avatar-rigging

[sage patio]

I still think doing it the normal way is the safest way though

can still do this

[deep brook]

hmm, ill try it both wayd

[green wigeon]

Question how come when the model I make in blender is rigged but in unity none of the bones are shown and when I upload it collapsed into itself

[marsh widget]

whats the correct way to export//setup fbx? I always got problem (maybe) related to scaling, the avatar squeeze to huge noodle or squashed. Even with a avatar bought from booth, import into unity directly, it still going like noddle or squashed

I tried export normally with apply scale All Local, export with CAT, export normally with FBX All

I have no idea why, could anybody explain to me?

[fallen chasm]

Are you exporting these with Blender?

@marsh widget my impulse would be to tell you to select all -> apply scale inside Blender, not on the export FBX menu. Iirc "apply transform" in export is marked as Experimental, might not be working

[sage patio]

if you set "Apply scalings" to something different than the original model was exported with, the scale will either be off by 100 (too large or too small). you should always export with FBX All to make sure the scale is 1 across the board

if you're not sure what it was originally exported with, just export as a new FBX with the correct settings and use Pumkin's to copy what you did on the original model to the new one

[woven steppe]

Can we rig a model on maya for vr chat if we can do you have any tutorial?

[quaint cosmos]

Sure. I don't use Maya so I don't know what to recommend in terms of videos but here's one that is probably fine. See Sacred's message for specifics on what bones are needed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c538zkwxgTQ

^

[rough mortar]

i have 4 bones and im scared to do the rest

[marsh widget]

#avatar-help message

This is the original post of my problem, you can check them there.

Im not sure if my problem was 100％ related to blender export. Situation is this: my avatar is heavily modified from the original one. However, even if I start new blender project, import the original bought fbx into blender, export directly. OR import the original bought fbx into unity directly, both of them breaks

[marsh widget]

#avatar-help message

If you dont mind, you can check this original pose made about the problem

[deep brook]

Question, in the Docs, it says for excellent ranking, you need 1 Skinned Mesh(es).
To verify, if I skin my whole model to the skeleton I have made. That would count as 1 right? what are the pros or cons of having more than 1 skinned meshed? Im a bit confused? or is it more like, the model cant have seperate sections. Like I can hide a jacket while still showing the rest of the body? would "1" skinned mesh mean, if I had 1 part of the model, the whole model would hide itself? Sorry if I worded that weirdly

[quaint cosmos]

You're kind of getting at it, as I understand it. A skinned mesh is a separate object attached to the same skeleton so if you want to hide it for a clothing swap, all you have to do is disable the object or the mesh renderer on the object, whereas if you want to do that to an article of clothing that is attached to the body, you need to do something on the vertex level like scaling it in using a shape key to hide it. So, you probably can figure out a way to do whatever you want with one skinned mesh renderer but it's easier sometimes to have multiple. There are also things like guns that can be parented to bones but aren't actually properly weighted to the armature that just use normal mesh renderers and I think you're allowed to use more of those.

[deep brook]

thanks, i think thats the last bit of info i need before i start skinning. wish me luck

[sage patio]

you should probably avoid using a shape key to do that, especially if the whole thing is one mesh

best option imo would be to use Poiyomi's UDIM tile discard

can use the shader to hide pieces based on which UV tile they are in

[quaint cosmos]

a better option if you don't need it to work on Quest since you can't use unsupported shaders on Quest but you're probably going to struggle to get multiple clothing options in under the polygon limit on Quest anyway if you don't want it being very poor quality.

[hasty plume]

So, I'm just wanting to rig the Mario model from Super Mario 64 DS/New Super Mario Bros., which is quite low poly, so, how would I do that?

Anyone who might wanna help?

[quaint cosmos]

Could try Mixamo.com, it'd probably give you decent starting place

[hasty plume]

Like, I just wanna make it work with VRChat.

[quaint cosmos]

Mixamo will get you something you can import into Unity, though it might not move perfectly without some adjustment. Then you just need to follow the steps to publish it, there's lots of videos for that.

apparently, this server doesn't like that link but you can find an already rigged version if you search for it, just search for VRChat avatar Mario and you'll get some hits

[hasty plume]

Just send it in DMs.

[fathom hawk]

help

[tame burrow]

The shoulders need to be directly under the chest bone. Yours are childeren of "clav" bones.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/730948173379535022/1017557606765699153/unknown.png

Anyone know how to fix an avatar's upper arm being rotated the wrong way?

When I extend my arms outward in front of me, with my elbow crease up (oculus controllers vertical), the arm in VRChat is rotated sideways like it's T-Pose instead.

(Duplicating from #avatar-help since it's technically a rig issue.)

[rough mortar]

lego :O

[tame burrow]

Yes, it is Lego

I may have figured it out.

Blender rotated the bones for the arm 45º

[inner cedar]

I've ran into an issue where the thumbs up is left devastatingly flat. I've changed the proxy animations since those are the ones that are used by default, but it seems no matter how much I bend it, the animation never applies to the thumb. I've currently got them at an absurd rotation to check if there's any effect, to which there seems to be none. The avatar has a humanoid rig. If anyone has experience with this or a similar issue and has the time to help me out in DMs, don't hesitate to shoot me a message.

This is what the rig currently looks like in Unity, compared to what it looks like in VRChat, as pictured above.

[tame burrow]

Did you check the rig configuration to make sure Unity actually mapped the thumb?

Select your model in the Project tab > Rig tab in Inspector tab > Configure... > Left & Right Hand buttons (to the left of the green mapping preview; Inspector)

Make sure your thumbs are mapped.

—
Anyone know how to change Unity's "default" muscle position? It's breaking the movement of my avatar's arms, as it wants to angle the arm forward. :u

[stray wind]

hey umm....I might need some help with combining rigs in blender

[kind mortar]

CATS can do it automatically

[stray wind]

not in blender 3.3, the guys might need to fix it up for future updates

[kind mortar]

Then use an older blender, I do, makes it less complicated 😛

[stray wind]

got it

thanks

[gusty oasis]

question on 11 point tracking, I am vaguely aware of how models needed to be updated to have their bones reworked or some type of adjustment (sorry I never really learned about it as I didn't have the ability to use that many trackers), I don't know if this applied to all models or some models, but is this still the case?

essentially I want to know if I can use 6 point tracking on a model and then when I want to use more trackers, just connect them and have everything work fine or if there are any quirks or limitations like not being able to do what I described with whatever model I use

[sage patio]

as long as the proportions of the avatar are close to your real body proportions, everything should just work

[gusty oasis]

existence of twist bones or not doesn't matter? that's what I think I remembered reading about when 11 point tracking was added, something related to needing to remove/add/adjust twist bones

[sage patio]

no, those shouldn't interfere at all

[gusty oasis]

okay, that's a little reassuring

[honest coral]

I need to add a hip bone to an avatar with an existing armature. How would i go about doing so without the pain of reparenting?

doing this because of weight painting issues with the pelvis

[inner cedar]

I did. The thumb joints are mapped properly under the humanoid rig. The fingers move properly for all other hand gestures except for the thumbs up which I'm trying to correct.

And it's only the thumb in a 'flat' pose instead of rotated upwards.

[tame burrow]

It's possible the bone is oriented incorrectly in blender. Open the rig in Unity and check the muscles tab in the inspector. If the thumb looks weird after switching to muscle view your thumb bone might be broken.

[bronze ridge]

Is anyone know of a updated guide to do twist bones/weight painting?

[nova skiff]

do i have to take her back into blender to fix this this hapens when i go into make toggles but the body looks fine in blender

[bronze ridge]

Is this bad it's all blue? ****

[nova skiff]

control click on a bone to see if its weighted

[nova skiff]

i got it the leg and arms got weighted to the volume bones some how

[bronze ridge]

none

Is that a twist bone?

[sage patio]

normally it would be half the length of the arm, doesn't really matter though

[bronze ridge]

So, I'ma gonna take it I have to repaint the whole body

[sage patio]

what? where did you get that from

[bronze ridge]

Well, it hasn't been weight painted

[sage patio]

hmm, that's odd

are the vertex groups all there?

[bronze ridge]

Yes

The base model

[bronze ridge]

Blender isn't showing any weight paint expect a small spot on the butt. In VRchat my avatar moves just fine? Does avatars still work even if no painting is done?

[quaint cosmos]

No, you definitely need weights for the avatar to move. Did you go through all the vertex groups?

[bronze ridge]

@quaint cosmos what do you mean by that? Sorry I'm new to rigging.

[quaint cosmos]

Weight paint mode will only show you the weights of the selected vertex group so that's probably just the weight of the selected vertex group.

[bronze ridge]

How do I show all of them?

[quaint cosmos]

You can't at once, you just cycle through them.

[inner cedar]

Is there a way to check if it's oriented correctly in Blender?

[tame burrow]

Unity abstracts the bones' positions for its muscle system; When you look at the muscle tab in the rig configuration, it'll apply a default post with the fingers partially bent.

If the thumb is bent the wrong way it's probably rotated 180º or oriented wrong.

You'd open the model in Blender, select the Armature, switch to Edit mode, then adjust the thumb bones to be the right direction and orientation.

[inner cedar]

Seems the bone roll is currently at 0 for all thumb bones

[spiral elbow]

I've tried a few things to get the head and the rigged bones onto the body but everything I've done breaks the shape keys and shit lol

I know I got to merge the armatures together I also assume I've gotta delete the head and eye bones from the base model when then re parent but I guess I'm doing it wrong and I'm not wording thing right on Google to get it done what might I be doing wrong or is there any good guides to do this correctly

[cold nova]

i need help with some rigging an stuff i don't recognize on a model

can someone message me if willing to help please

[hasty pilot]

how come when i try merging armatures this keeps happening , i have both armatures lined up pretty well why does this happen

[rough mortar]

i think you need to parent the clothes to the main rig my g

[hasty pilot]

do i do that through the mesh or the armature

[rough mortar]

i think you click on the mesh and then the armature and then click "parent with automatic weights"

if you dont see that option then its the inverse

[hasty pilot]

so i did that its doing the same thing putting the the hands to the sky

[rough mortar]

did you delete the clothes armature

[hasty pilot]

yes

[rough mortar]

i dont think its gonna parent if its already parented to another rig

hmm

you may have to use mesh deforms to fit the clothes to the model

(thats what i do at least)

[hasty pilot]

like edit the mesh

[rough mortar]

yea

i have a tutorial, lemme see if i can find rq

[hasty pilot]

after its parented or ones are merged i keep getting same results

[rough mortar]

could be that the default state of the mesh is with the arms raised up and not tpose

https://vxtwitter.com/NanonanoVRC/status/1562903321677275136?t=xNqC2kQdLoM8ZcH3cU2zVQ&s=19

try this

[hasty pilot]

it is but i reset the the pose

[hasty pilot]

well i gess mesh deform is only way to do it right

not as simple as sculping to fit and merging bones

[rough mortar]

its not hard, just tedious

[hasty pilot]

i dont like the merging bones option anyways

[sly crater]

Can someone tell me why the chest and spine refuse to bend on my model im working on?

I have a different model where it bend perfectly but on my other one it does not bend at all

So when sitting down in FBT, it just pushes the hip way too far down

[quaint cosmos]

Does it have weights for those bones?

[slim herald]

Anyone have a clue to fix this (model is a mmd model if that helps)

[quaint cosmos]

Did you add the avatar descriptor to the mesh instead of the parent object?

[slim herald]

I believe so?

[quaint cosmos]

Well that's what you don't want to do, the descriptor should be on the parent object of the mesh and the armature.

[slim herald]

Thanks

[cunning summit]

I have a question, Is there a way to export VRC Avatars from Unity into blender because when I try to export them from unity using the FBX Exporter, It doesnt export the Vertex groups which breaks the avatar and prevents me from making changes or animations for it.

[sage patio]

why are you trying to "export" it from Unity? the FBX file should just be in a folder somewhere in your unity project

you don't need to export it

just find the FBX and import it straight into blender

[bronze ridge]

Scared, I'll move the convo here. So this isn't good paint done by cats?

[sage patio]

that seems fine

[cunning summit]

I dont have an fbx of it, its a .prefab file

[sage patio]

that is weird, where did you get the model from? @cunning summit

[cunning summit]

oh

[sage patio]

so it's a ripped model then

you should not use that model

[cunning summit]

its from a site

[sage patio]

find out who the original author is, and buy it from them

and you will get the proper files

[cunning summit]

ok

will look into that, thank you anyways

[night roost]

hey guys, i wanna put a lip pierce on a model but when she talks it dosent follow her lips, how can i fix this

[quaint cosmos]

That's kind of a tricky one but what I would do is put 2 dots on the texture where the piercing inserts and then move the piercing in each viseme/expression so it lines up properly when the shape key is at 100. Otherwise, I think you'd have to use bones for creating your shape keys and then make sure the lip and the piercing are weighted to the correct bone.

[pure pumice]

anyone willing to just a rig model and send the file back after cause I keep trying and it just isnt working for me

[golden wolf]

I would

But I can't do it right now if that's ok

[pure pumice]

thats fine

I'll dm you the model

[golden wolf]

Ok

[abstract trout]

"

[velvet arch]

hii does anyone know the fix to this weight painting nightmare? I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong

[tribal mica]

with the way it is weightpainted, you are moving everything that is weightpainted on there with the rotation of the bone

you should only weightpaint the area surrounding the length of the bone and not any lower as the bone is dedicated to your "neck". Not your chest or clothes

also, it is recommended make sure the bone is actually positioned in your neck and is the length of your neck

if you are relying on automatic weights you may have to redo the weightpainting on nearby bones

[sturdy talon]

I'm trying to manually create a armature for a avatar b/c mixamo can't create one with the avatar hands as a fist. When posing the armature, the mesh does not move and "armature deform with automatic weights" does not do anything. Anyone have a recommendation to fix this?

[tribal mica]

try using envelope weights

[sturdy talon]

The mesh moves now, but the weight painting is a mess. Do I just need to clear the everything and redo the weight paint?

[sage patio]

you can just adjust what's there if you want

redo certain parts if they are really bad

and keep the parts that are fine

[sturdy talon]

Alright then, thank you for the help!

[tribal mica]

yes just adjust the existing weightpaints on each bone but make sure everything is weightpainted at some point

[mossy pumice]

So it won’t let me build and publish 😭

Nvm there was more then 1 model I had to delete them

[final idol]

Hello I have a question, I’m new to making avatars of my own, I’ve made a model, but it’s topology is terrible, a mix mash of triangles and squares that don’t make sense, it’s terrible. But it has the overall shape I’m looking for. Does terrible topology affect things like rigging for instance, and will fixing it make it cleaner for deformations and stuff like that ?

I’m assuming yes but I really don’t know

[sage patio]

yes, bad topology can make rigging and unwrapping harder

you should do a retopology if you can

[final idol]

Yup that’s exactly what I set out to do, I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t for naught

Thanks!!

[fading verge]

Anyone got a tutorial on rigging non human/furry avatars?

[night spear]

most avatars you buy from gumroad doesn't include the fbx, either because they want to rip you off like other small stuff (avatar not being quest compatible) and make it so called unity exclusive, or its a stolen avatar.

[drowsy finch]

not sure if this is the right channel but how do I remove the eyes from the view? (generic rig)

[sly crater]

Yeah it should, i use automatic weights on the base body

Could it be i need to do some manual weight paint?

[quaint cosmos]

You don't have to guess if there are weights, just select the vertex group in weight paint mode and see

[mossy pumice]

Where do I put physbones in 😭

[sage patio]

not by opening the prefab

[mossy pumice]

What is the prefab lmao

Cause I put physbones in the hair root but it won’t move

[mossy pumice]

Help 😭

[fading verge]

What am I doing wrong here? I rigged him up myself in blender and gave him proper IK joint rolls. He poses fine in blender but in Unity... His whole body starts twisting around itself. I've rigged 100s of models in the past and I really don't get why I'm just now running into this issue.

[pure galleon]

anyone know a fix for this? it was working and i had uploaded (buggy af but it uploaded lmao) but now its broken i dont know what i did

[sage patio]

540K polys...? what the hell do you have on that

this is why the new VRAM metric needs to include meshes

[pure galleon]

lmao

oof

[sage patio]

give people an inch and they take a mile

hard limits for PC when

[fading verge]

Go to the head tab on that green menu

Then put in the right stuff. I can help with optimization as well.

[fading verge]

And that’s why there is a long standing option that allows you to adjust the viewable file size for avatars in game. Most have a default setting but you can lower it

No need to be rude. It’s a help channel. Not a complaint and argue with other people about their work.

Show your error log (console) too if you can @pure galleon

[quaint cosmos]

Very Low performance for PC is anything above 70k tris. Saying that you should be okay with 500k avatars because you have your minimum displayed rank to very poor is like saying because you signed up to box at Super Heavyweight, you shouldn't mind if they put you in there with a 1,000 lb grizzly bear.

[fading verge]

You’re talking to a guy that has done over 400 public avatars that are optimized and 10+ maps. Several people on the game use my edits or original work from either my maps or the websites I put their files on. Not stroking my shaft or anything. But once again. If you don’t want to see a high poly avatar then hide it. And instead of shitting on people for it. Help them

• “Hey guys, I need help”
• “Wow, look how unoptimized your avatar is. inserts sarcasm and something hateful

Crazy how the concept of helping someone improve instead of shitting on them would help your issues with them be solved a lot quicker

@pure galleon if this chat gets too clogged. Dm me and I’ll help you with both your issue and optimization. These people do not represent the entirety of the creators on the game.

[final idol]

Furry avatars have the same bone rig as humans, so any human tutorial works for furry avatars

Just add tail and ear bones if needed once you get the gist of it

[sly crater]

This is the hip

And this is the chest

Doing a sample animation in Unity,

This is how it looks like on my working avi

And great discord blocked my message

Fuck it, i am doing wireframe xD

Dammnit!

Dm for the pic of the broken one

There we go

You can see the arms are supposed to be around the line

[humble oriole]

You I need help, please

I'm trying to add bones on a pec chest and when I export in unity and physic bone doesn't work even when I grab it still doesn't move

Idk how to add bones on the chest to make it physics

[fading verge]

someone mind helping me in dms

[humble oriole]

I been here and watching this channel for hours

;-;

[wintry surge]

Lol I do have a avatar like that. But works lol

[humble oriole]

Waiting for response

[fading verge]

Anyone know how to make a vertext group into mesh

[fading verge]

attatch the eyes to the head in the hiarchy

[drowsy finch]

in the what?

[humble oriole]

anyone

;3;

[sage patio]

could you elaborate?

a vertex group is just a group that vertices in a mesh can be assigned to. they're also assigned with a weight from 0 to 1

[fading verge]

@drowsy finch this is ur hiarchy

look for somthin named head and attacht the eyes to it

[humble oriole]

guys how i add bones on the upper chest pecs

so i can make physic bones on vrchat

anyone ?

pls

[fading verge]

Found duplicate transform 'LeftEye' for human bone 'Jaw' and 'LeftEye' what this mean?

[fading verge]

I think I fixed it

[humble oriole]

i try adding bone not working anyone help me on this tho

[sly crater]

What about FBT and sitting down? My hip pulls way too much down into the floor

But standing up, it matches perfectly

[wintry surge]

I don't have full body tracking

[quiet flax]

Hi! Very new to avatar development. Im trying to change the scale of an avatar, but not 1:1, so Im only changing the y value. Is there a way to do this without severely messing with the rigging, or to at least fix the rigging? Cause my head always is way above my body

[quaint cosmos]

I think you can just do it in Unity by scaling the parent object for the mesh and the avatar.

[quiet flax]

Doesn't work sadly, my head still is far above the rest of my body

[quaint cosmos]

So do you just want to scale the body and not the head, then?

[quiet flax]

I want to scale everything, sorry I poorly worded that

[quiet flax]

My actual head was above the avatar head

[quaint cosmos]

Is your view position set correctly in the avatar descriptor?

[sage patio]

that is a viewpoint issue, not an avatar scaling issue. if you use full body, there's other things to check after that

[quiet flax]

Probably not, how would I go about fixing that

[quiet flax]

Also yeah I do, what else should I check

[sage patio]

check the viewpoint position in unity first. then, check if the issue happens when you switch to Lock head mode in the quick menu

[quiet flax]

I changed my viewpoint but now my feet are in the ground? Im confused lol

[quiet flax]

moving the avatar in blender doesnt seem to fix this

The viewpoint is better but the feet clipping is an issue

[sage patio]

make sure your User real height setting is correct

it should be your real height

then, try switching to Height based scaling rather than Wingspan

[quiet flax]

I was just testing using desktop but Ill try in vr

[quaint cosmos]

Is your avatar above the origin in Blender?

The feet should be on the ground plane.

[quiet flax]

Sorry probably dumb question but where do I find the origin?

[quiet flax]

Its correct, and looks fine in vr, until I crouch, at which point my feet go below the ground before actually crouching

[quaint cosmos]

It's the grid, it should be on unless you turned it off with the highlighted button

[quiet flax]

Ah yeah its above it, but not on the ground

should I fix that? Idk why that would make my feet go below the ground

[quaint cosmos]

It should be the other way around, you should be floating if your armature doesn't have its feet on the ground but it is a good idea to fix it anyway.

[quiet flax]

Ive found that changing my avatar positioning, at least y-wise, doesnt affect anything in game

[neon spruce]

how to fix choker going inside the neck(weights for the neck are already max)?

[sly crater]

Most likely why u dont have the issues that i have

[fading verge]

Hello

[mossy pumice]

Can anyone help me my fingers won’t move in vrc :c

[median pawn]

can anyone help me with exporting from blender to unity? im having trouble with missing bones from unity

[jovial turret]

So I'm trying to rig my body and eyes separately, mainly because I want a specific effect with my eyes. When I apply automatic weights, it seems to work fine for the body. The mesh distorts as expected. However, the eye acts as though anything above 0 is 1. I am not sure what is causing this.

[jovial turret]

Okay... I think I figured it out? I guess I needed to set the weight of the entire eye to the head bone, and then the eye bone to the specific parts, so the head acts as the base? It at least seems to be doing what I want. Not sure if this is correct.

[stark jetty]

Uploaded a model, used it multiple times but it's giving me this error any fixes? Eventough its clearly linked to a rig etc

Fixed it an duplicated animator module

[halcyon sable]

So I'm working on this avatar right here, idk what to add/change rn (Model is a rip from the Wii game, Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion)

But I'm assuming I need to add some rigging elements?

[halcyon sable]

I have no clue where to start though. Can anyone help

[shut oasis]

Is it right to put the bones to the edge of my shoes or should I put it a bit up so it won't sink or float?

wait is this the right channel to ask?

Will there be a error on my body if I move the balls in Y direction like this?

[halcyon sable]

Alright, I'm getting serious now.

All I needa do now is set up an armature.

How many bones should I use for this armature?

[pallid cipher]

So, i am not pro but i can send you some pics that i think would be fine

The hair bones ain't important

But you do need a "head" bone

In your case i think 3 bone for each arm (Finger, Hand, eldbow, arm) finger won't be necessary, 3 to 4 bone to your leg (Toe, feet, knee, leg) not so sure about toe in you case, 4 to 5 bone in your chest (left and right shoulder, neck, chest, spine, hips).

All that with the good parenting, toe is child to feet, and feet is child to knee etc

Feel free to correct me if made a mistake as try to learn by myself 🙂

[mossy pumice]

Does anybody know how to make ears move using a facial expression?

[halcyon sable]

Alright, I've got 6 bones set up as of now

[halcyon sable]

Got the legs done, now starting on the backbones

I still got a long way to go .w.

[quaint cosmos]

Shape keys. Just sculpt the ears along with the face.

[mossy pumice]

No like animal ears

[quaint cosmos]

Yeah, I assumed. Same deal, shape keys can do it. You might also be able to use bones but shape keys should suffice.

[pallid cipher]

The feet bone, make so he his laying on the ground

Or your feet ingame will be broken

[halcyon sable]

O

[pallid cipher]

Like this gentlemen up 🙂

[halcyon sable]

Got it.

So, something like this?

[pallid cipher]

Yes ! You will have to test it ingame and see if your feet goes underground

[halcyon sable]

Ok then

I probably won’t upload the avatar to my own world if I ever do make one since this is my first ever time making a VRChat avatar

But when I’m finally confident with it I will

[pallid cipher]

Ok, gl then 🙂

[halcyon sable]

Hey maybe we could make this a collaborative effort

[pallid cipher]

Nha it's all your's 🙂

[halcyon sable]

Ok then :3

So here are all the bones I have set up currently

Haven't started on the head or arms just yet, still working on the vertebrae and chest

Ok so when I go to making a test build of the avatar in Unity, where can I find it and how can I transfer/copy it to the Quest version?

[quaint cosmos]

All you have to do is use one of the mobile shaders and then switch build target to android and publish like for worlds. Only concern is that it might not display properly on Quest if you don't meet certain optimization requirements but you should be fine with this model and a basic rig.

[halcyon sable]

I see.

So I think I’ll have to make separate PC(PCVR) and Quest (standalone) versions for the avi

[quaint cosmos]

This is necessary if you want the PC version to use non-mobile shaders but usually just means swapping out the shader before publishing to Android. You can keep a completely separate version using the same blueprint ID, though, thay might save a little bit of time when publishing.

[sleek isle]

That avatar will be are to use in VR if you put the view point too high

Place it as if it's was a mascot costume

[halcyon sable]

I'll be sure to place the viewpoint somewhere near her eyes

You probably get what I mean by that no?

[sleek isle]

Then, have a great time

[rough mango]

Hey, is there like a tutorial anywhere for rigging hands for vrc? Seems like everything I do is wrong and ends up looking super janky on index controllers without a tonne of work getting them accurate. What's going on there? Like is there a trick to getting them to look fine with less effort than uploading and re-uploading?

[sleek isle]

Perhaps

Need to move the bone in the humanoid

[spiral elbow]

im importing the body with CATS then the head with CATS and when i switch to the view that shows terxtures this happens and i dont know why

[sage patio]

set the material to Opaque instead of Alpha blend

[spiral elbow]

thanks

[halcyon sable]

Progress update!

Now I just gotta do the necessary head bones

[viscid grove]

Prooo

[halcyon sable]

This is my first time, so I wouldn't say I'm a pro just yet, but thank you! :)

[quaint cosmos]

Looks nice but a bit low resolution. You might want to increase the resolution of the texture or increase the space the head takes up in the texture space. Also, the way the light reflections are mirrored doesn't look right since the light should all be coming from one direction and if it isn't there should be multiple sports of reflection on each eye. You want it to be in roughly the same spot on both.

Like this

Sometimes, avatar creators will make those reflection dots their own geometry so they can stay in one position as the eyes move but you might not be animating the eyes on this one.

[halcyon sable]

I'm not animating the eyes on this one. Also, you're right, I prolly SHOULD increase the resolution here. And maybe center the pupils too.

[halcyon sable]

Alright, the resolution has been fixed.

The lighting around the mouth, I don't know how to fix. Any suggestions?

[nova skiff]

my model in game is t posing and when i move she just like slides

[finite stratus]

Hey I have question for anyone who has made a furry model befor with big ears, how many bones do you put in it? Along with when you put it in for rigging how do you set it up? I’m working on one as a test to gain more skills and im working next on boning and not sure what to do for them I was thinking 3 since I want one ear to bend down about midway nicely but have the ability to stand straight up for emotes and expressions

[white ravine]

Any weight painting tips?

[white ravine]

I have this coat I want to add to my avatar but it does not have an armature. So I am going to have to weightpaint it from scratch. Is there maybe a tool that can automate most of it perhaps?

[sage patio]

you can transfer the weights from the body to the coat to get a decent start

[white ravine]

👀

I had no idea

What would this tool/method be called?

How do I search for this lol

[sage patio]

either use the "transfer weights" function in weight paint mode, or use the data transfer modifier

[white ravine]

vertex data transfer I am guessing?

[sage patio]

vertex groups

[white ravine]

great

Though how will it know where to apply what weight?

Proximity or something?

the coat does not have an armature its just a mesh. So I am curious how it works

[sage patio]

you can pick a few modes, but the one you should use is Nearest Face Interpolated

think of it this way:

on the body mesh, look at the normal direction of each face, and take the weights of the vertices that make it up and project that onto the coat mesh

[white ravine]

Right

I'll mess around with it, thank you!

[halcyon sable]

I still haven't found a solution to this here.

[halcyon sable]

So, I'm gong to work on rigging for the head now.

Should I add bones for the pigtails, or no?

[finite stratus]

umm um help their feet are see though you can see the beans though th top of the foot and it didntin blender (1 in unity 2 in blender)

[halcyon sable]

I'd suggest activating Rendered mode in Blender so you can see what's wrong.

Select the icon I have selected (the one in blue) to see the final render..

[finite stratus]

ok im just testing to make sure everything else is alright

clicked the button in blender how it looks

[halcyon sable]

Is that really how it looks?

[finite stratus]

yes

[halcyon sable]

And you clicked the "Rendered" option?

[halcyon sable]

Huh..

[halcyon sable]

Cuz I see that in Unity the fur is blue, is it supposed to be?

[finite stratus]

and unity is this

eyelashes not showing idk what i did wrong but ima just test if i can get it into vr

[halcyon sable]

Ok then.

[sage patio]

most likely flipped normals

fix that in blender

[finite stratus]

how do you? this is only my second model and first furry model

[halcyon sable]

Can I get a zoom-in on the head and see how many bones I should add and where I should place them?

[pallid cipher]

1 bone for the neck 1 bone for the head, and if you want to dynamise your hair put some bones in it, 2 bones for each side is ok i guess

[halcyon sable]

How long should I make the neck bone? Here's what I've got right now.

So, bones are all done.

[sage patio]

that does not look right

[halcyon sable]

Wdym?

[sage patio]

based on this view at least, it looks like the ankles are too high up, and the legs are a bit too long. the spine should also never be below where the legs start, and I'm not sure but I think you might have too many spine bones (should go hip>spine>chest>(optional) upperchest). you're missing shoulders, the arms are too short, and the wrists start in a weird place

[halcyon sable]

Well I mean whoever developed Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion made the tris (the triangular polygons) a little weirdly-placed

What I mean is..

:/

But yeah I'll take your advice on the bone placements

[sage patio]

you should convert that to quads (alt + J) and add loop cuts to add extra geometry to bend

[halcyon sable]

Ok I'll do that

But first I bent the tailbone a bit, does it look fine?

[sage patio]

you don't need a tailbone, and that is too many bones

[halcyon sable]

Ah okay

I’ll use that

But I may have to alter it to match the model a bit better 🤔

We’ll see

Yeah, just based on the placements alone I'm gonna have to do some adjustments..

[halcyon sable]

I can say that the fingers are unneeded

Are these two bones needed in this case?

Also, is the "roll" necessary on all the bones?

[sage patio]

you can remove the toes. as for the roll, you should be able to clear it in this case

[halcyon sable]

Got that, done that. Now, what about the arm bones? Can I remove the “roll” there too? (I apologize for pinging.)

[sage patio]

should be fine

[halcyon sable]

Unfinished, but here's what I have so far when it comes to repositioning the bones to fit in the model (I'm sorry for any and all future pings that occur after this one).

[sage patio]

the arms are still quite short, keep in mind that this is where the wrist will bend

it feels like the hand will be very long and the arms too short

[halcyon sable]

That's why I said "unfinished." I've still got some ways to go before the armature is done being adjusted.

Good placement for the shoulders? (on the sides)

[sage patio]

they were fine in the previous pic

[halcyon sable]

Aight, undid the movement

Now I just gotta expand the arm bones to fit the whole arms

How does this look?

Does it look okay?

I tried to get them to be as mirrored as possible

which was easy

(copy-and-pasting the necessary values and toggling the positive/negative on the value)

[sage patio]

why not just enable X mirror

so it mirrors automatically for you

anyways it looks better now

[old wolf]

Having difficulties getting my avatar animated

In game the model is just a t-pose

[sage patio]

@old wolf there is an extra bone in the spine that shows up as gray, if you have a chest and upperchest make sure they are both mapped

[old wolf]

I did have it previously and still had that problem

[robust crescent]

hip to neck - 6 bones, too many

unless thats a mini tail

[sage patio]

and there should not be any pelvis bones

those should most likely be merged to the hip

the hip bone should also never start below the legs

[old wolf]

Combine a few?

[sage patio]

it should be above

yes

[old wolf]

Alright I’ll try that

[sage patio]

you can try either merging the bone above the hip to the hips, or to the spine

in the pic Thulen posted, the one above the orange dot

[old wolf]

Alright thanks

[finite stratus]

i have a question my models feet you can only ee the bottom of them and i dont know how to fix it does anyone here know how? along with the eyelashes arent showing up even tho the are in blender there are photos at this link (its my old discord message of this problem #avatar-rigging message

[fading verge]

Can i have some help, i have unity, (this is my first time trying to upload an avatar) but its a vrm ... But i keep running into problems... I have tried to use univrm and vrm to vrchat but i cant seem to be able to import the character

[pallid cipher]

Have you tryed to import it on Blender and then on Unity ?

[fading verge]

Uh no i havent, can you give me instructions on how to do it exactly

[pallid cipher]

First of all, did you used VRoid ?

[fading verge]

Yes

I made the avatar myself

[astral quest]

solidify will double your polygon number so Id stay away from that, looks more like a texture issue, Id look at the image in UV editing and make sure its assigned to the correct images

[sage moss]

Your faces are backwards

[finite stratus]

how do i fix this

[sage moss]

Flip them. lol

[finite stratus]

how

this si ym second//third model ive ever made and first tiem running itno this problem

[sage moss]

turn on backface culling in Blender

select the affected faces

go to Mesh -> Normals -> Flip

[finite stratus]

where d i find backface culling

[finite stratus]

ok now effected face slect in edit mode?

[sage moss]

mhm

should be able to see which ones are backwards now in Blender

[finite stratus]

gasp excted nosies thank you thank you thak you sorry if my tone came off rude in text just ive been dealing with this problem for a while with no help and have wanted to commit arson because of it

[sage moss]

well you're asking in a rigging channel, thats one issue. lol

[finite stratus]

i was worried it was and double guessed myself

3....

shit cat was on keyboord srry for that

[astral quest]

I dont have those options, im also in a similiar predicament

[sage moss]

you're on the wrong viewport

[astral quest]

how do I change that

[bitter needle]

could i remove one of the foot bone?

[sage moss]

the solid circle to the left of the one you have selected, @astral quest

[astral quest]

thx, sometimes im dumb about the names of things

[halcyon sable]

Textures have been upscaled again, but I still have the spine and neck to do.

[halcyon sable]

Does this look okay for the spine? (Sorry for any and all pings that occur today.)

[halcyon sable]

Are these two the eye bones?

[halcyon sable]

Alright, I just thought ahead and decided to do this.

[halcyon sable]

@sage patio What do you think? Do you like what I did here?

[sage patio]

looks fine, did you remove the eye bones though?

not sure how you're doing the eyes right now but there are ways to do 2D eyes

[halcyon sable]

Yes, I did remove the eye bones, and I am doing 2D eyes (via textures on the model)

Now I just gotta set the bone parents right?

[sage patio]

you can do 2D eyes driven by the movement of bones so you can use VRChat's fake eye tracking

[halcyon sable]

I can kinda see how I can pull that off, but is it alright to use textures for 2D eyes?

[sage patio]

yea that's fine, you could have the eyes as decals and offset them to move them

[finite stratus]

can you make the avatar blink? if so how ive been trying to

[old wolf]

Where can I change this?

[halcyon sable]

Don’t really wanna make the eyes move, but do PNGs count as decals? Just wanna know for future reference.

[inner ridge]

Where can I find the rig requirements? I want to develop an avatar from scratch in blender.

And I'm having a bit of difficulty understanding the actual bones and stuff I need.

[quaint cosmos]

There re pictures and template rigs out there but what I'd recommend is just downloading a ReadyPlayerMe avatar. Not only does it include a rig with a configuration that will work for VRChat, it also has a body with good weights and visemes so you get a good template you can follow for that as well https://readyplayer.me/

[inner ridge]

I've seen those, but I do want to make my own avatar, got a few ideas I want to play with. And I want it to be quest compatible.

[quaint cosmos]

You don't have to keep anything from them you don't want to keep. Changing out the clothing can be a good place to start in learning how to create your own avatar or you can delete the mesh entirely and just use the rig. Or don't use the rig but just use it as a guide for creating your own rig. It's just a good example of how to properly rig and weight a character.

[inner ridge]

This feels fairly convoluted, wouldn't the rig requirements just be documented somewhere?

[quaint cosmos]

Someone probably has a picture but it would do you way more good to have an actual rig than a picture of a rig and to be able to look at what proper weights look like rather than having to figure that out yourself but if that's how you want to go about it, I won't stop you. I don't have a picture on hand, though.

[inner ridge]

Well, the method I'm using in blender is supposed to automatically rig things and weight things for me.

(Skin modifier)

[quaint cosmos]

If you're planning on relying on automatic rigging, your avatar is going to be jank. Automatic rigging always requires manual clean up which is where it would be useful to have proper weights to look at. I have a dedicated automatic rigging plugin I use, Auto Rig Pro, with an additional plugin for that to improve the skinning and I still have to do manual weighting to make it move right.

[inner ridge]

Well, I suspect there's going to be some tweaking involved, but I guess the point is I'm hoping not to have to compare with a readyme rig.

[quaint cosmos]

So you think it's smarter to just fumble around in the dark rather than have a professionally weighted rig to use as a guide? It's a strategy.

[inner ridge]

Well, no, I was thinking smartest would be work work from documentation! 🤣

[quaint cosmos]

Documentation isn't going to show you the correct weighting for every bone from every angle.

Nor is a picture going to show you how the rig should look from every angle.

[inner ridge]

That's a pity.

So you're saying the best source of info is to download a readme avatar and put that into blender and look at it that way?

Essentially reverse engineering the existing avatars.

[quaint cosmos]

That would be my suggestion. It takes less than 5 minutes to make one and then you have a rig you can inspect from every angle to see exactly how it should be configured along with what the weights should be like for every bone. You never have to use that character at all when making your own, just drag it to the side and reference it when doing your own thing.

You can even take a picture of the rig and work from that if that's what you really want.

[inner ridge]

You're right, they make it easily downloadable as a .glb file, just looking at it now, the bones are a bit surprising.

Also looks like it doesn't need to be in a t-pose.

Does readyme not support face expressions?

[quaint cosmos]

Your rig should ideally be in a t-pose but so long as the bones are properly set up like they are in the RPM avatar, Unity's humanoid system can convert to a t-pose for you. RPM avatars don't have expressions by default but they do have visemes, which is another nice thing to be able to reference for making your own avatar. Facial expressions are just shape keys that are made exactly like visemes, though, so you can easily add them to an existing model.

[inner ridge]

Ah, good to know.

This is going to get very interesting once we get face tracking in common use.

[quaint cosmos]

I make live theatre in VR so that is one of the biggest things for me but we need headsets that allow for that sort of tracking to be more available before VRChat is going to bother supporting it officially.

[inner ridge]

Yeah, a bit of a catch-22, I'm hopeful that newer headsets will support it - like, next year or the year after.

I'll certainly be lining up for them. 🙂

Full hand skeletons and face tracking are my most important new features.

I've hacked my quest setup to emulate index, and for now, that's the best I can get.

readyplayerme's toe bones are the most surprising to me.

[delicate bramble]

I've been trying to get help on trying to fix the eyes on a head asset i bought awhile back for awhile and haven't been able to figure it out.. I've gotten help once before but it was on an already merged avi that I made and have tried getting help a second time on just the asset alone but haven't had any luck getting a hold of someone or getting help that solves the issue.. Everything seems fine in blender but when I import the model into Unity and play with eye rotations the eyes shoot to the back of the head.

[inner ridge]

Like its parented on the middle of the head or something? I havent figured out parenting or rotations yet but sounds like its being rotated around a point closer to the spine?

[delicate bramble]

I honestly have no idea.. I've been waiting on an update for the fix for a couple months now but nothing has shown up..

I have been trying everything that I could think of..

[inner ridge]

Make the avatar transparent and move it slowly?

You cant fix the problem if you haven’t figured out how its behaving the way it is.

[delicate bramble]

I think I got it..? I honeslty don't know how.. I think using Eye tracking in CATS "fixed it?"

[inner ridge]

There must be a common issue that CATS has identified and fixed magically.

[delicate bramble]

I know other people have delt with the same issue with this head.. there was suppose to be an update for a fix for it but it's been awhile.. i'm not 100% sure that it was fixed though..

[inner ridge]

Fair!

[delicate bramble]

Ok so the pupils move around just fine, but the head wont blink and when i try to configure the armature in unity a bunch of armature errors pop up and wont upload as a humanoid avatar

[gentle socket]

I will once again be asking this since my question was not answered yesterday

I have an avatar with two missing fingers, how do I add them? https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/390924397726138370/1022253518419144704/unknown.png

And yes I am a rookie

[jagged heath]

enter edit mode on the armature. Select the hand bone. Then you should be able to press e and extrude out new bones from there. Remember to name them correctly.

[subtle narwhal]

oh this is perfect

what does a normal humanoid skeleton looks like?

so that i know how to add the boens properly for vrchat

if anyone has a possible picture I would be thnakful

[jagged heath]

https://aleasevr.gumroad.com/l/ik2rig This could help?

[subtle narwhal]

right, well I dont know if I can use that for 1 reqson

it says I shouldnt move the bones, but my model isnt in a perfect tpose

[jagged heath]

Shouldn't and can't is two very different things. You should be fine moving some stuff around.

[subtle narwhal]

oh, ok

so while i put it in there, will the automatic weight think work ok?

[jagged heath]

Automatic is a good base. You most likley have to do touch ups to make it look good.

[subtle narwhal]

right, Ill look up some weight painting tutorials if I need to

thank you for getting that base though

helps alot

oh yeah real quick

whats the shortcut of keys that allow you to move bones on opposite sides at the same time?

to avoid having one side be off

[jagged heath]

Good. Since I'm garbage at weight painting :P
In pose mode. select one side and ctrl + c and then control + shift + v. If I'm not mistaken.

I might be wrong.

[subtle narwhal]

So uh

in the weighting thing

it says failed to find solution for one or mmore bones

welp

shit

ok, time to do this then

[sly crater]

Scale the avatar up really big and the armature

Then do auto weights

Then scale back down

Its a weird blender thing when verticises are too close together

[gentle socket]

When I click symmetrize to add the other half of the bones, nothing happens

[west basin]

I need help with my avatar, how can I have my knees and elbows not bend so sharply

Like a noodle or a wire

[gentle socket]

maybe add more bones on the elbow and knee areas

or instead of two bones on the whole arm/leg maybe add 4 or 5

[west basin]

I have like at least 6 in the leg

And arm

Can I show it?

[gentle socket]

k

[west basin]

give me one second, sorry it's difficult to explain

I'm new to the stuff and this is my first avatar

he has 7 bones in each leg and arm not counting the hand or foot

[gentle socket]

i think that the reason why they don't bend like noodles is because the vrchat avatar animations are designed to move like a human, so elbows and knees only

maybe you could make the wobbly effect by adding physics or something, but i don't know how to do that

[west basin]

you mean like physbones?

[gentle socket]

maybe

also is that a pokemon i think?

[sage patio]

that is not a humanoid rig at all, it will not work

if you want your avatar to move with your hands/head at all, it needs to comply with unity's humanoid rig requirements

now, that's not to say that the humanoid rig needs to move any of the mesh, but you can use it to drive other bones using constraints to make the model move in the way you want it to

reading up, you said that you were just trying to avoid sharp bends

you can totally do that without adding more bones

just need to do the weight painting right

[west basin]

im literally playing as him in vr chat, it is a humanoid it has all necisarry bones and works correctly

so tell me, how does weight painting affect the bendyness of his joints? id like to know more as i have already weight painted his custom bones

[sage patio]

if you're doing a knee joint for example, there will be a fairly sharp gradient of weights from 1 to 0 for the thigh. however, if you extend that gradient to go from the start of the thigh to the ankle, then the bend will be smooth

same for the shin

but in reverse

[west basin]

like evening it out for that bone?

[sage patio]

you basically just make a longer gradient

[west basin]

so it will be like as if i had more knees

[sage patio]

blender has a gradient tool for that

no, you're just making the bend less sharp by spreading out the influence of the bones

[west basin]

i know, i just wasnt sure thats what i needed before i flubbed it up

thank you

[sage patio]

np

[gentle socket]

hi

anyone know how to merge the bones i duplicated with the other half?

[sage patio]

why didn't you just do Armature > Symmetrize? you don't need to duplicate the armature

[gentle socket]

because when i tried to, nothing happened

[sage patio]

you have nothing selected

[gentle socket]

look

[sage patio]

try only selecting the bones that are on one side (so don't select the spine), and you should also probably name them correctly

[gentle socket]

what is "correctly"?

[sage patio]

something you would actually call bones, so not like "BD0" but like "Hips"

[gentle socket]

ooooh

something like "upper leg", "lower leg", "foot", "toe"?

[sage patio]

yes

could do like R.UpperLeg

UpperLeg_R

you can name the bones either based on the bone or the joint

so for example, you could name the lowerleg "Lowerleg" or "Knee"

or Shin

[gentle socket]

it still won't work

it doesn't mirror

there is a small window at the bottom that says "symmetrize" and gives the option -x to +x and +x to -x

@sage patio

you still there?

[sage patio]

ah

try switching between -x to +x and +x to -x

[gentle socket]

still nothing

there isn't a confirm button or anything

oh my god i noticed

i had to put right leg

i had to put R on the names

it worked

[bitter needle]

The SDK is complaining that i am missing a chest bone, yet i do have one. any reason ?

[halcyon sable]

I’m sorry what character is that (I KNOW IT’S FROM GOEMON .w.)

[bitter needle]

i fixed it. Using the Unity Rig editor i found out that i was missing a Spine and that it was using my chest as the spine therefore i need a chest. cool.

i dont even know her name! i just call her girl for now.

[halcyon sable]

I see

Now

I'm gonna assign the bones now

Buuut Idrk how to .w.

Can any Blender armature/rigging experts teach me how?

[halcyon sable]

Okay so I want to have something like this for the neck/head

[halcyon sable]

How do I do that exactly?

"Fill Between Joints" just puts a bone between the points I have selected

So how do I add the dotted lines and what are they called?

[finite stratus]

How do you make a model blink and everything is set up to but it won’t

[sage patio]

dotted line means parenting

select one bone, shift click another, ctrl+ P > Keep offset

[sage patio]

just enable eyelids in your avatar descriptor, pick the correct mesh, and pick the shape key

[halcyon sable]

Ok so one problem

Ok so

the mouth area is a separate mesh from the head

and it causes this awkward lighting effect on the model

I don't want that to be there even tho it probably won't be noticeable in-game..

Any way I can fix that?

[sage patio]

could just join the meshes and then merge the vertices

[halcyon sable]

erm

Idk what exactly you mean by that

I did "Mesh > Merge > By Distance"

idk if that worked tho

[halcyon sable]

Is this right?

[sage patio]

yea you'll need to have the vertices you want to merge selected

[halcyon sable]

Apparently when I do the merge by distance thing it doesn't merge any of the ones I have selected (as you can see here)

Am I doing something wrong here? @sage patio

[sage patio]

oh wait, are there separate textures for the mouth?

[halcyon sable]

You mean in terms of emotes or..?

[sage patio]

that or for talking

[halcyon sable]

I truly do not know

This is all that the Models Resource dump for this model gave me in terms of textures

which is a bit annoying but eh

This is the same case for the Blossom (Chemical X-Traction) model I got

As it didn't give me all the textures

[halcyon sable]

tbh I think I might just take a risk with the whole lighting thing

[sage patio]

you could transfer normals using the data transfer modifier to make it look seamless

[halcyon sable]

And where do I find this data transfer modifier?

Also whenever I try moving the chest bone in Pose Mode this happens

Also yes I do have the parents set correctly

Ok all it took was a quick and painless process

[inner ridge]

@delicate bramble i forgot to mention, i got a from scratch avatar working in vrchat yesterday, its actually pretty easy as it turns out. Everything moves good!

Of course, it helps that skin modifier automates the bones and modifiers although i had to learn the hard way that i really, really should rename the bones it generates.

[west basin]

does anyone know how to use aim constraints on an arm or leg so that they can be bendy?

[halcyon sable]

Okay so I want to have the hair move at the same time as the head

Should I just take the head, hair, and mouth meshes and merge them?

[sage patio]

@halcyon sable they should just all be weighed 100% to the head bone

and to no other groups

[halcyon sable]

I see

Ok

[sage patio]

you can join the meshes too

better for perf

[halcyon sable]

So how do I adjust the weight

[sage patio]

through weight painting

but if you're just weighting stuff 100% to a group, then just do that through edit mode

if the head is currently its own mesh, delete all of the vertex groups on it, make one named the same as the Head bone. then go to edit mode, select all of the vertices, and assign them all to that group

[halcyon sable]

Now when it comes to the pigtails..

[whole tusk]

i saw in the pins that there is a picture of what the rig should roughly look like, but does anyone by chance have an premade example rig? i'm planning on making an avatar from scratch soon (waiting for reference art), but it's my first time i'll be trying to make an avatar from scratch, so having something i can directly look at in blender would be really useful.

[halcyon sable]

An armature template was sent in this channel a few days ago

[whole tusk]

i'll dig through the chat then

[halcyon sable]

ok

or wait-

[whole tusk]

hm?

[halcyon sable]

Here

so you don't have to endlessly scroll until you find it

[whole tusk]

thx haha

[halcyon sable]

Np x3

[whole tusk]

another question, for vrchat, does it matter if the model is in a t-pose or an a-pose? as the reference is showing a t-pose but i've seen people use the a-pose as well without seemingly any issue

[halcyon sable]

I believe it doesn’t matter what rest/default pose the author uses for the avatar

So I think you’re good to go either way

[whole tusk]

rogger rogger

[halcyon sable]

So, this is my first time using Weight Paint mode; Could I get a brief run-down of how to use it in this case?

[sage patio]

it will be put into a T pose at the end of the day. I normally opt for a T pose as it makes weight painting easier

[halcyon sable]

Like what should I do and how should I do it?

[whole tusk]

okay, thanks for the info ^^

[halcyon sable]

@sage patio I am really not sure what to do here since I can't access Weight Paint mode with the bones being the main selection.

[sage patio]

you weight paint a mesh, not bones

[halcyon sable]

aaaah I see

[sage patio]

if you had the head group selected in that pic, then it looks fine

try moving the bone in pose mode and see if the head moves

[halcyon sable]

nope

doesn't move

[sage patio]

check the mesh if it has an Armature modifier with the correct armature selected

[halcyon sable]

There's 3..? O_O

[sage patio]

wtf .-.

delete the other 2, make sure the first one has the actual armature selected

you should only have one armature

[halcyon sable]

Ok I did that

Might rename the armature tho

[sage patio]

just call it Armature

[halcyon sable]

Alright, took some time to fix the rest too (they had multiple armatures and I had to set the objects to the correct ones)

Oh yeah the Armature also has the hair, chest, spine, and head bones

Should I do something about that?

[sage patio]

it should have every bone

on your model

you don't need more than one armature no matter how many bones you have

[halcyon sable]

Aight, joined all of them together

(the separate armatures are now one)

Thing is tho, am I gonna have to grab all the meshes and merge them together too, now that I've done this?

[sage patio]

yea, you can have it all as one mesh if it's weight painted properly

[halcyon sable]

In that case, I don't really want to take any chances, so I'm gonna play it safe and keep the meshes separate for each limb

So uh this doesn't look right, does it?

If this looks incorrect, should I make it all at 1.0 weight?

The whole arm at 1.0 weight is completely red

Do I want to do that or no?

[quaint cosmos]

You only want the part of the arm weighted to the nearest bone so the upper arm should be weighted to the upper arm and so on

[halcyon sable]

So something like this?

[quaint cosmos]

Yeah

[halcyon sable]

And this?

[quaint cosmos]

Do you have both bones selected here? There should be a bit of overlap and ot looks like the midpoint of the lower arm is a little close to the hand. You really just need to try posing it, see how it moves and adjust accordingly.

[halcyon sable]

I can't Weight Paint bones

[quaint cosmos]

Sorry, the vertex group associated witj the bone. The weight around the bone needs to be assigned to the appropriate vertex group

[halcyon sable]

um..

[quaint cosmos]

I use the tab on the right that looks like an inverted triangle to select the vertex group but that might work. If you're not changing your selected vertex group when doing this, you're just assigning all of this to the top bone

[halcyon sable]

I think I got the weight painting right..

[quaint cosmos]

I would say that looks generally right though I think you want more overlap but are those weights assigned to the correct vertex groups? If not, you 'll need to redo them

[halcyon sable]

More overlap, huh?

[quaint cosmos]

Yeah, like there shouldn't be that dark blue in the middle, the weights should blend more but the vertex group issue is more pressing, you can adjist that later.

When you select your upper arm vertex group, what do the weights look like?

[halcyon sable]

Oookay I think I found out why I'm having trouble

I split the polygons on the limbs to have separate sections of them cuz I thought that would work

But that's why I'm getting weird shading on the arms

[quaint cosmos]

So you're just going to ignore the vertex group question? I promise you won't get a good result if you don't address that.

[halcyon sable]

ok so

I don't mean to ignore it

but

I don't know if the right group is selected for this limb

[quaint cosmos]

Then you need to figure that out rather than proceeding as if it doesn't matter because it matters a whole lot. Do you find the inverted triangle tab? It should be on the right.

[halcyon sable]

This one?

[quaint cosmos]

Yeah, when you click that, see the vertex groups? Click the one associated with your upper arm bone and look at the weights

[halcyon sable]

Oookay I see them clearly now

I didn't know that's what I was doing RIGHT all this time

They all look pretty good

[quaint cosmos]

So when you click the vertex group, the part of the mesh that should be weighted to that bone is? Not sure how you figured that out without being aware of it but if it's how it should be then great

[halcyon sable]

I'm.. pretty sure! :)

[quaint cosmos]

And yes, separating parts of the mesh can cause discontinuities in the shading so it's best if everything is welded

That looks appropriate for the upper arm but I'd make sure to go through them all

[halcyon sable]

Now, how do I weld meshes?

[quaint cosmos]

If its all part of the same mesh you can just select neighboring vertices and then press M and merge by distance. You might have to adjust the threshold in the dialog box that pops up after doing that if nothing happens

[halcyon sable]

It looks good as new! Thanks!

Now, I'm gonna get back to Weight Painting the limbs and see what else I have to do from there.

I just realized the weight painting had already been done for the model in the original game .w.

Now I think it's armature time

[quaint cosmos]

And you're sure you didn't add all those arm weights to the head bone?

[halcyon sable]

Should I do that or no?

I mean, I added the arm weights to the vertex group "Bone" when I was doing it from scratch before I realized the whole vertice-merge

[quaint cosmos]

Definitely not but if you were painting weights and not paying attention to the vertex group, thst seems like it would have happened

[halcyon sable]

Well the weights were already set to the model, like I said earlier, so I don't think that will be an issue now

Except now THIS is happening o_o

[quaint cosmos]

What bone is bone? This is why you label before doing all of this but you should be able to track it down if you open the armature in edit mode

If you added weights to bone, whenever that bone moves the arm will move with it

Check the weights on the left arm and see if the have influence on the head

[halcyon sable]

Ah

The shoulders I think

[quaint cosmos]

I'd select bone and then look at the weights in weight paint mode

[halcyon sable]

Ok so "Bone" is the right pigtail

[quaint cosmos]

And is that all that's weighted to it?

[halcyon sable]

I'm not too sure just yet

Turns out, the right pigtail is all that's weighted to "Bone"

And the left pigtail is all that's weighted to "Bone.001"

[quaint cosmos]

I'm still confused as to what happened to the weights you were adding. Did you delete those or did you never add weights and were just showing what was already there?

[halcyon sable]

I was adding the arm weights to "Bone" with the arm selected before checking the other vertex groups and realizing that the modelers for Punch Time Explosion had already done the weighting for the model (and I'm assuming the other character models for the game's characters as well).

[quaint cosmos]

So if you were adding those weights to bone, they should still be there unless you removed them.

[halcyon sable]

I removed them from the arm I was doing from scratch

Again, I hadn't realized that the arms were already done until I looked at the vertex groups

[quaint cosmos]

Okay, I just wasn't aware you had removed them and that would have been an issue down the line.

[halcyon sable]

So I pretty much got them all sorted out

And now I'm testing the armature and WOW

It's so good

I think it's ready to export! What do you think?

[quaint cosmos]

If it moves well and you aren't planning on adding eye tracking or lipsyncing, then it should be good to go.

[halcyon sable]

Ok I'm in Unity now and I seem to have got an Import Message..

I did add all the necessary bones (because it was a template for the armature I was using), but Unity just doesn't seem to see it there for some odd reason

I eventually decided to use "Generic" for the animation type, but in this case, I'm not sure if it will work.
The SDK seems to approve of it, though!

[robust crescent]

You need humanoid or all those bones you just sat up would be pointless

[halcyon sable]

o

[quaint cosmos]

Pretty sure that'll just make your avatar T Pose unless you set up your own animations.

You should be able to assign any bones it's missing in the configuration

[halcyon sable]

I see

Now the configuration, where do I find that?

[quaint cosmos]

Click the FBX in your project tab and then in the inspector there will be 4 options, one of them will be rig and you can find the configuration in there.

[halcyon sable]

This is was what you're talking about, yea?

Cuz I have it set up already

But I thought you meant something different I need to do to fix what the import message is telling me

Off-topic but in the Animation tab here, do I turn off "Import Animation" or leave it on?

[robust crescent]

Dont need animation - unlikely you are importing one thats in the avatar

[halcyon sable]

I didn't really set up a set avatar anim so

[halcyon sable]

Now about the Import Message here, I'm 100% sure the armature template I used had every bone I needed for the model, so why is Unity not acknowledging this "LeftUpperArm" bone?

[robust crescent]

Never seen anyone use custom, might be the error causing it 🤷

[quaint cosmos]

Yup, that's where the configuration is. It could be the name that it's not recognizing.

[halcyon sable]

A true bruh moment right here

[robust crescent]

just check if the bones are all slotted in on the side panel (vrchat do not need fingers / jawbone / toes or upper chest) *upper is optional

[halcyon sable]

🤔

[quaint cosmos]

Unity requires that the bones are parented to the right bone and it looks like your shoulders aren't parented to the chest or upper chest

You might be able to fix that in blender.

[halcyon sable]

Ohhhhh

I see

[halcyon sable]

Now how do I get out of the mode in this image here?

[quaint cosmos]

At the bottom, there should be apply and revert buttons, you need to scroll down.

[halcyon sable]

Aight I see them, do I apply or revert?

[quaint cosmos]

If you didn't change anything, it doesn't really matter.

[halcyon sable]

Well I did fix the whole "missing bones" thing

[quaint cosmos]

Then apply

[halcyon sable]

Wait what the-

[quaint cosmos]

Ancestor I believe just means parent. If your shoulders aren't parented to your chest then they also won't be parented to its parents which is the hips if you go down the chain.

Ancestor probably refers to a parent of a parent.

[halcyon sable]

So do all the bones have to have some sort of parenting method?

I mean the "Hips" is a vertex group on the model

[quaint cosmos]

Parenting is something you do to your armature, the vertex groups just tell the model which bones control which vertices.

[robust crescent]

check if they are in right order

[quaint cosmos]

Generally, everything is parented from the hips, either down to the upper leg, lower leg, foot, toe, or up to the chest, upper chest (optionally), then shoulders and arms.

[halcyon sable]

So..

[robust crescent]

shoulders go under chest

🔨 anyway gotto scoot heres the long list of order

[quaint cosmos]

You might be able to go into edit mode on your armature and parent everything properly but it might mess stuff up. Another option is just to redo the rig and then parent the mesh to the rig and then add the armature modifier to the rig so it doesn't override your vertex groups.

[robust crescent]

color coded easier to see

[halcyon sable]

I think I got it all right?

[quaint cosmos]

Looks right to me

[halcyon sable]

Okay, now I definitely got it right.

And after all that this is still happening ._.

I don't know what the import message is talking about but quite frankly I just wanna get this all right

[quaint cosmos]

And you've set everything up in the configuration? Did you do your parenting in Blender or Unity?

[halcyon sable]

I'm currently doing more parenting in Blender to try and fix what's apparently wrong

[quaint cosmos]

You may need to redo the missing bone issue if you haven't done that but it seems to recognize the shoulder, just not the parenting so I'm not sure that's the issue

[halcyon sable]

Okay, now MORE is mixed up..

[quaint cosmos]

Check what bone is assigned to the spine. It loos like maybe the head got assigned there somehow?

[halcyon sable]

Well I did this..

(Head bone parent of neck)

[quaint cosmos]

I mean in the configuration, what is in the spine slot?

[halcyon sable]

O

Well I fixed everything!

[quaint cosmos]

Now to test and see how it moves

[halcyon sable]

Well I applied and went back to the menu, now THIS is happening..

[halcyon sable]

Okay so everything's fine now (I just set the the Chest bone to be parent of the Neck bone)

But what IS this pose?

[quaint cosmos]

Not sure what's going on, you can probably just delete the pigtail bones and assign the pigtails to the head bone. Also, the Hips slot is assigned to the armature instead of the hip bone which might be a problem but I'm still not sure why it's complaining about the shoulder parenting.

[halcyon sable]

Something doesn't look right

[quaint cosmos]

Chest needs to be assigned and Hips should use the Hips bone

[halcyon sable]

I don't get it! What does Unity want from me?!

[quaint cosmos]

And your hips are assigned properly?

[halcyon sable]

Yes.

But it must be something that's wrong here..

[quaint cosmos]

Your hips are in the hip slot? I'm also not sure why there is a camera there, though I don't assume that's the cause of the issue.

[halcyon sable]

I don't know why the camera keeps appearing

I'm just gonna delete it from the blender project

[quaint cosmos]

In that hierarchy, it doesn't look like the upper body is parented to the hips. The hierarchy looked right but that last one you posted doesn't.

[halcyon sable]

And yes, the hips are in the slot.

[quaint cosmos]

Hips should be at the top of the hierarchy like your old hierarchy, the new one you posted has the head at the top

[halcyon sable]

Okay I think I've got it down

[quaint cosmos]

You don't need an upper chest bone but if you have one, it should be parented to the chest, not to the neck

[halcyon sable]

Thing is

Every time I try to delete it this happens

And no matter what I choose it always boots me back out

[quaint cosmos]

You don't have to delete it if there is one, you can keep it but if you're going to delete it, it should be done in Blender and then you'd have to change some weights to compensate for its removal.

It just needs to be parented right

[halcyon sable]

But then the thing is

I don't even have an "upper chest" bone in the armature

[quaint cosmos]

Okay, that's fine but how did it get in your hierarchy?

[halcyon sable]

I really have no clue

[quaint cosmos]

It's not there in Blender, it just appears on export?

[halcyon sable]

Apparently

Okay one problem

The mirror is still on

So

I can't just weight paint one pigtail

It goes to both

How do I turn off the mirror

[sage patio]

@halcyon sable are you attempting to change the bone hierarchy in unity?

don't do that

do it in blender and re export

[halcyon sable]

Ok

Thing is

I'm trying to fix the weights for the pigtails here

I want the left pigtail to be fully weighted in vertex group Bone.001

But

I can't do that because every time I try to draw on ONE pigtail, BOTH of them get affected

Basically mirror's on and I can't turn it off

[quaint cosmos]

You can also just select them in edit mode and then click assign or remove underneath the vertex groups panel.

[halcyon sable]

Big oops on my part

[halcyon sable]

Okay uhhh

[quaint cosmos]

Post your configuration menu so we can make sure everything looks good there,

[halcyon sable]

Which one?

[quaint cosmos]

The one you see when you go into Unity's rig configuration. Ideally multiple screenshots to show all the assignments.

[halcyon sable]

The one I have highlighted?

[halcyon sable]

Whenever I click "Configure.."

Unity RESETS the thing

Like what did I do to it

[quaint cosmos]

And you're doing all of this parenting in the bone tab and not just dragging things around in the hierarchy?

[halcyon sable]

Wait

Is that really all I'm missing?

I know what's wrong now

All of the bone names are incredibly wrong

(4th one was "Head")

I am disgusted tbh

I thought the CATS plugin wouldn't do that to the bone names

What should the Chest Bone parent be, if any?

[quaint cosmos]

Spine, it's always the one before in the chsin leading to the hips

[halcyon sable]

Segment 1 2 or 3?

Or the start?

[west basin]

i need help, im trying to animate a custom hand gesture, and i posed trhe bones right and now im stuck, how do i export this movement and timeline of a keyframe to a animation file?

[quaint cosmos]

Going up from the hips it should be spine, chest, upper chest (optional), neck, head with the shoulders connecting either to the chest or upper chest if you have it

[halcyon sable]

(going from the bottom up)

1. Spine Start
2. Spine Segment 1
3. Spine Segment 2
4. Spine Segment 3
5. Neck

[quaint cosmos]

Did you make this in Blender or Unity? If Blender, expand out the FBX in Unity and you should see a triangle with a couple lines, that's your aninations. If Unity, you would have created the anim file prior to making the animation

[west basin]

im confused by this, im in blender trying to make an anim file

here is a screenshot

[quaint cosmos]

Even with an upper chest, that's one too many bones. You'll need to merge 2 of them with cats

[west basin]

ive posed the fingers how i want them to be for open hand guesture, what do i do now?

[halcyon sable]

Which button do I click?

[quaint cosmos]

If you look in the action editor, that animation should have a name or just expand out the FBX in the project tab when you import it into Unity using the arrow to the right of the file and find it there

[quaint cosmos]

I dunno, I don't use cats, my rigging program gives me the correct bones in the rigging process. I'd look it up on youtube or check the cats documentation

[west basin]

i think im doing this all wrong, do you have a min to walk me through this?

[halcyon sable]

Wait which program do you use?

[west basin]

blender, also i found it under cats, then optimization tab, then bone merger

[halcyon sable]

Wasn't talking to you, but thanks

[west basin]

oh sorry, im just waiting for help

[quaint cosmos]

Not at the moment but if you import your model and use the arrow to the right of the imported file, I think you'll find what you're looking for.

[west basin]

i did and all i see is this box looking file, named l

[quaint cosmos]

I use auto rig pro but its a paid plugin. Mixamo can also do automatic rigging for free but both will require manual adjustment to your weights

[west basin]

if i open it it will come up with this

[quaint cosmos]

You seem to be trying to open the fbx. You want to expand the menu to the right in your project tab in Unity

[west basin]

i am

that is the file that gets opened if i select and open it

[quaint cosmos]

That button doesn't open a file, it shows yoy the contents contained in the fbx

[west basin]

that box in the assets is my "animation"

[quaint cosmos]

Are you exporting as fbx as there is no animation there

[west basin]

i want an anim file so i can overwrite my animation on a hnad gesture

i dont think i made an anim file in the first place, i dont know how

[quaint cosmos]

You did by creating a keyframe in Blender

[west basin]

does the keyframe save by itself

[quaint cosmos]

It creates an action that should be embedded in your FBX file but for something like this, it might be better to just create it in Unity

[west basin]

how do i do that?

[quaint cosmos]

If you click on the parent object of the mesh and the armature in Unity in your hierarchy, you should get the option to create an animation in the animation tab. Then, just press the record button and pose your bones

[halcyon sable]

I honestly am way too confused

By the way I'm following a tutorial here and I didn't know all this hassle would happen before the uploading part .w. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66y6sbV0UXA

[quaint cosmos]

It's probably more complicated to try and make a rig that wasn't designed for VRChat work for VRChat rather than just making a working rig from the start but luckily after this part, it's all pretty simple

[halcyon sable]

Well the model I'm using wasn't designed for VRChat lmao

This armature was tho

[quaint cosmos]

Then they must've done it wrong or you did something wrong with it because you ended up with too many bones. Though even a good auto-rigging program would struggle with that model as they expect humans with necks. It was perhaps not the best choice for a first avatar.

[halcyon sable]

I don't think they did it wrong

[halcyon sable]

@sage patio Is this really one too many bones?

[quaint cosmos]

Yeah, I checked and it has the right number of bones labeled correctly so something must've gone awry in your process.

[halcyon sable]

Eh?

[quaint cosmos]

It has a spine, chest, and upper chest labeled correctly so I'm not sure what happened with your bone names.

Maybe something to do with CATS

[halcyon sable]

I renamed them the way I wanted to

[west basin]

in unity, how do i set a bones rotation relative to the possition of the bone instead of the world's xyz

[quaint cosmos]

Top left, change it from global to local

[west basin]

which section?

[quaint cosmos]

Why would you rename a properly configured template? Also not sure how you ended up with another bone.

[quaint cosmos]

No section, just towards the top left of your screen next to center/pivot

[west basin]

ah, thank you

[halcyon sable]

I just didn't feel like re-adjusting the bones all over again

But for the sake of it, I will

[quaint cosmos]

In the future, you probably want to rename your vertex groups to match your bones rather than the other way around.