Megurine Luka v4x's Sonicwire page uses an early Piapro v4x picture?

[Bookworm2]

I was looking at Luka v4x's Sonicwire page for a refresher on exactly what her E.V.E.C colors do, and I noticed something really interesting. About halfway through the page, there's a short blurb about Piapro Studio with a picture of Luka v4x in the editor next to it. But looking closer at the picture, there's a few things off about it that are big enough that I think it might be an early version of both the editor and Luka v4x. I'll list what I found below.

1. The E.V.E.C color selection box doesn't have a blue OK box or a grey CANCEL box
2. There's a box with a speaker symbol next to the auto button that's clicked that doesn't appear in the final
3. There doesn't seem to be an option to render the pitch
4. Adding to the above, the bar to show rendered pitch, play sample sound, show E.V.E.C marks, and display note lyrics/phonemes isn't there
5. PIT and PBS are part of the main parameters box, instead of being another box with Pitch Snap Mode
6. I don't see the options for XSY or GWL
7. There's a greyed-out option for a box I can't read that I don't recognize
8. There's no Line Tool or Curve Tool buttons on the toolbar
9. The Consonant Extension buttons look different
10. There's no wallpaper settings button on the bottom right
11. The art for the singer is the one used for English, despite the track being in Japanese
12. The singer's name is "Luka_V3_Power", despite Luka not getting a V3 nor a Power bank
13. In the top left, it says "Piapro Studio" instead of "Piapro Studio for v4x"
14. The entire UI is a darker color, like when the track isn't being used

And that's it! Let me know if you found anything else, but I couldn't.

 

[MagicalMiku]

Good findings! I think it's a screenshot from early version of both Luka and Piapro Studio. I have Miku V4X Beta ver. (early access), and if I remember correctly, that interface is similar. Even for NT, if you compare early NT version and NT2, there are many interesting differences in terms of features available on screen

 

[IO+]

I think what they show in the website is the early version of the piapro studio and Megurine Luka V3 they do a major change during transition to NT
Megurine Luka V3 do actually "exist" There was supposed to be a Megurine Luka V3, and Crypton even launched a preliminary V3 website back in 2014. The planned V3 was advertised with improved quality and several new vocal styles. It was a real project, had promotional material, and got pretty far into development. The twist is that Luka V3 was never actually released. During development, Yamaha announced VOCALOID4, and Crypton decided to move the project to the newer engine instead. The result became Megurine Luka V4X, released in 2015. She just got caught in the V3 → V4 transition and died before release. So she get Y E E T E D from V2 straight to V4 because of that.

So Luka's release history is basically
Megurine Luka V2 (2009) She was born
Megurine Luka V3 (2014) got caught in the V3 to V4 transition and she didn't make it.
Megurine Luka V4 (2015) V2 > V4
Megurine Luka SP (2024) Get Mikuify

There are actually a surprising number of breadcrumbs about the cancelled Luka V3, even though Crypton never officially released it. The most interesting part is that Luka V3 seems to have been much more ambitious than the V4X we eventually got.
The temporary V3 product page listed:
- Japanese (Native)
- Power
- Soft
- Cute
- Whisper
- Closed
- English
That's 7 voicebanks in total.

For comparison, V4X eventually shipped with:
- Japanese Hard
- Japanese Soft
- English Straight
- English Soft
Plus EVEC gimmick.

So V3 wasn't just a minor update. It was shaping up to be a huge expansion of Luka's tonal range. Later comments from Crypton's Wataru Sasaki suggested that "Closed" sounded somewhat similar to the later "Dark" voice color. Nobody outside Crypton seems to have heard a public demo. And that's something i tried to re-create what Luka dark voice "should" sound like.

What Crypton said about the new recording.
The V3 announcement page mentioned several improvements:
- Higher notes were less strained. (pitch compression)
- The "tight throat" quality of V2 was reduced.
- The voice was more expressive.
- Vocal tension was adjusted for greater realism.

If you've used Luka V2, this makes perfect sense. V2 Luka is beloved, but she can sound:
- tight
- nasal
- slightly choked at high pitches (Again. pitch compression)
especially compared to newer Crypton vocals.
It sounds like V3 was trying to preserve Luka's identity while fixing those weaknesses.

The lost Append connection
Before V3, Luka was actually supposed to receive a VOCALOID2 Append package.
One known Append voice was Soft, and beta versions appeared in promotional material years before V4X existed. Eventually the entire Append project was abandoned and folded into V3 development. Then V3 itself got abandoned in favor of V4.
So the timeline was roughly:
Luka Append (cancelled)> Luka V3 (cancelled)> Luka V4X (released)

A fascinating comment from Crypton
In late 2013, Wataru Sasaki described three major vocal directions being worked on
- a calm standard vocal
- a flashy vocal
- a breathier, sexy vocal
with the goal of creating a singer with a wide tonal range.

Fans generally speculate these correspond to some combination of
- Native
- Power/Cute
- Whisper
but Crypton never confirmed exactly which was which.

My info may or may not correct, so take it with a bag of salt.

 

[Bookworm2]

Oh, that's actually really interesting! I knew that Luka has a planned V3 update and that it got cancelled but had a website up, but that's a lot of really good information! Looking at the screenshot now, the editor does look a lot more like what Piapro V3 looks like than what v4x looks like. But the most confusing part to me is that the screenshot clearly shows off the E.V.E.C functions on all of the notes and even has the E.V.E.C color selection window open, but you're right that it's probably with V3. And that leaves me with one question. When does it take place? It's using what looks like early Luka v4x because of the E.V.E.C colors and the art used in the singer profile, but the singer label being V3 and it using the V3 version of the editor is really confusing. Maybe they were planning to add E.V.E.C in the V3 release, and repurposed it for v4x? I don't know...