avatar-rigging

[robust crescent]

if you get something like that ^ importing you need older blender , if not fix should be fine

[tardy socket]

Ok, how do I tell cats to fix the armature

[robust crescent]

your model need manual fixing those bones straight up usually from a game, otherwise

those shouldnt point up

[tardy socket]

Ok, so how do i get to this

Is it in the import screen

@robust crescent i installed blender 3.6, i have the .zip for the correct version of cats (the unofficial one), but it isn't showing up to install as an addon

[tardy socket]

Ok, @robust crescent i have cats working in 3.6, how do i get to this screen

[rough snow]

Please keep in mind that the people helping here are just other community members trying to help others out when they have the free time to do so. Not everyone is going to be able to walk you through every single step. Try searching for answers on google when you can and if you have to ask here, just be patient

[tardy socket]

Alright, sorry, just incredibly frustrated with this as I've been working on it all day with practically 0 progress

[tardy socket]

Ok, figures it out

[tardy socket]

@robust crescent cats says I need to make it a single user, but when I try to do that it pops up the warning "Not yet Implemented"

[robust crescent]

select everything in scene , hit space

( or just U , shortcut binding might differ )

[tardy socket]

I got it, thx

Let me get you a screenshot of what it did, bc some of the bones are still pointing up

[robust crescent]

those need to be manually edited

[tardy socket]

Some of them appear to be for fur

Do you want me to export and send it to you?

[tardy socket]

How do I do that?

Ykw, Im not gonna mess with it, it works properly, I don't mind if on the technical side it is janky

[fossil rivet]

My armature looks weird in unity because bones that are "floating" like this become stretched out to the ones they're parented to. Is there a way to avoid this?

It's resulting in my model becoming distorted and strange

[pale pumice]

nothing there looks distorted, but also the bones look normal for Unity

[fossil rivet]

How would I fix this issue then, make more bones in blender physically connected to the ones in the ribbon?

[pale pumice]

I'm not sure what it is you're trying to fix here

[fossil rivet]

After adjusting the height I think the distortion issues during movement are more due to weight painting, though I can't quite figure that out either... When I have the whole mesh weight painted red it still stretches things out weirdly when I move the head. The clothes stretches very weirdly all over when I try to crouch or sit

[pale pumice]

remember that if your weights aren't normalized, full red might not be 100%

[pale pumice]

got the armature in a pose in blender maybe?

[mint thunder]

negative

[pale pumice]

how did you add them in Unity? I usually just export the whole avatar with clothes direct from Blender

[mint thunder]

its a seperate fbx with the clothes

[pale pumice]

hmm - if it's for your own personal use, I'd just export it all together. But that's fine - how are you adding it in Unity then?

[mint thunder]

vrcfury

[stray wind]

guys, this is actually going to be very painful for me to say but sometime in the future in 2025, I'm gonna need some help rigging

I'll let you know when

I say painful because I've never rigged before

not anything complex

but I have a feeling that it'll work out

[nova shard]

its rather easy once you figure out how weightpainting actually works, i generally suggest this video to users as a quick overall guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fICQmBEt4Y

but asking for help with something that you havent started yet/arent planning on doing for a long while doesnt really help you much :P

[tardy socket]

Ummmmm... How do I fix this

(Avatar isn't stiff, I'm tposing to emphasize the issue)

My hands are facing the ground in this image

[ruby pivot]

Anyone know why the character mouth is slightly open despite not having jaw bone assign nor having blendshape value higher than 0?

[wintry jetty]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1185471176886210570/1322835222672183356/image.png?ex=6773a34e&is=677251ce&hm=c9397d9b84152062ed6daed8b96d58d8da9258b0ec3870163112e962c951167e& looking for tips on how to rig the blue sections for physics bones

[nova shard]

add a bone for each piece (and parent them to the head) then just weightpaint the flap to its correlating bone

[stray wind]

Guys, I think what you really need is this

https://youtu.be/3yrwKXQbRpI?si=UuQlYdaRAPo95md0

Now I know it isn't much, but now I know a lot more than what I have known in the past 2 days so now I'm more prepared

[pale pumice]

weight painting is so much fun.

[stray wind]

Indeed

[pale pumice]

by which I mean it's been annoying me all morning 🙂

[stray wind]

It's going to be so much fun for me

I'm actually very happy for it

[stray wind]

Okay, suffer for it then 😂

I'm going to enjoy every bit of it

[pale pumice]

hehe

[stray wind]

Besides what I'm going to be doing isn't going to be that hard either

It's just a cape

I'd be like, My progress, I'm faking saying I'm fine, My internal voice saying help me, then to today, I say well that's enough of that.

[pale pumice]

oh flowing cloth is annoying

[old flare]

So I was wondering if there is a way to rig an arm in such a way that it bends like a cartoon, like rubber hose type characters. I can't find anything about this, I know some sonic avatars do this but I have no idea how I would rig it

[pale pumice]

Could rig the arm like a noodle but make the normal arm bones also, which VRChat's IK drives based on your movements. Then use rotation constraints to move the noddle based on the IK arm. might be kinda complex but it'd work. Or do the same rigging but use FinalIK

[tacit oasis]

does anyone ahve advice if i wanted to replace the legs on this ? theres a ton of constraints and ive enver worked with them before 😭

[wintry jetty]

What am i looking at first off.

there are so many bones i cant understand whats doing what

[pale pumice]

probably has twist or muscle deform bones hanging off the humanoid bones.

colors or collections can help organize things, if you get lost 🙂

[wintry jetty]

i prefer shape keys for doing most of those. except for ass and breast giggle. i like the bones so i can have more direct control over it

[pale pumice]

ah interesting, I use bones and constraints for these

[wintry jetty]

when the movement of specific joints is predictable shape keys and drivers are the way i choose to go with it. simply because i try to reduce the chances of me missclicking bones i dont want to move by mistake.

[pale pumice]

whatever works for you 🙂

[wintry jetty]

i just find moving the weight values as needed or letting the system figure it out based off of variables and equations to be more intuitive

[gentle hare]

i have a interesting problem with a Base that i work with a Creator. but we don't figure out the Problem.
if we use in VRChat Height in IK the T-Pose looks Correct.
But if we switch over to Arm-Span for Measurement the Avatar does a Sorta Y-Pose instead of T-Pose 1.st pic
And in if i let the Arms Hang it doesn't do it ingame. 2. pic
Maybe Someone has idea how to fix it that it works in Both not just Height mode.

[fossil rivet]

My character's clothes look normal in Blender, but the shorts clip through the skirt a lot in Unity and VRChat. I'm guessing this is probably a weights issue, but I'm unsure of how to go about fixing it

[arctic notch]

oh yeah I probably should ask about this since im here: I was doing something funny on this model where the "meat" of the limbs weren't actually rigged to the real humanoid skeleton bones, but a chain of physics joints tethered by kinematic fixed joints on constraints at both ends. In an attempt to conform it more to VRChat, for that version of the model I reparented those bones so each limb had two physbone chains pointing at the elbows/knees. I guess the best way to say it would be like if I was trying to make limbs like that ARMS game nintendo had. I don't really have plans on making the hands or feet fly out in VRChat, but I thought it would be fun to have limbs somebody could grab and stretch like a rubber-band while the hands and feet remain in place.

this was my first vrchat avatar, so I probably jumped to a lot of conclusions for no good reason, but since I joined here I figure I should run the idea past people that would have a better idea on it all

for reference, this is how the hierarchy looks for the vrchat version's limbs using physbones (it does NOT behave like the video above, I just posted that as a "proof of concept" or what the ideal behavor would look like)

this is how I had a limb setup in the recording above, and how I have it running in vtuber applications like Warudo

everything's running acceptably to me for now, I just hadn't had an opportunity to run it by anyone more experienced to see if I overlooked anything obvious; otherwise I would have gone to the help channel

I was trying to get this as close to being compatible as a fallback avatar as I could (with a few exceptions I'd have to manually tweak for android/ios versions), so I suppose the main thing I was concerned about was being able to strip out the physics without breaking the limbs; which as far as I can tell works fine for the physbone version since the bone hierarchy would make it act like Perfectly Normal Limbs when physbones are disabled

[copper rover]

Goal
I am trying to do a deep dive into Ik rigging and so far the avatar tracks well, but I would like to reduce the height loss when lock both is used.

Issue
Two separate issues:

• Slight neck hunch
• Chest and spine compressions

Details
I've dug through VRChat discord and whatever resources I can find but guidance on this is very limited. The main culprit appears to be that lock both will translate the distance between spine and chest and that will cause some torso compression around the spine and chest area.

the distance between the spine and chest is what changes, but the bone transforms themselves are never scaled.

• Comment by Kung

I try to eliminate variables when adjusting IK rig:

• Straight skeleton
• As close to IRL proportion as possible
• IRL height and by Height
• Swap between Lock Both and Lock Hip for testing

Spine compression is minimal when standing but noticeable. It's much more obvious when lying down with my back flat on the floor.

Guess at Solution
Use Lock Hip and measure where the viewball offset is. One or more bone might be too long or too short in the chain: Hip, Spine, Chest, UpperChest, Neck, Head. If my IRL eye level is below my avatar's when one or more bones may be too short. If my eye level is above, then one or more bones might be too long.

FBT is tricky because leg, arm, and torso are all relative. So if I lengthen torso it might ends up impacting my limbs without any obvious purpose or payoff. In addition it may impact the viewball which also plays a role. Help would be greatly appreciated.

[fiery grove]

hey i cant get to the final part of importing an avatar i made (using the bones from maya) it says i haven't added an "animator", what specifically does that mean, is it an animation file, ik info.... what?\

is it telling me it doesnt inherit them? or when? or do i have to learn how to animate

[arctic sundial]

https://vrc.school/docs/Unity-Animations/Animators/

[pale pumice]

if you do a humanoid rig setup in Unity, it'll add an animator for you. if not, you'll have to add one to the avatar root

[fiery grove]

oh gotcha, i just jumped over that hurtle, now ive built a bui.ld successfully, about to name it and change thhumbnail

[pale pumice]

nice

[warped hound]

I'm standing up straight with a bend in my knees and I cannot for the life of me figure out what bone is causing that

(head/hands tracking only if that changes anything

my current theory is that my heel should be in line with my hips .. so I'm trying that

[rough snow]

i think that kind of knee bending in game can be caused by your head being lower than vrchat thinks it should be. like if the height setting is too high, or if your headset was calibrated wrong/ your setup changed since the last time you calibrated it (on an index at least, i dont know how it works with other headsets)

[warped hound]

it got worse when I adjusted my foot location so it's not that ... then also I just tried changing my height and it starts to go away around 7 feet but when I max out at 8 feet it still hasn't gone away yet

I'm using a quest 1 on virtual desktop with a stationary boundary as well, so there's basically nothing in terms of calibration other than the floor level

my lower leg seems like it was too long. shortening it seems to have made a difference ... and now I stand on my toes when I look down

also my feet go below the floor now, but that's because the toe bone is too high

[thick flare]

It’s your tracking, whenever I had this issue with avi’s I reset my guardian and it fixed

[stray wind]

do you guys want to know the crazy part? the rest pose of Anakin wasn't what you saw, this is the rest pose

how do I apply this as a rest pose?

[rough snow]

apply the armature modifier on the mesh(es), apply pose as rest pose, parent meshes back to armature with 'armature deform'

[stray wind]

I figured it out, I just need to duplicate the armature modifier twice on each part of the model and apply it as a rest pose for each model

okay let's find out

if it works, it works

it finally worked

[somber cliff]

Time for another silly question ig 💀 I'm adding a clothing item to an avatar that I got from Booth in Blender. But the clothing item is an fbx with bones in it. Do I delete the bones after I've posed it?

[copper rover]

You need to make sure the bones are named the same and any new bones are kept and attached to your avatar. If the FBX is meant for your base, you can pose and export the clothing mesh and bone and use VRCFury/Modular Avatar to attach them separately in unity.

[somber cliff]

sadly not meant for the base, i had to sculpt and fit it

[somber cliff]

so once they're named the same, where do I go from there?

[urban shoal]

Hi everyone, Im not great with the art of Weight Paint.

The first Pic is what it looks like at the moment, would would you do to make it look abit better if i can? or should i just suck it up?

The last 2 pics are its weight paint on pelvis and leg bone just so you can see

[arctic sundial]

I would try to get the center to fold in a bit like the legs. Remember that in vrchat, nobody will inspect your clothing that closely. Dont break a leg over it, youll just become hella frustrated if you aim for "perfect" cuz for that you need 2 more subdivs and ik bones :P

[urban shoal]

Okay yeah thank you for that answer! i was sorta getting too into it

[urban shoal]

Hi again everyone, Does this look normal?:

I reimported a fixed FBX and the tail sticks up and the chest has a whole bunch of connections. Why could this be? I have changed animation type in unity from Humanoid to None back to Humanoid

when i test the avatar in Mucles and Settings it does seem to move fine

[arctic sundial]

Unity does not count the body of a bone

it counts the connections/joint and displays it funky like that (without empty spaces) (plus it wont display the last bone of something, like finger tips). this is also related to needing to add an end point on the y axis of physbones that consist of only 1 bone rather than 2 or more

[urban shoal]

Okay thank you, i wont stress then. Is the tail pooping up not a problem either then ?

[arctic sundial]

The tail being angled up like that may be a result of either objects not having transforms applied or the tail is posed in blender and the actual rest pose is the uppy position - what matters to unity is the rest pose

[urban shoal]

thank you

[pale pumice]

I have to try to remember this 🙂

[merry jetty]

can someone show me the rigging on a hand?

I forget it

idk how to do it anymore ;-;

[balmy delta]

Similar to your irl hand
1 Wrist bone
3 finger bones

[pale pumice]

3 thumb bones

[versed sphinx]

Hello everyone, maybe someone know how to make correct rig of the zip for VRchat, I can’t figure out how to do it the same way as here?
https://metalgod.gumroad.com/l/METALzip

[smoky wolf]

What could be causing this?

[fresh dragon]

I need someone to please help me fix my radial menu. I'm adding assets for the first time to my first avi and have no idea what I'm doing.

[pale pumice]

that's not rigging, try in #avatar-help

[wintry jetty]

im looking for general feedback on my rig before i start to learn unity to get it in vrc

[pale pumice]

there's a pin in here that has an ideal rig setup - yours looks pretty close. Might be an extra spine bone in there though

[wintry jetty]

in mine or the pinned reference

[pale pumice]

in yours

hips -> spine -> chest -> [optional] upper chest -> neck -> head

[wintry jetty]

its for the spine segments for her mechanical body. having to keep certain parts rigid meaning i added in a extra spine joints

to make sure this point can rotate and stay rigid

[pale pumice]

yep, but VRChat's IK won't drive the extra ones, which may not be ideal for your model.

[wintry jetty]

i could tag it as "chest" and have the main body bone be upper chest maybe. be a bit creative with these restrictions so i can use all 3 bones

just not as fully intended

[pale pumice]

names aren't that relevant, it's more the mapping from your bones to what VRChat expects, in the rigging setup

[wintry jetty]

hmm maybe a simple thing to do would be to tell the extra bone to copy the rotation of the other one using bone constraints.

[pale pumice]

that could work

[wintry jetty]

i never used unity before so i dont really know whats best for it

[pale pumice]

That pinned armature is what's best for it. Deviating from that is going to mean trial and error to figure out what works best for your avatar. Every one is different.

[placid crown]

if im making an avatar with layered clothing how should the weight painting look?

should the top layer have more weighted painting than the layer below? and what about the actual body?

[pale pumice]

doesn't really matter how it looks, it matters how the objects move.

I'd start with the lowest layer though, make that look right, then work on the next up

[placid crown]

it all looks "right" but in vrchat all said layer clip when i move my arms

[pale pumice]

Then that layer probably needs different weight paint

Or to be moved further from whatever is below

[placid crown]

i was able to hide the top layer and move the bones around to really see the body clipping with that layer and i think im on the right track now so thank you ☺️

[pale pumice]

ooh yes - definitely hiding stuff helps a lot here

[placid crown]

ive been trying to fix the clipping here with the weight painting but it isnt working

the brush just wont move it to cover the exposed area even a bit

[pale pumice]

not sure how you do, but I tend to paint with weight fully at 1, but strength around .02 and using a tablet, usually with normalization on

[placid crown]

what blend mode would you suggest

[pale pumice]

paint mostly, but I often use blur as well

usually I paint first, then blur to smooth things out

[rough snow]

in a case like this you could also try to change the weight on the base model as well, but i'd go with kazin's suggestion first, the upper leg should have the most weight for that top area and the lower leg should be around 0. the only change in values should be closest to the bend itself, not halfway up the thigh

[pale pumice]

I will! I can't help it, it's really annoying. It also means weight painting takes me a while because I'm too much of a perfectionist 😦
But yeah, most people just won't.

huh totally necro, didn't realize I was scrolled up

[rough snow]

imo clipping caused by sharper weight painting around the leg looks better than trying to make it smooth and distorting the stomach weirdly (though thats probably cause my models are low poly)

[brisk terrace]

got a question about armatures and bone positionning. I notice that when i'm coming out of a walking animation my legs are properly positionned but after a second they move forward slightly and it looks like i'm crouching. This is the blender , Unity and Vrc comparative.

[pale pumice]

that's not how humanoid legs are, so it's not going to work very well in vrchat. Most of the digitgrade leg systems use a second set of bones for the model's legs.

[brisk terrace]

not trying to do digitgrade legs , i just want them to bend like regular legs.

[pale pumice]

the armature you've got clearly looks like digitgrade though

[brisk terrace]

becasue the heel is higher up ?

[pale pumice]

yeah, human heels are on (or very close to) the ground

there's a pin in here that shows the ideal humanoid armature

[brisk terrace]

yeah but i made this before and didn't get this problem

this previous model doesnt have the issue

[wintry jetty]

think this setup will work for vrc? trying to make sure i can have the toes somewhat animated while making sure its a part of the IK

[rough snow]

looks like that should work, humanoid models don't require individual toes so that means you can do whatever you want with them

[slim quartz]

empty.

should i just remove empty

they're not rigged to anything at all

[rough snow]

remove anything that is an empty, not needed for vrchat avatar. though i think those are being used by the eyes so not sure how it would respond to being deleted

[slim quartz]

no

theyre literally

empty

nothing

nvm

they're the eyes

[pale pumice]

they're useful as parent objects for project organization, but that's not very needed on an avatar

[slim quartz]

(had to delete them to test 😭)

[rough snow]

i dont know how else to tell you this... that object type is LITERALLY called an empty

[slim quartz]

but its the eyes

so what do i do

[rough snow]

that means the eye textue is being controlled by empties and it won't translate to vrchat well 😬

[slim quartz]

gulp

so im cooked

[balmy delta]

use bones or blendshapes not an ik rig

[rough snow]

might have to apply some modifiers

[slim quartz]

gulp is that a good or bad thing

[slim quartz]

this sentence just killed me

[slim quartz]

anyways!!

what do i do now

you told me something

but i forgot...

[rough snow]

turn the bones into a forward kinematics rig

[slim quartz]

how

[pale pumice]

there are tutorial videos for this. I did it recently, was kinda fun, but not all that useful for going into vrchat

[rough snow]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OFpKXpvdDU

[pale pumice]

queues that for later

[slim quartz]

but

which one should i use for vrchat

[rough snow]

fk

[pale pumice]

a rig like the one pinned here

[rough snow]

it said "how to switch" in the title so i figured it would be useful despite not watching it at all 🤣

[rough snow]

aka what you have now is IK and it needs to be FK

[slim quartz]

but does FK work with uhm

vrchat?

[rough snow]

yes

[slim quartz]

okay

[rough snow]

it should

[slim quartz]

how do i switch

[rough snow]

if it's set up right

[slim quartz]

i'll watch a tutorial video for once

sigh!!

[rough snow]

it's not like. a button click

[pale pumice]

I'd say that worrying about IK is probably over-complicating things if your goal is just to make a vrchat avatar.

[slim quartz]

11 minutes

bet!!

[slim quartz]

i just want to upload it to quest and add expressions

[pale pumice]

fun to work with and learn anyway though

[slim quartz]

lol

[pale pumice]

then IK in Blender is not of use to you

[slim quartz]

i see

i wanted to add physics to the tail

[but that seems too hard

[balmy delta]

thats done in unity

[pale pumice]

rig the tail in Blender, add a physbone component in Unity

[balmy delta]

all you get is bones and blendshapes

[rough snow]

watch on 2x speed
6 minutes

[slim quartz]

ok

[slim quartz]

bet

im starting to get eepy gulp

okay so

how do i invert the bones

[pale pumice]

rotate it 180 degrees along an axis?

[slim quartz]

i mean

that was not the right question

😭

how do i turn it into forward kinematic

or whatever

FK

[pale pumice]

I'm not sure what it is you have now

[slim quartz]

im pretty sure its Ik

i think

[pale pumice]

how do you know?

[slim quartz]

idk

my guesses are 100 right

(they arent)

[rough snow]

yellow bones

[pale pumice]

possibly the yellow bones have constraints on them

[slim quartz]

what about em

ooh whats that!!?

[pale pumice]

if they're IK constraints, remove them or set their influence to 0

[slim quartz]

but if i remove them

[pale pumice]

(damn I'm awful at the typing tonight)

[slim quartz]

my arm wont be able

!!

[pale pumice]

eh?

[slim quartz]

to do stuff

or should i just create one after i delete taht

[pale pumice]

not how this works

[slim quartz]

o?

[pale pumice]

select armature, go into pose mode, click each yellow bone, see if there's a constraint (in the properties box at the bottom -right by default, one of those tabs is for bone constraints).
If it's an inverse kinematics one, set the influence to 0.
Then just do the rest of the rigging normally.

[slim quartz]

o

how do i select both

its not letting me

[pale pumice]

both what, bones? you do this one at a time

[slim quartz]

OOOH

i see

😭

wheres the properties

[pale pumice]

is this where I suggest basic blender tutorials?

you may want to reset the view to default

assuming you didn't clip that image and that's the whole application

[slim quartz]

how

:3

oh nvm

im peak

i did something by myself!

whar now

[pale pumice]

yay! So yeah, in that box, if you're in armature pose mode, one of the little tabs there (the man, the bone, etc) will be for bone constraints

[slim quartz]

whar now

[pale pumice]

not that one

it's below the green bone, it's bone-shaped with a swirl around it, and blue

[slim quartz]

what now

[pale pumice]

there you go

and look, an IK constraint, as expected

[slim quartz]

what do i do now

[pale pumice]

as I said:

If it's an inverse kinematics one, set the influence to 0.

[slim quartz]

both of em

wat i do now chat

[pale pumice]

what was your goal again?

hmm not sure why there's an upside-down bone there

[slim quartz]

i need to remove these dont i?

[pale pumice]

where "these" are what exactly?

[slim quartz]

idk lol

i'll see

[pale pumice]

... okay

[slim quartz]

with this one

i move

[rough snow]

make sure the hands and feet are parented to the arms and legs

[slim quartz]

how do i check

im too stupid

[rough snow]

if you move the arms to the hands move with them

[slim quartz]

yes

this is SO funny

in vr would it bend?

like in cartoons

[pale pumice]

that seems like "no"

[slim quartz]

dang it

:c

[slim quartz]

no

what now

[rough snow]

parent them

[slim quartz]

how

[pale pumice]

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/armatures/bones/properties/relations.html#parenting

[slim quartz]

sketchy!

sure i'll try it

[rough snow]

okay i was trying to find a video on parenting bones but i got distracted by a more interesting one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws8oWmBbo_s

[slim quartz]

lol thats funny

i'll try it tomorrow

its 2 am for me

and sleep is important

[rough snow]

this video might me more advanced that what you're going for right now ngl

[slim quartz]

?

what do you mean by this?

[rough snow]

you have all the bones set up for your model, no need to mess with bone roll or orientations. If you want to learn blender though it's a great video 👀

[slim quartz]

i see

a victorian child using blender would kill them

[rough snow]

a victorian child would die at the sight of a windows XP computer

[slim quartz]

lol real

do i need to delete all of my bones

😭

[rough snow]

no

[slim quartz]

also i'll ping you tomorrow

i need to sleep

[slim quartz]

then what

!!

[rough snow]

parent the bones

learn blender 😼💯👍👍🔥🔥🔥

[slim quartz]

how

guh

[rough snow]

https://tenor.com/view/blender-hop-on-blender-blender_3d-hop-on-gif-27333732

[slim quartz]

i dont wanna spend my whole day on blender

[pale pumice]

haha

[slim quartz]

i have an avatar to upload!!

[pale pumice]

quit now then 🙂

[rough snow]

spending all day in blender would literally be a dream for me 😭

[pale pumice]

I spent a bunch of time between jobs recently and did exactly that. Lots of fun 🙂

[slim quartz]

okay

pure cinema

[pale pumice]

you're a the point where this is a few hours of work if you know what you're doing, or a few days to learn enough to do it

[slim quartz]

i mean

if i could

[pale pumice]

but once you learn, the next time it's quite easy

[slim quartz]

okay sure

i'll try tomorrow

maybe sleep is taking a toll on my learning

[copper halo]

but thats the best part

[slim quartz]

Sigh

lets start the day..! with rigging

[slim quartz]

@rough snow R u Still There?

[urban kayak]

:P

[slim quartz]

sigh

this is too hard

!! the only thing that i learnt is how to make bones

!!

[pale pumice]

that's a start

[slim quartz]

sure but

how do i rig them

and what im i supposed to rig

i forgot

[royal rain]

It's a learning process

Take small steps

Do your research

I also needed countless tries and scenarios to be able to rig like an amateur

[slim quartz]

guh

[slim quartz]

@pale pumice i know this is SUPER random but i got this model to experiment and theres no bones is this IK or no?

[pale pumice]

please don't ping me for random new questions, anyone present can answer you

[slim quartz]

o

i see

sorry

[pale pumice]

I'm not entirely sure of that display mode, but those look like bones to me - you can check for an Armature component in the hierarchy

[slim quartz]

Okay i'll see

[pale pumice]

I want to again strongly recommend learning blender basics, you're asking the kinds of questions that indicate a lack of understanding of the fundamentals

[slim quartz]

Okay i'll try learning blender today

Oh hey cool i learned how to delete bones

!

. oh yeah

and i learned how to make a parent

i guess my journey starts here

i learned how to parent a bone

nice

[placid crown]

having issues with clipping because of sculpting the weight painting isnt the issue it was the sculpting but now whenever i fix clipping after pose mode the clipping jsut happens somewhere else when i repose the rig again

how do i fix this

it just looks like ass now

[hollow quartz]

Are you talking about body clipping through clothes?

[hollow quartz]

You could try copying the weights from the body to the clothes to try to mitigate this

[simple spruce]

did i name these correctly, and will it work as humanoid when importing to unity?

[pale pumice]

Sure. Unity does a bunch of guessing, but those look reasonable

[regal minnow]

How can I stop my avatar from flying above the ground? How can I set it back on own feet?

[regal minnow]

If I bend down a little, it will be just right.
Already tried: move leg bones, move hip bone, change bones positions etc, zero effect

[regal minnow]

I tried 3 variation of default bind poses with difference in bones position, and it all works and looks equal inside vrchat. So I don't know what else can I change here. Maybe it not a problem with bones at all and require some changes in unity project, but I can't find anything related

[unkempt laurel]

could it be your in game height?

like the one inside your menu under settings

[regal minnow]

Looks like it. Strange, I set my real height and it was that strange looking. Now I'm a bit higher and it looks better

[unkempt laurel]

if you're using a quest or something, id recommend resetting your guardian, and you should be able to use your actual height

[royal rain]

its a mix of ingame heigt and the floor set by your vr system

my height is also offset since my oculus play area has its floor slighty above

its also dependend on where you vrc eyes are iirc

[regal minnow]

Does it mean I can change it a bit by moving eye position?

[royal rain]

i think so

but im merely stating observations

its not factually supported

also i love the glados model 🙏

@regal minnow quick question, are you restating vrc everything youre publishing a test?

[regal minnow]

Yep

[royal rain]

you dont need to lol, i found this out a few days ago but you can just switch avatar, press build and test and itll update it

than switch back

saves me so much time lo

[regal minnow]

Ik, but I did that to see if it will change behavior

[void turret]

is there any specific scale and angle i need to make sure i have specific bones in order for it to properly work in vrchat? i constantly get issues with stiff shoulders, shoulders collapsing (down or inwards), legs bowing inwards, character stuck on tip toes, head dragging the character up and down depending on angle, and more issues that are only present in vrchat and not unity or blender

my characters proportions are as close to my irl proportions as i could get it, but i stil have a feeling it might have something to do with the proportions... ive seen chibi avatars work just fine, so whats the issue?

[arctic sundial]

Generally, refer to this image

Important:
Knees and elbows must be bent slightly so the ik knows which way to bend them. This is related to bowleggedness. I personally do a solid 20 degrees at the elbows for a more matural look. Also your top view alignment of head/neck/spine to the shoulders matters. Youll experience weird mid body angulation if your torso stuff is way off from the head. Tip toeing can be remedied by unmapping toes from the rig configuration in unity.

[copper rover]

I've seen this rig posted a few times. Is this an official rig? If so, where can this be found?

Is this what vrc targets for their IK 2.0?

[pale pumice]

if you create a thing which looks a lot like this, things will work fine

[copper rover]

I am looking for a more exact answer. I would like to dig down to understand how things work in detail.

[pale pumice]

there isn't an exact answer, since you and your avatar are unique, you create something like this while fitting to both of those things.

[arctic sundial]

As base, you could always go and take apart the default robot. Other than that, what kaz said.

[void turret]

how can i restrict my characters leg rotation in unity? i have oddly shaped animal legs and when the knee is bent the calf comes way too far up clips through the thigh

during the normal walking animation ^

[pale pumice]

You can't really, there are no rotation limiters

[void turret]

https://tenor.com/view/haoaddict-agony-gif-594728941091527236

[pale pumice]

there's some stuff in the rigging setup but once IK is applied, that seems to not be used

I may be wrong about that but some testing I did didn't result in the limits I was hoping for

[void turret]

man

i know there are constraints but those seem to only copy the rotation or location from another bone, not restrict it. kinda lame

[pale pumice]

yeah they're only copies

FinalIK has some stuff but that also doesn't seem to do anything, or the component is not whitelisted for vrchat, I forget if I was trying that here or on Chillout

oh - yeah the Rotation Limits component is whitelisted

[void turret]

finalIK?

[pale pumice]

I'm not sure if that can be applied to humanoid bones without doing full custom IK though

yeah

[void turret]

not sure what that is

[pale pumice]

https://creators.vrchat.com/avatars/whitelisted-avatar-components/whitelisted-avatar-components#root-motion-finalik

links there

[void turret]

its paid ?

[pale pumice]

yes

often goes on sale for half price though

I don't know if this does what you want, so do some research rather than believe me 🙂

it was just something I'd tried out briefly, but didn't get far (other stuff was priority)

[undone bough]

Bone roll possibly needs to be cleared

[hasty cloud]

cant select bones from pattern :( what is going on

[bleak apex]

I cant seem to figure out why my elbows are doing this. But the and golliders might have something to do with it

[hollow quartz]

Isn't that just normal and cause you don't have elbow tracking?

[limpid bridge]

it seems to be an ik issue

[bleak apex]

No the elbows aren't messing properly

[bleak apex]

How do I fix the ik or at least look at it

[twin idol]

This might be a stupid question, but if I want to make a toggleable outfit do I have to make a separate armature for it? Seems like every clothing tutorial I can find are just showing how to fit booth clothes to the avatar and pretty much all those clothes have their own armature

[robust crescent]

Better off adding in blender + weightpaint/transfer, either toggle on/off using uv shift (pc) or mesh toggle ,booth way sloppy it works but reason you see 10+ meshes is those (tldr : no armature needed if you use blender)

[twin idol]

i do use blender, but how do I make it a toggle in that case? Toggle tutorials seem to use separate objects

I am like super new to unity

[arctic sundial]

You can use blendshapes as well (animate it to hide clothes inside the body)

[twin idol]

whats the best option for both performance and making it quest compatible?

[brazen island]

always single armature. as long as outfit uses separate material, you use separate mesh, that you just toggle. if you managed both body and outfits to use the same material, then blendshape on quest, uv tile discard shader on pc.

[long roost]

not sure if im supposed to put it here but im having trouble uploading an avatar ive been working on for a good 10 hours now, any help?

it says that i dont have my arms and feet defined when i obviously do

[pale pumice]

I can't read that but is the bone in the Hips slot actually the hips bone?

[long roost]

I'm not sure, I dont read Chinese either

[pale pumice]

oh, you'll probably have to figure that out to be sure then

[robust crescent]

image to text id check this av in blender if its connected (auto rename cats can do ...probably with this av)

can always try the set it generic > humanoid drag new copy in scene

[tame socket]

why does my spine... do THIS in FBT

[twin idol]

I think the docs say that the thigh bones need to be straight down

I took this armature from one of the SDKs example rigs.

[pale pumice]

there's a diagram pinned in here too

[flat musk]

Hey I have a question in regards to avatars, clothing and armatures.
I have an avatar with 3 sets of clothes. They all use the same body armature. All good there,

But I want to make a skirt, and have phys bones on it.
Should I build up the original armature to include bones, or should I make a separate armature for the skirt, and then in unity just armature link it?
What's the ideal workflow when it comes to dealing with extra clothes and armatures?

[pale pumice]

I put the extra bones on the base armature, in a collection. Then when exporting the model, if not doing the "skirt version" I'll just select the bones in the collection and delete before export.

[flat musk]

ooh thats a good idea too. I forgot about bone collections.

[pale pumice]

yeah I do them for any "accessory" bones.

[tame socket]

will test later, ty kindly :)

[flat musk]

Now, If i change my armature in blender (ie; add bones), and over-write the FBX in unity, is there anything in particular I need to do so I dont crash/damage my project?

[pale pumice]

use exactly the same settings for scaling as before

[flat musk]

Ok. Thanks.

[pale pumice]

oh - make backups 🙂

always got to say that.

[flat musk]

yes always. I've ruined enough projects to take that to heart

this look good enough for skirt phys bones? or too many? too little?

[pale pumice]

the back ones are probably starting too high - the first bones in those chains probably wouldn't be moving much

otherwise looks decent for a short skirt

[pale carbon]

stuck like this when my arms are forcefully straight down

how can i fix it? also related how do i fix the fingers?

[copper halo]

dont listen to this man, scammer

[pastel scarab]

SMALL MODEL IS CLOTHES N BONES, big model is avi, why is he so much bigger and on floor?

[balmy delta]

Whered you get the file you imported and secondly how did you import

[pastel scarab]

imported as a binary, and its a hyperbeast avi from vrmodels, its a NovaBeast Edited base

[balmy delta]

Vrmodels is a piracy website

You need to go and actually buy it instead of pirating/ripping

[torpid ermine]

Hi, newbie here, is there an official rigging example? Or a standard one? That I can just copy paste the whole rig?

[pallid marten]

how do i start rigging in blender just start with armatrues?

I think this is right?

[pale pumice]

good start! Check the rig diagram in the pins in this channel for how you should build the armature for vrchat

[pallid marten]

I did yea

That’s what I based it off of

[pale pumice]

oh good

[molten sail]

hey, I'm currently at my first rig for vr chat avatars and am unsure how detailed the rig for the face has to be. I used the preset rig from rigify and adjusted it to fit to the model, but the face feels too complex with bones for my taste. Can you reduce it and still get good results ?

[pale pumice]

VRchat isn't going to use the face bones at all, so.....

[molten sail]

ah

that was my concerrn

[pale pumice]

you of course can use them to animate whatever, but it'll be all manual

[molten sail]

but dont i need them to animate different facial expressions ?

or how is that handled in vr chat

[pale pumice]

No - you make viseme shape keys

which you can make by moving around the face bones and such, of course.

[molten sail]

how does facial tracking work ? doesnt that require bones in the face ?

[pale pumice]

nope, also visemes

[molten sail]

I see, so in the end the bones here are just for me to create the visemes easier

[pale pumice]

yup!

[molten sail]

alright thank you so much

[pale pumice]

https://developers.meta.com/horizon/documentation/unity/audio-ovrlipsync-viseme-reference/

great reference pics and such in here, vrchat uses this set

[molten sail]

man, doing 3d chars specifically for vr chat is hard x_X

[pale pumice]

haha yep, it sure is

[molten sail]

I mean I have quite a lot of experience 3d modeling and sculpting, but only ever for 3d printing or showcasing, not actually using it real time with animations

If I come across some major issues, can I ping you here ?

you seem really helpful

[pale pumice]

I'd prefer to not be pinged for new questions, I'm often not actually present 🙂

[molten sail]

noted, you dont have to worry about it in that case ^^

thank you, nontheless

[pale pumice]

yeah if I'm around and have answers, I'll usually help. and you're welcome 🙂

I'm actually playing with face tracking shape keys right now

[molten sail]

yeah I gotta watch some tutorials to really get the hang of them

[robust crescent]

avatars with mouth(face) bones , you either make the basic ah ch oh then just have cats make the visemes for you or animate them by detecting speech to move the bones (this is very very tedious but you can have alternative movement if using bones)

[serene veldt]

I WISH THEY HAD UPPER ARM BONES, and i suck at riggingggggg

[molten sail]

damn isnt this that one enemy from doctor who

dont remeber the name

[pale pumice]

Cybermen!

[serene veldt]

yeah!

[molten sail]

hella crazy model, the bake is really good

[serene veldt]

Gracias, I simply found it like that

[molten sail]

wait

so this isnt your model (not judging, just asking xd)

?

[serene veldt]

Nah, I wanna make it an avatar i upload, the rig IS SO CLOSE

Besides, I can't make my own yet, still advancing on the porting skill tree

[molten sail]

well you can always start modeling

starting small and work your way up to full character

[serene veldt]

fair.

[pastel scarab]

mb, im new to avatar stuff, ill be sure to do that

[molten sail]

I dont get what I did wrong. I created the basic metarig in blender, posed it to fit to my model, pressed on generate rig to get all the controllers, and then parented the mesh to the rig. But if I pose the rig, the mesh doesnt follow

[molten sail]

on the 2nd pic, the rig looks like that when I go into edit mode on the generated rig

[molten sail]

Ok I can add that my mesh doesn't have any weightpaint whatsoever even after using automatic weights (and yes I selected specific vertex groups to see that). But why isnt it working ? My model consists of several seperate meshes, that I joined all together

[pseudo saddle]

Click the mesh.
And show me what, with a screenshot, vertex data window of that mesh

[molten sail]

you mean this ? There are 2 different types for vertex groups, cause I originally parented the mesh to the basic rig before generating the new one. and then parented the mesh to the new rig

but even after deleting all vertex groups and parenting anew, it still didnt work

[pseudo saddle]

If I asked you to only show the DEF bones to be visible of rigfy, do you know how to do it?

[molten sail]

these ?

these are the bones of the generated rig

[pseudo saddle]

In pose mode instead of edit mode(much easier for me to know if they are the def ones)

[pseudo saddle]

Those aren’t the def bones

Those are CTR bones

[molten sail]

no idea how to show the other ones then

[pseudo saddle]

Check the bones layer in the armature settings(green person icon)

[molten sail]

pictures from left to right are the little dots on the far right lower row

not sure if thats it

[pseudo saddle]

it is the first one on the top left

click any of the bones and go into the bones settings now

[molten sail]

are these the settings ?

[molten sail]

i assumed the bones setting is the little green bone

[pseudo saddle]

yes

[molten sail]

there is nothing in it

[pseudo saddle]

did you select a bone?

[pseudo saddle]

It needs to be a bone from this layer

this is the bones that matter for moving

[pseudo saddle]

this setting is what makes the bones move and only the bones in the DEF can have that checkmark on

all other will and must be off

When parenting the armature, you must parent with automatic weights the armature with colorful bones. NOT THE grey METARIG added originally

the one generated

[molten sail]

i did that of course

[pseudo saddle]

are any of the vertex data not blue that have DEF in their name?

[molten sail]

wdym with "not blue" ?

[pseudo saddle]

this blue

[molten sail]

i selected spine here, but in all the other vertex groups on the right is nothing not blue in the model

if thats what you meant

meaning there is no weightpaint applied

[molten sail]

nope nothing of that is in mine, but I followed the exact path you took to make the rig

[pseudo saddle]

noticed i deleted the metarig

Because that bone arrangement is not to be parent of the mesh

Rig is

[molten sail]

im just gonna reset to where you started

1 sec

i just dont get why the automatic weights dont apply any weights

[pseudo saddle]

I am thinking, but a heads up

clicking this arrow is not how you check the other weight paint generated

you just moved DEF-Spine.001 lower in the list

[molten sail]

ooof I just saw it

but even if I just click the groups normally, nothing shows

[pseudo saddle]

oh

click the avatar mesh and show me the yeloow square propety

[molten sail]

I just tested the automatic weights on the cube like you did, and it worked.

[molten sail]

on it 1 sec

[pseudo saddle]

you got a warning when trying to automatic weight paint

[molten sail]

huh but why

[pseudo saddle]

i think rigfy has some algorithm issues when you edit the meta rig to fit your model

did you apply the modifications after you changed the armature in edit mode?
CTR+A

[molten sail]

I think so

I mean I didnt really change anything, I just adjusted the size and deleted like the heel and hip bones cause I saw a reference here, where those weren't needed

[molten sail]

this

[pseudo saddle]

Yes both are different but they wont cause a conflict later for vrchat

[molten sail]

im just gonna try to fit the metarig again, and tell you when I did so.

[molten sail]

a new rig *

Ok i deleted nothing now, and it still shows me that error when I try to applay the automatic weights

[arctic sundial]

im not surprised

do you know what that error means

[molten sail]

nope

[arctic sundial]

basically, you have mesh where its unclear which bone should be used, specifically overlapping mesh. this could be cracks such as bum, boobs etc

[molten sail]

so its related to intersecting mesh. my model consists of several seperate meshes, that I just joined together, some of them arent even closed meshes, cause you wouldnt see the inside. like here

[molten sail]

but how do i fix it

[arctic sundial]

gnerally speaking, you should unparent your clothes for the thime youre rigging it

[molten sail]

well

there is nothing below the clothes

cause why would i need a skin model below

if its not showing

[arctic sundial]

also dont rely on auto rig. you may use it to get a base started, but the results arent perfect anyway. just paint the areas it had trouble auto generating because you will know better than the machine

[molten sail]

Yeah I planned to do that, but atleast get the basic weight paint in with the automatic weights, but that doesnt work

[arctic sundial]

it should generate vertex groups for everything else. if it doesnt, you might want to try opening cracks. like i said, bum, boobs, between toes, fingers.

[molten sail]

tbh dont know what you mean

[arctic sundial]

it may also be reasonable to just weight paint it from scratch. the mirror function will do the other half

how is that not clear

[molten sail]

"try opening cracks like ... " , do you mean by opening just making holes in the mesh in these parts ?

[arctic sundial]

think boobs

boobs touch in the center right

those cracks, model them so the are not that close

like a few mm distance, not touching

[molten sail]

alright, gotta try these things out. this sucks xdd

thanks tho

Ok a friend told me to try merge by distance, and now the error doesn't occur anymore, it had to be overlapping verts that made the trouble @arctic sundial

[arctic sundial]

why did you have mesh bits duped anyway

[molten sail]

i didnt dupe anything

[arctic sundial]

well i hope you know that merge by distance can also do damage

[molten sail]

like what

[arctic sundial]

you really cant imagine?

[molten sail]

if I merge by distance on the lowest level which is 0.0001 , only exactly overlapping verts get merged. the seperate parts of the mesh are still intact in mine

if thats what you were implying

[arctic sundial]

sure whateve

[molten sail]

no tell me

maybe you have some insights i dont know about

[craggy glacier]

can someone tell me why this is happening and what i can do to fix it or am i just sol

[robust crescent]

weightpaint part of upper neck to headbone

[craggy glacier]

is that easy @_@

[robust crescent]

depends if you done any weightpainting, its about a 1 min fix

[robust nymph]

This is kind of a meta question for me, but how does blender vrchat etc. Animate face and eye movements for avatars.

[pale pumice]

face movements are generally done via blendshapes/shape keys. eye movements are done via bones, one per eye

[quartz compass]

So I got this hand-

It regularly has four fingers but I rigged it to have five. Everything moves completely fine in pose mode in blender, but I get to Unity and while in play mode or in the .fbx settings, the pinkie gets offset lower than the other fingers.

Is this an animation issue or is something possibly wrong with the rig?

[robust crescent]

my guess rig, check in blender for crooked finger bones

[quartz compass]

A few screenshots of the right hand. Look off at all?

It rolls fine into a fist, but Unity refuses to let it lol

[quartz compass]

^Update

It was the .fbx configuration settings moving the pinky lower than it needed to be. Relocating it to the original position fixed the issue!

[molten sail]

Quick question , how would I do the rig for the ears ? Are they supposed to be in the same rig as the body, and do they need to be a seperate object from the body ?

[robust crescent]

weighpaint start of ear to head rest to earbones wich are connect to headbone , merge after

[molten sail]

awesome, thank you so much

[kind panther]

So I rigged a model in blender and everything seems fine. In Unity though once I hit play to test things with gesture manager it decides to move the jaw bone forward giving my character a massive underbite. Its like it's moving the jaw bone forward for some reason.

[molten sail]

haha, do you have a pic of the underbite, sounds hilarious

any idea why the mesh moves back like this, when I switch between edit and object mode? I let mixamo rig the base for me, and now I'm fixing the mistakes, but this bugs me, cause you can obviously see which parts I added, that are not being moved.

[arctic sundial]

see if you got unapplied transforms

[molten sail]

I mean, I applied the transforms, but nothing changed, it seems that the mixamo pose is being applied still ( its the one with the straight t arms )

[arctic sundial]

then try resetting your pose

[molten sail]

good idea

[ivory terrace]

I want to create a re-scaled version of my avatar, closer to my actual body proportions.
I've tried to use immersive scaler/CATS for this, but unfortunately it seems that my avatar is using an unusual armature, since the addon complains about missing bones (left_eye in particular, though I'm fairly certain it's not the only one).
This is not the first time the unusual armature of my avatar has caused issues for me.
How would I go about re-rigging my avatar with a more common armature, so I can use these automated features of various plugins?

[pale pumice]

it's really not much harder than re-orienting the bones to look like the standard armature vrchat expects, then updating any weight painting if needed. Hard to be more precise without knowing the project in it's current state

[kind panther]

Normal and cursed for comparison.

Doesnt happen until I go to gesture manager and let it take over.

[molten sail]

hahaha

I also notice that part of the eye is being moved aswell

[kind panther]

Thats just another problem on the list.

[pale pumice]

haha that IS kinda hilarious

[edgy nest]

Love the under bite. Lol

[kind panther]

I managed to fix it. I manually messed with the bone in the Import Settings when assigning bones. That was... odd

[molten sail]

I try using CATS for several things with the vr avatar, but when I'm at the installing part in blender, it fails. I install it via plugins and then extract the zip, but I get red error on bottom. Any ideas ? I tried using older version of blender 3.6 and newest 4.3

it says this

Ok, fixed it myself. Had to get the development version of cats instead of the master

[robust crescent]

https://github.com/teamneoneko/Cats-Blender-Plugin-Unofficial-/releases/tag/4.3.1.5 get this one instead

offical cats is ancient

im staying on 4.2 cause lts and some random add-ons i have slow to update

[molten sail]

thanks a lot

[molten sail]

yeah installed it rn, and this version looks much more modern than the old one I installed first xdd

[fallow gulch]

@pale pumice

[pale pumice]

this must be a game rip?

[fallow gulch]

I might be thinking that too, i got it from a website with all sorts of models from the game

[pale pumice]

yeah..... probably you'll need to put it in Blender and make a whole new armature

[molten sail]

currently at weightpainting this choker here, and I cant figure out the proper way of painting it

[arctic sundial]

id paint 100% red to the neck

a collar usually isnt stretchy like rubber or thinner fabric

[molten sail]

also is this head weighpaint correct for the head bone ?

cause I still got the neck bone I have to paint

[limpid bridge]

i mean you could also just parent the collar to the neck in unity

[arctic sundial]

looks a bit too much at the top of the neck imo

[molten sail]

i could try that yeah

so from chin downwards more towards orange/yellow ?

[arctic sundial]

think

[molten sail]

kk

thxs

[arctic sundial]

not what i meant

i asked you to think here

the head bones ass end is approx at the jaw

why would the base of the neck be moving with that

[molten sail]

I thought you wrote " (I) think)

sry

ok so the most part of neck blueish

for the headbone

[arctic sundial]

yea

[molten sail]

got it

[arctic sundial]

keep the transition rather thin at the joints

[molten sail]

and then a nice gradient for the neckbone

so the collar shouldnt even be painted for the headbone right

[arctic sundial]

no, because then, if you look down ingame, the collar will stretch up the backside of your neck

does that sound like what you want

[molten sail]

little less sassy, but i got it

[arctic sundial]

wasnt meant sassy, just stating but ok

[molten sail]

sry, came about that way then :c

[molten sail]

maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but I retopod the neck cause the loops were awful for bending, but now when I weightpaint and rotate it around the axis, there is this weird hard cut off

[molten sail]

Ok I fixed it, It had to do with how the shoulder bones had no weight on them, so only the neck bone had 100% control over the deformation here. Thats why the cutoff was so sharp on the edges

[shadow charm]

How do you do the bones for the avatar

[balmy delta]

in blender

[molten sail]

why is my rig being imported like this, on a completely different spot and with a pose that differs from before the export

[pale pumice]

un-applied transform, most likely. Apply them all - in object mode, select objects, ctrl+a, it's in that popup.

[silver trench]

getting this error i supposedly know how to fix it but all the bones are connected properly in blender

[pale pumice]

check your rig setup in Unity, you must not have the head bone in the right slot

[silver trench]

life saver ❤️ i would have kept looking for the problem in blender i didnt even know that was a thing in unity TY!

its just not reading that it is there

[silver trench]

so close to fixing this

wait do they need to be named properly?

[pale pumice]

no, just drag the head bone into the head slot

[silver trench]

so i did that an another thing just turned red instead then i kept doing it and now i have a mix of DEF and ORG is it supposed to be one or another or?

[silver trench]

omfg i figured out what i did wrong 😭 , I added on the Rigify rig that one is for animations not doing what i was trying to do witch is importing. but it work now, welp that's the thing to a learning curve everything is happy and connected properly now.

[pale pumice]

I wouldn't export that with your model at all

but glad you figured it out

[molten sail]

currently at the shape keys, and why is my symmetry fucked up? the head is perfectly symmetrical, but only the actual head part moves in symmetry, lashes, brows, etc. dont ? I have proportional editing (with connected mesh only) and the x next to the little butterfly in the top enabled

[pale pumice]

are those a separate object? are you editing both at the same time?

[molten sail]

its one object made up of several meshes

[pale pumice]

hmm I'd think that would work then, perhaps select both sides of one of the parts and in the "Mesh" menu, try "snap to symmetry"

[molten sail]

ill give it a shot

testwise, i seperated the eyes, did snap to symmetry, but still

or am i interpreting the function wrong ?

[pale pumice]

is your object's origin at 0,0,0?

[molten sail]

not possible cause, the entire model itself obviously has dimesion

or do you mean the single objects own origin

[pale pumice]

I mean the single mesh object

[molten sail]

I applied all transforms

[pale pumice]

"yes" would have been fine 🙂

[molten sail]

sorry

[pale pumice]

no worries, just no need for images for simple answers! Anyway, I'm about out of ideas, it sure seems like it's not symmetrical if that doesn't work

[molten sail]

I also tried deleting the other half, using mirror modifier, applying it

but nothing

im frustrated

[tidal roost]

How would you go about making an object animated with bones line up with a part of a model that only moves via blendshape?

[stoic nymph]

Yo I Need Like Help with this I Dont know how to fix this Issue

[pale pumice]

Show an image of your avatar's armature in the hierarchy window from root down to the head, and also the main rig setup window

[stoic nymph]

In A Sec

[pale pumice]

.... okay so with bones named like that I have no idea what's what.

but those first four hips/spine/chest/upper chest - make sure those are the correct bones.

[turbid ore]

does anyone here know how to add facetracking to an avatar?

[uncut breach]

least obvious scam

[nova shard]

sounds scammy

[pale summit]

does the clavicle/shoulder bone move when upperarm is lift?(no other trackers)
I've been checking a lot of avatar lately and notice only the upperarm bone moves.

[molten sail]

How necessary is it to have a blink shape key for each eye? would a blink for both eyes be enough or should I go for separate keys

[brazen island]

default vrc eyetracking doesnt support separate "winking", and eyes closed should be a single blendshape anyway.

[molten sail]

awesome, got it right then

thanks

[molten sail]

the clavicle does in fact move when you lift the upper arm ( e.g. the shoulder). try lifting raising your arm straight in the air and feel your clavicle, its moves too

though its only a very slight movement

[regal minnow]

Why can mesh simple disappears in unity viewport, after I add some new bones to it? It looks fine in fbx viewer tho

Hmm, for some reason new bones also didn't show up in current project, but it still included in fbx file... Strange

[outer lance]

are you overwriting the fbx in unity, while the fbx is unpacked in the scene?

[regal minnow]

Yes. It always works with geometry part, have no idea why it doesn't work with bones

[outer lance]

yeah u can overwrite geometry as long as its done a certain way but bones however do not like being overwritten at all when its unpacked unfortunately

[regal minnow]

It works when I move bones in 3d software but it doesn't work for new ones?

Sounds like painful feature

[outer lance]

u can try going to your fbx config and resetting it from there possibly?

i honestly just copy things over if im dealing with something changed after its unpacked, so i dont have really any tips to revert it

[regal minnow]

You mean reset the rig? Already did that

okie i'll try to export new bones with new root and then merge it inside unity

[turbid ore]

lol fr fr

[tardy grail]

how do I make movement such as sitting down or bending legs look more natural rather then stretching

the ass losses shape and the pelvis gets a bit digged in

been trying to find videos but I can't find any

[tawny crown]

erm idk

[rare moon]

try using helper bones

basically for your butt for example, you have a butt bone that uses a rotation constraint to have 50/50 rotation from hips and leg

top is with no helper bones, bottom is with helper bones

the extra bone gives it more points to interpolate from

[signal grotto]

im struggling to rig this tube its going from a back pack to the right forearm

ive tried so many different solutions and it always moves in sections which is not what i want

[pale pumice]

Yeah tubes/cables with two endpoints are always an issue with VRChat

[outer lance]

final ik would probably shine for that, or parent and aim constraints

[pale pumice]

oh hmm, I should try that, I actually have a use-case but didn't think of it

[outer lance]

yeah i love using components

[signal grotto]

ngl im kinda struggling with this

[rare moon]

for quest compatiblitity aim and parent constraints like ghost said would work best

[vague patio]

Hey, I'm trying to rig a bendy/segmented arm for an avatar. I've never really experimented with rigging anything like this, so my usual steps didn't work well. Is there any steps I should be taking to fix the weird bends that I'm getting?

Like, should I be messing with weight painting or cutting this into smaller bones or something?

[vague patio]

Oh my god, I had part of the lower arm vertex group assigned to the upper arm

removing that fixed the weird bending

Still, the bending now isn't all that natural

This should really be moving like a segmented tube but I don't know if that's possible in vrc

[pale pumice]

You'd need more bones for that unfortunately

well......

This might be tricky, but try to vary the weight paint along the whole arm, with each segment getting uniform weight paint on itself, as they should be rigid.

so the lower arm segment closest to the upper arm might get say, 20% upper arm and 80% lower, and the one above the elbow might get 20% lower and 80% upper. Then add (guessing) 20% for each segment away from that joint

[nova shard]

rather then middle manning it'd be better to have them join and ask questions

for the first image the arm might red because of a parenting issue or it not being in proper T-pose with the rest of the rig, not to sure about the 2nd one without a visual of what's going on

[frigid widget]

was able to remedy it in a very odd but easy way, Needed to 180 the model

idk how it worked but it did lol

[grim coyote]

HEy guys

[molten sail]

Hey @grim coyote , whats up

[prisma radish]

help

[nova shard]

gotta be more specific with what you need help on

but it looks like your body's mesh isnt weightpainted to your rig, this goes over the basics of weightpainting if you dont know how to already do that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fICQmBEt4Y (also you should probably re-name those bones for easier unity setup later on)

[copper halo]

Put each segment on its own bone and then in unity just use unity constraints raning from 1.0-0.0 to 0.0-1.0 so that the last segment ends up were it is supposed to be

[vague patio]

I see. If I'm using that many bones per arm, won't that effect the avatar definition? Afaik I wouldn't be able to declare it as humanoid if I did that. Correct me if I'm wrong ofc

[copper halo]

Oh you still keep the normal humanoid arms. Just dont weightpaint them to anything…. Cause those are the ones the bendy srms will be using as a refrences for the constraints

[vague patio]

OH, I get what you mean now lol

[copper halo]

Yea!

[vague patio]

I was a little confused at first

That should work fine then

[copper halo]

Tell each segment to move x_amount of real arm. Just gotta get the valurs right so they lign up at the last one

[vague patio]

Right, I'll look into doing that when I have the time

Thanks a bunch

[copper halo]

Also tell me later if it works! Cause that is an idea iv had for a while now. Just never found the chance to make an avatar with bendy srms like that lol

[vague patio]

So just to be clear, the humanoid arms shouldn't move anything

and each segment should have its own bone?

[granite delta]

how do I apply visemes???

[brazen island]

how you what

[granite delta]

like when aeiou when you speak in vrchat I dont remember how

[granite delta]

Yay I did it

[granite delta]

thanks

[rigid totem]

@rich torrent

pinged

[wintry jetty]

any suggestions for rigging the toes? i want them all to collide with the terrain and have a dynamic look.

[short sapphire]

is there tutoirals for SL to VRC conversoin?

in rigging

?

[wintry jetty]

if its in a .fbx and can be recognized as humaniod rig it should be fine

[short sapphire]

perfect!

I'll redownload the SDK and give it a shot

[pale pumice]

Looks like you have two joints there, so one bone per joint, with the pivot where the mesh pivots. Weight paint each mesh segment 100% to the appropriate bone, since it looks robotic, it's probably rigid parts.
I don't tend to do the collides-with-floor thing, but I have FBT with feet. I do put physbones though so they can be amusingly poked by others

[wintry jetty]

yeah i was thinking the same thing but i wanted a master toe bone for the setup. wanting the actual toe bones to coppy the rotation of the main one

[rare moon]

make sure the heads of the bones are centered exactly on the joints so the motion looks correct. I would also add a bone that is a child of the foot and parent of all the toe bones (call it something like Toe_Root). Make sure the tails of the bones are facing exactly the right direction with the correct bone roll.

I reccomend when exporting to disable "add leaf bones" since it adds unnecessary bones.

Then in unity you can add a physbone component to your "Toe_Root" bone. Make sure to add an endpoint, it should be positive Y and set to a length that goes to about the end of the toes (ideally to the end of the toes minus the radius of the colliders once you set that). Set "Immobile" to a fairly high number and set the collision radius to whatever you think looks accurate. It might be a good idea to add gravity to your forces settings as well. Make sure to set the angle limit to hinge, and adjust the settings so it's facing the right direction and limited to the range you want. Now in the colliders section, add 1 collider. Create an empty in your hierarchy and parent it to the root gameobject (your avatar). On this gameobject, add a physbone collider component and set the shape to "plane". Drag this into your collider slot on the physbone component. Then you can copy and paste this component to the toe bone on the other side.

[pale pumice]

oh - good point, that is something I do too, so you can put the physbone on that. I generally make that an average of the middle two toe bones

Also start with your bone rolls at 0, adjust if you need - those don't look very angled so probably 0 is reasonable

[rare moon]

also if you want to do the "master bone" thing, then you wouldn't need the toe root bone, just put the physbone component on one of the toe bones (probably the middle) and do the same setup otherwise. Then on the toe bones on the same foot, add a VRC Rotation constraint and set the source to the toe bone with the physbone. Set the global and source weights to one and then activate and do this for both sides

[pale pumice]

oh interesting. I haven't tried with the constraint.

[wintry jetty]

im new to unity so most of this just flew over my head. im still learning the basics of the UI so i am doing these mostly as tests and expirments

[rare moon]

i mean you can kinda just follow what i said and if you have any questions feel free to ping me and ask

[wintry jetty]

could i dm you when i get the weight painting and texturing stage done?

[pale pumice]

weight paint for this is going to be easy, the parts are all rigid 🙂

[rare moon]

sure, although i do like talking in here when we aren't taking over the space someone else is using since it can be used for reference by other people later

a lot of times i try using discord's search feature to help solve problems other people have had before as well

[pale pumice]

this server is a great reference, I just wish people would actually use it more

[rare moon]

always nice when someone found the solution already and you just have to find where they've said it lol

[pale pumice]

I've been using the search a lot for world-building stuff.

[wintry jetty]

im using all of you as my reference. thats why i am having these conversations with you all.

i can model rig and texture but setting all this in unity is a bit different and challenging for me in some areas

[pale pumice]

good!

[rare moon]

yeah i get that, for my first avatar even though i had other models i wanted to get into the game, i instead modeled something super quick so i could focus on the unity side and not be disappointed by the avatar being underwhelming

it can get frustrating if you set your expectations high for your first few projects, especially because it makes it take longer

i found i improved most at first by working on smaller projects and focusing on learning a few things at once rather than trying to learn a lot just for one really cool avi

now i can make really cool avatars that i want because i've had experience with all the components that go into it

some people also have like pet project avatars where they start with something simple and then keep adding new things to it so they learn how to do those things

like start with learning how to model, rig, texture, and just get the avatar functioning, then after a while they learn how to setup visemes, then a toggle, then add emotes, etc

[wintry jetty]

here to double check my lip sync shape keys. did i miss any?

[pale pumice]

the official list: https://developers.meta.com/horizon/documentation/unity/audio-ovrlipsync-viseme-reference/

(it's linked from the VRChat docs on animator parameters)

[wintry jetty]

seems like i have them all.

[pale pumice]

excellent

[wintry jetty]

tomorrow i will set up all of the textures and then the unity side of things

[low pine]

i know i litterly just joined but can someone PLEASE teach me how

[pale pumice]

to....?

[low pine]

rig? its the name of the channel

i know how to upload, i know how to create, i just cant rig

this is what im trying to rig

oh wait, im in the wrong channel

sorry

[pale pumice]

this is the rigging channel though?

[low pine]

#avatar-help

[pale pumice]

sure, but this is more specific to rigging

[low pine]

can you teach me?

[pale pumice]

I probably could but that's not a thing I do. Happy to answer questions if I can though.

[low pine]

and dont tell me to look up a tutorial, i have a really hard time learning from those

the things i know how to do: place a bone, extrude a bone

[low pine]

does this skeleten look good?

[pale pumice]

there's a pin in here that's a good guideline - but yeah, that looks quite decent

[low pine]

so now what do i do?

[balmy delta]

You need a neck

[pale pumice]

oh yes, have a neck

[low pine]

why?

[pale pumice]

because vrchat wants it

[low pine]

ok

[balmy delta]

Its a required bone

[pale pumice]

Also probably set the bone roll for all bones except fingers/toes to 0

then the fun part: weight painting

[low pine]

neck

[low pine]

so how do i do that?

[balmy delta]

The typical tpose has the arms/hands horizontal not vertical

[low pine]

and this

[pale pumice]

ooh I missed that, good catch

[low pine]

oh

[balmy delta]

Its not typically required since unity can auto tpose buts it better to do it to begin with

But

[low pine]

uhhh i went into object mode and now he is an asian god

ok fixed it

[balmy delta]

Since your body parts are separate cubes

After renaming the bones n such you can just parent the mesh to the armature with empty groups

Then in edit mode just go down the vertex group list which is named the same as the bones and weight paint it that way

[low pine]

uhhh, could you show me?

[low pine]

and what do i rename the bones to?

[balmy delta]

Whatever you want really

People choose stuff like upper arm and lower arm etc or elbow or knee

[low pine]

ok, what are empty groups?

[balmy delta]

When you parent a mesh to an armature it asks how you want to

[pale pumice]

make sure you do left/right indicators. like upper_arm.L and upper_arm.R

[balmy delta]

Empty groups just creates the vertex groups with no weights

[pale pumice]

then blender knows to mirror when you weight paint

[low pine]

@balmy delta can you call me in dms and show me trough this?

or no'

[balmy delta]

Man its 1 in the morning

[low pine]

oh

[pale pumice]

2!

[balmy delta]

Damn youre worse off than me

[pale pumice]

ah, it's still early 🙂

[low pine]

wait, do i name the bones or blocks

[pale pumice]

bones - if by blocks you mean mesh parts, merge those all together into a single body object before you export it

[low pine]

but... that will mess up my texures

[pale pumice]

it definitely should not

[low pine]

wait im thinking of boolen

ok i joined it

do i really have to name ALL of the finger bones

[pale pumice]

if you don't it'll only annoy you later when you need to figure out which is which

you could name them all bone.001 and so on if you really want

but you really don't want that 🙂

[low pine]

how do i un-join something?

[balmy delta]

Separate by selection

[pale pumice]

select faces or whatever, 'p' to "part" it out

(make backups, etc)

[low pine]

how do i sepperate?

[pale pumice]

...

'p'

learn blender, etc.

[low pine]

dude ive been useing if for less than a month

[pale pumice]

yep, there are lots of great tutorials though

[low pine]

.

ok, finished nameing the bones, whats next

@balmy delta

[pale pumice]

weight paint

[low pine]

isnt there a step before that?

[pale pumice]

such as?

[low pine]

connecting the bones and model somehow?

[pale pumice]

yes, weight paint

oh I guess you need an armature modifier

[low pine]

whats that?