3d-modeling

[tough plover]

so I thought of this

[hollow ermine]

I'm gonna check this out in a minute- I gotta dip

[tough plover]

aight

[thin shadow]

how do i fix uv wrap shifted / transformed when using material combiner

i use mineways to export minecraft world

uv wrapping looks good with 69 materials, but when i combine it, i notice some pixel bleeding on the model

before

after

[azure rain]

I would suggest moving the uv for like the flowers so they're not so close to the edge

[quaint jasper]

UV padding might be necessary because pixel color bleeding is inevitable

[azure rain]

especially considering how low resolution Minecraft textures are

[dusty heron]

Also disable texture filtering, that'll make it more minecraft-like

[thin shadow]

i dont know how to turn off filtering in blender yet, but i did turn it off in unity. Looks better when being close to the texture, but aniso will still mess it up if seen from far enough distance

[snow fern]

there are MIP settings inside the importer that might help you

one makes everything more gray as it gets farther away, but that effect is really obvious if you pick that MIP up close, e.g. at a corner

Unity (at least 2018, haven't checked 2019) always makes a full MIP chain and you can't stop it, but you can prevent it from using the higher mips if you write your own shader

or are using a custom shader you can modify

the only other solution is bigger islands between textures, which should be an option when you're building the atlas

and/or you can try to manually arrange the atlas to put similar things next to each other (e.g. wood, dirt, and keep all alpha clip stuff like flowers next to other alpha clip stuff so their transparent edges match)

[exotic obsidian]

Sorry if this isn't the right channel for this, but I wanted to see what other people think before I model this

I'll probably add fingers btw

[foggy granite]

It good

[exotic obsidian]

thx

[spiral sigil]

make sure u hav an agryyyy face on it

for a gesture or something

[exotic obsidian]

ye

[spiral sigil]

:(((

[languid fog]

thats a cool model

[exotic obsidian]

thx

[oak kindle]

can someone help me add my fursona into vr chat i is dum but i wil paey muneys

[neat viper]

Might want to check out VRCTraders or the VRChat forums instead c:
<#community-servers-old message>
https://ask.vrchat.com/c/commissions/avatar-commissions/35

[zenith cloak]

Sure looks fine. Kinda reminds me of a model I tried to make several weeks ago. Too bad I don't know how to make a proper hooded pullover.

[lean hedge]

I tried 3d modeling once, made this piece of artwork that i'll call 'chewed piece of gum'

lmao

[outer pawn]

this is the furthest ive ever gotten in zbrush

[languid galleon]

hey, first time using substance painter for anything avatar related and i was wondering how to in apply the texture i already have onto my model?

i have the texture in substance now but its applying as a paintbrush rather than onto the whole model?

[tough plover]

you could add a Fill layer and set the texture as the base color for that layer

but you can't really edit that

[languid galleon]

crap

[tough plover]

Substance is really for making new textures

and it's very good at that

[languid galleon]

i really wanna redo the jacket i have on this avatar

[tough plover]

then go for it 👍

[languid galleon]

but its attached to a shirt which i dont wanna mess with

[tough plover]

separate them then?

[languid galleon]

how do i do that

i havent used substance in ages

[zenith cloak]

Sorry for barging in, but, speaking of textures, is there a way to make something good-looking without Substance Painter? (I'm kinda low on funds right now)

[tough plover]

you can get substance for free if you sign up as a student

you could try Quixel Mixer, an alternative, but resources and people with knowledge to help may be harder to find'

[tough plover]

you would do that in blender

[zenith cloak]

Are you sure about signing up as a student? It might not be possible because of my region.

[tough plover]

it's literally what I did

https://store.substance3d.com/user/login?destination=students-teachers

[zenith cloak]

This page doesn't open for me

Say, there is actually a way to draw textures in Krita (which is my primary drawing app) by drawing directly on the UV maps. Too bad I always fail at making those UV maps...

[tough plover]

https://substance3d.adobe.com/education/

try that then

[zenith cloak]

The page opens, but when I click Log In it doesn't.

Maybe it is region-locked

[tough plover]

odd

[outer pawn]

so if i wanna make parts move.. like say the nose do i have to create a separate entity or can i just mold it all from same source

[thorny ivy]

Time for me to pop in here again.

Why do anime-style models (like those originating from Vroid) tend use shapekeys for the teeth movement as opposed to having dedicated bones?

I feel like you'd get more natural-looking movement and deforms with proper jaw bones + weight painting.

[azure rain]

as far as like Vroid because until relatively recently it was blendshapes was your only choice for mouth movement that's not Muppet jaw flapping up and down

[quaint jasper]

All from the same source, bones will make parts move

[merry vault]

@outer pawn do you think you could help me export something? I've been meaning to find someone who uses zbrush for a while lol.

[outer pawn]

im a complete newb at zbrush lol wish i could

even though ive owned it for years its hard to use so i keep giving up lol

[snow fern]

When you sculpt like that you are not making the final in-game model. After you do your high-res sculpt you do something called "retopology" which is where you build a nice mesh over the soup of polygons you made from sculpting. Then that will be animated.

[zenith cloak]

When I said yesterday that I made Four, I really meant it. How do you like it? Anyway, the only problem I have is with the face. If I were just animating it in Blender, I would use Grease Pencil to imitate the hand-drawn style, but, sadly, GP does not import to Unity. Can somebody help me please?

[devout scroll]

bake your faces to a texture or draw them onto it

then there's a bunch of ways you can go about animating it in unity

[zenith cloak]

Interesting. But how exactly will that work? I don't really know of any ways of animating, other than through bones, or blendshapes.

[valid terrace]

HELP:
in blender (up), al the surfaces are facing outside, but when imported to Unity (down), some faces are missing, how to fix it ?

[zenith cloak]

Well, first, what in the world is this? Second, that's a problem with normals.

[valid terrace]

this is a mesh, all the normals are facing outside

[devout scroll]

in unity you can change any parameter in an animation so you could use a shader that flips through frames and animate the frame counter, or you could have an texture atlas and animate the offset value of the texture

then with avatar 3.0 you can check the viseme parameter and play the appropriate animation for the face

[valid terrace]

I have "face orientation" overlay turned on, that is why it is blue in blender, the faces should show up in Unity, but in Unity, that faces are not even there

[zenith cloak]

I understand, I'm just bothered by the fact that shaders are automatically disabled for most users and they will just see faceless Four walking around.

[valid terrace]

if In Unity I can see the faces from the other side, then I know is face orientation problems, but this monster here, I can't even see it from both sides

[zenith cloak]

Do you know that when you export a model from Blender to Unity all quads become tris?

[valid terrace]

what is that ?

[zenith cloak]

As in rectangles get sliced into triangles

[zenith cloak]

This conversion process can mess up some geometry

[valid terrace]

so why will those part become missing ? and how to fix it ?

[zenith cloak]

Well, the geometry of whatever that is you are trying to import is pretty bizarre, so I don't quite know how to fix this.

[valid terrace]

like by turning them into tri surfaces ?

[zenith cloak]

Dunno, try it.

[valid terrace]

it's actually like a tube forming a "tree"

[devout scroll]

Use a default shader. If none support texture offsets then replace the material in an animation

If you're bothered by animations being disabled then you're kinda out of luck. Though you could make blendshapes using face plates but that looks kinda janky

And is what people used for 2d facial expressions and animations before 3.0

[zenith cloak]

I am currently watching a video about how to pull this off.

Thanks anyway.

[spiral sigil]

Uhhh I can't say I was expecting that

Have fun with green eye ball man named mike

[wispy verge]

hamburger helper

[spiral sigil]

Oh god what is this channel turning into

These creations are too creative

[wispy verge]

please dont steal my hamburger helper oc

[spiral sigil]

Too late I already cloned and favorited and ripped

[wispy verge]

oh no

[oak hatch]

Lmao

When y'all make stuff, do you ever like...block out the shapes with a mesh?
I'm noticing I do that a lot, get the general shapes in with one set of meshes and then actually model it based on that.

[quick egret]

So i have a problem. If i put eye tracking on my avatar on blender, the eyes go correctly left and right, and up and down. But, if i blink test it ...Only 1 eye closes. Does anyone know why?

[devout scroll]

Make a blenshape that blinks both eyes

[quick egret]

nvm fixed the eye problem, now it is the brow actualy removes itself form the face when the eyes blink lol

[quaint jasper]

I personally start with a basic mesh, sphere or spherical cube depending on the topology I'm gonna need, and modify that in sculpt mode

[burnt drum]

Anyone know how to make reverse facing legs work for vrchat?

[foggy granite]

You gonna have to give it a custom animations since it not using an humanoid rig

[burnt drum]

thank you

[tough plover]

hm, that's interesting

I suppose you could use trhe same technique used for making articulated digitigrade legs

which consists of having 2 bone chains per leg

the one that actually follows the leg, with the meshed weighed to it

and another which is of the standard humanoid shape

the standard humanoid ones get mapped in the rig config

then you use constraints to make the other set follow it

[burnt drum]

Thats an interesting idea as well... Just gotta figure out how exactly to do that now haha

[foggy granite]

So kinda of having a puppet effect

[tough plover]

sort of

it's basically just guiding one bone chain using another

for this use case, constraints would probably do the trick

but maybe not

in which case, FinalIK would need to be used

[foggy granite]

I can see it working it just be funky to set up

I’m pretty interesting in seeing how it would look once setup

[white moth]

Put that thing back where it came from or so help me

[onyx juniper]

Weird, why wouldn't anyone just make digitigrade legs with an elongated foot with a raised heel like the real thing?

[tough plover]

that's how most furry models are

this is how it's typically rigged

notice how the digi ankle cannot bend here

this is the easy way though, it doesn't require any special setup, because in reality, it's just a humanoid rig

and this is the fancy way

requires FinalIK and constraints to work

[onyx juniper]

When I was talking about elongated feet with raised heels, I was talking about the bones and not the mesh.

Why can't it be done like that without the fancy stuff?

[tough plover]

because then the game's IK wouldn't like it

[onyx juniper]

Is it a problem for full body tracking?

[tough plover]

or, if you weren't using full body, you'd need to make custom animations

yes

the method I showed above doesn't require any of that

it works the same in full body and in half body/desktop

because in the end, it's based on a standard humanoid rig driving the properly rigged legs

[white moth]

You can do that, but it’s more complicated to set up if you still want to be able to play humanoid animations correctly.

It’s outside the skill of most novice creators

They do look much better, though.

when it is set up it works fine in fullbody, there are no downsides

[oak hatch]

Voidscythe Complete

1ktri, 1ktex.

[tough plover]

very nice 👍

[pseudo storm]

so... Material Combiner refuses to work on me, there doesn't seem to be any real fix around, I assume CATS plugin doesn't have its own built-in solution, right?

[narrow halo]

like the atlas optimizer?

[inland skiff]

I have a pre-existing 3D character model that I could turn into an avatar if not for the hair. How could I possible model curly hair?

[devout scroll]

Look at curves for hair modelling

Stylized hair is always done the same way

There's also hair cards if you want the hair to be more fluffy and less chunky

[lapis herald]

@quaint jasper My buddy ONI messaged you about me, i have a problem with my uvs when i uwrap these shoes, the uvs look wavy and stretched even tho my topology isnt stretched, do you know why?

[quaint jasper]

Did you apply your transforms before unwrapping ?

[lapis herald]

Under modifiers? there were no transforms in the first place

unless that is something else

[foggy granite]

Mind showing your topology and uvs seams

[lapis herald]

Can you rephase that pls?

[foggy granite]

Bruh autocorrect is horrible

[lapis herald]

Oh

LOL

Havent done my optimization yet so dont flame me too hard 😅

[foggy granite]

https://github.com/Radivarig/UvSquares this should help other are you gonna have manually adjust the uvs

Do you know how t add the addon

[lapis herald]

Yeah

Lemme do it rq

[foggy granite]

That’s should help with clean up your uvs

[lapis herald]

❤️

Thanks ill try it out

[devout scroll]

Applying transformations usually just means applying scale. If your scale isn't uniform (from scaling in object mode) it affects how modifiers and some tools work

ctrl+A your mesh in object mode and apply scale to make your current scale be the new 1,1,1 , rotations are a good idea to apply as well usually

you can also apply position but it's usually not desired

since moving an object in object mode and applying position would basically do the same thing as opening edit mode and moving all the mesh in it

[lapis herald]

Oop, yup, that fixed it

i didnt apply all transforms

[devout scroll]

When you go into edit mode you're usually warned scale is not uniform

That should be the first thing you check when something doesn't behave how you expect

[lapis herald]

Hmm

Good to know

Thanks

[devout scroll]

👍🏻

[lapis herald]

Another question, kinda new to the whole optimization scene, i was getting rid of unneeded vertices and now when it comes to texturing, the normals are kinda goofed up any ideas on how to fix them?

[quaint jasper]

That's a result of overlapping UVs

[lapis herald]

I see

[devout scroll]

Topology, marking edges sharp, turning on smooth normals in the mesh tab

Wait is it overlapping uvs?

[quaint jasper]

In this case i'm fairly certain

[lapis herald]

It was, yeah i had one seem not marked correctly so they were overlapping each other

[merry vault]

Figuring out how to export stuff shouldn't be too difficult, since that's basically all I need someone to do. I have the files so I can send them over if you want to try.

[lethal wave]

ive got a model with a bunch of different copies of the same mesh w/ different textures, to be used as eye/mouth animations

my main experience is with mmds that come with these types of things already configured as shapekeys, how would i go about making that happen?

[devout scroll]

depends on if you want to keep doing it with shape keys or if you want to do it with a shader

shape keys were needed for face plates in sdk2 but you can do custom animators with sdk 3 and just slide around an atlas texture's offset

if you want to do it with shape keys you gotta hide them inside the head, create a new shape key, select it and in edit mode move them to where they're supposed to be

[spiral sigil]

Probably best to go with shapekeys if you want it to function on quest

with the very strict shader limitations on quest avatars

[devout scroll]

That's fair

[tough plover]

man that rig is not going to work very well lol

[spiral sigil]

Maybeeee with enough FinalIK magic it can workk??

[devout scroll]

No shaders but finalIK

[tough plover]

na, you'd still need a proper rig to drive this rig with IK

[lethal wave]

i got the faceplates working w shapekeys

but i tried using one of them as a jaw flap blendshape and it doesnt work in game

[craggy lintel]

Okay so

Substance won’t answer my ticket rn and this is due tomorrow.

Maybe I can get an answer here

So my thing is, I plugging in my custom camera Luts into the substance camera (REC.709)

and added effects and lens corrections

Basically; I used my irl job and color scienced the shit out of substance’s camera... now it won’t show during Iray

Any idea why it’s not popping up in I-ray?

[tame harbor]

anyone knows what retopology means?

and how to apply it to my model? i've been working on it for the past week, i'm still new to modeling

i can share it if needed

[quaint jasper]

Retopology means redoing the geometry of your model by adjusting/removing/creating edge loops so that the topology fits better for deformation and is more optimized as in poly count

[tame harbor]

ooh

okay 0.0

also when is okay to use triangles in my model? last time i showed the mesh to someone, someone pointed out that doing that on the head (face specifically) was a bad idea

i assume he was mentioning that in therms of topology

i'll... just ask later then..😅

[craggy lintel]

Nahh triangles no good

It’s just sloppy topo

watch videos on Pixar topology and you’ll get why

Here you can take a look at this for example

[azure rain]

there's a time and a place for triangles but yeah probably not something to use as a amateur

[craggy lintel]

True yes, but like he said it really just depends on where you utilize them

[azure rain]

like what I've seen with game models is using them to like change the amount of edge Loops something takes up so like for example the back of the head would be more low-poly than the face

[snow fern]

if by working you've been sculpting and so on, then you will need retopology to make a good mesh. if by working you've been carefully pushing vertexes around with subdivision surfaces, you might be okay without

[craggy lintel]

It’s best to watch how topo moves when rigged to understand why this is the best way

And yes check out loop patches for arms n stuff that stuff is great

not reaaaallly necessary for VRC models really but it’s just... great to know and do

[azure rain]

yeah if you're going subdivided approach you can probably just dissolve Edge loops

[tame harbor]

yeah i'm doing subdivision to the model before but also i'm just trying to avoid making a triangle at any moment possible like the plague as i merge and make new lines on the mesh

[azure rain]

yeah probably for the best it would take some skill to know when triangles are actually helpful and typically that's on retopology that they're handy as triangles cause problems in subdivision

[snow fern]

the idea of retopology as an independent step is to ignore all that, go nuts, use dyntopo all over, make a complete soup of vertices and triangles and stuff. THEN after you're happy, you shrinkwrap a new nice (lower poly) topology on that. and then you can use the high res one to bake normals and other details

trying to be creative WHILE maintaining good topology is just going to be more work. plus you won't have any of those sculpted details to bake from if that's your goal

kind of a middle ground would be to use blender's multiresolution modifier, which lets you work at multiple levels of subdivision at once

[azure rain]

https://i.gyazo.com/e622a7baefdf6fdd29d18e1f450fb1cc.png

an example of somewhere where a triangle could be handy in a retopology

but that's probably more relevant if you were trying to make like a quest Avatar

[tame harbor]

give me a second, trying to understand here i only discovered all of this about a month ago. 😅

[snow fern]

if you want to understand retopology, watch a tutorial on retopoflow. it's a really neat blender add-on

[tame harbor]

okay

[snow fern]

there are plain blender tuts too, but the plugin tutorial will give you the flavor much faster because it avoids a bunch of setup and stuff

[azure rain]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8232nJX0AU5VHX?format=jpg&name=4096x4096 found this handy picture that shows a retopology to make a quest build

[snow fern]

for an example of someone actually building with good topology right from the start (but using hand drawn references instead of sculpted references): https://youtu.be/5d1vca8R43A

[tame harbor]

okay, i'll watch it tomorrow, not that i don't want to (i actually really want to) but it's because i'm nearly done with basic shape of the model and i really want to get it done. but i'll be wanting to animate it as well for 3D animation (but first this because slow and steady rather than jumping from session to session randomly 😅 )

plus, this is allot 0.0

[azure rain]

of course 3D modelling is a complicated skill to learn

[tame harbor]

but i'm willing

i really want to

[tame harbor]

so, just go wild with my model?

[snow fern]

it just depends on how you want to work. but if you knew nothing about topology when you started, and you are willing to learn, then you might as well go nuts now and then retopo later

if you had some idea about topo before but are having trouble keeping it straight as you make creative changes, watch that long video I linked, and apply those ideas

[tame harbor]

i'll give it a watch as well

[snow fern]

a "real" 3d modelling workflow has a bunch of steps that take much smaller leaps than you'd expect as an amateur. each of the steps is kind of a specialized skill

[azure rain]

gamedev it's split up to five different jobs

[snow fern]

so you would have a concept artist come up with ideas, and a character artist refine those (all in 2d) and then someone good at sculpting would make a base mesh (which would be unusable in production but looks nice) and then someone would retopo that to make a usable mesh for posing/game/etc

[tame harbor]

got it, so go to town with it, then later go back to it with retopo

[snow fern]

whereas you probably opened blender and made a quad for the tip of the nose right off

[azure rain]

and then probably another person would do the rigging and another texture it

[snow fern]

and another person would animate it (and/or another group would mocap it)

[tame harbor]

i see

[snow fern]

so as a one-man-band you can decide to combine any of those steps

[tame harbor]

well damn, my journey as barely begun!

[azure rain]

yup

[snow fern]

there's also something to be said for not worrying about making your first effort perfect

just try not to make it 1 million triangles and you'll be fine for your first avatar

like who cares if the face shading gets wonky when your mouth moves. it's amazing that the mouth can move at all

[tame harbor]

i do have a set idea what i want to do, specifically under 3D modeling. so i'm trying to follow that path but that's for another day.

[tame harbor]

right something i did on the ears... oops 😅

[snow fern]

put on some headphones, delete the ears, solved

[tame harbor]

okay

well... got the basic shape done! another friend of mine showed me a tip on how to get the shape of the body. (that's all he showed me... that's all)

it's just now missing eyes looks way too hollow and... creepy

but i will be going back to these messages to write down points, so thank you tons @snow fern, @azure rain, @craggy lintel and Ruuubick. i'll be diffidently be trying to learn as much as possible.

[azure rain]

glad to be of help

[devout sedge]

bruh

[spiral sigil]

lol

[civic depot]

stop

[lyric mauve]

what

[wary thorn]

Stfu

[spiral sigil]

ban chump?

[devout sedge]

ayy finally that nerd got smoked

[vernal otter]

Tf?

[river pond]

Oh god, here they come 👀

[desert whale]

🤡

[craggy grove]

Te flying fuck

[umbral elk]

I was wondering why I was getting pinged

[misty valley]

6 pings

[fallen carbon]

omg

[misty valley]

wat

[wary thorn]

Stfu 😑

[analog galleon]

[regal basin]

it's just a bot attacking the server

[spiral sigil]

💩

[river pond]

this channel is getting slowmode, im calling it

[regal basin]

nothing special

[royal river]

👀

[analog galleon]

[umbral elk]

Same here, I'm betting on slowmode

[spiral sigil]

I would rather learn making a avatar the buying one my opinion

[analog galleon]

i hope so

[spiral sigil]

funny.exe

[misty valley]

you almost broke my new selfbot 😠

[vernal otter]

[craggy grove]

[crisp barn]

Tf did i get 8 pings from

[twilit dawn]

what just happened

[river pond]

You didn't see anythin here, go back to vrc peps

[umbral elk]

A spammer

[spiral sigil]

[analog galleon]

random troll bot

[misty valley]

paypal money glitch lmao

[spiral sigil]

[misty valley]

thats what it said

[umbral elk]

You know what else is annoying?
Those scam nitro links that you get in DMs

[crisp barn]

I've DMs fully disabled

Friend requests too

[mystic kiln]

Holy pings.

[feral veldt]

??? Where did the pings come from?

[nimble shuttle]

what the pings doin?

[umbral elk]

A troll bot

[feral veldt]

Oof

[umbral elk]

Yeah, it was a mass mention

[nimble shuttle]

it's been taken care of, feel free to go back to sleep or return to whatever y'all have been doing before

[misty valley]

there will be more ppl asking tho

[umbral elk]

They'll probably scroll up to find out what happened

[fossil oak]

[spiral sigil]

[snow osprey]

Me wakes up: sees ping in 3d modeling and gets terrified as I can model shit.. looks and realizes it was s troll.. anyhow back to sleep now

[devout scroll]

derailed

[oak hatch]

Huee

Always dodge roles, saves from getting mentioned

[spiral sigil]

I will get all the roles and all the pings !!

[spiral sigil]

idk where to put this but ill put it here

everytime i edit an fbx file.. it imports to unity ok but when i upload it it turns into a collapsed mess

any help?

[tough plover]

@spiral sigil you might have messed up shape keys

[spiral sigil]

oh heck

how do i fix them

[tough plover]

well check if that's the issue first

[spiral sigil]

oh

[tough plover]

activate some of them and see if it breaks

also, what does your rig look like

[spiral sigil]

ill show you in a sec, im checking shapekeys

shapekeys arent the issue

ill reimport the rig and show you

[tough plover]

not exactly what I mean but that also seems fine

what does the rig look like

in blender

[spiral sigil]

oh, my mistake

[tough plover]

oh wtf

uh

so first off

you always need to disable Add leaf bones under armature when exporting

[spiral sigil]

oops

[tough plover]

to not need to do that manually, export using CATS

[spiral sigil]

i use cats

[tough plover]

k, also

go under Model options

More options

Delete zero weight bones

[spiral sigil]

where do i find that

[tough plover]

in cats

[spiral sigil]

oh

done

[craggy lintel]

Why do I have 11 pings in here.

Oh late to the party

[spiral sigil]

how can i make a screen like that

[neat viper]

https://github.com/Xiexe/RGBSubPixelDisplay-Shader

[spiral sigil]

thank uuu ^-^

[craggy lintel]

Guys im panicking

can you update your files on gumroad if you need to make an adjustment!?

[full ice]

can you not just upload again to the same product ?

[craggy lintel]

Idk!

[jolly shuttle]

I have no idea where to go to ask about general avatar creation in it's entirety, I suppose since I don't have a model for Unity SDK3 I need to make one or find one but I can't find anything that looks appropriate or similar to what i'm going for and am internally panicking yet again over small details. . . . quesitons?

Should I be looking for any model that I can modify physically within blender afterwards because I have no idea what kind of things I might need to edit within blender for appropriate segments, documents talking about bones and blendshapes and nothing to help me get started because I have no idea where to start.

Internal Panicking is causing frustration and since I haven't used either Unity or Blender, I have no idea what specific parts of anything go to which area, ignoring that I don't know how either system works in the first place beyond Blender for 3D Modeling and Unity for programming

[late glacier]

Does anyone know an easy way to make bones for a pre-existing model? Like not rigging it with armature, making actual 3D bones from a pre-existing model

I’ve already made the rib cage and a partial bit of the spine and shoulder-blades

[thorny ivy]

One step at a time, mate.

First, figure out what you want your avatar to roughly look like.
Second, features and details.
Third, find bases/free assets you can use. As long as you're not repackaging stuff to sell, most are game for personal use.
Four, figure out how to combine them all. Easier said then done for some depending on how much of your model is kitbashed/what parts.
Five, test and refine the model. Don't try to make it perfect right off the bad, just focus on getting a rough draft/mock-up done first and go from there.

Custom parts + personalized details are obviously gonna be more ideal then purely repurposed assets but for a complete beginner, that's putting a lot on your plate if you already don't know how to make or modify meshes + textures yet.

There's countless tutorials that can walk you through the process, just need to tackle one thing at a time and have patience.

We're happy to help how we can but don't think anyone here is inclined to 1-on-1 teaching and explaining every detail so some autonomy is expected.

[jolly shuttle]

I have an idea within my head that I want my avatar to look like, Discord Avatar actually, even a basic idea of clothing and anatomy in terms of Limbs, but I have no idea how to get it to physically onto blender, not even quite sure WHAT i'm supposed to be putting together because as far as I know, it's just a single detailed shape that I have 0 idea how to actually modify or get towards.

I'm not even sure where to look for models given that everywhere I look has nothing similar that could be used as a baseline or are a bit too costly to purchase given that i'm not planning on actually using them

Checklist is nice to have however, even though I understand the words as being accurate terms for blender, I can't make sense of what differences are between some of them . . . googling based of the checklist at random i guess

[thorny ivy]

Well, guess the simpliest path is finding a furry-type fox avatar and just texturing it to be black. From there, trim off or modify parts of the mesh you don't like to make it more fitting.

[split aspen]

wip 111

[tawdry agate]

ok this might sounds stupid but i need help can anyone help me get hair on a model in blender with cats plugin?

[oak hatch]

Do you already have the hair model?

[white moth]

Yeah you can push an update whenever but people will have access to the old version I believe

[craggy lintel]

Aight we good

[white moth]

You can also spam out email notifications to everyone who’s bought it that there’s an update but I don’t recommend it lol

[tawdry agate]

This would be my first model so I don't think so

[oak hatch]

So, you will need to make hair, and add it to an existing model, correct?

[tawdry agate]

I dont know how to make the hair is the thing I have the model

[oak hatch]

What kind of hair do you want to add?

[jolly shuttle]

Many tutorials and I still can't figure out how to sculpt a head

[foggy granite]

Are you using a good reference

I can seen you one where it shows the topology and have both a front and side view of topology so you can model then use the sculpt tools tp adjust the topology

[oak hatch]

^^

Faces are hard to sculpt, imho.

I'll sculpt hands all day but faces??? Eugh

[jolly shuttle]

I'm new to blender and the only reference for what I want to make is my Discord Avatar

I know what I want in my head but I have no clue how to use Blender to actually make it, and I really don't want to have to pay someone else to do it for me

[tough plover]

you could probably use a Rex model as your base

one sec

https://rezilloryker.gumroad.com/l/MYutV

[oak hatch]

Yeah, even if you used it as a armature and overmeshed.

[tough plover]

paid base though

[oak hatch]

I do that a lot, I have a few base bodies and I remesh/retopo to suit.

[jolly shuttle]

Useful I presume, assuming I knew how to actually modify anything without screwing the entire thing up -_-,

[tough plover]

modifying a base is definitely a good learning experience

[oak hatch]

Yeah, you have long road ahead, lmao.

Fun road tho.

[tough plover]

I recommend doing that before trying to make something from scratch

[oak hatch]

^^^

[jolly shuttle]

I've seen Armature mentioned in blender on other models but nothing I observe when selecting it makes any sense

[oak hatch]

What knowledge, if any, do you have of 3D modeling

[jolly shuttle]

I've figured out how to make pre-existing models into what looks like a bunch of polygons thrown through a blender, with little to show for it. I don't even know if I'm being negatively pessimistic about any of this or if I'm just this much of an idiot

[oak hatch]

Also, how "techy" are you?

[jolly shuttle]

I did basic blender years ago, remember nothing

[oak hatch]

That's better than 90% of folks

Lmao

If I were you, I'd look into Flipped Normals on YouTube, they have great tutorials on modelling at all skill levels

Get comfortable with the program before you go ham.

[jolly shuttle]

given how much blender has updated and the different variations of basically any tool out of the many options that overwhelm me, I don't know how

[oak hatch]

Use the latest version of blender.

[jolly shuttle]

2.8 right?

I'm not finding other versions

[oak hatch]

https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-90/

Boop

[jolly shuttle]

yay, all those tutorials were worthless

good to know at least before I got deep

[oak hatch]

Some helpful tricks, number one, use the incremental save feature (Ctrl+shift+s) and click the little plus button.

Nah

2.8 and 2.9 are very similar.

[jolly shuttle]

not like I have anything I can call progress TO save'

[oak hatch]

It's not the program, and it's idiosyncrasies, almost all the knowledge you need for modelling is conceptual.

[jolly shuttle]

I have other models tha ti've downloaded

[oak hatch]

Like, knowing what a vertex is

[jolly shuttle]

but I have no idea how any of the model actually works and messing around with anything just tells me how to break it which in my mind teaches me nothing

[oak hatch]

Loops, polygons, ngons and where to use them, what vertex weights and weight paints actually do.

That's the big deal, IMHO

[jolly shuttle]

And we've entered the realm of confusion and the understanding that I don't understand anything

[oak hatch]

Ah. Yeah, that's a big wall to climb.

[jolly shuttle]

FlippedNormals you said?

[oak hatch]

https://youtu.be/tTfIo_bezqw

Yes.

There, that

Watch that, consume that, dream about it.

[thorny ivy]

Tutorials and experimenting seems to be the best combo for learning something advanced like 3D modeling.

Even if you don't use whatever you end up making, be it a simple item, a specific part of something larger, etc, you'll at least have more experience then before.

Also, don't be afraid to do small elements + combine them with pre-existing assets.

IE: making and rigging some claws for an avatar which didn't have them before, jewelry, various accessories.

[jolly shuttle]

I can't tell if I'm an idiot or not, I don't know if I am or am not missing simple concepts that other people seem to know plenty about, I don't know these tools to modify basic shapes or how to use them, I don't know what you mean by rigging, I don't know what Armature is, And yet I keep being forwarded towards tutorials that talk about using yet more things that I hadn't even heard of yet let alone any that actually teach anything to help, feels like an endless ring of mockery, either teaching me the most simple things that I already know like how to pan the godamn camera, or skipping over what i'm looking for and teaching things that use tools that everyone/thing seems to think I should know exactly what they're for.

Video above is nice to know how you could get to make other shapes, but it speaks of tools to do so while i'm trying to figure out if it's going to actually talk about how you even find the tools, let alone actually use them.

I apologize for ranting, I apologize for wasting your time, since apparently I'm not finding the middle ground for what I actually need to learn myself

[neat viper]

Literally nobody started out being great at Blender lol, and it can definitely be frustrating at times, but I'd vv much recommend just messing around in the program and watching some tutorials! Searching online for where certain things is fine, and it can be vv helpful too, especially considering Blender's UI choices lol

don't be ashamed of learning c:

[oak hatch]

Ye

[thorny ivy]

Search up "Blender 2.9 modeling 101", "Beginner Blender 2.9", stuff like that.

You're kinda jumping straight into the deep-end by wanting to make an avatar without any real modeling experience so things are gonna feel pretty daunting/confusing at first.

Like the others said, its a long road but every journey starts with a single step.

[quaint jasper]

Took me a couple months to make something i was happy with, and another year to be really happy with it

[thorny ivy]

I've only gotten relatively adept at modeling in Blender after a year+, started out with model bashing and doing practically everything by hand because I didn't know how to mirror, what modifiers did, or use anything other then the basic X/Y/Z tool.

[tough plover]

yea, learning how to manipulate geometry/selecting stuff more efficiently rather than vertex by vertex is really important

[oak hatch]

As are how to abuse modifiers, see my voidscythe model that uses literally two ribbons of polygons and abuses bevel/solidify.

[gaunt abyss]

I just started off by modifying models from other games, then I eventually started to learn other skills through tutorials as I needed them. With something like modeling it's usually best to learn at your own pace rather than diving in head first. In my case, I just found tutorials for specific things that I needed to do at that point in time. Still not good at rigging though, so I still use Mixamo for that.

[jolly shuttle]

I can just tell a lot of irritation is going to be in my future, tutorials to learn blender, so that I can do basic stuff and eventually work my way up to making my own avatar, just so that I can prompty be confused and at square one when i get to the SDK3 and Unity. I'll probably have a VR Set by then at least

[foggy granite]

Trust me it better to mess around and take breaks then forcing your self to finish a project just make sure you make some progress

[keen tulip]

I'm trying to give this character two animations which are Facial animation and body animation and combing them together into one animation file. Problem is I'm so lost with what I need to do to do that. Any suggestions?

[stable imp]

Any experienced Blender users here? I did a major screw up, I was making modifications to an avatar and somewhere in the process I lost all the vertex groups somehow… now the animations don’t work anymore… is there any way to cope the groups over from an older version of the mesh before I made the changes (95% percent of the topology are the same ) or any other way to recover the groups?

[foggy granite]

You can check your autosave and go to a previous version

[late glacier]

Any suggestions or changes I should make to this?

[fringe notch]

been trying to import an outfit i got off booth into blender but i keep getting errors. it works fine in unity, what can i do?

[foggy granite]

Not really much you can do to try to verify your file

[bold jewel]

Transfer Mesh Data

which is also useful to create weights for clothing on characters or anything that has to move with another mesh

[white moth]

If you have steam I just recommend installing Blender from steam so it auto updates

Otherwise just keep it updated so you don’t end up with the people who are still trapped in 2015

[spiral sigil]

made this rig for this model, and for some reason no bones move with the mesh, no matter what i parent it to and no mater how i weight paint the mesh, does anyone know how to fix this? also i tried with automatic weights and it just keeps saying bone heat weighting failed.

[stable imp]

Ah thank you, this worked quite good, I had to do some clean up but I got it almost right now… I only have one weird phenomenon that I cannot explain

The vertex groups for the ears are symmetrical but when animating them in unity one ear works fine the other one pulls half the face with it… any idea what might cause this?

[dreamy epoch]

Vertex groups may look symmetrical, but weightpainting on them might be completely different.

Also I don't think ear bones should affect face area at all.

[stable imp]

you are totally right!

the wp for the ear is way too strong, gonna fix this... (damn issues with amd cards make it look so weird... havent found a solution for this yet)

[zenith cloak]

Now I wonder how furry avatars are made. I kinda want one now, however the prices on Gumroad are just too much for me to afford (that, and I spent all my money anyway).

[oak hatch]

Same way as any avatar, honestly.

[zenith cloak]

I was actually asking for things like how to better do things like eyes, legs and other such things.

[oak hatch]

Pro tip for weight painting. Make a custom gradient for the weight paint display, set 0 weight to gray, and 0.0001 weight to blue. It'll always show where you aren't weighted. Saves so much pain.

[oak hatch]

It really depends on your level of experience with 3D modelling and art in general. A good tip is to work from a reference image, that will make most of the work go by faster and easier.

Even if you make """parts""" of a head (eyes and ears separate) using different references, you can combine them into one after the fact.

Super helpful.

[zenith cloak]

Well that's kinda reassuring.

[oak hatch]

Yeye. Literally go find some art with parts you like, drop them in as an image in blender, and model them.

Experiment with subdivision and bevel modifiers.

Subdivision, Grid Fill, and Bevel are the most beefy tools for modelling, IMHO.

[zenith cloak]

I have some art to reference, but what bothers me on some models is the 3-dimensional fur strands. How exactly are they done?

[oak hatch]

Oh, I just did that for my Collab.

The way I did it is, I made the main """volume""" of the fur, then I selected a vertex and beveled it.

Make sure the bevel tool is beveling by vertex, with one segment.

Delete the face that's made, select the loop, and grid fill.

It'll make a x shaped set of polys.

[zenith cloak]

Grid Fill? That's a thing in Blender?

It is

How did I not know that?

[oak hatch]

Yes

Grid fill is KING SHIT

Oh

You know the spacebar remap trick, yeah?

[zenith cloak]

No

[oak hatch]

If not, I'm gonna-hoo be ready to have your mind exploded.

Go into preferences and change your space bar from "Play/Pause" to "Search"

At any time, you can press space, and type something and it will find any command with that word in its name.

Space>"Grid" will show you grid fill, no menus needed.

It will only show you tools you can currently use in the mode you are in.

Also, set your Orbit to be keybound to Mouse 4, and your pan to Mouse 3.
Now you can navigate much more quickly.

You can control the camera with one hand, and punch commands in with the other without any weirdness. Behold, workflow.

[zenith cloak]

Mouse 4 and Mouse 3. What are those?

[oak hatch]

Mouse 3 is middle mouse.

Mouse 4 is the extra button on every mouse that isn't like...100% normie.

[zenith cloak]

I'm using a Razer Viper Mini and it has those two buttons on the side.

[oak hatch]

Middle mouse becomes pan, zoom (scroll) and M4 is orbit, it's-yes those.

One of those is M4 and the other is M5.

[zenith cloak]

Okay, thanks

[oak hatch]

As soon as you get used to that, you'll be very angry at any program that doesn't do it.

Lmao

[zenith cloak]

Like what program?

[oak hatch]

Inventor.

It doesn't let you rebind the mouse.

I'm so. So mad.

[zenith cloak]

I don't even know what that is.

[oak hatch]

Engineering software.

Think, blender but for machines.

[zenith cloak]

Oh okay

[oak hatch]

This sorta thing.

[zenith cloak]

Kinda looks like that interface that Main Assembly game uses to build vehicles

[oak hatch]

Also, if you're mega new to blender, check flipped normals YouTube channel. They have an intro video that's 10/10

[zenith cloak]

I've heard of them, but never delved deeper

[oak hatch]

Yeye, it's a 230,000 volt power thing.

Or, as I call it, "The bane of my existence."

[white moth]

Mouse 4 is the back button (thumb) and mouse 5 is forward (pinky)

And mouse 3 is middle mouse button or clicking down on scroll wheel

[oak hatch]

Ye

[ashen stag]

It depends entirely on your mouse, but they should be labeled hopefully, at least in your mouses software if not physically

except 3, 3 is always middle mouse click

[glacial estuary]

Is there an easy way for me to only select the hair vertexes?

[quaint jasper]

L with your cursor on the vertex

or if it's using a single material, select a face, Shift + G > Material

[craggy lintel]

L select

Is best

if they made the mesh then they don’t have a matte set up yet

[foggy granite]

I thought the key bind was ctrl-L to select linked vertex

[lapis herald]

So i imported my model into unity and it went from 43k polys up to 2.1 billion, what can cause that? i already checked to see if anything was off the model and i also clicked the legacy blend shape normals thing

[foggy granite]

Did you forgot to get rid of a subdivision modifyer

[oak hatch]

Import settings. Read/write.

We had the same issue with another avii earlier.

[lapis herald]

Is there a way to fix it?

[oak hatch]

Ues

2,147,483,647 is the integer limit, if you see that then read/write is disabled on your mesh and the SDK assumes the literal worst

[lapis herald]

Sorry im kinda new to this whole, like, read/write thing

how do i activate it?

[oak hatch]

Lord knows. I only know it's an issue because I saw that as an issue earlier.

[lapis herald]

damn

[oak hatch]

in unity check your import settings on the fbx, enable -> read/write enabled

Boop

Behold the power of GOOGLE

[lapis herald]

Smart

thanks

[tawdry urchin]

i wanted to try and make a audio gesture on a freddy character from fnaf but im not to sure where to download models does anyone know where you can find a fnaf model to edit

[spiral sigil]

i find it funny how everyone feels safety by simply being in their own home

[oak hatch]

Gonna model this today.

[wispy verge]

its the guy from

[muted raven]

Current wip

[onyx juniper]

Delicious!

[spiral ledge]

Total noob question: All the tutorials I've found simply are "Step 1: Do the Thing" type.

How do you import the ActorDescriptior thing? I've created a new Unity Project, and imported the SDK3 package into it.

[languid fog]

I dont think thats the right chat for that

Ok, thats my first time doing a hair like this, any tips?

[astral frost]

hey guys i stuck with a face i cant modify the mouth any idea?

[lapis herald]

Any idea why some vertices show in blender but not in unity? its not the normals, the material has backface culling off

[onyx crane]

This tutorial by YanSculpts is great for creating anime-styled hair. It's much slower than modifying existing wigs or using VRoid, but you have a lot more control over your results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqWYgrXw7Jk

[onyx crane]

Your avatar is missing the mouth shapekeys entirely -- you'd need to either remake them from scratch or do a face transplant (similar to adding clothing but using a face)

[languid fog]

he teach a way to do a specific type of hair, you can see on the print the hair is different from the "normal"

i cant use that technique

[onyx crane]

I think what I would do in your case is the following:

1. Use a simple bowl shape (it looks like you have one there) to create a simplified version of the hairstyle (it will be ugly, that's okay)
2. Use Yansculpt's hair technique to build the tufts
3. Join all shapes together
4. Go into sculpt mode and use the Remesh tool with a very, very small voxel size (.001?) so that the hair all sticks together and forms an actual 'wig'
5. Use the plugin QuadRemesh to optimize this shape into a more reasonable amount of vertices
6. Manually weight paint the hair as desired.

[languid fog]

yeah i was thinking about smth like that too, but the Remesh tool is new for me, i will study about it thx

[onyx crane]

It's pretty simple to use -- if you end up with a horrible 'spiderweb' looking shape when you try to remesh, it means you have a hole somewhere in your mesh that you need to patch.

[languid fog]

noted

thx

[onyx crane]

np gl!

[quaint jasper]

I'd suggest press I to inset any face, moving those edges up, extruding, scaling down, moving up, and eventually you get a tuft, you can give it a slight rotation/angle, and do that everywhere you want

it might not look right until you get some toon shading in blender though

[onyx crane]

This too. I mean, you're basically building a soft 'spiky ball', might help to think of it that way

[languid fog]

noted too

[astral frost]

no i dont thing you understand

the mounth is like locked when i try to edit his vertex its drag all the face

[quaint jasper]

Can you show your blender screen ?

[astral frost]

how i can preform that face transplant

[snow fern]

making your own shapekeys isn't that hard. pretty much all you have to make are a few for the eye (eyes closed, look up, look down) and a few for the mouth (there are 3 that CATS will make a whole set from). For the mouth shapes it helps to rig a jaw bone (which you will not use in actual vrchat upload) to get the mouth to open smoothly.

I would say face transplant is more technically and artistically challenging overall

maybe a head transplant less so, but even skin matching can be tricky

[astral frost]

cats can do it?

i mean fix the face?

[snow fern]

to quickly judge how hard the shapekeys will be: around the eyes, make sure there is enough geometry for the lids that you can close them without it looking blocky or smearing texture details like eyeliner. if the model ever had closing eyes, it should be fine. around the mouth, make sure the mouth is open (not sealed shut accidentally by "merge verts") and connected to an inside-the-mouth shape.

[astral frost]

if that what you mean?

[snow fern]

cats will make the big list of visemes from a smaller set of 3, but you still have to make those

[astral frost]

(decimation) section you mean

[snow fern]

no, under "visemes" where it says AA OO CH

if you make AA, OO, CH, and set them in there, and click "create visemes" it will make the full set of 14

[astral frost]

only basis there

so its wont work

[snow fern]

"you make AA, OO, CH" is how you get more than basis there

do you know what shapekeys/blendshapes/visemes are in general?

[astral frost]

offcurse

the blendshape is not the problem for me

the problem is mainly the to do it one the mouth

AA , OO , CH wont work unless i can figrout how to fix the mount

[snow fern]

did it get welded shut?

the first thing I would check is the original model, before you ever touched it with CATS. if you merged nearby verts with CATS it might have welded the mouth shut even though the original was fine

[astral frost]

well i have to go , once i back i will show you a video

maybe its will explain a bit better then i can

[foggy granite]

Them bones for limbs need to be changed if you plan to use the standard humanoid animation for varchar

[astral frost]

limbs is not a ik bones?

[foggy granite]

i said limbs since im refreing to bones of arms and legs they need to be adjusted

[astral frost]

ok thanks @foggy granite

[cyan plover]

hey guys so I have a question regarding topology

I'm trying to make a feather like effect and found that this looks good

but I was wondering if it might become an issue when rigging later on, and if so, is there a better way to achive this effect or a similar one?

[foggy granite]

No it shouldn't cause any problems at all

[cyan plover]

perfect

thanks

[thorny ivy]

So, I've been modifying one of the common anime-esque head models but because of the changes, the visemes are all wonky now.

Any tips for updating/replacing them?

[tough plover]

whenever you do edits to a mesh that has shape keys, always create a new shape key, activate it, and edit on that

then you can just apply it to the basis afterwards

[thorny ivy]

...and if we've been making edits to the basis from the start?

[tough plover]

then that's a little tougher lol

[tough plover]

here's an idea to try

oh god damnit

[craggy lintel]

Joined the TREND

:3

[tough plover]

so did I but I'm not posting here lol

[craggy lintel]

all assets by me ;3

DO ITT @tough plover

[tough plover]

@thorny ivy create a new shape key, select everything, Vertex > Blend from shape

in the pop up in the bottom left, select Basis with "Add" disabled

then apply that key to basis

[snow fern]

I think someone was talking about having just added a tool to fix that to CATS

[tough plover]

(I have no idea if this works, but try it)

^ I did also hear about that, but I think that's still in the dev branch

[craggy lintel]

Cats eats keys like candy tbh

[craggy lintel]

Okay I just want to say this to any beginner to anything. DO NOT LISTEN to people who tell you stuff is too hard. You can do it. Everything you see is more than doable.

They just want to kill the hobby for newcomers. Don't listen to them!

[spiral sigil]

Hey, I am trying to extrude a point on the curve to achieve this, but everytime I do it does this weird looping thing. I think it has to do with being in the middle of the line and not at the very top or bottom. If anyone has an idea on what to do so it just makes a single normal curve and not a loop that would be great since I can't find anything on google.

[foggy granite]

unfortunately that just curves you can model the branches individually using curves then just connect the vertex after

[spiral sigil]

ah ok

thank you

[obsidian nova]

Yo, Cina, going to make a tutorial re: how to fix broken shape keys soon, but in the meantime, feel free to write me on Discord if you're still having the issue.

[quaint jasper]

Didn't feilen make a tool to fix that instantly ?

"heya! If you grab the development version of CATS I've added the algorithm as an option under Model Options->Show More Options->Repair Broken Shapekeys"

[late glacier]

Trying to fix these “non bone hands”

[spiral sigil]

trying to UV map this in blender but it's only affecting one side and from the front it makes half the mask invisible with the texture on the wrong side, does anyone know how to fix that?

[quaint jasper]

is your mesh symmetrized or mirrored

normals seem flipped

[spiral sigil]

i started of mirrored then made it two separate pieces, and i have no clue how to flip normals to where they should be XD

[quaint jasper]

alt + N

recalculate

[spiral sigil]

@quaint jasper thanks very much, that was driving me nuts! XD

[heady vortex]

guys why is unity showing me a wrong polycount??

blender:

Unity:

[dreamy epoch]

Update your VRCSDK and apply autofixes that it provides.

There should be one mentioning meshes imported with mesh read/write setting being incorrect.

[spiral sigil]

trying to make shape keys for mouth movement but i run into a problem, this is the model without the cat's plugin auto fixing it in any way.

clicking on a single point on the mouth clicks the entire face and i'm wondering how can i move the mouth if it's connected to the entire face, it's the same for the eyelids.

and if i were to try proportional editing then clicking one point moves ALL of the model, i dunno what the heck is going on with this.

[neat viper]

Try changing the proportional editing size? either by using the scroll wheel, or in the menu at the bottom-left after you finish moving something

[devout scroll]

Why are you doing select linked?

[spiral sigil]

oh because that's how i'm seeing it done in tutorials but it's clearly not working for me...

[quaint jasper]

Might want to reset your blender settings, cause that's not default behavior

[spiral sigil]

i did that, i still can't select the upper lip and lower lip separately, the best way i can describe the problem is that the mouth is welded shut

[quaint jasper]

Then you need to disconnect the edges that form the mouth hole with V

[spiral sigil]

thanks for the tip, man, never have i ever had so much problems with one model before lol

[finite yacht]

Hello. Everytime when i want to import FBX model to blender 2.79 i have mixed shape keys. How to properly import it? I dont want to use CATS because it breaking everything other.

[quaint jasper]

Do you use 2.79 for a specific reason ?

[finite yacht]

i dont ask about it.

[ashen stag]

Is the randomization of shape keys fixed in the newer blenders? I havent tested that specifically

[quaint jasper]

Never heard of shape key randomization, what does that do ?

[spiral sigil]

if you made the model yourself from scratch, and made it an fbx, and you know you made it an fbx, get this little addon in blender to import it, if you found the model somewhere else, 99% of the time you HAVE to use the CATS plug-in...even if it's annoying.

as for the randomized shape-keys, i have never encountered that either on any model i ever altered or worked on 🤨

at the worst case scenario you might have to delete all the shape-keys the model has and remake every single one of them in edit mode, and let me tell ya, dependent on model that can be a bitch and a half.

[naive helm]

Hey how should I go about texturing the collar part of this?

[ashen stag]

Could just manually create the bands with vertices and then color those

[naive helm]

is that tedious?

[ashen stag]

Seeing as how its a simple design, no

[naive helm]

Oke

[ashen stag]

at least not anymore tedious than texturing the bands, but that depends on your UV

[naive helm]

is the model I'm making cursed btw lol

[ashen stag]

Do you really need to ask that

[naive helm]

lol

[naive helm]

I'm not sure how to go about this btw

I'm pretty new to modeling

I think I might have an idea

actually I have no clue lol

[quaint jasper]

Ah if you don't have the topology it's a bit more difficult, but if you create a seam in the back and unwrap, you might be able to use texture paint

[naive helm]

It keeps saying missing textures detected in texture paint

here was the unwrap in uv editing

[proper wyvern]

Made you something nice 💖

[naive helm]

:0

[proper wyvern]

Makes you a better circle for UVs

[naive helm]

Idk if you remember me but thishelped so much

[proper wyvern]

Youre that TV cat person. I remember. Helped you last time. 🙂

[naive helm]

Awwwwwe thank you

[proper wyvern]

Good luck ✌🏻

[azure rain]

yeah that would be a lot better topology

[proper wyvern]

Depends how detailed they want it to be. ✌🏻

[azure rain]

of course more Loops could be added if need be but definitely flows better than the square grid

[proper wyvern]

Id most likely go lower than that but thats only because I aim for Quest medium - poor on avatar polys.

[azure rain]

but on the nice note it's easier to dissolve Edge loops to make the quest versions compared to that square grid

[proper wyvern]

https://tenor.com/view/lauren-london-gif-18603761

[lapis herald]

My mind is blown trying to figure out this thing, i have both meshes with the correct normals facing out, and lined up with each other, but my high poly bake is just messed up

With a cage and everything

As you can see they are overlapping each other so idk why its only messing up the soles

[proper wyvern]

Also another thing. To make this simply go to canva, play with elements, count the stripes, make them and put them all around the circle. Underneath the elements add a grey square. There are other ways but I prefer canva since it was taught to me in school and those are simple shapes.

[naive helm]

i dont really understand 😅

[proper wyvern]

Make something like this once you have the UVs. Then replace the image texture with it and atlas/place UV map nicely on texture. I obviously drew this since im on phone now but you get it.

Heres the website in english:
https://www.canva.com/q/pro/?utm_source=google_sem&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=REV_FI_EN_CanvaPro_Branded_Tier1_Core_EM&utm_term=REV_FI_EN_CanvaPro_Branded_Tier1_Canva_EM&gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=Cj0KCQjwg7KJBhDyARIsAHrAXaG2LIW6Xm1L0bSQXEZckBNGlue8KUpo9olUjnTt9tnC3xeLQsk98agaAsaKEALw_wcB

If youre really smart you port the UV to canva, make it transparent and then place textures on current UV, then delete the UV from canva and port texture to Blender.

https://tenor.com/view/think-about-it-use-your-brain-use-the-brain-think-brain-gif-7914082

[lapis herald]

Welp i guess i found another problem, about the faces I subdivided to show what the problem is with the faces. They are like, there but not there, how do i fix something like this, ive had it happen before and idk what causes it

[naive helm]

You're being too helpful for a project im not even sure I can finish ,_, so sweet

[azure rain]

even if you don't finish the project is helpful knowledge for next time

[naive helm]

yeahh it is

[tough plover]

those are N-gons

you cannot subdivide ngons

should probably make a cut through them to either make one tri and one quad, or two quads

[proper wyvern]

Thats what im good at. Working on other peoples projects instead of my own. You friended me so you will finish this one. As long as your motivation holds since im personally too depressed to bother whipping people to work on their things these days.

[naive helm]

oh my god im tearing up, you're way too sweet omg

[vagrant nimbus]

does vrchat support gltf ?

because im working with blockbench and i find a pain in the ass having to unwrap everything in blender.

[proper wyvern]

Ill invite you to a server. Im hanging there almost every day/night working on things so if any questions come about just ask me there and screenshare or screenshot. No need to tear up tho. Im not made of onions even though some MIGHT be vampires and to them I might be made of garlic. 🥴

[azure rain]

https://github.com/Siccity/GLTFUtility there's various plugins you can install to have Unity open those

[peak basin]

hi guys, i've been working my way down the endless list of mistakes that people usually make while trying to learn avatar creation. i've read a bunch of documentation, stackexchange pages and i've searched a bit of this discord but i've run into an issue that probably has multiple solutions or i might be missing something super simple:

i bought an avatar which comes with 50+ shape keys. i made several edits to the body, some of which involved deleting parts, and the vertex order got messed up. so now i have an exploding shape key problem.

i found bartoszstyperek's "Transfer the vertex order," as many have linked here before, but unfortunately it doesn't fix the problem. copying vertex order based on proximity sounds like exactly what i want, but i assume i've deleted vertices that were early in the order and the add-on doesn't fill those gaps in the indices the way i expect. the original mesh and the edited one aren't the same, anyways, so this add-on wasn't really designed to work here. i also tried the experimental CATS "Repair broken shape keys," and while this does change the vertex order, it doesn't fix the problem.

i'm trying to figure out what i can do to salavge the mesh changes, if at all possible. stuff i'm considering:

• remake all of the shape keys. i didn't make them in the first place, and there are a lot of them, so this would be super time consuming.
• start from the base avatar again and try to copy as much of my mesh work over, but this time, avoid deleting vertices in the original model so the vertex order never changes to begin with. this is probably the most certain path i have right now but it feels ugly, since there will be useless vertices.
• write a modified version of "Transfer vert ID by vert proximity" which ensures that all overlapping vertices ALWAYS maintain the same vertex order between two models. and i would have to make it so index gaps i created in the original mesh are filled with other vertices on the modified mesh. i know some python but nothing about how coding for blender will look. there's a ton of bugfixing and ugly code to be written here but this is a possibility.
• is there a way to copy a shape key by proximity? something that would change which vertex indices are being changed by the shape key? i see people talk about "parenting out" the parts of the mesh that explode, or even using Blend from Shape, but i haven't gotten a clear enough description of the steps to perform it properly.

[ashen forge]

A wip of a commission I'm working on for a friend, gonna make the outfits next.

All done from scratch

[snow fern]

you should be able to take the original model, select the part with blendshapes (i.e. the face) and separate by selection and then remove the equivalent part from the mesh you've been working on and then stick them back together. be sure to delete all blendshapes from the working mesh part that's not supposed to have any

if you changed the face itself a lot one crazy idea would be to try to shrinkwrap the original face onto the new face

[peak basin]

ah yeah that is a totally reasonable compromise i hadn't considered, the vast majority of the shape keys are visemes or head changes, and fortunately i haven't edited the head. i think 2 or 3 might involve changes to the parts that i've already altered, but those alone would take far less time to remake. a question off the top of my head though, if the shape keys on my edited version cause the body to distort due to the vertex order change, then would pulling the head off of the original model and moving those blend shapes over still cause the body to explode?

[snow fern]

that's why you delete the shapekeys from the body before recombining

otherwise it will merge them by name I think. like other vertex data

[bold jewel]

https://twitter.com/delaneykingrox/status/1381064455597871110

Delaney King ✍🏻👸🏻 (@delaneykingrox)

Quick #gameart tip: if you set your vertex normals to display a negative distance, they show you how your baking will align.

Retweets

224

Likes

1327

Twitter · Apr 11, 2021, 1:59 AM

[peak basin]

oh of course, the shape keys from the original will just lose reference to all of the body vertices, so they wouldn't move anything but the mesh i copy over. okay, that's a great idea, thank you. i've been trying to consider what i could have done differently to avoid this problem altogether but it seems like blender's control over vertex indices is intentionally limited. "editing a mesh with shape keys already on it" feels like a fairly common problem, but hopefully in the future i just notice it before i put several hours of work into messing shape keys up

[bold jewel]

if the shoes share the same UVs and overlap (i.e. the shoes are mirrored and you don't flip and move the UVs) then the normals will be baked twice, once per shoe
in this case you would bake only one shoe

[finite yacht]

I dont know. I didnt test it. When i said randomization i mean that sequence of shape keys. Cats fix this, but break everything other.

[lapis herald]

Ah, i see, thank you

[hollow lagoon]

Hi, can i write here a question about avatars for vrchat? 0 з0

[oak hatch]

Sure.

[hollow lagoon]

Oh, ok, I have a difficult situation - I'm making a custom model and I need to do physics for the ears and tail. I don't understand - do I need to buy dynamic bone, configure them and send the project, or does the customer have to do all this?

[misty frost]

Question, sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, I have hopefully small issue my characters pinky acting like this in-game and was wondering if someone knew of a way to fix it? Or could at least direct me to somewhere/something to fix it?

[tardy rapids]

My latest commission is FINISHED

[neat viper]

That'd be something more for #avatar-help if you're using SDK3, or #avatars-2-general for SDK2 - you'd need to buy dynamic bones and configure them in Unity, then send the finished .unitypackage to the customer
Do not include dynamic bones in the .unitypackage though, just include the scripts on the avatar, your client will have to have their own copy of dynamic bones o:

[hollow lagoon]

Oh, ok, I'll try to do it, thank you very much!

[neat viper]

yw! hope everything works out c:

[obsidian sorrel]

Question: How difficult is modeling, it's basically building your character from the ground up right?

[neat viper]

depends on your prior experience, but character modelling can be pretty difficult to start
I'd recommend looking into Blender tutorials and working on hard-face models first (i.e non-organics, stuff like cups, cabinets, tools, etc) and get comfortable with that first, to learn the tools, shortcuts and etc c:

[obsidian sorrel]

I have zero experience modeling, so I will practice by making tools and stuff like you said

[languid fog]

(srry for the ping)
Idk if this is what you're was thinking, but i ended up doing this sketch, i think that's the best way to do a hair like this one

[obsidian sorrel]

It will be awesome to make a unique character that no one else has

[onyx crane]

I would say this is a pretty solid way to do it, that's the way Ruuubick was originally thinking of doing it

[languid fog]

it will take more time on it, but will look way better

thx again

[neat viper]

yus! Good luck, and keep in mind that nobody started out being great at modelling, so don't beat yourself up over that. Practice helps c:

[languid fog]

I don't think someone can answer that question 100%, learning is something that fluctuate by person, some people learn way faster than others, but one thing i 100% sure is practice is the best way to get into it.

[unborn acorn]

sum sculpting

gonna retopo and rig it later on

[tough plover]

b u f f

[foggy granite]

Jesus how many abs do you need

[languid fog]

yes

[small valve]

random blender tips

the item tab when selecting anything will display its dimensions

typing in any number followed by a unit of measure (in, inch, inches, cm, centimeters, meters, m, etc.) in any blender textbox regarding size or scale works

you can also perform math inside of any blender textbox, so you can add or subtract or multiply or divide any metric (if you need to double the size of a new image which may start at 1024px, instead of manually typing in 2048 you can just go to the end of the default value and append 1024***2**)

[naive helm]

I had a question

why is my the model I downloaded purple-ish

[foggy granite]

Texture might off imported Improperly

[naive helm]

also a bit off topic but pretty related

why do i always lose motivation in 3d modeling

[devout scroll]

because 3d isn't easy and you can burn out if you get too ambitious and start having issues

[eternal tusk]

Can you tell me how to fix this problem?

help me..

[slow hound]

Try putting you avatar descriptor on the root of the avatar "untitled" instead of putting it on the left leg.

[eternal tusk]

Thank you! but I think an other problem still there..

[devout scroll]

#avatar-help

[neat phoenix]

Is there a guide on how to make an avatar from scratch?

[open dew]

Hello. I got this problem with the mesh being see-through. How do i fix it. i tried to enable/disable backface culling but it didnt work.

[unborn acorn]

Its just the material being weird, you can dix this by making a new one and adding the texture to it and you shouldnt have any issues afterthat, if thatt dont work then go into edit mode select all, then shift+n

[open dew]

The Shift+N worked. thank you very much.

[unborn acorn]

No problem

[thin shadow]

how do i fix the texture front face culling even though it's already in correct orientation?

[thin shadow]

ok so I changed to eevee and the blend mode to opaque instead of alpha blend. But when combining material, the texture goes white, and does not include in the atlas.

[open dew]

I got another problem with the shading . it looks like this in unity too.

[unborn acorn]

all the mats have to be blender default mat, they cant be anything special and all have to be the same

[languid fog]

well, @onyx crane and Ruuubick thx again, you guys helped me a lot here, thats the sketch after 6hours
(srry for the ping again ;-;)

[unborn acorn]

thats pretty gosh darn nice^

[cyan plover]

Hey, usually it's either material or Normals

Sometimes the normals flip (aka the from side of the faces) so see if you need to reverse your normals

I don't know how to reverse that in Blender tho since I work with Maya...

[quaint jasper]

Looks perfect !

[lament pond]

Wip

[tame harbor]

Looks nice so far o.o

[lament pond]

Thanks, rigging it is gonna be interesting since I wanna try to get the arms to bend like a rubberhose cartoon

[dapper stirrup]

thought i solved my issue but i was wrong, whenever i apply subsurface to my model it does... this. anyone know how to fix? (backface culling is off here, its not the cause of this)

[quaint jasper]

Your vertices aren't merged ?

[dapper stirrup]

they are merged, i checked that first and it made it look better but then its not merged

found out what was wrong, there was some weird extra vertices there that should not have been there

[thin shadow]

it's already the default shader, principle BSDF

[spiral sigil]

what da blender doin

[thin shadow]

https://streamable.com/w6la1j

still happening. normals already outside but the front face culling still there

the result of material combine

https://streamable.com/2nx6p6

[unborn acorn]

Strange, you can just go into a image edit program and just drag on the white spot and there ya go

[thin shadow]

It’s a 10px by 10px white spot

It will look very pixelated

[thin shadow]

also that sounds like evading the problem, not solving

[small valve]

yes and no. making an avatar from scratch is less of a "how do i make an avatar for vrchat" question and more of a "how do i become a(n organic) 3d modeler, how do i texture and rig 3d characters, and how do i make them game-ready?" you're going to have to learn each part separately, and before you can even begin to do that you also need to have some level of confidence in the tools youre working in (blender and unity), even if its beginner-tier confidence

some good resources are grant abbit to get you up on the basics of blender, and then i would reccommend going through Royal Skies' yt channel since he has god tier advice for both beginner and advanced parts of the software especially when it comes to character creation. after words i would watch a lot of timelapses from people who make characters to see how they actually model, and go from there

that's what i did, anyway

[lavish bear]

Hey everyone I'm stumped here. I've amalgamated 3 v3 models from pmx to blender to unity for use in the MMDs world. The only problem I have is getting the music lip sync to work with the models. The lips move when I talk and even during a song, which would be cool if it was MMD Karaoke, but I'm looking for automatic lip movement with the song. All my visemes are accurate in both blender and unity.

[snow fern]

I have no idea about any of that, but have you tried using the tracking behavior to turn off the visemes?

[coral island]

Will learning blender from scratch take a while if all I’m trying to do is make a simple model?

[dusty heron]

Yes, blender takes a long time to learn.

[coral island]

Ight

I watched a video series about a donut a while ago but that went to waste

[dusty heron]

There are a lot of learning resources though, so that should help.

[coral island]

Allright

We making progress slowly bois

[spiral sigil]

lol

So basically I am knifing out the wings (because right now its a black background texture for alpha or whatever and that doesnt work on quest mobile shaders) and the weightpaint messes up really bad in the sections I carved. Is there anyway to fix this besides manually repainting?

also if anyone happens to know a way to automate this PLEASE do tell

[azure rain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR_Vke__voU

[spiral sigil]

thanks

%transfer

[thorn cradle]

hey so im new to making vrchat avatars and i just made my first one but i ran into a problem can sumone plsss help me?

[spiral sigil]

Working on anne + outline addon test

[quaint jasper]

Love the hair !

[spiral sigil]

Thank you!

Regular version (before she was in amphibia)

[sick mulch]

Does anyone here have ANY idea on how to use the xfbin_parser tool?

Or at least know how to get their hands on textures from xfbin files without the need to use Noesis? Noesis renames stuff, so I'd rather not use that.

[thin shadow]

is there a way to auto cut a face that has transparent texture?

[spiral sigil]

Any suggestion or rating?a

[open moth]

Looks great so far

[spiral sigil]

thanks

[quaint jasper]

Are you sculpting on top of a reference ?

[swift pier]

does anyone know where i can find an avatar of this model

[keen tulip]

Uhhh so, did Blender stop working for anyone?

[quaint jasper]

[keen tulip]

Program stops responding on startup

[quaint jasper]

The program is only on your computer

There's no online component to it

[keen tulip]

No I know, but I was wondering if anyone else had gotten this?

[quaint jasper]

Are you opening something specific ?

[keen tulip]

Nope, just clicking the blender button for me to open it

[quaint jasper]

which version ?

[keen tulip]

2.9

[quaint jasper]

you tried 2.92 ?

[keen tulip]

Nah not yet

Is there an update?

[quaint jasper]

worth a try

[keen tulip]

There's blender 2.93.4

I'll try it

Fixed, restarting my computer did it.

[coral island]

Bro how do I show the floor grid again, it just randomly disappeared... cant have shit in Detroit

its just gone

[dusty heron]

In the top right, there should be something like this. Make sure that the viewport overlays are enabled, and that floor and the x and y axes are too

[devout scroll]

I want to make a giant floating island for a world and am wondering what's a good approach to do it..
I want to sculpt it in blender since unity terrain is square only.
I want it to be a floating island but have an underwater section to it. Do I just sculpt it out of a giant midpoly piece?
Do I split it into the top and the bottom objects and then place rock props on the edges to hide the seam?
Do I sculpt a giant detailed terrain then cut it into chunks and split them as different objects for optimization?

This is what I currently have but it's kinda hard to work on one piece like this

https://puu.sh/I8SUN/4762dcf743.png

I was thinking to paint it with vertex colors and use a shader to blend between multiple materials based on them

I seriously can't find any workflow on this for a game engine that would be both optimized and detailed while being big

All I see on youtube is small and low poly floating islands

[thorny ivy]

From what I know about terrain (which is admittedly little), think the general process is this:

subdivide to get a fair number of polys
sculpt into general desire shape
refine as desired, adding additional elements like rocks, trees, etc
decimate but not to the point where the quality drop is noticable

[cyan plover]

what I think my donut will look like

[cyan plover]

what it ends up looking like

[foggy granite]

Gather a lot eference images of island then try to block out with some simple shapes to get a rough idea and then use muti res modifier to sculpt and get the details in

Reference image is king make sure you have plenty because diving in blind is not the way even for the most experience folks

[spiral sigil]

Working on joel aka vinesauce or my favorite streamer

(zeurel style)

[thorny ivy]

Any suggestions on making the mouth look more... proper? Feel like the lower jaw is far back.

[outer saddle]

If you want it look less monkey, then yeah

But don’t look at it in side. Check it 1/3rd view. Maybe it look good in turnaround.

[exotic obsidian]

can someone help me out? the texture only does this when I'm in Unity and Solid shading (Backface culling and all that is disabled)

But it's fine when it's on Material Preview

nvm it was a normals problem

[thorny ivy]

After a few hours of work (and getting distracted), got the mouth + lips to look a way I'm rather pleased with.

No more monke lips and a more realistic/natural jaw shape as well.

Proper headshots for those who might be interested in seeing how the whole thing looks

[dapper cobalt]

i don't understand why anyone would need or want reference images for an original fantasy floating island....

curious about the best solution for this problem though

[foggy granite]

Reference images are there to help you get an ideas/inspiration as use all over in art and not only that it also help block out your ideas into more fuller forms so I don’t get where you come form

Are you saying people who use reference are not original

Because that’s the vibe I get from that

If so a majority of artist and modelers will like to have a word with you

[dapper cobalt]

thats fine if you do things that way but you completely ignored the question that was asked... inspiration comes from life and experiences

[foggy granite]

Inspiration can come from anything but I didn’t avoid the question I gave a process is the best method no but it generally would help with process

But I generally don’t see how I skip over the question

[spiral sigil]

Let me just go visit my local floating islands to get some experience then

-_- Some things that aren't tangiable in reality kinda need you to use references, at least at the start

as you do it more often sure, you should use your reference much less often and go on your own basis

but you need to start somewhere

Heck I need some floating island references I need to rewatch some SkyFactory 4 Ssundee and Crainer videos

[dapper cobalt]

meanwhile pumkin asked a technucal question, not #artadvice

[foggy granite]

Did you not read this

Like legit I gave him a process of doing it then an explanation on the reference part nothing wrong with that

But I feel like this can go over more smoothly if pumpkin was here

[dapper cobalt]

maybe u should ping them

[spiral sigil]

PUMPkiENnn

[foggy granite]

@devout scroll I summon you for your opinion on the advice

Welp no cigar

[devout scroll]

Let me sleep

A bit of both actually. Reference helps, which in this case is artwork, but i was asking more from a technical aspect yeah

Still, any advice is helpful I guess
And I think in the end I'll use multires for details that I'll cut up into chunks that have LODs

[outer saddle]

Look good 🙂

[spiral sigil]

Does anyone know why weight paint symmetry isn't working? My mesh is completely symmetrical

[spiral sigil]

Calamity anne

[snow fern]

there are two kinds of symmetry. one makes your painting symmetric for the current bone (so paint left arm, get weights on left and right arm for left!! bone). the other makes your painting mirrored across bones (so paint left arm, get weights on left arm/left bone and right arm/right bone)

[spiral sigil]

i figured it out

[snow fern]

the big obvious symmetry button is the wrong one

[spiral sigil]

Sadly the way I weight paint doesn't support symmetry

[snow fern]

you can probably also use a data transfer modifier with some shenanigans to copy the weights

like if you're "almost" symmetric

[spiral sigil]

I use alt and hold left click

[snow fern]

isn't that just gradient paint?

[spiral sigil]

Yes

[coral island]

Would you eat this?

[azure rain]

not currently because it looks like it's made out of modeling clay

[foggy granite]

I agree

Add the texture and we might have deal

[spiral sigil]

congrats on following that tutorial that far, when I first started I already quit

[foggy granite]

I almost gave up on the cup handle part it was so annoying trying to use the spin tool then after coupled days I realize I could just use extrude to do it

[ionic sail]

i never watched that tutorial my first tutorial I did a sword tutorial channel was called cg-fast track or something like that

[exotic obsidian]

I have no idea how, but unity is detecting WAY more polygons than I have