Avatar Creation Process

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The creation of an avatar is a creative process that takes in skills from a number of tools and there are a significant amount of caveats and things to keep in mind. Hopefully this page will outline the overall process, and highlight specifics that can be taken in a bit more modularly, and with an easier way to keep up to date.

The bones of this will be similar to the Tupper Megatutorial, which outlines the process from an mmd download to uploading to VRChat. It is now horrifically out of date but probably about 70% of the concepts and skills still apply even if you're not even using an MMD.

Model 'creation' is usually the following process:

  1. Find a base model to start with.
  2. Load this into Blender
  3. Clean and modify the model to work with VRChat/Unity
  4. Export this model
  5. Load this into Unity
  6. Configure and setup to be compatible with VRChat
  7. Upload to VRChat and use

The overall flow is outlined here, but for a more detailed video tutorial set, check out Avatar_Hypertutorial, a kind of megatutorial sequel.

Find a Base Model

Back in the day, MMDs (Nippon anime models made for anime dancing) were the main source of anime models. Nowadays the best source is Booth which is a poorly designed site that sells high-quality anime girl models specifically made for use in VRC. Gamerips are also a source of models; but they would be considered hard mode.

Easiest

Booth

Booth is the easiest source of models. The models that are made there are often pre-packaged for VRChat and can be uploaded without any work at all; skipping every step but the last one.

If you want to be lazy, and you're fine with generic anime girl that you can customise fairly easily, and one that is probably supplied with lewd parts, this is a decent place to start. Most people use booths nowadays with various levels of customisation; booth with heavy customisation is recommended.

Heavy customisation will require going into blender; modifying it and starting at step "Load this into blender" above anyway.

Best way to look through booths is to visit either a VKet (seasonal event held on vrchat, 2 times a year), or look for 'Avatar Museum' worlds in VRC which are big lines of avatars for you to look through.

Another way is to check out Avatar Network: https://avatar-network.herokuapp.com/avatars/ or https://boothplorer.com/avatars These have a collection of popular avatars that are easier to look through, and you can see if outfits exist already, although this is only a partial database.

Overall:

  • May cost money
  • High quality (usually)
  • Made specifically for VRChat
  • Clothing available specifically made for popular booths
  • Lewd bits very common
  • All rook same

Medium

MMDs

MMDs are a massive repository of anime girl models. This is most recommended if you want a model from a specific show, gacha game, or some weeb shit that a nippon has probably made a model so they can make it dance to terrible music. Availability here is varied, quality varies massively, and nippons are notoriously falkey and guarded of their models and many specifically state they don't want their model used in VRChat. Relevant to you, however is that they come in the format required for Miku Miku Dance, and not for VRChat.

Places to find MMDs:

<TODO: Some of the places I used went down, pls help>

Overall:

  • Varying quality
  • Japanese autism is involved
  • Source of nice anime models, like kemono friends or other fotm things like touhou
  • You have to work from an MMD file which is a fair bit more work
  • Japanese autism
  • Often no body underneath to attach clothing or remove clothing from
  • Using CATS blender plugin is recommended to save some busywork

Koikatsu / Vroid / 3D custom Maid / etc

You can rip models from these wholesome games (and possibly some other 'wholesome' japanese anime girl games) to allow yourself access to a character creator that can be exported to VRC. Will let you use all the outfits and other bonuses (such as lewd bits).

Is a bit easier than normal game rips since loads of people have done this before and there are sometimes tools available to do some of the heavy lifting.

I've never done it but it's an option.

  • Pretty hard process, there's a lot of cleaning to do
  • Lewd.
  • Customisable
  • People will be able to tell which hentai game you ripped the model from. They have distinctive features.


Hard Mode

Gamerips

Gamerips are usually harder to work with than any of the above. Only recommended if you have some understanding of modelling since you'll not get anything standardised, the files will often be a mess, and you'll have very few automatic tools to help you get it VRC ready, all so you can be a 10000 polygon gun man from videogame.

Places to find:

  • There's no legal place to find these so you'll have to ask around or rip them yourself.
  • https://ninjaripper.com/ (warning can get you banned if the game is anti-cheat or some shit)

Overall:

  • Will have to do basically everything yourself
  • Not anime, so much less cringe
  • Usually no base and little customisibility

European Extreme

From scratch modelling. You can take a cube in blender and morph it piece by piece into a fully rigged whatever you want.

If you know how to do this you already know the pros and cons.

Load Into Blender

Setup

First, install and familiarise yourself with Blender <link to blender page>.

Load

Basically just import the FBX or whatever else you're working with (MMD) into Blender. Depending on what you start with you're likely going to have to fix textures to a workable state, maybe run some tools like CATS to get it into a standardised armature, and basically have a look at it and see what it's like.

Details here: Blender#Load_Avatar_Into_Blender

Edit

See: Blender

Optimize

Optimization is a balancing act between features and frames. However, there are some things you should definitely avoid doing, and best practice is to have several avatars. One that's stripped down and performance is great for large instances with lots of avatars, and then one with lots of fun features for smaller instances.

Details here: Avatar_Optimization

Clean and Modify the Model to work with Unity (VRChat)

The checklist below doesn't have to be in this order and the more experience you get the more you can skip and shift steps around, but this'll do for learning.

Your checklist for this is:

  • Load the avatar into blender Blender#Load_Avatar_Into_Blender
  • Get it into a usable state <Link to Blender#Getting avatar to Unity Structure>
  • Check for problems <Link to Blender#Problem checking>
  • Customise to desired look (This is so extensive a link to a single area is meaningless, try to look for specific things you'd like to do)
  • Create Visemes <Link to Blender#Cats - Viseme creation or wherever>
  • Optimise! Avatar_Optimization
  • Double check for problems <Link to Blender#Problem checking>
  • Export to FBX <Link to Blender# Export to FBX>

What you will need for importing into unity is an FBX and some textures (and also matcaps, speculars, masks and other things that will be covered elsewhere)

Things you do not need to worry about in blender:

  • Materials (These are not exported to unity through the FBX)
  • Animations
  • Gestures
  • Eye tracking
  • Other effects

DO worry about:

  • Armature
  • Mesh
  • Weighting
  • Appearance
  • UV Maps
  • Optimisation

Export the model

Export it as FBX. Exact settings can be done with CATS, but the key is to always export everything you make with the same settings.

Load into Unity

Setup Unity

Unity needs some setup; and basically you're going to:

Installing stuff is basically; have Unity open, and either move unpacked items into the project folder or execute a unitypackage and it'll throw it in for you.

Moving Avatar into Unity

I highly recommend starting as organised as you can, since unity projects get very messy very fast.

Generally; create a file structure that looks like this: 

Assets
  -> Avatars
     -> <avatar name>
       -> Textures
       -> Materials
       -> Animations

A checklist is:

  • Copy over FBX and textures (And matcaps and speculars and normalmaps etc etc if you have them)
  • Change the import settings to add armature, tick legacy blend shapes, and use external materials.
  • Move FBX into the scene and get started.

Configure And Setup With Unity

Basically:

  • Add and configure the VRC Avatar descriptor <link to Unity# VRC Avatar Descriptor>
  • Configure Materials <link to Unity#Materials>
  • Gesture configuration <Link Unity#Gestures>
  • (Optional) Dynamic Bones <Link>
  • (Optional) VRC Avatar 3.0 stuff; toggles, sliders, activatable effects.
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