avatar-optimization

[hasty sedge]

When using the automatic atlas plugin thing in blender, it works mostly fine, but some textures get brightened. This isn't the biggest problem for me, but is there any way I could fix it?

[normal nova]

new animation weighting in CATS is now working better, in which I mean that it works at all

quite delighted that it will just... preserve edgeloops as a matter of course

obviously you will still get better results doing it manually, but this takes seconds so... tradeoffs!

[calm spade]

That looks amazing !

Is it looking for overlapping weight paint or bone location ?

[normal nova]

Overlapping weight paints between every pair of deform bones!

[calm spade]

[normal nova]

It used to push this to the decimate modifier but it would just mess things up for decimate. So now it deselects however many vertices you slice off, then decimates everything else

[calm spade]

Is deform bone based on naming scheme ? I assume cats would complain about it

Or it's literally the deform checkbox

[normal nova]

It's 'any bone that has an identically named vertex group', in my implementation

[calm spade]

[normal nova]

It can also do shapekeys! (normalized vertex movement, in that case)

[buoyant holly]

cool

[ocean ether]

@buoyant holly Alright, I'm home now

[buoyant holly]

Cool

[ocean ether]

Alright, let me get you that screenshot

@buoyant holly

[buoyant holly]

okay your main problem is too many materials

you need to combine your materials together in like blender

[ocean ether]

Is there an easy way to do that without breaking the toggles?

[buoyant holly]

how would that break the toggles

[ocean ether]

Well, the other time I tried it, it broke the toggles for the avi

[buoyant holly]

oh dear

and basically you just need to shave 4 materials off

[ocean ether]

Alright, can you do VC?

I wanna screen share Unity to make things easier

[buoyant holly]

not really up for walking you through step-by-step

[ocean ether]

Okay, well, should I use the FBX from the Unity Package or the OG FBX?

[buoyant holly]

whichever one is currently your avatar?

or the prop you outed

[ocean ether]

@buoyant holly I used CATS and it breaks the avatar

[buoyant holly]

that's not quite enough info for me to help

and are you able to reload the blender scene

[ocean ether]

Yes

[buoyant holly]

good

[ocean ether]

@buoyant holly Before and after using CATS

[buoyant holly]

okay so looks like it messes up the material settings on the hair and and the pants

[ocean ether]

Yeah, exactly

[buoyant holly]

like maybe it was the material given those color instead of the texture

like maybe change the texture in image editing software to be the colors you want

[ocean ether]

Nah, it's still red in the texture

Idk what the issue is

[buoyant holly]

maybe try playing around with the material settings in unity?

but does the Avatar work okay minus the color being weird

[ocean ether]

I copied and pasted the material settings from the OG and it changed nothing

[buoyant holly]

question what shaders are you using

[ocean ether]

Looks like Poiyomi Toon

[buoyant holly]

maybe check the original materials settings to see if the pants and hair had the Shader provide the color?

[ocean ether]

Not sure how to check that

[buoyant holly]

you still probably have the folder with the materials somewhere in the unity project

[buoyant holly]

that's not the pants or the hair material

[ocean ether]

The hair is on that texture

[buoyant holly]

good to know

but yeah like do some sort of modification to the combined model to make the red reappear

[ocean ether]

@buoyant holly Yeah, no, it's the same exact material used by the OG model

So I don't have any clue how to fix it

[buoyant holly]

myself I don't use toon shaders so I don't have any helpful suggestions

[ocean ether]

Guess just give up then

[buoyant holly]

have you tried doing any modifications to add the red

as all I was just trying to say is I'm out of suggestions

[ocean ether]

I don't even know where to start

I know only the basics of modeling

[buoyant holly]

then perhaps we should both take a break

[ocean ether]

Now my animations are broken

[buoyant holly]

oh dear

[ocean ether]

Fixed it

[buoyant holly]

cool

[sand spire]

Heya, guys; just dropping a quick line to let you all know I just got a new automatic texture-packing tool working for Blender--it's a fair bit more advanced than CATS', and, unlike a Cycles bake, supports variable texture quality and non-PBR materials.

You may find the current version here: https://github.com/nights192/fast_pack/releases/tag/Alpha

Instructions on general usage are available on the main Github page; godspeed!

[tulip rose]

easy auto star lol

[sand spire]

it's time to become powerful.

[tawdry drift]

8 material limit?

[sand spire]

Nope!

No material limit whatsoever.

It works with any shader node available in Blender.

[tawdry drift]

👌 🧑‍🍳 thats sick

[sand spire]

(It should be noted that this doesn't combine materials for you, as it's meant to be flexible; it'll pack all of your textures, but you will still need to choose what should be its own material vs. a shared material.)

Heeey, thanks a ton, dingus; I appreciate it. ^^

Oh, also--I forgot to mention, it requires having Python's "Pillow" library installed. This is required by CATS' material packer, so if you've used that, it should work fine, but otherwise you'll need to install it onto Blender's Python install. An auto-installer will be present in the next update.

[tulip rose]

I may take a peek under the hood when I get some time to see if I can learn anything lol.

[sand spire]

Sure, goof! If you feel like you need help with following any of the internals, let me know.

I've tried to keep the code fairly clean.

[tulip rose]

[buoyant holly]

got this error message when I try to install it

[sand spire]

Mhm! Sorry about that, friend; it requires that you install the "Pillow" Python library onto Blender.

[sand spire]

Here's how ya do that:

Ya go to your Blender install folder, go into the folder labeled with the Blender version name, then the Python folder.

Enter bin, and run the following command in your console:

(Using my path as an example.) cd "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.1\3.1\python\bin\" python.exe -m pip install pillow

After that's done, you should be good to go--thanks for letting me know about the issue. ^^

[buoyant holly]

so do I click on like the python exe

[sand spire]

You've gotta open cmd.exe with administrative privileges; so that's, like. Just search cmd in your windows bar, right click, run as administrator.

Then copy-paste the commands I wrote in the quote box in.

(Replacing the path I put next to the cd with the path to your version.)

It'll be a bit easier to install for the next update of FastPack, but works flawlessly.

[buoyant holly]

the with or without the quotation

[sand spire]

With the quotation. ^^

Yeah, I know the console can be a bit intimidating; I'm sorry that I didn't manage to slot in the automatic installer for this release.

It's a one-time thing; you'll never have'ta do it again. ^^

[buoyant holly]

"Python was not found; run without arguments to install from the Microsoft Store, or disable this shortcut from Settings > Manage App Execution Aliases."

[sand spire]

Ah, sorry:

.\python.exe -m pip install pillow```

I forgot to include the .\ at the start of python.exe.

[buoyant holly]

I have to go run some errands real quick so I'll have to try this some more later

[sand spire]

Haha, sorry for the extra work.

[buoyant holly]

yeah might be a good idea to get the automatic installing working next version

not quite sure if this means I have it installed or not when I try to put in that command

[sand spire]

Ah, I ran into this; if you go to where it lists the thing as already downloaded, you can copy its folder (pillow) and paste it into the Blender 3.1\3.1\python\lib\site-packages folder.

It's because you have another copy of Python installed for something else; for some reason Blender doesn't default to using the normal Python install, and it confuses the system.

Just means we have to copy the folder is all.

[buoyant holly]

okay don't have the missing module error but I have a different error

[sand spire]

What’s your blender version, friend?

@buoyant holly This thing’s built for the latest version of Blender, but making it compatible will only take a few moments; I’ll go do that.

[buoyant holly]

3.0

silly me from not being on the latest version

[sand spire]

https://github.com/nights192/fast_pack/releases/tag/Alpha

Here, the latest version--should support 3.0 as well.

Thanks for going through this with me, Rain; this really demonstrates the points where an install can go wrong.

[buoyant holly]

it installed correctly now

[sand spire]

Glad to hear it, Rain! Lemme know how it works for ya!

[buoyant holly]

about to eat dinner so it'll be a little bit before I can report back

[sand spire]

Hey, no rush; I'm fairly certain you'll find things satisfactory. ^^

[buoyant holly]

probably a good idea to put a required Blended version in the add-on description

[sand spire]

Good call.

[buoyant holly]

I get this error when I try to make the combined texture

[tulip rose]

blend file not saved.

[buoyant holly]

thanks

[sand spire]

Alrighty! Just got a release out that that'll greatly simplify installation.

https://github.com/nights192/fast_pack/releases/tag/Alpha

You should now be able to install Pillow from within the addon if necessary, pending a restart.

[copper plover]

Trying to atlas my model with cats. For some reason in the atlas area it is showing some of my material textures as 32x32 when they are not, and when I run the atlas it just ends up turning those areas white. Any ideas?

[buoyant holly]

Cool

[sand spire]

To my knowledge, CATS does not properly support post-3.0 versions of Blender; it may well be an issue with the addon.

I'd use FastPack for it if I were you, honestly--biased though I may be. 😛

[stray tangle]

you need to use the Dev version if you plan on using anything past the latest LTS release (2.93.X)

for maximum UV efficiency, the Bake option in CATS is miles better than the Atlas tool

[sand spire]

Not necessarily; baking tools will result in uniform texture density between different areas, which means prioritizing certain features over others is not very feasible without manual intervention.

Furthermore, sampling errors will impinge upon the image quality. (Not to mention the lack of support for non-PBR materials.)

CATS' atlasing tools are just fairly limited, unfortunately.

[stray tangle]

the name "Bake" is a little misleading I admit. it's basically re-packing the islands (pretty sure texel density is maintained, but would need to double check). it then samples from the original textures to create the new ones. the only actual "baking" it does is AO and normal, if you select it. it also handles any PBR textures like metallic, roughness, and also emission

[sand spire]

I'm reading through CATS' source code, and it's definitely using Blender's inbuilt baking system.

This is why it doesn't support non-PBR materials.

(Blender has no analytical texture baking features, to my knowledge.)

[buoyant holly]

you can provide your own UV unwrap for the cats baking tool

[sand spire]

Yeah, but at that point, wouldn't it just be better to bake using the Blender features CATS is already using?

[buoyant holly]

that requires more button presses to use the blender baking

[sand spire]

More power to ya, friend. ^^

[buoyant holly]

and when I was testing your packing tool it was about 50-50 about whether it would actually process the model and turn it into an atlas

[sand spire]

If the maximum res you specify is below what it would be possible to fit the atlas into, it won't pack.

[buoyant holly]

that'll definitely be helpful next version some indication as to why the packing failed

[sand spire]

Mhm! There's actually a branch of code that recognizes that the packing failed, but I wasn't able to fit it into the current release without making things kinda clunky.

It'll be in 1.0.

(Along with non-square texture atlases and a couple other goodies you may find useful. ^^)

[buoyant holly]

got this error message when I try to use a viroid by the texture combiner

[sand spire]

Ahhh, I see the problem; I hadn't imagined that anybody would use something other than the default UV map selector.

Would you mind sending me the model so I could take a look at its shaders and see what's happening, @buoyant holly

[sand spire]

Okay, I found the problem for real; VROID, for some reason, uses the same blank image for nearly every material,

which ties them together in the system and causes it to misunderstand what UV-islands are related to what images.

The next feature update of FastPack will allow you to exclude a set of material input labels to work around this.

[uneven gate]

wow

just wow

quad remesh eboy avatar at 160k tris

drops to 50k with no discernible change in quality

do people even know what optimization is

like bruh

[calm spade]

I would personally not use quad remesh on a model, but hopefully it doesn't turn out too bad

[uneven gate]

turned out fine for what i was using it for

[calm spade]

also why is it 160k is the question

[uneven gate]

i have no clue

do people just not reduce the poly / tri count ever

[errant kindle]

160k is just

unnecassary

[uneven gate]

like basic decimation modifier would probably be better than just letting it burn your pc alive

[errant kindle]

50 different separate meshes 🗿

[muted roost]

hi, would an avatar with just an 8k texture + normal map be a little too performance sapping compared to most other avatars? the poly count won't be any higher than a human character model from a 2011 game

[languid quartz]

You really should avoid the use of 8k textures, as the VRAM cost of them is very high. For PC you shouldn't go higher than 4k, ideally use 2k if possible for what you're doing.

It's not a huge problem when talking about a single avatar, but think of how problematic it could be if everyone you were with was using 8k textures. Even people with like 12 GB of VRAM could run out quickly in such a scenario.

[tawdry drift]

also you can get away with a really small normal map

without much visual loss if at all

[buoyant holly]

and you can also use tiling normal detail maps to help out with the perceived detail level

https://twitter.com/VIANVOLAEUS/status/1517951135528665088?s=20&t=Nicv4wtAO3YD5hQz7TglDQ

VIANVOLAEUS (@VIANVOLAEUS)

Single material, 3.3k △, using RGBA masked 256px normals in @poiyomi's shader. 🧵👇

Likes

278

▶ Play video

Twitter · Apr 23, 2022, 7:38 PM

https://twitter.com/VIANVOLAEUS/status/1517951160740687873?s=20&t=Nicv4wtAO3YD5hQz7TglDQ

VIANVOLAEUS (@VIANVOLAEUS)

Back to shader: Can use seamless tiled normal maps per RGB area - tiny (128/256px) normal maps, but tiled around 50-100 times in the shader, giving you a higher effective TD.

You can combine these with an base nrm map for creases and baked normal details etc: (Blend with Base)

▶ Play video

Twitter · Apr 23, 2022, 7:38 PM

[weak lodge]

I have a question about avatar optimization, is it possible for a pc avatar to be qeust compatible? [Probably by changing the materials etc, right?]

[errant kindle]

yes

[stray tangle]

sure. just make sure that it follows all of the performance requirements for quest, which are much stricter than for PC

chances are, you will need to do work on it in blender to get it down to an acceptable level

[weak lodge]

Okay thank you, I need to watch some YouTube and Google about how to do it, ^^

[peak rivet]

Can anyone tell me why the Humanoid shape avatar I put in says it's Non-Humanoid?

[onyx harness]

Did you tell unity it’s a humanoid in the file’s Rig import settings?

[peak rivet]

I don't know, I'm still new to Unity.

but, I don't think I did.

[onyx harness]

Okay, when you select the model file in the Project window it’ll give you a bunch of settings you can modify about have unity handles the import. The categories are Mesh, Rig, Animations and Materials iirc. For this you’ll need to select Rig and set it from Generic to Humanoid.

[peak rivet]

Okay.

[peak rivet]

Found it, Thanks.

[weak lodge]

anyone know what i could do?

[cold yarrow]

Delete extra mesh or decrease texture sizes is usually where to start

[weak lodge]

i tried doing the texture size thing, but i think i did something wrong because the number didn't change

[cold yarrow]

Yeah I'm not sure the best way either, I mostly got lucky, I guess.

[onyx harness]

Sometimes the number can be larger than the texture's dimensions so changing it down a step or two might not actually decrease the size.
I have this (Image) set to 1k but the texture's dimensions are actually 256x256. So even if I changed the setting to 512 nothing would change.

If you want a tool to help see what is using the most memory then I'd recommend Markcreator's Size Profiler for the compressed and Thrys Avatar Evaluator for the Vram. Both are available on GitHub last I checked

[glass ibex]

Quest users don't accept 4k textures, so lowering it to 2k doesn't change it, try going even lower with some parts that are not really visible, or barely noticeable.

[weak lodge]

Okay I will give that a shot

[stone prairie]

I am trying to upload an avatar with many animations to compensate for an Euler equation.
Long story short I am animating a parameter and the final result is that it desyncs quite often since for different people, the parameter doesn’t updates for others at the same time

Any tips to sync everything?

[strong perch]

Anyone who tested the performance difference between many materials and many objects can tell me, if it's better to reduce the amount of objects or the amount of materials for a avatar which toggles these?

Also does the material not drain any performance anymore when you disable the object which uses the material?

Please @ me or write me a direct message if you can answer me that.

Currently the avatar toggles just turn the visible material to a transparent one. The Avatar takes some time to load in.

[onyx harness]

Man I just started typing and never stopped. This is how I understand it, things could be wrong. Lets be real, things probably are wrong

Each mesh generally has at least 1 material. 'A single mesh with 8 materials' and '8 meshes each with 1 material' is about the same. If you can, try to merge meshes and then also merge materials. You'll do better as it's decreasing draw calls.

Yes, when you disable a Renderer it stops the calculations for those materials. Material swapping to a transparent material still renders every polygon. We can't see it but the Pc can. If you're not merging materials, one could argue that above, 8 meshes each with 1 material has the potential for better performance as you can disable them.

Another option is the shader you're using. Recently I've been looking into Poiyomi v8 which has UDIM Discard. For multiple toggles, this seems better than any other method I've tried/been told about. It takes a little bit of setup using the UVMap but it's capable of toggling up to 16 things individually all through 1 material. The Silent Cel Shading Shader also does this if you want another option (It's been linked before so if you search for it you'll get a lot of results). I'm not sure how many toggles it can handle as I've never used it before.

Other common methods are Blendshapes and Bone scaling. Blendshapes are known to get expensive pretty quickly so I'd try to avoid them. This is why people recommend separating the face mesh from everything else; so you're not calculating your visemes on your toe verts. Bone scaling is exactly as it sounds. Things like a hat, necklace, armband, those that are weighted mostly to 1 humanoid bone using an individual bone to scale up/down to toggle them on/off respectively. Both of these methods allow multiple toggles on 1 mesh with 1 material but those affected polygons will still render even if they're hidden below the skin.

Bone scaling in combination with mesh toggles is what I've been using till recently.

.
I'm pretty sure there's a webpage that explains it better than I can but I don't remember it so we're just gonna have to wait for someone to drop by and go, "oh yeah check this out Link"

[strong perch]

Thank you, I will have a look at the Poiyomi v8 UDIM Discard.

[onyx harness]

I think I heard there's a site for poi now

[onyx harness]

yeah, check out https://poiyomi.vercel.app/special-fx/udim-discard for the option. I'ma read this too lol

[normal nova]

Is this a hard limit? or a vram thing?

[glass ibex]

Hard tex res limit is 2k for quest, so better use low quality for items not really needed in HQ, such as weapons, glasses, accessories, just use normal quality and 1 res grade lower for better results.

[normal nova]

Heck. I just worked out a way to cram a 4k ASTC into the same vram as a 1x2k default Android compression

[buoyant holly]

would that be still helpful knowledge for PC avatars

[normal nova]

Nah, ASTC is specifically for ARM devices

[buoyant holly]

good to know maybe that would be helpful for worldbuilders with their atlases

[normal nova]

Testing on Quest 1, 4k ASTC 12x12 appears to be fine? Unless its only loading up to the 2k MIP, which would make sense

[buoyant holly]

is there a texture you could make that you would be able to tell the different MIP

[normal nova]

I could buuut

I am also tired |3

but yeah, it was decisively lower

alas

A shame cause it wouldnt really harm performance since the VRAM footprint is identical, but gotta cover 'actually I just crunched an 8k, have fun' case

[buoyant holly]

out of curiosity what settings did you do for that so I could keep a note for when I try worlds on Quest

[normal nova]

ASTC 12x12, you can only do it by forcing an android override compression in the texture settings

'Low' just makes it 6x6

It ends up 2.7mb

[buoyant holly]

that's not too bad size-wise for a 4K texture

[normal nova]

Yeah, like I said its the same as a 1x2k ESTC

[buoyant holly]

so I could stuff like 4 4k Textures in the space of a regular 4K texture

[normal nova]

8, but yeah

Quality is pretty blocky but acceptable

In general I would always set the project to use ASTC by default anyway, on average its half the size with no major quality loss

[buoyant holly]

what settings menu would I use to do that

[normal nova]

Its ESTC by default for compatibility, but VRChat targets only Quest which is fine

[normal nova]

Project settings, file menu

[buoyant holly]

I don't see a file menu tab

[normal nova]

uhhhh

I'll have to look later

I meant under 'file' in the menu bah

[buoyant holly]

I think I found it

[sterile summit]

Hi, do anyone understand how to use mantis Lod editor?

[silent steeple]

do all blendshapes have a performance impact, or just ones that are not zero?

[glass ibex]

Don't think so, unless you have many blendshapes that'd make your avatar turn into a huge mess, that would weirdly lag the game, so far 1 avatar caused me to lag when it spiked. xD

[ruby isle]

Only blendshapes that are not 0 will cause performance decrease

[silent steeple]

cool, thanks

[onyx harness]

Blendshapes can inflate your Vram if you have a lot of them. Generally it's good to remove any you're not planning on using.

[grizzled owl]

Is there a way to combine meshes in Unity?

[errant kindle]

yup

theres a plugin i can send you

easier to use cats in blender tho

[stray tangle]

why would you use CATS to combine meshes? can just do Ctrl + J in blender

if you're trying to combine materials though, that's a different story

[errant kindle]

cats does both so its easier

and ctrl+j sometimes just doesnt work for some reason

[onyx harness]

No offence but that's probably user error. Shortcuts don't just not work

[hexed ferry]

Is there’s a way I can make my character have outlines without it being pc only?

[buoyant holly]

lots of the popular vrchat toon shaders have outline options

[stray tangle]

shortcuts in blender depend on where your cursor is on screen

if your cursor is over the modifiers, ctrl + A applies a modifier. if you're over the viewport, ctrl + A is to apply transforms

ctrl + J only works if your cursor is over the viewport

[stray tangle]

for your quest version, use Matcap Lit with this matcap

for your PC version, do whatever you want

[marble rain]

i would recommend use cats plugin in blender and go that route.

[marble rain]

it can combine mesh + material + make it a atlas.

[worldly hull]

A thing what I don't understand in VRChat, why are more audiosources = worse performance?

Are they in case that the player would run all the audiosources at the same time?

• Because in most cases, the peoples would have a bunch of audiosources for a bunch of audios, but they enable/disable them mostly not at the same time!
  Like a avatar with 8 songs in 8 audiosources would not make sense to play them all at the same time. so what would be, if VRChat would make a feature into the SDK, that would allow to change the audio-file inside of the audiosource? so that I can play for example multiple songs with the same audiosource?
  (just not at the same time...)

I know that is possible to change the audio inside a audiosource via code, so why they don't intergrate it into the expression menu for example, where you can select in an array your mp3 or ogg files and play tghem with the same audiosource. like a radio changing his channel...

[marble rain]

more resource intensive. both networked and well for a user.

and total avatar size.

[worldly hull]

this would just increase your avatar size, so no safety issue...

but you would be able to play more than just 8 audio files without having a very poor avatar with more than 8 audio sources

[worldly hull]

what exactly? I mean, there is just one audiosource playing...
and they can make a 5 seconds cooldown or something or avoid spamming the audio files though the audio source to avoid lagging.

or to make it more pleasant, make a cooldown, after you spammed 5 audios in 10 seconds so you have to wait 30 seconds, before you can change the audio again from the audiosource...

I personally see no issue there, you can proof on this way, that the peoples are not playing more than 8 audios (at the same time)

[marble rain]

download size. is just troublesome. 8 audio files can increase it quite abit.

[heady smelt]

nobody actually cares or pays attention to download size

[marble rain]

eh.

thats false

[worldly hull]

but there is already a safty feature to avoid to large avatars...

[heady smelt]

stop spouting garbage, i'm right

[marble rain]

it's to do with how unity handle audio, and garbage collection etc. there are a few other issues related to it.

[heady smelt]

i have my download size way bigger than it should have to be and still 80% of avatars end up hidden from the size

[worldly hull]

if some guys make 200MB avatars, they just will get performance blocked or something if you have your safty only allowed under 70MB Avatars

[marble rain]

there is yep

i block anyone above 100 mb lol.

typically because if someone is that high in mb. it very much reflects to many materials etc. or something else. that i rather avoid

[worldly hull]

so the players have still to play attention to not overload they avatars with 1000 audio files, because this would explode your avatar size and even IF! vrchat can make via code, that you are only allowed to have max. 16 songs for example for every audiosource in a array

[marble rain]

well it's also to do with compression etc.

like your pc has to uncompress audio and so on

takes time.

[worldly hull]

10 audio sources for example will be still enough for every audiosource. and noone would be able to have more than 80 audios. and you can still avoid this peoples with a avatar size limit in your safty

[worldly hull]

that's don't make sense, because we are already able to have 8 audio source ( at the same time). and the part of changing the audio source is just a tiny moment and even this would be still possible without spamming, if you make a cooldown, that happen if you changed your audios to much into a short time.

so where is the problem with this idea?

[marble rain]

tbh not fully sure. could also be part of the older restrictions. and how vrchat handles audio sources etc.

[worldly hull]

older restrictions? the new sdk3 and just a year old

[marble rain]

and tbh. why 8 audio sources? you can just change the audio in animation. with one audio source. unless you want different ranges, pitches etc

[worldly hull]

they already made even larger inpacts than this

[marble rain]

eh some of the ranking stuff has not been changed in a long time.

[worldly hull]

they are allready filled up with small single sound effects.

[marble rain]

ah

how many sounds do you have?

[worldly hull]

and if you also want to make a few animations with songs, there is no space left without getting into the very poor area

8

more is not allowed without being very ppor

[marble rain]

wait you got 8 sounds? in total or more? since u said its filled up with sound effects

[worldly hull]

they are not enough and only a few do sometimes play at the same time, but never all or even the half

things like a knife stab sound, triggered by a contact resiver

[marble rain]

well the thing is even if they are not being played. those 8 sources are still active. well sorta. they take up resources and memory etc.

[worldly hull]

but you just change the audio file inside of the audio source, where is the performance inpact? the tiny moment of changing will be avoidable with cooldown to avoid spamming

even having just 5 array slots for every audio source would be way enough to make really sure...

[marble rain]

thats going even further into how unity works in general.

how it allocates memory, how it uses it

how it finds it and such.

[worldly hull]

audiosource.clip = Resources.Load<AudioClip>("PlayMyAwsomeMP3FromTheResourceFolder");
audiosource.Play();```

Thats how to change a audio inside of a audio source

not that hard....

[marble rain]

nothing to do with how hard or easy. and doing that way is intensive. as it needs to find the Clip first. of that type and then it creates a object. which it well attaches it to etc.

and thats just a simplistic way to look at it

[worldly hull]

and in case of VRChat, a 5 slot huge array script instead of a resource folder should be good enough.

VRChat can make a script, where you can extend your audiosource Audios... The script have 5 arrays for the Mp3 you want to play and a serializefield, where you have to put your audiosource in, then just attach it into the avatar descriptor or something and you good to go.

it would also be possible to build some cooldowns into it to avoid spamming the "change song button".

[marble rain]

always through animation you can do a delay if needed. same for worlds.

[worldly hull]

but I am talking about a spam protection to avoid peoples to spam the button the lower the performance with infinity times pressing the change song button because the changing would take for a second performance

[marble rain]

eh. tbh they could but i sadly dont think its on their agenda to do atm

[worldly hull]

I think I am not the only one that want more than 8 audios, the most peoples just give a F about it and just upload their avatar in very poor with 1mio poligons 200 materials and 67 audiosources

and 40k particles

Today I modified my avatar again and today is the day, I can't no longer avoid using less then 17 materials. thats why I am now "poor" ranked instead of "medium". otherwise, I don't want to change always my avatar, only because I missed a feature on there...

SO I want to ask here, how bad is this downgrade from "medium" to "poor" ?
even with atlasing, I can't no longer avoid 17+ mats
Because I fear that most player can no longer see me now and such stuff because of the "Medium" --> to "poor" downgrade...

[marble rain]

for avatars? its completely not necessory lol.

i can't see a single usecase where you want more then 1 audio source even

[worldly hull]

if a ambient music is playing, and now you are also some other soudns playing like a stab sound of a knife, so you need one active audiosource for the ambient music and a second for the sound effect and if you have even more stuff like walking sounds, you need a third or more. (and this in case, if we would able to change the audios inside the audiosource, what we currently not can) currently, you need for every audio a special audio source. you want a second song your your second animation? thats need a second audiosource because YOU ARE NOT able to change the audio clip inside of the audiosource.

[marble rain]

thats still only one. on the person. and the world.

and you can change the Clip via a animation. unless you need different pitches,volume levels for each sound. but even then all of that can be animated.

[worldly hull]

never heared of it that you can cahnge the AUDIO CLIP inside of the AUDIOSOURCE via animation...
The only way I would know was C#

[marble rain]

hmm. seems like they removed that ability

[worldly hull]

but to my other question, how bad is the downgrade from "medium" to "poor" because I have now 17 mats instead of 16

[marble rain]

eh. the ranking system in general is kinda shit ngl. because each part has different levels of performance hit. and going 1 up in materials may not hard hitting. But it all depends on the complexity of that material. but in general 17 materials is far to many. and causes alot of issues in general frame wise.

[worldly hull]

I mean, in case of the censore. like if someone have minimum "medium" allowed in his safty, he will no longer see me, right?

[marble rain]

true

[solid smelt]

I try to stay with medium because then no one has my avatar hidden unless they specifically manually hide my avatar. If your avatar is rated poor then it's possible that they may automatically not see you

I'm actually curious how you got 17 materials and can't find a way to reduce it. I would assume particles

[buoyant holly]

https://github.com/vrchat-community/LazyOptimiser interesting a avatar Optimizer has popped up in the vrchat GitHub

[solid smelt]

Seems interesting, I mostly like the blendshape cleaning 👀

[buoyant holly]

and also cool to have something official so more folks easily notice it's there

[solid smelt]

People making their entire avatar in unity 😩

[marble rain]

blendshapes are not really a issue. and wont give more performance. even in unused. plus they dont take that much memory. its mostly Textures that takes up all of it. just one 8k texture is 64 mb and for the download size i dont know 8-12 mb per 8k texture it seems.

[buoyant holly]

https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/avatar-optimizing-tips#-except-when-youre-using-shapekeys

[marble rain]

note it says Can be. it's true to an extend. however unused once do not use any important resources. as nothing happens. also more Meshes > way worse performance wise then having blendshapes

[solid smelt]

To be honest it's less about performance for me and more for just getting rid of shit I'm not using

[buoyant holly]

that would depend on triangle count if the the blendshapes or the extra draw call would be worse

[solid smelt]

Have a model with everything, then before upload you clean a duplicate and upload that instead

[marble rain]

Extra draw call is always gonna be worse. but blendshapes do not create more draw calls.

as that is determined by Materials and well lighting etc.

plus majority of models in vrc has below 128 Blendshapes.

[marble rain]

you should care about both lol 😄 but i do agree i clean up my avatars alot. and remove anything unused.

[buoyant holly]

I doubt the vrchat developers are going to be completely wrong with their benchmarking to make the face separation suggestion

[marble rain]

eh.

they are

very wrong

the reason why blendshapes can be expensive is if its dynamically adjusted by bones, or animations etc. if that blendshape is in use that is

[solid smelt]

I DO care about performance, but honestly I favor organization more than optimization. But that's in cases like having a bunch of extra gameobjects for hierarchy order. Mostly micro-optimizatoons

[marble rain]

yuh.

[buoyant holly]

well that optimization tip was about active blendshapes as it was talking about the Visine

[solid smelt]

From what I'm aware, blendshapes are fine, active blendshapes is where the performance cost comes from. Having 100 blendshapes at 0 doesn't matter

[marble rain]

exactly.

only cost is memory.

which honestly.

eh.

does not matter to an extend.

hoooowever

big if

[buoyant holly]

good point the one that tends to be the performance killer is using blendshapes as toggles

[marble rain]

if you have a blendshape affecting a million polygons yeea.. you might be looking into alot of extra memory use

[solid smelt]

Where my bone scalers at 😔

[marble rain]

Blendshape as toggles is a really good way to cut down on material use.

which is why its the best way to combat draw calls

[buoyant holly]

it's spikes the CPU cost compared to just doing bones

[marble rain]

eh. barely

[buoyant holly]

as you're having active blendshapes constantly so you're having to calculate per triangle every frame

[solid smelt]

The only time you should use blendshapes to hide something is if that thing does not have a common root bone, but there are shader methods that are more optimized than the blendshape method for that

[marble rain]

a blendshape is not really active or not.

its weight based.

but once the weight has been set it does not recalculate it again and again.

it acts as if it was normal.

[marble rain]

commonly used for clothes. which is wise.

[solid smelt]

I tried out the whole "split face from body" thing for a while and it was 100% not worth the effort 😭

[marble rain]

i am not sure i recognize or know any methods via a shader that is worth doing.

yea dont lol.

you get odd light behaviours 😄

[stray tangle]

could maybe do a benchmark by making a 1mil poly mesh and animating shape keys on it

[marble rain]

like different colored head and body

[stray tangle]

see if the perf impact is only when changing it or if it's always tanking performance

[calm spade]

blendshapes are active when their value is greater than 1

sorry, 0

[marble rain]

ehm no?

[buoyant holly]

you need a light probe anchor so it looks good

[marble rain]

thats their inactive state.

[solid smelt]

You can fix that via anchor or something in the mesh, still annoying

[marble rain]

oh yea.

anchor.

but anchor cost performance.

[solid smelt]

Why would the anchor cost performance it's basically moving the origin point?

[calm spade]

Not more than an active blendshape, ie above 0

[marble rain]

okay only a little bit. due to recalculating the origin point etc.

[solid smelt]

Yeah everything costs something. It's really just a battle to cost as little as possible

[marble rain]

yuh.

[solid smelt]

I say this while using Final IK on every avatar so just ignore those costs 😎

[marble rain]

haha

i mean physbones is pretty impressive performance wise

[solid smelt]

At the very least it kicks the shit outta dyn bones

[marble rain]

considering its not using Jobs/Dots

well Dyn bones were not ment for that kind of scale 😄

[solid smelt]

Trust me I am very used to the "that's not how you're supposed to use that" statement

[marble rain]

tell me about it lol.

10 years of unity and counting.

and c#.

[stray tangle]

@marble rain Physbone do use jobs

afaik

[marble rain]

cant Jobs were not a thing til 2020.3

[calm spade]

It is using the Job system, and the burst compiler

[marble rain]

nvm its just not supported. says on unity's documents

[solid smelt]

2019 gang ✊ 😔

[marble rain]

welp Unity's docs are well ehm

abit out of date then imao

[solid smelt]

Now that physbones is out and good I can't wait for the Final IK replacement :))))

[marble rain]

lol

[hexed ferry]

Is there a way to make transparent textures? For quest

[onyx harness]

nope

[fickle stratus]

trying to lower my physbone transforms for quest, any help?

[marble rain]

what kind of help do you need? and how many physbones atm?

[marble rain]

Oh jeez.

ehm

for quest i believe max transforms would be 64.

[fickle stratus]

i do have 2 of these, but idk if itll fuck something up, they both have physbones on them

thats how it came when i bought it

[marble rain]

8 PhysBone components
64 PhysBones affected transforms
16 PhysBones colliders
64 PhysBones collider checks
16 Avatar Dynamics Contacts

right.

ehm you might not only be limited by bones.

but also polygons

materials etc.

[fickle stratus]

its just those 2 things

the one standard shader

[marble rain]

https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/avatar-performance-ranking-system go bottom almost you can see the actual requirements.

[fickle stratus]

and the transforms

[marble rain]

well

[fickle stratus]

i found the standard shader but I cant edit it in anyway

[marble rain]

you would have to do some blender work to remove alot of bones or limit what you want to have physbones on.

i recommend removing the hair physbone components fully.

seems like its taking alot

other then that depending on what else the avatar has physbones for. well.

[fickle stratus]

i removed all the other physbones but the ears and hair

the thing thats most concerning me

its the standard shader, what do I do there? I cant edit the shader?

[marble rain]

u cannot

standard shaders are not editable

[fickle stratus]

can you not remove them

[marble rain]

you can put on a new material or change the current materials shader to what it says

vrchat/mobile

[fickle stratus]

how its all greyed out

[marble rain]

uhm try and remove the hair physbones. cause that one seem to be taking up all your budget

[marble rain]

Right. you want to make a new material and put it on there.

[fickle stratus]

how do I do that

[marble rain]

right click anywhere in the folder in your project and there should be a New Material option.. should be under Create > Material

[fickle stratus]

ah ok

is there anyway for me to expand my entire hierarchy without manually clicking them?

[radiant shadow]

one way to get material out of fbx if is has one (ctrl+d) , other one is inspector -> click fbx , extract texture & materials out of it

[marble rain]

Hold down alt when clicking on the group.

[fickle stratus]

legend

oop there we go

the transform issue is gone

now the shader thing

[marble rain]

when you make a new material you should be able to just drag it on the avatar

[fickle stratus]

ah you see heres thing with that

for example with this cross bag, its all one thing

and it wont let me drag anything onto my avatar anyway

[marble rain]

replace the Metal material with the new one.

[fickle stratus]

ye but how

i cant drag it on

[marble rain]

ehm? per chance when you imported the fbx. did you import with the embedded materials?. all through even then it should be replaceable

and are you sure you made a Material?

[fickle stratus]

i can show you my screen if you want

probably easier

[marble rain]

https://docs.unity3d.com/2019.3/Documentation/Manual/Materials.html @fickle stratus 😄 that should tell you how

[fickle stratus]

ye iv made a material

i just cant apply

it

i was able to before I closed unity earlier

[marble rain]

try and close the project and reopen it.

may just be a temp bug

[fickle stratus]

plus if i was able to apply it, itll change the entire bag to that material

[marble rain]

well no. cause the Metal one is just a standard shader. it seems to be doing nothing.

its the metal shader you want to replace

but the most likely problem you have @fickle stratus is that you need to extract the materials.

[fickle stratus]

can we call?

and ill show my screen

[marble rain]

cant atm sadly. somewhat busy

[fickle stratus]

right, well idk what im doing, its not letting me drag nothing to the mesh

[marble rain]

this is what i am talking about. the imported file

if you click on the actual top object for the avatar.

[fickle stratus]

how do I get there

[marble rain]

you should see Animator in the Inspector

and you can click the Avatar in that animator which shows you were the Fbx is located.

[fickle stratus]

found it

[marble rain]

can you see the thing above?

Model-rig-animation-materials?

[marble rain]

no need to be in the muscle section just make sure the inspector shows material section instead

just click Done/Apply or whatever it says down below the inspector.

https://docs.unity3d.com/2017.2/Documentation/Manual/FBXImporter-Materials.html

[fickle stratus]

i have no idea how youve got to the screen

[marble rain]

thats because you need to be on the top object in the FBX. it needs to be a actual object file.

should be in the XO folder

[marble rain]

in the FBX. make sure to make the icons smaller

[fickle stratus]

OH

im dumb

i found it

[marble rain]

good

should have the material option in inspector.

[marble rain]

i can already tell that that avatar wont be able to do quest. to many materials. but u can try. but you need to extract materials.

[fickle stratus]

sadge

extract them to my asset folder>?

[marble rain]

yee

[fickle stratus]

right theyve been extracted

[marble rain]

should be able to change em all now

[fickle stratus]

right, the standard materials dont show up anymore, but the error is still there

nevermind it shows up on "plane"

[marble rain]

hmm?

[fickle stratus]

idk what it is but i can probably just delete it

[marble rain]

yea

[fickle stratus]

oh thank god its gone

the onyl thing im struggling with now

is an eye texture

i put one on but its just a solid color

i dont want to wear you out like, but the help would be appreciated

[heady smelt]

why do you have 3255239 materials

not okay

[heady smelt]

was that eye texture made for that model

[chilly fox]

VRChats viseme detection is kinda sucky, particularly if you have a high voice or are a performer... they're jittery and don't always respond too well. But hey, it is what it isss~

But what if they could be better? Well, then an unnecessarily complicated animation controller will fix all of your viseme woes that you didn't even know you had!

The most noticeable difference is at around 2:05, where high-pitched sustained notes just aren't even detected at all. While still not perfect, I think this is big improvement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZJr0RVEEa8

[marble rain]

soz. its a bigger project. if you want that avatar to work for Vrc quest. you have to look for a quest version of a avatar. cause i can tell you that avatar willl not work

[fickle stratus]

Where do you see that

[fickle stratus]

Ye it didn’t lmao, I got rid of all the problems but the file size was 3x over the allowed amount

[ruby isle]

This seems a bit broken, as the VRC visemes never use the Ah viseme. Either configured wrongly, or a bug in VRC?

[chilly fox]

Each of the visemes have a detection range, so if the audio falls into that range, it triggers the viseme. Audio that doesn't fall into ANY of those ranges, just has you sitting on the SIL viseme 0. I noticed the problem when looking at the debug menu, and that it sat on viseme 0 a lot of the time.

I made another demo video... this shows that happening even more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG7qERcjNV4

[trim mortar]

Anyone available to learn with me/teach blender and unity avatar optimization and things.

[opaque barn]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2EEbgwoJzdt5kFVDyY2lliNqf7cWJeD3 this tutorial is an excellent place to start

[trim mortar]

Thank you Tristan. I have watch videos for a few weeks now. I was really interested in a guiding hand or someone who is an eager learner too. You know. . .Liked screen shares and working together on stuff. . .

[radiant shadow]

quest av good or better, upload as fallback, get a pc avatar good or better use the same blueprint as the quest uploaded one , now you have a quest+pc fallback you can use on any other avatar if their setting i strict they will see those instead

[hallow spindle]

holy cow this is great! thanks so much

[radiant shadow]

probably , all my quest fallbacks are good+ rating

[buoyant holly]

https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/cross-platform-setup

[fierce finch]

Think this'd be the right area to ask. I'm being requested to make this for an avatar model. I don't think it's feasible to model all these shapes so I was going to pursue using alpha textures. I believe I heard that alpha textures won't actually work because of mobile shaders not supporting see-through textures like that. Is this true and if so, is there a better way around this? Or should I just say no to that request

[zealous wigeon]

Yes, Quest does not support the use of any kind of transparency.
Modelling it is the only way you could do something this detailed on Quest.

[fierce finch]

Hmm, for PC, what's likely to happen if I expand my current personal limits of 40k triangles to the 75k cap? Is it likely to start breaking for some users between those two points or is 75k the point where things start degrading enough to be a problem?

[zealous wigeon]

The cap is 70k which is when it instantly turns to "very poor" ranked, which means unless a PC user has changed it then it won't automatically be shown. There is nothing that starts breaking at that point or even over it, but the avatar is just ranked "very poor" (the line for "very poor" on Quest starts after 20k polys).

Performance wise however at some point, which I think was 50k, you should separate the face mesh (basically the mesh which has blendshapes) from the rest of the body because at 50k or something the performance gained from having only 1 skinned mesh is outweighed by having blendshapes in use on the skinned mesh.

I do not know why the cap is at 70k, hopefully it is increased at some point, but it is verry common for creators to jump past it by 2-3 times, having a "very poor" avatar is incredibly common in VRChat, I don't, but it is what it is.

[fierce finch]

I see, I appreciate the detailed response

I think I'll stick to my current limits and reject that request as I'd rather have something that can be shown off to many people than something that can only be used in Blender

[zealous wigeon]

Found the actual count, at 32k polygons is where you should keep a separate mesh for shapekeys https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/avatar-optimizing-tips#-except-when-youre-using-shapekeys.

[fierce finch]

Hmm, You're right, I should do the face mesh as well

Haven't been doing that

[wheat rock]

So I was having an issue where parts of the face were whited out, I figured out that I could assign the texture to that separate material. But now the teeth, tongue and eyelashes are all gray for some reason. I'm a noob with unity, any ideas?

[zealous wigeon]

Texture must be making them gray.
Also wrong channel for this, #avatar-help is where questions like this should go.

[wheat rock]

Oops! I didn't see what channel I was in

[rose sequoia]

I want to add some textured orbs to an avatar but I dont want to need to use a large number of polys just to include a few small orbs. Is there some fancy way to achieve this with maybe a shader? Ive seen shaders add a lot of fake depth detail to objects but not sure if I could do something like make a low-poly cube appear like an orb/ball? (with semi-detailed texture on it)

One side of each orb needs to have a little face textured on it, so it cant just be like, a 2d sprite that always faces the camera (i think...)

(this feels like an optimization question because im trying to find some way to be super reserved with polygon usage)

[ruby isle]

You can just make a low poly sphere and use that

[rose sequoia]

How low poly can you make a sphere and it still look like a ball?

And not a squarey/blocky hexagon-like object. (That's a legit question - how low can you go before people tend to notice it's not really a sphere shape)

[ruby isle]

Depends on the orb size but you can get away with very little

[calm spade]

There's a low poly sphere object you can create in blender with Shift + A

[rose sequoia]

Ooo really? Nice I'll try that out!