as a Foreign Student in Japan

Why not study in Japan? Sounds great, get excited, get there, get enrolled, get busy studying.

While already working on high-tech stuff and still having some freedom, why not turn the project into a company?
After graduation it will be too late, the market will have moved on, and hustle of finding a job / working will make it hard.
Besides: what a challenge! Starting a company as a foreign student* in Japan!

* (Important note: I am not an "exchange student" (as in "spending a semester abroad" or "enrolled at a university back home"), but a normal student who just happens to not be Japanese).

The most important question first:
Is it even possible to start a company when your visa status says "student"?
The answer... depends on who you ask.

My professor admits he doesn't know, but is likes the idea.
So he recommends me to our Universities Sankangaku-Renkei-Suishin-Honbu (産官学連携推進本部; lit: department for the promotion of industry-government-academia relations), which is supposed to assist students who want to bring their research to the marketplace.
The first thing that the person over there says to me is that he is not a lawyer and has no experience in starting companies. He was however so nice as to search the Internet for an answer and found that it is not possible. In order to get the right visa for starting a company, you must have an investment (in the form of a company) of at least 5 Million Yen... and two employees... in Japan.
I point out that it sounds strange that the requirement for starting a company should be to have a company. He agrees. That concludes the discussion.
Luckily I had done my homework on this (rather than doing classwork) and saw the misunderstanding ahead of time.

There is something in Japanese immigration law that is called a "Investor/Manager Visa" (投資経営ビザ Tōshi-Keiei-Visa).
Say: you have a company back home and want to start a branch in Japan - sooner or later you may want to visit your branch for a longer period of time. Then it would be nonsensical trying to employ yourself at your own branch just so you could get a visa. Instead, you get a Investor/Manager-Visa. However, you don't need the Investor-Manager-Visa to start a company. You can start it from abroad or while working or studying in Japan. If your company becomes large enough to support you, you can quit your work or studies, get a Investor/Manager-Visa, and become full-time CEO.

In Japan, there is a special type of lawyer called a Gyōsei-Shoshi (行政書士; Administrative Scrivener) who specializes in the paperwork necessary to deal with the Japanese bureaucracy. I was lucky to find one who specializes in both visa questions and founding companies.
He tells me that there is no law preventing me from just starting a company, but that I will be unable to sponsor visa applications. Meaning: I won't be able to employ other foreigners (unless they already have valid working visa), and if I don't manage to acquire a Manager/Investor-Visa myself before my student visa runs out, I'll have to leave Japan. So the race  is on to raise my company's value to 5 Million Yen and find two full-time employees!

NOT the office (sadly) - that comes next.

Most companies in Japan - even small family businesses - are actually corporations (株式会社 Kabushiki-Gaisha).There is such a thing as an LLC in Japanese law, called a Gōdō-Gaisha (合同会社). This only exists since 2006 and is not very popular yet, which sometimes makes it difficult to be taken seriously.
On the plus side, it is much easier and cheaper to create a Gōdō-Gaisha than a Kabushiki-Gaisha. You don't even need a notary.
Of course, this way it's harder to run fund raising campaigns, because you cannot just issue stocks to new investors.
Advantages and disadvantages....
But since I am self-financed (as a first-time wannabepreneur with no business background, the idea of being responsible for other peoples money gives me stomachaches), I opt for the Gōdō-Gaisha.


(There are of course other forms for companies in Japan, but these are more complicated and usually include some entity with unlimited liability - not what you want if you're a first time entrepreneur in a foreign country.)


The other thing I ask from the university support office is if (in case I could start a company) I would be allowed to use my dormitory address as company address.
I am not. *
I am also told to remove the sticker from my door.
I had put up a small plastic plate there that reads 社長室 ("President's office"). It was half a joke, and half a reminder for myself when I came home at night that there was still a dream to be chased and work to be done.
Luckily, I didn't have to pay for a new door, because the damage that the sticker had done to the door was considered acceptable by the university authorities.

* (This is only half the University's agenda. If you do have a house or apartment in Japan, it may be possible to start a company with that address, but not guaranteed. Sometimes, some prefectures will reject company registrations that use residential addresses - but I don't know any details other than that my University would kick me out if I tried to do it there.)

So I had to go find office space.
There are several options: virtual offices that only provide a mail address and a forwarded telephone number. Another option are shared office spaces.
At a startup conference in Osaka I meet some people who run a startup-hub.
The option of seeing Japanese startup culture live and having people with first hand experience to ask in times of trouble is exciting.
I put together a business plan (making up numbers about expected future sales for which I have no evidence goes completely against my scientific training) and pitch them my idea.
They accept!
Great!
Then they change their mind!
Not great!
It turns out their lawyer thinks it might be illegal for foreign students to start companies.
This again.
We agree to a second meeting, with their lawyer.
In preparation, I ask my Gyōsei-Shoshi to write down his point of view and which laws he thinks may apply - knowing I will be in no position to debate Japanese legal issues at the meeting.
So I just admit that I know nothing and hand the print-outs to their lawyer before the meeting.
He has time to study the details ahead of time, everyone can safe face and I get my desk at the startup-hub back.

Office, sweet office. Note the sticker from my dorm room wall found a new home in an attaché case - my mobile President's Office.

Traditionally, Japanese people are using name stamps instead of hand-written signatures to sign legal documents. Recently, this has become more relaxed and most foreigners can get through the legal affairs of living in Japan without having to get a name stamp.
Not so, if you want start a company. Then you need to get a stamp and register it at your city hall.
Luckily there are websites where you can just type in your name and get your stamp by mail (which is perfectly okay, since at this time the stamp is not registered to your name and thus not legally valid yet).
Two hours later, my phone rings. After biting through the fast-paced almost incomprehensibly polite formalities I understand that my name is too long for the stamp. Most Japanese names consist of two characters, some of three, mine of twelve. After some discussion we come to the conclusion that we can break my name and spell it over two lines. So, a long name is no hindrance to starting a company either.

I have to get a second stamp, which is then the official company seal.
Meaning anyone who has the stamp can now make legal contracts in the name of the company.
This is to equal parts awesome and disturbing.

My company's signature is so fat that I still can't find a nice box for it.

Now I need to get the capital in the company.
But all that money is in Europe, where we use the IBAN/SWIFT system.
The "I" in IBAN stands for "International".
It is not international.
At least in Japan, no bank provides IBAN accounts.
It takes me a couple of months to find out that I can actually send money to my Japanese Post Bank account by combining my Japanese account number with some magic number. However it is quite expensive to do so, partly because by now the Yen has risen to match the height of Mt. Fuji.

Time for another quirk in Japanese law to save the day:
There is no minimum requirement for capital.
Well, there is.
1 Yen.
So there isn't.
So I can just start the company with a small amount, and later increase the capital through a process called Zōshi (増資).
I am still praying for the yen to drop before I run out of cash.
That or profits.
Please, please, profits, please.

Now the company still needs a company bank account. I gather the required documents and go to Mitsubishi (yes, that's also a bank - and a big one). The woman looks at my ID.
"You are a student...?"
"Yes."
"But, then you can't do business."
"Yes, I can. See: here are the documents. I have a company and..."
"Please wait a second."
Japanese people have the unnerving quality of staying totally polite while innerly, they stop listening to your arguments, pleas, and curses.
So I go to Rakuten (the Japanese version of Amazon, and, yes, also a bank).
They also reject me.
I realize that I could use my Japanese drivers license as ID - which does not give away my visa status.
The next bank still turns me away. No explanation given.
The fourth bank accepts me. No explanation given.

(I hear that this is a recent phenomenon. Due to too many cases of mailbox-company money laundering frauds even Japanese people have trouble getting a bank account for a newly founded company that does not yet have any records of income or expenses to prove their business. It is sometimes advised to go to smaller, local banks or just run the company out of your personal bank account for a year or so. But this is hearsay.)

Not the goal - just the starting point of the real challenge.

The first thing last: I started over two years ahead of time with acquiring the language skills to start and run a company.
Already having conversational level Japanese, I set out to find the business phrases required.
While normal Japanese with it's different levels of politeness is challenging, business Japanese is a whole other Godzilla.
Most of the resources and translations I can find are Japanese-to-English.
I realize that my Business-English skills are lacking (I'm not a native English speaker, in case you haven't guessed yet from my no prefect writing, ja?).
I often have to translate them back to my native language.
I find that my business skills are lacking, period.
I spend hours on Japanese Wikipedia, decoding explanations and cramming whole phrases and text segments into my Anki Vocabulary Learning App.
I cram until I can quote reference legal documents from the top of my head.
Surprisingly, this makes for great conversational material, because most Japanese people (who would never dream of starting a company) know as little about this obscure corner of the Japanese language as I did.
My favorite is Teikan (定款 - articles of incorporation). No Japanese person (outside the legal and startup subcultures) that I ever met knew the word, nor the second character. Some outright claimed that it does not exist.


So, is it possible to start a company while studying in Japan?
Yes, it is.
It's not easy.
But worth it, maybe, or, I don't know, I'll tell you afterwards.



Max is founder and president of
www.MARUI-PlugIn.com - the VR PlugIn for Maya

VR Environment

Some of the feedback we received was that the plain white background that MARUI used as a VR environment was - well - boring at best, and hard to look at in some scenes.

So we added some new options to the settings dialog:


Not only can you now change the background color, you can also use a cube-map environment!

This has two advantages:
If you want to use MARUI for PreViz, you can load a cube-map of the final VR environment (game level etc) and get a better feeling on how the model might fit into the overall scene.
And if you don't, you can just pick a nice and relaxing environment to escape your office:

If you don't have any cube-map textures, you can find a lot of them at http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=Textures

Currently only .PNG images are supported (we're working on supporting more file formats), so you may have to convert the files manually.
Also take care that the image size must be a "power-of-two" number. Which means they could either be 512x512 pixels (low quality), 1024x1024 pixels, or 2048x2048 pixels (high quality). You could use higher resolutions, but in current-generation VR devices, you won't see a difference anymore.

We chose to label the textures "front", "up", "right", and so on to avoid confusion, but very often, cube-maps are named in a different convention, describing the directions as "positive Z" or "negative X".

Here is a quick guide on what the directions mean:

negX : Left
negY : Down (ie: the floor)
negZ : Front (ie: your view direction)
posX : Right
posY : Up (ie: the sky)
posZ : Back (ie. behind your back)

Take care that the files will only be loaded when you click the "Set CubeMap Files" button, and that the "Render CubeMap Environment" checkbox must be checked in order to see it.

You might want to save your VR settings by clicking the "Save" button at the bottom of the settings dialog. Otherwise you'll have to select the files again every time.

Now get the latest version at www.marui-plugin.com VR-PlugIn for Maya and try it out!

Mixed Reality: the "Recorder" feature in MARUI v1.4.4

I received some feedback about the last videos. (Thanks again!)
It seems that the "Artist's POV" makes it a bit hard to understand for people who are new to VR what is going on.
Instead, I was told, the first shot should illustrate the work environment by showing the Maya 3D scene in the real world.
I didn't want to "cheat" however, and just produce a fancy concept video. I only wanted to use what MARUI really can do.

Well, the solution was to just make MARUI do more.
So I implemented a "VR Camcorder" - a small module that allows recording videos from a different point of view than what the user sees, which can then just be inserted in a video recorded from that position.

The first attempt was still a bit crappy, but came in handy as release video for the new MARUI version 1.4.4.

The Recorder can be activated from the recording menu in the Maya shelf.
Use either the HMD or one of the controllers to set the Recorder to the position of the camera in reality.

As soon as you open the Recorder, it will start saving the video images as a PNG sequence.


To make good MixedReality videos, you'll need a bit of knowledge about your camera:
the so called "intrinsics" focal length and centroid.

The notation of the camera intrinsics is a bit different in MARUI:
they are relative to the width and height of the image.

So let's say your camera has 2/3" sensor (8.8mm x 6.6mm) and you record it with 15mm focal length, then fx would be 15mm / 8.8mm = 1.7 and fy = 15mm / 6.6mm = 2.27.

However, in most cases (unless you have quite professional gear) the effective focal length will probably be hard to calculate.

Rather you would use some camera calibration toolkit like MRPT, which will require you to take a series of pictures of a chessboard pattern and then calculate the focal length and centroid.

The output may look like this:

resolution=[1920 1080]
cx=970.40973
cy=512.52167
fx=1845.70793
fy=1861.81341

The numbers here are all in pixels, meaning the focal length is about 1845 pixels. It is also different horizontally (x) and vertically (y).

So for MARUI the resulting values are (approximately):

cx=970 / 1920 = 0.50
cy=512 / 1080 = 0.47
fx=1845 / 1920 = 0.96
fy=1861 / 1080 = 1.72

Now you can see why MARUI wants these parameters in such a strange format:

(1) MARUI started as an academic research project, where people are used to this calibration procedure.

(2) If you want to record at a higher or lower resolution, you would usually have to update the parameters (because the size of "a pixel" just changed). But since MARUI uses image-size relative values, you can just switch to 1280x720 or 960x540 without changing the values.


I'll try to make that easier to use in the future.

In the meantime: check out MARUI - Maya VR PlugIn.

More Character Animation in MARUI v1.4.3

Since the last video was not a very good illustration of how you can do 3D Character Animation in VR with MARUI, I tried to make a bit more elaborate animation.

(It actually was a lot of fun to do, but it reminded me that I didn't do any animation in years, so my skills have gotten from bad to worse...)

This also shows some of the changes in the new v1.4.3.
The Animation Menu and Time Slider are now combined, meaning you won't have to hold the "Shift" key anymore to set a keyframe.
It also shows the way of the motion to change the current frame, which should be very helpful for new users.

Making this also made me realize that it's important to know the current frame, so I quickly added that to the menu.
It's not in the v1.4.3 MARUI because it's a hack I just put in after the release.
It'll definitely be in the next release, but if you want early access, just send an email to contact@marui-plugin.com .

Character Animation in VR

One of the really cool things about MARUI is that you can take your existing character rig and start animating it in VR.

In order to properly test that, I went out and bought a rig... and it worked right out of the box in MARUI:

Video of my first attempt to animate this little rascal.
My animation skills suck, but you get the idea.

You can see how I use the left controller to flip through the frames,
and the animation menu (SHIFT + TIME buttons) to set keyframes and turn ghosting on or off.

I have yet to make the use of the animation menu a bit easier.

The real cool thing gets a bit lost in the video at the end:
because you now have two hands, you can still move objects while flipping through the frames. So if you have Auto-Keyframe enabled, you can make animations superfast: push the time with the left hand and push the object with the right. Done!

One thing I have to admit though: even though it is a low-poly rig, it dropped the framerate on my 2-year-old notebook to about 30. It's still usable, but I saw visible juddering in the Vive. Guess I have to optimize the code a bit... or finally buy "VR ready" hardware.

Give it a try on your own rig and let me know if you're having any troubles:
www.marui-plugin.com

New Blog

Hello World!

Welcome to the MARUI-PlugIn Blog.
Here, we will provide news, support information, and development stories on our VR Maya PlugIn, that brings your Autodesk Maya workflow into VR, with HTC Vive or Oculus Rift.

Stay tuned for updates.