avatar-optimization

[stray tangle]

if separating the head brings the main body mesh under 65K, then the 16 bit index thing might make it worth it

[velvet crow]

entire body mesh is something like 40k I think, so yeah

[stray tangle]

but if both combined is already lower than that, separating it might not make a big enough difference

[marble rain]

eh. you need alooot. i have seen plenty of test in unity with 250-500k polygon with 200 + blendshapes. each randomized each frame. and he only lost 20-30 fps in unity. mind you that was in the editor. outside the editor your looking at a much lower value

[marble rain]

no worries if your total count is only 40k.

[stray tangle]

40k is quite good yea

[lone tiger]

You can still use normal maps.

When I set Tangents to Import on a model that I use that was made in Blender there is no difference in visual appearance from setting Tangents to None.

Oh and memory size of meshes stays the same too.

Only once I set it to Calculate Mikktspace it goes up, but by not that much.

[stray tangle]

interesting. might need some more testing then

if disabling tangents has no adverse effects then it might be worthwhile to push VRC to add it as a warning with an auto fix button

[lone tiger]

My guess some shaders can depend on tangents being calculated instead of imported, especially something like Poiyomi.

[velvet crow]

Idk if tangents are the same thing, but I have worked with some models that have custom normals, and resetting them can cause problems on some models. So I'd imagine ignoring them would do the same. Unless that is a different thing

[ivory sluice]

i don't think vertex data can be calculated during the cg shader, setting tangents to none might mean that it uses the model's built in data, because not providing any tangents will actually map the normals incorrectly since it needs the tangent and bitangent to guess the uv orientation on normal space

[rose sequoia]

I want to try and optimize my fx animation controller a little bit, but i need some advice on likely performance costs:
Here is an example scenario to help explain my question
Layer 1 has two states: "Default" and "State1". There are 4 transitions from Default to State1: A=true or B=true or C=true or D=true
Layer 2 has two states: "Default" and "State1". 4 transitions from Default to State: C= true or D = true or E= true or F = true
(assume there are also logical transitions back to the "Default" state, I'm just not writing them out here)

So this means that, at all times, these two layers are playing an animation (either their Default or State1. The actual animation playing on Layer 1's "State1" is different to the animation being played on Layer 2's "State1", just to clarify).
I assume that having two layers playing an animation costs more performance than one layer player an animation (ignoring transition condition checks)- is that right?

I could merge these two layers, so that only one state would be playing, however I'd need to create some additional versions of the animations and a lot more conditions to change between them (in order to replicate the behavior each had when they were two layers)

I know the more transitions checking conditions you have at the same time, the more costly it is to performance...

So - If i merge these two layers (to have only 1 state playing instead of 2), how many extra transition condition checks can I add to the new merged layer before it starts to cost more than just having the two layers separate?

(This is just a simplified example, but I can use the logic of the answer to apply to the scenarios i have to solve)

[marble rain]

you can do it all in one layer. and you only need one Transition having all those conditions. simply Default > State 1 Checks A,B,C;D if any of them are true do X animation. and the other state you just need to do the same. but call it state 2 instead. and that one checks for C,D,E,F on one transition

[rose sequoia]

The example was to suppose a situation where the merging would require multiple OR transitions to at least an additional 1 state. I'm looking for information on performance costs

[stray tangle]

additional layers has a much more significant performance impact than slightly more complex logic within a layer

example, this nested direct blendtree bullshit runs significantly better than having toggles be on their own layers

[lone tiger]

Direct blendtrees are pog, but I don't think it's possible to do with them for example fullfill 2 or more conditions at once to go to state 2 and then do "if condition 1 OR condition 2 are true" to go back to state 1.

Anything simple that needs one condition to change state and doesn't have anything like X or Y need to be this and this can be put into a direct blendtree.

[stray tangle]

you actually could, since you can drive the value of parameters using animations

don't get me wrong, it's a lot more janky, but it would actually run better

[lone tiger]

Hmm, I haven't tried that, but it just reminds of how I tried to do direct blendtrees on a state with WD Off and it did some unwanted math on outputted values.

The particular logic that I wanted to add to my direct blendtree that didn't work out is this.

Ahoge Off has 2 transitions going to On, all of them are based off of physbones-generated parameters. Each one is "greater than value".

[stray tangle]

so fun fact about that, you can mix WD on/off with blendtrees

if your controller is entirely WD off, you should still always use WD on for direct blendtrees

[lone tiger]

While the other way it is both need to be less than value.

[stray tangle]

it won't break anything else, and fixes all weirdness with direct blendtrees

[lone tiger]

I know, I made even a rant about this on VRLabs Discord.

[stray tangle]

xD

[lone tiger]

I was like " why are blendtrees so tedious to expand".

Solution was do them WD On instead of Off.

[rose sequoia]

hmm, so is the general idea "you wont be able to realistically create a complicated enough set of transitions after merging a bunch of layers together to make it not worthwhile doing, performance-wise"
To exaggerate, having 1 layer with many many different possible combinations and transitions to control 10 independent, bool-controlled, toggles is probably going to still be more performant than having an extra 9 layers running... ?

How chonky would i need to make a layer before it would start to cause the same amount of performance impact that adding a brand new layer would?

[lone tiger]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/906565496592281670/1036663928899510392/Discord_2022-10-31_16-32-12.png

[rose sequoia]

hmmm alright this is good info. Many thanks for all the replies

[fringe portal]

i dont have any physbone colliders yet its saying this what do i do to get rid of this pls

[buoyant holly]

that's only a yellow so I wouldn't worry about it too much

[ruby isle]

Click the Select button to the right and it'll show you all the objects that have colliders on it

[simple wagon]

Tried this with one of my avis. Brought the number of layers down from 20 to 4. Seemed to make the performance worse in the Unity editor though.

I tested with 40 avatars in the scene and the Animators.Update took 4-5ms on the blendtree fx layer while the original fx layer took ~3ms. Even deleting the 3 non-blendtree layers left on the blendtree fx layer still resulted in 4-5ms times.

I'm not seeing the 6-7 times increase in speed, but my testing methodology may be flawed or something else is affecting the frametime on Animator.Update.

[sharp kiln]

Fallbacks scale to your current avatar's size automatically. That is, unless your avatar is extremely big, in which case your fallback will keep it's original scale and just float in the air. Does anyone know off the top of their heads what size that cutoff point is? It's not in the docs. No need to lab it for me, I'll do the labbing if nobody knows

[marble rain]

testing in the editor is also subject to performance loss btw. gotta do standalone testing. and 20 layers is alot. like aloot. but people are overestimating and thinking its going to increase your performance. while that is not the case. more layers does not always mean worse performance. it does however take up more ram. and longer build time.

[buoyant holly]

https://twitter.com/RolltheredDev/status/1596291434142892040?s=20&t=bTB3ji9eTuHrD2zkfXV7IA

Rollthered (@RolltheredDev)

Holy cow.
I did not expect nearly unanimously 100 people asking for this tutorial.

Here you go! Its under 1 minute long!
As all tutorials should be.

Now go out there and optimize the heck out of stuff.😎

Likes

183

▶ Play video

Twitter · Nov 25, 2022, 11:55 PM

[marble rain]

Vertex color might be slightly faster and such but it has alot of limits. i do not recommend doing vertex colors over UV map. the difference in what it takes is neglectable. and working with vertex colors is well. not as easy as with textures. as you would have to go into blender or maya all the time to change it.

ontop of that if you have clothes and other things switching around it's even worse.

cause that is basically not possible with vertex colors unless you have multiple meshes. which is even worse as your just causing unnecessary draw calls

[stray tangle]

it's still possible to toggle stuff with vertex colors

just not as many options lol

[marble rain]

yes. but it requires multiple meshes. which is not ideal. and not to mention you need to bake everything in blender which just takes alot longer.

[stray tangle]

1: bone scaling
2: blendshapes
3: if on PC, Poiyomi UV tile discard (doesn't require textures, but does require a UV map)

none of those require more than 1 mesh/1 material

[marble rain]

eh, i am talking about different vertex colors. those things have nothing to do with vertex in general.

[stray tangle]

I know what vertex colors are lol, I'm the one who optimized Red's avatar to quest fallback, and even suggested doing vertex colors in the first place xD

realistically it's not that practical to use vertex colors in a lot of cases, there are other tricks to save on vram

[marble rain]

lols 😄 but yea. it saves on vram for sure. but the other benefits i don 't believe applies to vrc sadly.

[stray tangle]

I mean, baking AO to vertex colors is a pretty smart idea

there's also cases where you could use the 4 vertex color channels to mask out different textures, Poiyomi can actually do this, and I've had to use it before

it allows for seamless transitions between stuff like grass/sand/stone with separate textures and normals

[marble rain]

well. you can do the same to a texture. might just be abit different. but like vertex colors do allow for fake shadows and such easily.

[ivory sluice]

one downside i find on vertex colors is that, at leat the last time i tried it, you can only have a single vertex color slot for your data input

[marble rain]

yep

[normal nova]

it's technically possible in unity to use other UV channels as vertex colors, it's Just Data (though not a thing in VRC, at the moment)

[ivory sluice]

yee i tought about it but you'd need two slots for each vertex color and three slots for two, unless you have an elready set up color palette or use two of three hsv values

[marble rain]

honestly its not worth using it. just use textures

[heavy siren]

dangit, i was just about to post that

You beat me to my own self promo

[stray tangle]

kekw

[heavy siren]

Also I think people are discrediting what vertex colors are actually useful for.

Or, this tutorial specifically.

You would want to do this if you are looking for a quick and easy option to optimize your avatar (1 mesh 1 material), its not supposed to be an end all be all, but more a bandaid.

[normal nova]

CATS Bake can do vertex colors!

It even premultiplies AO into them

[marble rain]

the thing is . vertex colors are not useful for desktop. its mostly useful for quest etc. low end hardware. and even then its far eaiser to do materials. one material will out perform vertex colors at any moments.

[heavy siren]

I disagree, I use vertex colors on desktop. See this message: #avatar-optimization message

Its an alternative, not superior.

Still useful.

[marble rain]

i am not saying its not useful. but its less preferable.

i speak from experience.

barely anyone in the game development field uses it

[heavy siren]

You need to pick better vocabulary in that case

very confusing

[buoyant holly]

vertex colors are used all the time as masks in Game Dev

[heavy siren]

This isn't true. Vertex colors are used a loooot.

[buoyant holly]

and pretty much like Nintendo's entire catalog from the N64 to Wii

[heavy siren]

Especially for things like hair.

[ivory sluice]

it's not used a lot, but when t's needed it's useful

[marble rain]

nope they are really not

[buoyant holly]

would you like me to pull up articles pointing out the use of vertex colors in Game Dev

[marble rain]

i disagree i seen my fair share and non of them does it.

[heavy siren]

Look at any Daz3D model and you will see the amount of vertex color used.

[marble rain]

100% please do

i might have outdated info

[buoyant holly]

question if you're not extracting the model data how would you know if the vertex colors were used for masking purposes

[marble rain]

Textures.

if a game takes up 100s of gigs of data.

it does not use that.

it uses 8-16k texxtures.

or similar

[buoyant holly]

I'm talking about vertex colors for masking not the direct color

[heavy siren]

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/48nJD1 more than just masking

[marble rain]

anyhow we can disagree to agree 😄 i am not saying its not useful

[ivory sluice]

it can be used very low mesh lods or linear gradients

[buoyant holly]

well you're down playing their usefulness by saying they're never used in games off of like no actual source

[marble rain]

for vrc textures are better.

[marble rain]

well. to be fair. its rare that they do.

like EA,ubisoft etc

even ehm path of exile

etc

uses materials

[buoyant holly]

how would you know you literally cannot see the vertex colors for masking

[marble rain]

or textures to say

[heavy siren]

I just linked an example from a AAA company

I'm sure there is much more

[marble rain]

100% there is

but its not wortth going into for vrc.

[heavy siren]

I don't see why you would dismiss that

[marble rain]

different game engines handle it differently.

because it takes to much time

[heavy siren]

[marble rain]

and is to complex for alot of people.

[buoyant holly]

the video is literally one minute long

[marble rain]

and peoples attention span in vrc is what?

less then that 😄

[buoyant holly]

that's shorter than most video tutorials for vrchat

[marble rain]

anywhoo i am out. sorry. i did not mean to cause a spur here.

i just dislike vertex colors.

[ivory sluice]

it could also be used for color irregularities on terrains. Minecraft does this for grass dependkng on biomes

[buoyant holly]

and pretty much most Nintendo games before the Wii U

[marble rain]

they do compression more than anything btw. finding similar textures etc.

[ivory sluice]

well at the end vertex colors is something as simple as its name says, everyone can use it however they want

[marble rain]

agreed

but simply said textures are eaiser to do

[stray tangle]

I once had to optimize the old bHaptics touch reactive vest from 3 materials down to 1, that was a challenge

[marble rain]

how so

[stray tangle]

because it used render textures from cameras to color touch zones in a specified color

and the "nodes" on the vest were condensed to small UV islands in a 4x5 grid across the UV space, so that it would line up with the render textures, which were also 4x5 pixels

[buoyant holly]

examples of a Vertex colors in a big-budget title

[stray tangle]

so my solution was:

[ivory sluice]

it's not really easier nor harder to do them, but it's something more limited, it's not as advanced as textures in terms of directx (i think it is)

[marble rain]

game?

[ivory sluice]

the game

[buoyant holly]

Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword

[marble rain]

its more effort to get to the same result'

[stray tangle]

• use UV1 and UV2 for the front/back motors
• Poiyomi's RGBA masking section, using the red and green channels for the 2 render textures, with the correct UV specified.
• since UV maps need to contain all verts, the rest of the vest was shoved in the bottom left corner. if you touched the bottom left area of the vest, the entire vest would line up red. to fix this, I used vertex colors as the masking method for RGBA masking. the vest was painted black, the front motors red, and the rear motors green

[marble rain]

older game makes sense

[buoyant holly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV4cYQzsY30

here's a technique used by a lot of modern games involving vertex colors

[marble rain]

they use textures.

[buoyant holly]

which are controlled by the vertex colors

[marble rain]

the point of vertex is not textures

its baked onto the model

[ivory sluice]

vertex colors are not made to replace texel sampling but to have less memory use or better interpolations at the cost of only being able to interpolate colors between vertex

[marble rain]

its debateable how much less.

like if u use 512-1024 sized textures the difference is minor,

and when your already in the low spectrum of below 30 mb of vram

it really does not matter.

but that said

optimization sucks.

cause

of the fact that its endless.

[ivory sluice]

idk for other creators but to be fair for me every bit of optimization matters

[marble rain]

legit i had no idea vertex used less memory.

for some things usre.

sure

but in this modern world

it matters less

that said

i still always work towards 1-4 materials top

and max 70k polygon

for a avatar

etc

and max 30 mb of vram

[ivory sluice]

now that a lot of people make extremely unoptimized content, optimizing my stuff and helping others to optimize is very important

[marble rain]

100%

thats what i do

i run around with a avatar that is good rated

close to excellent

and it looks great

and has collisions and other things

and 4k textures

texture sorry

and uses 30 mb of vram

well less actually

like i even go to the length of saying i can do it for you for free.

i dont care about money in that sense'

i just want to better the experience for people.

[ivory sluice]

it's frustrating when i find an avatar i like but i don't wear it because it's very poor
but standardizing very poor performance in this game is not very good tbf
i got crashed too many times because of memory overload and performance hits

[marble rain]

agreed

but its so easy. like many avatars got to many materials

making a atlas is so fast and easy

and at no less quality

polygons is harder.

[ivory sluice]

just keeping a small percent of avatar making effort to exclude and reduce stuff is enough, but somehow people don't want to, and sometimes people don't understand that limits exist and they cannot put an entire closet of clothing in a single avatar

[heavy siren]

I really want to stress this

If you adopted some vertex colors into your workflow

[marble rain]

nice.

[ivory sluice]

i win you w my 256kb 256 poly fox

[marble rain]

i am already low enough

[heavy siren]

By your standards, yes.

[stray tangle]

I'll be honest, my main avatar is VP due to the clothing options on it, but they are all casual clothing options that I will actually regularly switch to. individually, each piece of clothing is optimized as well as it can be (1mat/low poly, 2 mat if transparency is required). at any point, it should not be any worse than a good/medium rated avatar. for special occasions or costumes, I make separate avatars with no other clothing except the one made for the event

[marble rain]

5.88 is enough low

[stray tangle]

I plan on making a quest fallback version the same I did for Red, but haven't gotten around to it yet

[heavy siren]

I mean sure, but don't discount my boi vertex colors

you could get it lower

😎

[marble rain]

going lower is fairly. pointless

[heavy siren]

Its been extremely worth it

you should do that soon, a lot of people have been appreciating your work

😄

[ivory sluice]

what abt
my 16kb infinite tunnel world 8)

[buoyant holly]

might be more helpful for World optimization but potentially handy to reuse grayscale textures by using vertex colors to provide the color as far as reducing vram consumption

[stray tangle]

haha yea I should, that was the most twitter activity I've ever had lol

[heavy siren]

That's the kind of nerd shit i love to hear

[stray tangle]

haven't had anyone contact me about it yet though

which I'm perfectly fine with lol, I got other stuff to finish first

[marble rain]

how. at that point it becomes a question why

[heavy siren]

Id say for scalability's sake.

[buoyant holly]

stretching one's creative muscles working with technical constraints

[heavy siren]

The more people you cram into a lobby, the more it scales.

your 5mb isn't a lot sure, but it adds up.

[ivory sluice]

i'll go next level and make a world that generates the mesh and texture via udon
jk that could get near the size

[marble rain]

at that point your looking at physics.

5mb will not add up before you are at 500 +.

[heavy siren]

No, you're looking at everything you can get.

[marble rain]

you do realize that

its pointless?

[buoyant holly]

like heck what if you loaded everybody with just vertex color does first and then loaded their textures later so that you could see the basics of everyone's avatars faster

[heavy siren]

Its not about the biggest common denominator, its about everything.

[marble rain]

the amount of work to get that low is less desired?

[buoyant holly]

like cats can pretty much automate the vertex color idea down to one button press

[marble rain]

like if most devs wanted to they could reduce their game sizes usage and more to a really low amount

[ivory sluice]

true an avatar level of detail system or lod group support would be cool

[marble rain]

but they dont

it cost to much

[heavy siren]

That's a problem of disinterest. This is an optimization channel. If you're in here, you likely care about that stuff.

[marble rain]

ido care about it alot.

i program with optimization by default

as in bit by bit.

but at some point the difference is just not worth it

[ivory sluice]

i don't care abt optimization
i live for it
i force it
i worship it

[heavy siren]

Its worth it for me. If its worth it for others, you are making content for an online game.

I will likely block your avatar automatically by size, and wont see it.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[buoyant holly]

yeah I also block avatars by file size

[heavy siren]

hence the reason

[marble rain]

good choice. but anything below 50 mb i consider fine for vrc

the reason is simple.

[heavy siren]

For me its anything under 20, since I go to a lot of large lobbies.

[marble rain]

at 100 people your at 5000 mb.

[stray tangle]

don't be like this guy

[marble rain]

at that point its down to draw calls.

[heavy siren]

LOOOOL

[marble rain]

and overall time per frame

[stray tangle]

their bio

[buoyant holly]

https://twitter.com/RolltheredDev/status/1596634385549099009?s=20&t=fu9xFzUAd9Lo7vhAjOwPFw

Rollthered (@RolltheredDev)

Here are some extra things you can do when baking vertex colors to optimize your avatar in VRChat!

▶ Play video

Twitter · Nov 26, 2022, 10:37 PM

[heavy siren]

Don't forget shadow pass calls and even overdraw for that matter.

When optimizing its a look overall, not just 1 thing.

[ivory sluice]

my max is 35mb because i assume most textures are crunch compressed and will x10 the mem size
i had to add and optimize assets for an avatar commission and low detail things such as collars had at least 5k polys and all, literally all textures were 4k, like, wtf is tiling?, it's so fed up this is the standard for texture size

[marble rain]

for sure. draw calls is a bitch t think about.

[heavy siren]

You have to consider the environments your avatar will be rendered in as well. some worlds are terrible and keep shadows enabled on the avatar culling layer.

[ashen hearth]

Hi

[marble rain]

i believe atm by avatar is like 8 draw calls i think

[buoyant holly]

yeah they could have just used a detailed map for the collar

[heavy siren]

Your drawcalls are important sure, but so are your polys in that circumstance

[marble rain]

polygons < drawcalls.

[heavy siren]

Its like one big puzzle, we're all out here finding ways to figure it out together 😄

[marble rain]

for sure lol

[heavy siren]

In what context?

[marble rain]

and believe me i dont want to sound like a jerk here lol.

[heavy siren]

In what enviornment?

[marble rain]

like in vrc context.,

[heavy siren]

you cant generalize that

VRC is the most dynamic content of all

[marble rain]

unless your at 1 + million polygons

thats the thing u can

[ivory sluice]

this is the reason why vrchat has to add back the avatar cap and yes-or-yes block any idiot that bypasses it

[marble rain]

every drawcall is another redraw of everything on the screen.

like 100 draw calls is gonna crap your pc out by quite abit.

versus 2 million polygons wont.

unless.

[buoyant holly]

https://twitter.com/VIANVOLAEUS/status/1517951135528665088?s=20&t=JuKh_iJtDl789TDhlGzv1A

V (@VIANVOLAEUS)

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

Likes

283

▶ Play video

Twitter · Apr 23, 2022, 7:38 PM

[marble rain]

that 2 million polygons has something done to em

that said

[heavy siren]

That's my point, the unless part of this.

[marble rain]

i always recommend below 70k for avatar.

[heavy siren]

Its why you cant single out 1 aspect of an avatar for performance

[marble rain]

why i said optimization is hell lol.

[heavy siren]

Exactly

[buoyant holly]

https://twitter.com/VIANVOLAEUS/status/1517951160740687873?s=20&t=JuKh_iJtDl789TDhlGzv1A

V (@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

[marble rain]

taking every single point and understanding it

and such

is quite litterly to much.

there is a reason why so many games are buggy AF 😄

not possible to do the 100k + tests.

[ivory sluice]

poly count is mostly affected by the vertex shader and maybe the rasterizer jumping through vertices, sadly most non legacy shader in this game has a vertex program as long as the bible

[heavy siren]

Best advice I have is just to make a different avatar version for each occasion, in varying levels of optimized.

That's what I do.

[marble rain]

mhm. good job 😄 i appreciate that

keep going mate

really

we need more optimized content 😄

[heavy siren]

We do.

[ivory sluice]

y e s

[heavy siren]

Its kinda our job as a community to tell more people about it

[marble rain]

haha yea.

[heavy siren]

since its our experience

[marble rain]

believe me i tell everyone i know

[heavy siren]

that gets ruined

xD

[marble rain]

and i always try to do it for them.

i want a better experience.

no lag

no crash

nothing

[buoyant holly]

my main Avatar is 1 2k material and 11k triangles

[mint topaz]

i have a meme for this

[marble rain]

well done mate 😄

[heavy siren]

Pogg

[marble rain]

maybe i should try to get my avatar to 30k polys 😄

[ivory sluice]

no need to have more
we need to force it on all existing content
unfortunately ppl like the one sacred had shown still exist

[marble rain]

just for the sake of fun 😄

its only 37k btw.

[heavy siren]

Edge loop dissolves are the best thing Ive tried for that recently 😄

[buoyant holly]

the Avatar base I used was already one material and 11k triangles

[marble rain]

just dont have the time sadly.

[heavy siren]

You had the time to talk in here though D:<

reeeee

[marble rain]

cause i am drinking with friends lol 😄
h

haha

[heavy siren]

xD

[marble rain]

they were busy with some stuff.

18+

haha

anywhoo. keep doing great @heavy siren scared etc 😄

i apprecaite you guys for trying to optimize

hecking good job

[heavy siren]

I will one day somehow convince you of how cool vertex colors can be, i promise

[stray tangle]

*sacred but ty 😄

[ivory sluice]

boo

[heavy siren]

I will make it my life goal

[buoyant holly]

well it's kind of tricky when they discounted most of the uses of them in modern games

[ivory sluice]

i just want to not crash tbf

[heavy siren]

I feel like they're warming up to it

[marble rain]

please do lol

i want to understand what you find

[ivory sluice]

i wish there were 16 vertex color slots like texture slots

[marble rain]

yoo sorry

[ivory sluice]

well not 16 but 8 i think it was the max supported in bmesh

[marble rain]

tbh i am programmer more then anything so.

[buoyant holly]

cross my mind Vortex color ambient occlusion would probably be quite handy for world-building

[heavy siren]

Would a post from the iconic bgolus help? xDD

[stray tangle]

https://youtu.be/2dy9p_QWNWw

[heavy siren]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/performance-implications-between-vertex-colors-vs-textures.671698/

[marble rain]

maybe haha

[stray tangle]

this is the kind of stuff that is neat with vertex colors

[marble rain]

i did read that

thats where i was like

[buoyant holly]

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

[ivory sluice]

bgolus is evrywhere on unity forums fr

[marble rain]

it does not matter to much

[stray tangle]

yea exactly, Poiyomi has this

[marble rain]

etc

[stray tangle]

it's called RGBA color masking

[heavy siren]

He is inhuman

some might even say he is a computer program

he has too much knowlege

its scary

[buoyant holly]

https://twitter.com/VIANVOLAEUS/status/1517951142730346497?s=20&t=w8of3CcETkKF8GeruJm3pg

V (@VIANVOLAEUS)

RGBA masking requires an RGBA texture - this defines where the shader acts on the mesh. Left, map. Right, shader setup. The region in red can be changed in shader to display as yellow, etc.

Twitter · Apr 23, 2022, 7:38 PM

[marble rain]

anywhoo you guys enjoy it

back to drinks

[buoyant holly]

https://twitter.com/VIANVOLAEUS/status/1517951160740687873?s=20&t=w8of3CcETkKF8GeruJm3pg

V (@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

[heavy siren]

mfw he realizes that the virtual drink he might be holding is using vertex colors for the fluid dynamics to calculate foam from the baked movement of each vert.

(joking xD)

that would be too many polys for vr

but still a good usecase ive seen a lot of recently

[buoyant holly]

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

[heavy siren]

yep!

ahaha

[stray tangle]

just remembered that Poiyomi has the option to bake averaged normals to vertex colors for smoother outlines

[ivory sluice]

i made a multi material shader for worlds and avatars recently (shader guis are hell btw) and it's as simple as making a structure for color, metallic, normal and emission, sampling and mixing their corresponding textures and then just treating it as any pbr shader, it also uses rgb masking

[heavy siren]

Wait what

tell me more

[stray tangle]

and also for controling the dissolve direction

sort of like Pathing

[marble rain]

naaah

[buoyant holly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGg3Vh8RZN4

[stray tangle]

Poi has a lot of options that can use vert colors

[ivory sluice]

ah aight like interpolated normals

[stray tangle]

ye

but that's only one of the things it can use vert colors for

[heavy siren]

Oh yee, procedural animations

best part about vertex color is you can write to it with less perf cost than a CRT

afaik

😄

[buoyant holly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRLG9Mgm5Kk

[ivory sluice]

yee
well unless you have more vertices than all the pixels on the crt
anyways gpus (at least nvidia) have more cores dedicated to fragment shaders than vertex so it could handle some more

[ashen hearth]

Could someone please play with tonight

[mint topaz]

im sorry to say but i cant optimize your playing experience

[ashen hearth]

What

[vale wagon]

I can low mb than that! 🙂 256x256 matcap cost 0.04 mb texture memory and 4.3k polys. OR just use mobile diffuse shader 0.11 MB size and ZERO texture memory.

[buoyant holly]

0.07mb with a single 64 by 64 texture and a 1000 triangles

[mint topaz]

bouta just make a 100 polygon avatar

[craggy basalt]

You know in blender you can make a really detailed model and save it as a texture for your low poly right, hell, there are even some people who just whip out the pen and pencil and scribble in the details. Just open up the texture for Krystal's mesh

[elfin karma]

Can anyone tell me how many phys bone transforms are supported on quest avatars? I'm about to weight paint this hair but don't want to run into compatibility issues later 😵
I intend to set one phys bone for the head bone and then make exceptions for the eye bones so it just affects the hair. Just wondering how many bones I can add to the hair strands without it breaking...

[zealous wigeon]

64 transforms (individual bones), 8 components.

[zealous wigeon]

https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/avatar-performance-ranking-system#default-performance-rank-blocking

[elfin karma]

Ah! That's super helpful thank you. I need to bookmark this

[proper grail]

Weird idea to phys bone humanoid defined bones, make a root bone thats parented to the head bone that all the hair bones connect to

[zealous wigeon]

I've got it on my bookmark bar, just because of how much I refer to it.

[elfin karma]

What's the benefit of doing that over assigning the head bone? Serious question. I'm new to this

[proper grail]

Benefit? Things just break if phys bones are on any of the humanoid setup listed bones

[elfin karma]

Oh I see. Thanks, I didn't know that

[charred pawn]

Anyone here able to assist me on optimization of a premade avatar? It has 245450 polys lmfao, that and the original creator is not of any help even though it was a purchased asset

[mint topaz]

BAHAHA

christ, 250k poly's

[onyx harness]

Yeah any avatar that doesn't specify the poly count and/or is advertised as is 300k.
This is one of those times where you take the fbx into blender and remove everything you don't plan on using all the time. Plus just hope they didn't make it in Marvelous designer without retopo

[buoyant holly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MkgXcidxg4 video tutorial that shows some basic optimization stuff and that is one thing I like about the Japanese models they're a lot more forthcoming about the triangle count

[heady smelt]

This will be marked as very poor on quest

[ivory sluice]

Premade avatars on vrchat that are very poor or worse shouldn't be allowed to be sold imo

[heady smelt]

True

Ejem.. most gumroad models.

[ivory sluice]

Just most in general

[heady smelt]

Nah, most booth models are medium rated lmao

[ivory sluice]

Some advertise them with 82k poly or 120k poly as if it was something normal

[heady smelt]

If it has toggles kinda makes sense to have so many polys, but if it doesnt its weird lmao

[ivory sluice]

Yee most booth creators work a lot of their content, or just keep it simple

On gumroad i usually see so many bases and avatars with a fton of credits, meaning that at least it goes over 100k polys

[heady smelt]

Dont hate me for this but i dont care that much about optimization

Ofc if it crashes someone or makes the fps drop ill do something, but if it doesnt mess with someone then i dont care if its a very poor lol

[ivory sluice]

I gotta say, since i put my safety to not show very poor avatars now i have more stable fps and my gpu doesn't scream

It's because i was blocking 90% of the instance but also because there's no rank over very poor, so very poor can be a bit over poor or just extremely over poor

Most times it's the avatar with sketchy shaders that make the bloom shoot blinks randomly

[heady smelt]

My avatars are just poor, particles, workimg gun system, etc

[ivory sluice]

Yee
In any ways you can have whatevs you want
But that won't mean the avatar can get way over what vrchat considers you shouldn't upload.

I find too many ppl saying that the performance ranking system is outdated or broken or incorrect, that polygons don't matter or other bs.
I even found someone that said that vrchat is not a game but a game engine itself and that's why they should add some random bs they wanted whitelisted.
It's people like this why most times everyone is a robot with poker face

[heady smelt]

Polygons matter, just not as much as the ranking system considers it

[ivory sluice]

Polygons do matter
But their impact depends mostly on what vertex shader is being applied to them
And gpus have less cores dedicated to calculating vertices, limiting them to fewer calculations than pixels

Unfortunately there's no way on unity to guess the performance cost of shaders so vrchat has to stick with what's considered in terms of rasterizing and closely the 16 bit vertex index limit

[heady smelt]

True

[marble rain]

typically its Drawcalls > Materials > Phys bones > Polygons > Blendshapes. from left to right as to what affects it the most. from a general standpoint and a generally decent system. through that can change depending on your system. and materials and drawcalls go hand in hand so to speak.

[heady smelt]

What are drawcalls?

[marble rain]

how many times your computer need to redraw something

[ivory sluice]

Imo draw calls, materials, shaders and polygons go together since they are kinda the same thing

[heady smelt]

Oh

[marble rain]

like if u got 10 drawcalls your asking it to draw it 10 times.

[marble rain]

in a way yes. but also not really. its more in terms of what affects it

[radiant shadow]

vram one thing that few check - too many avatars in one place and you can/will run out , some have theirs set to 'none' wich is terrible

[marble rain]

yep.

i see to many models at 500 mb plus lol.

[heady smelt]

I saw a 1,3 gb avatar

[marble rain]

jesus..

Vrchat should allow us to set a limit locally to how much vram we allow to show.

like it does with the download size.

[heady smelt]

The worse part is that it was just a car with many audio sources

[stray tangle]

that's also only texture vram usage, not including meshes

[marble rain]

yup

[mint topaz]

a

a 1.3gb avatar

what

[heady smelt]

.

[mint topaz]

thats the sound of my computer burning

[marble rain]

imagine how many avatars will be poor ranked once the texture usage affects it

[heady smelt]

Mine already is poor lmao

Im too lazy to optimize it

[marble rain]

once you go Good its hard to go back lol 😄

[heady smelt]

I just try to keep it above very poor

[mint topaz]

ya

[marble rain]

you could easily make a material atlas. to reduce the total amount you have.

unless you already did

[heady smelt]

I do material atlas ln stuff i know i wont modify, like clothes from a single outfit

The hair or body i know i will change it anytime soon so i keep those separate to avoid headaches

[ivory sluice]

The order for what is say is

The renderer requests to draw x material on the screen

-The material uses some shader

--The renderer sends the vertex data of the mesh containing the material to the shader

---The vertex shader is executed for every vertex on the mesh using the material, in here the polygons take performance, can be unnoticeable or a lot

---All output vertex data is stored

---The rasterizer maps the triangles on the screen and tests the depth to guess if it should replace the current pixel on the buffer or not, this one kinda affects perf depending on the polygons but not that much

---If it does, then the fragment shader is executed for each pixel, interpolating the vertex data of the triangle between the three vertices

---When the triangle is finished rendering, then it goes back two steps on this list and keeps going until it finishes all triangles

-After writing it all on the buffer, it check the render queue priority and calls to draw the next material

And so that's why i think draw calls, materials, polys and shaders go under the same category

[marble rain]

to a degree yes. but the reason why i wont count polygons into it is more or less because of the fact that you can have a billion polygons and still only cause 1 drawcall. obviously that one drawcall will take alot longer to render due to the insane amount of polygons

[heady smelt]

You cant have more than the 32 bit limit, thats a computer's hard cap on everything

Lmao

If you have read/write disabled the poly count is literally that 32bit limit

[marble rain]

eh no

32 bit isnt the limit

[charred pawn]

What would be the best way at reducing the polygons of an avatar with 245450 polys 🥲 tryna make it pc/quest compatible or at least so quest users can choose to see

[marble rain]

all through it was a example. a billion polygons is obviously outright not possible in terms of computing in real time

[marble rain]

put it in blender. find out you can reduce

or use decimate

[heady smelt]

Use vrc quest tools and watch quest users crash when you enter an instanc3

[marble rain]

but it might not provide a desirable effect

[heady smelt]

(Im joking)

[heady smelt]

Decimation on body 💀💀

Goodbye shapekeys!

[charred pawn]

Whats that 👀

[marble rain]

hence why i said dont lol.

unless you know what your doing 😄

reducing polygons is a lengthy process if you do it the proper way.

[charred pawn]

I have no idea what i am doing aside from my goal lmao

[heady smelt]

A plugin that converts an avatar for quest, but the poly count will be the same

[charred pawn]

Hmmmm

Interdasting

[marble rain]

you might need to get some tutorials from youtube on how to do polygon reduction

[ivory sluice]

Decimation should be done for uniform meshes, you can try unsubdivide or removing edge loops manually
But at this point i accept anything that optimizes your avatar, i prefer a decimated avatar than a 200k polygon mesh cluster

[marble rain]

100% lol

majority of those avatars sadly just have to many polygons making a simple shape

[charred pawn]

Nods head yes and smiles

[mint topaz]

ill point out that angel doesn't have much unity knowledge, but i will point out that youtube will help

[charred pawn]

^^^^^

[mint topaz]

removing edge loops will take time, but its something you can 100% do

learn what they are, which isn't hard, then see what you can do in removing them manually

[mint topaz]

basically the first part of this sentence is very useful for your case, theyre both fairly simple - it just takes time

especially for your avi

[heady smelt]

Like the time where a "D" letter avatar had 340000 polys

[mint topaz]

its a droning process

[charred pawn]

Waht

[mint topaz]

what

[charred pawn]

340000

On a letter

[mint topaz]

why would the letter D have 340k polys

[charred pawn]

☠️

Bruh

[mint topaz]

how do you even get to that stagee

[charred pawn]

Makin me scared to look deeper into this avatar

[mint topaz]

itll be good practice for you

[heady smelt]

I've seen avatars that would make the vrc devs themselves cry

[charred pawn]

🥲

[mint topaz]

the more you do, the easier itll be to do it again in the future

afterwards you can look towards atlasing your materials for further optimization if need be

i say 'if need be' but in reality it will 100% help with performance

[charred pawn]

But if the first project is a nightmare that is unsolvable by normal means

[mint topaz]

your project is more "oh theres a ton of shit" rather than unsolvable

its going to be very annoying to clean yours up purely because of how much crap your avi has on it

but if you want to get started, its a decent way to try

[charred pawn]

I'll buy you mcdonalds if you fix it with magic

Just snap your fingers and make it happen

[heady smelt]

I remember the time when a single shirt in my avatar had 30000 polys (Shirt rpped from a game)

[mint topaz]

i can decimate it for you if you want everything to look awful lol

i say that but id rather not xd

[mint topaz]

oof for vrchat purposes lul

but yea

3D tech is interesting stuff to get into

[charred pawn]

I wish aiko could see the horrors of which we seen

[heady smelt]

I like ripping stuff from games and then adding it to my avatar

[mint topaz]

and optimizing models via reducing subdivisions / removing edgeloops and cleaning up topology / retopology all falls under 3d shit

its a slippery slope if you like it

[heady smelt]

What did you see

[charred pawn]

Animations do not like this avatar

[heady smelt]

I never decimated something but i want to make a fallback version of my avatar

Ill look it up myself when i get back home

[mint topaz]

tldr:
its an easy way at reducing polygons
it will make your topology ugly

theres a good meme for this, let me look it up

[heady smelt]

Just dissolve vertices lmao

Ez

[mint topaz]

yea right?

[charred pawn]

I'd easily pay someone my last 6$ to optimize it for me ☠️ idk much and always have a 4 year old buggin me 😂

[mint topaz]

lol

https://twitter.com/i/status/1589233638238871552

Blender Renaissance (@b3d_Renaissance)

Markiplier reviews topology

#b3d #blender3d #3d

Likes

3237

Retweets

457

▶ Play video

Twitter · Nov 6, 2022, 12:30 PM

@heady smelt behold

[charred pawn]

😂

I need mark to explain unity to me

[ivory sluice]

I once saw a bloke flexing on how he has an avatar that can bluescreen your pc or brick it (i doubt it but just in case), he even said the avatar name, unfotunately you can't report individual avatars on the website so i just let it here

He has like 50 multi accs so bans don't work for that kid

[heady smelt]

Spheres should have the same topology as a Football/soccer ball

Change my mind

[mint topaz]

b r u h

[heady smelt]

Bruh

[mint topaz]

i hate that

[mint topaz]

but yea- anyways

i personally enjoy 3d tech stuff, since i also do it for job stuff lol

[charred pawn]

If i cant reduce my polys i shall increase them and create detriment for others!

[mint topaz]

but if youd like to get into it, i highly recommend it

its a good skill

[charred pawn]

Master plan

😳

[heady smelt]

A friend made another friend of mine replace the whole coolingnsystem of his pc because the avatar made the fans of the pc spin so fast the fans broke and hit the water cooled tubes, causing leaking 💀

[charred pawn]

Wth ☠️☠️☠️

I thought fans were set to fixed speeds

[mint topaz]

you can overclock some stuff

[heady smelt]

I wonder how the fuck the pc didnt shut off instead of making the fans spin so fast

[charred pawn]

All my stuff is overclocked

[mint topaz]

yea i would be seriously concerned

[charred pawn]

All my fans are constantly at 100%

[mint topaz]

normally thatd force your computer to just stop but

[heady smelt]

He told me the fans were malfunctioning so that maybe explains it

[mint topaz]

even im impressed

[ivory sluice]

Fr i really hate these kids, they download and promote sketchy apps and malicious stuff that is just made to f up other users in game, he even goes around like "yea if someone messes with me i'll have their whole dox leaked", idk if that's true but i can believe it knowing how many malicious apps he said to have

[mint topaz]

oh

yea that

[charred pawn]

Mans got a helicopter pc

[mint topaz]

its stuff like this which makes me really just.. furious really

because i love seeing peoples process and creativity

especially when it works

from blender / maya -> unity / unreal, for vrchat or otherwise

[charred pawn]

Dox aint hard ngl

[mint topaz]

people can come up with outstanding things which is awesome

[heady smelt]

We all heard through his mic how the fans were spinning 💀

[charred pawn]

I can code and stuff better than modelling in 3d

[charred pawn]

Dammnnn

[mint topaz]

@hybrid mulch cease

[heady smelt]

Im in the middle, im not the best but i kind of know a bit of everything

[mint topaz]

coding is a really useful tool

[ivory sluice]

If i told you how much me and many other users want this kid out of the internet

He got to the point that he can now crash and annoy other users on a specific world and not get kicked because he threatened the world creator with all this sh if he ever banned him from his discord server or vrchat world

[mint topaz]

can help with some rigging for like, maya and stuff, the initial setup

OR

you can make really nice shaders

do you use c# or what language?

[mint topaz]

what the frick

im sorry but the lengths this child is going through to just be an annoynace is

mindblowing

[charred pawn]

Who

[heady smelt]

At that point call the authorities 💀

[charred pawn]

Just lemme hack them lol

I'll make every file on his pc meatspin

[mint topaz]

angel, have you ever been interested in shaders

[heady smelt]

I gtg, was nice talking to yall

[mint topaz]

until next time aiko

[charred pawn]

Byeee aiko

[heady smelt]

Yup, bye

[charred pawn]

And yea

Wdym interested

I like things that make objects look better at low cost of performance

[mint topaz]

you can unironically make some really nice shaders if you can code decently

[charred pawn]

I can take my coding knowledge to make shaders?

[mint topaz]

of course! 100%

[charred pawn]

I mean i guess that is possible

[mint topaz]

oh my god i need to introduce you to shaders

[charred pawn]

👀

[ivory sluice]

If you know c you are good w shaders

[mint topaz]

yea

you can make the most unique things ever

[charred pawn]

Ouu

[ivory sluice]

Unity shaders are codes in shaderlab, that is hlsl, that is c++, that is just c

[mint topaz]

if youve ever been to those shader showcase worlds, most of them are coded!

[charred pawn]

Oh so thats why i can open them in visual studio as code

[ivory sluice]

What you need to know mostly is vectors and maths in general

[mint topaz]

like uhh.. shaderfest, that has really cool examples of stuff

indeed

[charred pawn]

Well i do know those lol

[mint topaz]

excellent

[charred pawn]

I haven't done too much for about a year now but it wouldn't be hard to get back into lol

[ivory sluice]

You also have the source code of unity shader on github if you doubt something

[charred pawn]

So i could have been doing this through code the whole time with proper information ☠️

[mint topaz]

pretty much

lol

[charred pawn]

I figure coding is "harder" and thats why it wasnt spoke of much

[mint topaz]

this is something that @candid estuary showcased in #shaders for instance

you can make something beautiful

[charred pawn]

Prettyy

But how big is the asset 🥲

[mint topaz]

its mostly because theres a whole other chnanel just for shaders

whether they be node connections / coding

well

you get 60fps+ on quest so

🤷‍♀️

[charred pawn]

Do the people here sell their assets or give em out for free or just showcase?

And da helll

[mint topaz]

a mix of free / showcase. paid assets are normally purely through gumroad / booth / personal web stores

[charred pawn]

Gumroad is where i got greek avatar ☠️

[mint topaz]

lul

[charred pawn]

Evil

😂

[mint topaz]

i always check the info of assets on gumroad before i buy 'em

[candid estuary]

Note this is quest compatible and uses 0 textures :)

[charred pawn]

gasp pretty shader person

[mint topaz]

LIKE this is GREAT

and omg trix noticed me lol

[candid estuary]

Discord ping momento

But yeah with limitations comes creativity

Flip normals. Go ham

[mint topaz]

y e s

[charred pawn]

I'm about to throw this paid asset in the recycling bin 🙃

[mint topaz]

F

[marble rain]

lols

[mint topaz]

ill normally buy a base, but i prefer not to get premade avi's

with a base, i at least can control everything else that goes on it

and you know, optimize as need be if necessary

[marble rain]

just understand 99% of avatar bases are likely extreamly poorly made in terms of how optimized

[charred pawn]

Where does one aqquire a good base model then 🤔

[mint topaz]

model your ow-

[marble rain]

eh hard to get to.

most of the times you either need to pay someone to optimize it heavily.

or delve into it yourself

cause it can be a long process

[candid estuary]

become archeologist. throw some bones around make picture. model your avatar after that. creature 👍

[marble rain]

or you need to know people that know people etc that made a optimized version

[mint topaz]

this is a solid plan

BAHA

[marble rain]

can u tell me how many materials the current avatar has Angel?

[mint topaz]

mans boutta say 100

[charred pawn]

Neither of you have seen an optimized base model paid or free that you would recommend?

[mint topaz]

idk, i have my own 🤷‍♀️

[charred pawn]

Lets not talk about that, how about this weather eh 👀

Theres a lot lmao

[marble rain]

well just say it lol 😄

[candid estuary]

I mean, according to VRC everything is unoptimized (for good reasons though)

[charred pawn]

sigh lemme open the project 🙃🥲

[candid estuary]

Theres real good ones though

[mint topaz]

its good practice to optimize things for vrchat, but obviously not everyone will do that since not everything is vrchat

but saying that, it should be normal practice to at least ensure proper topology, verts are connected, subdivisions aren't bloody insane, etc

[charred pawn]

Rate the greek avatar from 1-10

[mint topaz]

and while i love adding edgeloops, you cant just leave it as is-

[charred pawn]

😂😂😂☠️☠️

[mint topaz]

if i could see the wireframe, ill give you an answer

lul

[charred pawn]

Uhhhh can i see that properly in unity

Cuz remember the mesh was uhh

Fucked

To say the least

[charred pawn]

Linkz 👀

[mint topaz]

theres a wireframe mode in unity

its called the draw mode menu

[charred pawn]

Why there no vc in vrc dc

[mint topaz]

🤷‍♀️

you can just post a screenie whenever

[charred pawn]

Tru

Is there anybody here we could add to a group to maybe look at how god awful greek is optimized? Figured other people could have different perspectives and im useless so 🤷‍♂️

[mint topaz]

eh just post it here

people will talk about it 💀

[charred pawn]

Oh i know ☠️

Alright what all do yous need

A screenshot of the wiremesh

And texture count?

[stray tangle]

pro tip, use ShareX if you want to be able to record short videos/gifs of stuff

[stray tangle]

at least the full performance stats in the SDK for a start

[mint topaz]

i would prefer it in blender, but yes, wireframe and shaded wireframe

and the sdk stats

[charred pawn]

Okay give me a year to find them all 🥲

[charred pawn]

@mint topaz

Halp

Literally dont know where anything is

Idk why im being told keywords but not location when we know i am completely oblivious to unity

@stray tangle

Anyone?

This is why i refuse to learn any of this lmfao

[stray tangle]

the performance stats is the Builder tab in the SDK window in unity

if you've uploaded an avatar, same menu

[charred pawn]

...could've just said that

[stray tangle]

for the wireframe change your scene view from Shaded to Wireframe and Shaded wireframe

[charred pawn]

Like that?

[stray tangle]

christ the amount of polys lol

[charred pawn]

Yeaa

That's what im tryin to decrease

I want it to be able to be seen by quest users

[stray tangle]

...

that is not the only thing you'll need to fix to be visible on quest

there is a lot of stuff that needs to be done

if you were to pay someone to do it, depending on how much functionality you want to retain, that's a 100-200$ job easy

[charred pawn]

Lmao

[stray tangle]

for your quest version, you should start by removing every disabled accessory

any outfit toggles, props, etc

all gone

and then you can start thinking about optimizing the rest

[mint topaz]

good luck 💀

[charred pawn]

Gonna use quest tools and break everyone's lobby 🤷‍♂️

[heady smelt]

Good luck

Lets see how VRCQuestTools manages to make your avatar uploadable to quest

[charred pawn]

It probably wont lol im not actually gonna try

Quest users can just cry about seeing a fallback avatar

Get a good pc, not my problem anymore 🤷‍♂️

That's where im actually at

[heady smelt]

I mean its good to atleast try

[charred pawn]

It will either 1 be abysmally bad, 2 ruin others game or 3 most likely wont be able to transfer all the assets properly due to the way its staged

[heady smelt]

Just try it

[charred pawn]

😐

Didn't work

[heady smelt]

Welp

[charred pawn]

Too many physbones and i tried removing them all except my clothing, still too many assets

See 🤷‍♂️

At least my assumption was right, guess im learning something at least

Any quest user i see imma tell them to airlink or dont talk to me 🥲

So like 90% of vrc from my experience

[candid estuary]

100% recommend sharex. I have it set so it automatically puts images in my clipboard, opens recorded video folders and have a shortcut for scanning QR codes and picking screen colors

Its wild

[craggy basalt]

When I was making my avatar, the baked normal is very visible on the seams and I am wondering what I may be doing wrong to get this result

[proper grail]

its just barely cut off, but is the idk image type set to non-color?

[craggy basalt]

thx, it was not I will test out now

[proper grail]

also feel free to use like a 512 margin to bleed the edges of the uv out

[mint topaz]

i like how low poly your unironically low poly model is btw

it is very low poly

[craggy basalt]

my computer has 4gb of ram

[mint topaz]

oh god

understandable work sir

[buoyant holly]

that's so low-poly it doesn't even have any joints

[mint topaz]

lol

[craggy basalt]

who needs joints when you have bump mapping

[craggy basalt]

that fixed the issue

[buoyant holly]

it's not going to animate well without any joints and probably not going to make your frame rate better making it even more low-poly than Quest fallback avatars

[craggy basalt]

im doing this for the meme

[stray tangle]

@craggy basalt make sure those edges are not marked as sharp

when and edge is both a seam and a sharp, it still shows up red like a seam

[high igloo]

It can both be low poly and animate well, just know that you should put some priority on deforming areas when it comes to bone and edge placement :)

[craggy basalt]

Tbh I'll probably adjust the topology to make it semantical because all I did was spam the decimate to 0.02

[onyx harness]

open chrome with only 128KB of Ram, see how well it does

[buoyant holly]

Star Fox certainly didn't run at 60 fps

[onyx harness]

plus one vrchat model from gumroad has more polygons than all of those games put together

[silk elbow]

Hiya people! I would love some help to upload a quest version of a pc avatar i have… im real bad at unity

[craggy basalt]

ive never actually finished a model before

but, i seemed to have made another mistake

[hybrid shale]

people back then use every memory to their fullest

[craggy basalt]

When I mirrored the normal map there is a visible seam

(To get more detail in the texture)

[hollow root]

All the materals are still there, they never combined to one, Look what it did to my model!?!, it ruined everything, I clicked to save atalas to, I followed the tutorial, I have nrever done flipping anything wrong, or did I forget something?

[hollow root]

Liar!!!, because I have already changed generic to humanoid and it still say that?!!?!?!?!?

[stray tangle]

@hollow root did you ever unpack your avatar at any point?

and can you check which unity version you're using? (top of the window)

[hollow root]

Ver 2019.4.31f1, and Vrchat Creator Companion

[ivory sluice]

your avatar won't be used as humanoid if you don't put the animator avatar on the animator component, check if it's here

[stray tangle]

@ivory sluice it's automatic if the avatar was never unpacked

[ivory sluice]

yee but just in case

because i also see a removed animator

[stray tangle]

you should basically never unpack avatars to begin with, so if they did do that I was going to tell them to drag the FBX in again to keep that reference intact

ah good eye

[hollow root]

I swear to god I did add animator component, and did everything, and nothing happened, each time I leave rig, the avatar changes automaticlly to generic, and the repairs go in vein

[stray tangle]

did you click Apply after changing it to Humanoid

and are there any Import messages in the rig tab

you need to expand that section if there are

[hollow root]

I think I just clicked done

[stray tangle]

yea, that does NOT apply changes

[hollow root]

I clicked apply when I went to configure again, and the warning doesn't go nor anything changes, it's like some sort of hallucination/confusion

I just did everything😡 😡 😡 😡 😡

[hollow root]

Wait, how to unpack avatar?, wait, I would try to figure out

[stray tangle]

no, DON'T

[hollow root]

There is a demon in the project, and he's on to me just, kidding cause there is nothing else I can do

[stray tangle]

don't unpack your avatar

[hollow root]

I actually unpacked the prefabs

[stray tangle]

well then, no wonder why nothing is updating properly

because by unpacking it you break the link to the original file

so changing import settings will have no effect

you'll need to drag the FBX from the assets into the hierarchy again to have the correct version

and then never unpack it

[hollow root]

It already never worked, even before I unpacked the prefabs, it never worked at the start

[stray tangle]

because you changed your import settingsafter unpacking

so you never actually fixed the model in the scene

[hollow root]

I am so sorry because I ask too much, but how to avoid and notice that you changed import setting?, I think I changed it without noticing, is the changing import setting in blender?

It says the Rig type: Non-Humanoid, even after I clicked enforce T-Pose and I clicked apply right before I clicked done, no matter what I do, nothing gets fixed, is there anyone online reply to me?

It's Okay I finally did it, thanks Scared

What the heck am I suppose to do now?, should I select the warning, it puts me in this below

[onyx harness]

Your knee is below some other object in your hierarchy. That’s all it’s complaining about. You can move it up by dragging it if it’s unpacked but if your model is still packed, which it should be, you can use control ‘+’ to move it to the top of the list

[onyx harness]

These pings with np message. Just keep the message.

[hollow root]

Use control ‘+’ in keyboard?, cause I dunno how, click ctrl and +?, just tell me what I suppose to click

[onyx harness]

Yes, select the object in the hierarchy and then click ctrl then +

[hollow root]

The only way to click + is to click shift and then =

[onyx harness]

Okay the click ctrl then =

Same difference

[hollow root]

I clicked and nothing happened

Should I select only one?

Yes it is, don't need to reply

I just pressed ctrl and + and this time nothing happened, my keyboard seems be glitched, even my laptop's keyboard is also glitched

[onyx harness]

If it’s packed, I don’t know another way to move it up. I use default unity keybinds, I checked the shortcuts and for me that moves objects

[stray tangle]

it's a non-issue, it won't stop you from uploading

[hollow root]

For me the objects sometimes moves and sometiomes not, now when I click nothing happens, but it works suddenly, and suddenly not, as if my keyboard has it's own personality, just kidding, no need to reply, don't need to say something

[hollow root]

I finally put the knees on the top, thanks whever you're called

[hollow root]

I think I have to move the knees above the armature model itself

[stray tangle]

...what? no you don't

[onyx harness]

Huh

[stray tangle]

you also don't even need to really worry about that warning

it's a warning, not an error

[proper grail]

unassigned verts behaving as expected

[craggy basalt]

Probably going to redo the entire thing starting with the high poly model

[craggy basalt]

BTW, where is the sauce?

[proper grail]

in blender, edit mode, select -> by trait -> unassigned verts. it should highlight most of the head and itll be easy to just assign 1.0 head vertex group to it

[craggy basalt]

Oh OK thx

[craggy basalt]

im so sad, because the new model i made isnt able to parent to an armature

with automatic weights

[proper grail]

Sometimes if its a buncha smaller pieces itll fail. Separate by loose parts, do all of the parent by auto weight at once, and rejoin all the mesh bits

[craggy basalt]

i exited blender so when it would run faster, but when I came back the textures were gone : (

[ivory sluice]

Always save your textures from blender, these can be deleted from the memory at any moment on the project

[velvet pike]

What would be a good or acceptable amount total triangles for a mesh that is paws with fur covering arms and legs? Havent done much optimising yet so the total is about 30k now..

[buoyant holly]

for a pc Avatar that's pretty good

[craggy basalt]

https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/avatar-performance-ranking-system

[amber hemlock]

This user puts crappy minecraft models on all his quest versions. I feel like this is mean spirited. I didn’t even know I was sending this message to quest users when I was wearing it. Shouldn’t this be against the rules?

[mint topaz]

youre kidding right

this is probably as tame as they get

honestly for interpretations sake i doubt people would actually get insulted from something like that

and if they did they'd voice it

i wont condone insulting quest users but this is more satire than anything

[empty viper]

caugh u should condone insulting anyone caugh

[ivory sluice]

Doesn't sound very unoptimized
But imo this would kinda count as hateful messages, just not very hateful compared to what is considered an actually hateful message
Tho it would be cool if there was a report option for avatars that use malicious content on different platforms like with crasher avatars to crash the other platform users and things like that (but more hateful)

For me it sounds like someone dislikes quest users and wanted the world to know

[empty viper]

or maybe it's simply someone that dont have the required skill to do good things with low poly and thats he's way to present he's excuses to the people who cant see he's work :))

[mint topaz]

fair

[ivory sluice]

Sounds like a good reason too

[mint topaz]

its normally unwillingness to optimize for some people

big shrug moment

[ivory sluice]

Perhaps these "just get a better pc lol" people

[mint topaz]

its really not an excuse to make PC avi's unoptimized af lol

like

i was debugging someones avi that they claimed had an optimized, quest version

but

it wasen't even a mesh at that point

it was so deformed from decimation that

i dont even know

it was just some stuff in the scene view

the original avi was 1.2 million poly's with like 60 material slots amongst most things

[ivory sluice]

When physbones got announced as 10x more performant they tought that meant they could put 10 times more physbones on their 300 dyn bones avatar

[mint topaz]

lmao

[amber hemlock]

I think blocking people’s fallbacks for your insult is crossing the line. If you don’t want to make an accurate quest version let people show their fallback. It’s what they are for

Going out of your way to do extra work just to insult someone like, why?

Everyone uploads very poor to quest. That PC version would have been good rated on quest, he did extra work just to NOT do it

[mint topaz]

true

am i misinterpreting what 'condone' means?

condone = accept?

[amber hemlock]

Condone: “to accept and allow morally wrong or offensive behavior to continue”

[mint topaz]

o

oki, i thought i was using that wrong in this context

[amber hemlock]

Yeah to condone is a bad thing ;p

It’s almost always used as “we do not condone”

[mint topaz]

ahh i hate english 💀

[craggy basalt]

A lmao. I was wondering if I could make minecraft steve in vrchat

[onyx harness]

The worst ones are the public models that are perfectly wholesome on Pc and then straight up crashers on Quest. They're set up like that on purpose to reduce the Quest population in the lobbies.

There's also always more Quest users on vrc than Pc users so this Pc elitist mentality thing some older vrchat users have is just laughable.

[pseudo obsidian]

Had that on pc once. For me, it was essentially nothing; no bones, no tris, no nothing.

Meanwhile, the few quest players were getting pissed asking them to stop. I still don't know what the avatar was, or what it's contents were.

"what I'm not even doing anything! laughs meniacally." - dude doing it.

[onyx harness]

"If you had a pc you wouldn't be having this problem"

[pseudo obsidian]

Ah, a staple. It takes me back.

[mossy pike]

Just finished sculpting and now the worst part, retopology ;-; anyone know any easy tutorials for good retopo? Cause doing it vert by vert is so tiresome (And no I haven’t found anything good on yt )

[stray tangle]

you can use these modifiers in order to help:

• mirror (enable clipping)
• shrinkwrap (target normal project, outside surface)
• subdivision (1 level)
• shrink wrap (target normal project, outside surface, small offset)

start with a simple quad and position it on the face to start

you should also enable snapping (top middle of viewport) and set it to Face, with Project individual elements enabled

[mossy pike]

what does shrink wrap do

i got a plugin to help retopo with blender

it automatically added shrink wrap but i didnt know what it did so i removed it

[stray tangle]

essentially projects the mesh onto the base mesh

you should probably be using it lol

[mossy pike]

ah nvm

its active

then its on the right track

im not very good at it, all i do is look at tutorials

but thanks for the help man

[stray tangle]

I would start by creating the loops around the important areas, like the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, etc

and then slowly building out the contours of shapes, eventually connecting them together

[mossy pike]

took me a milion fucking years but this should be good enough to make blendshapes without any weirds clippings right? i have no idea how to do good facial topology and just went with google and tutorials

[hybrid shale]

damn fine work,nice topology

[mint topaz]

youve followed those tutorials well

[calm spade]

Could use a bit of smoothing, but the flow seems great!

[hybrid shale]

the only issue i see is some of the loop arnt too nessary(around the face mask)

and the nose loop didnt flow nicely to the side of the face

[stray tangle]

looks great! as some others mentioned, you could probably dissolve a few loops

and smooth out some other areas

[mint topaz]

by using a mobile shader, quite literally

youre going to need to switch your shaders to mobile/lite

quest cannot use any other shader @heady smelt

huh

uh

you dont need blender?

just do this

youre in the wrong place

click your avatar in your scene

youll then see the materials on the right

do you see those

right now theyre vrm, correct?

alright

first though

show everything

you have more errors

yes

alright

once you do that to everything, youre good to go

👍

screenshots please

you can adjust shader settings

expand the arrow next to the shaders

adjust as needed

possibly? i dunno

you wont be able to match mobile/lite shaders 1-1 with pc shaders

nope

black emission = nothing lights up

youll need to make your own emission mask

if you download or have any digital art software, its very easy for your case

easy then

you can just grab your eye material:

1. create a new layer justincase
2. paint everything except what you want to light up, black
3. paint what you want to light up wight

wight?

wite?

you get it xd

your eye tex ye

yea just incase

i like layers incase i do something stupid

yea

its an emission mask so dont worry

yea

now plop it in as your emission mask

wdym

no as in why are they pink

[stray tangle]

@heady smelt set your emission color to white, and then put your main texture (albedo) into the Emission slot. it's an emission map, not an emission mask. the difference is that a map determines the color of the emission at every pixel, while a mask determines if it should glow, and if so how brightly

note: if the color is dark, like black, it has the same effect as a lower emission value

by putting your main color in the Emission slot, you're effectively saying that you want the red eye to emit red light, and the blue eye to emit blue light

[mint topaz]

nice

[stray tangle]

you can control the emission brightness by the emission color field

you should keep it a grayscale value so that you don't change the emission color

for example, white for full bright, gray for less bright

[mint topaz]

i dont really dable with quest shaders so im not sure atm

[stray tangle]

you can't do any transparency on quest

you'll need to delete that part of the mesh in blender

yes, you can do that

but you'll still need to delete that part of the mesh

[warped apex]

I'm trying to optimize my avatar to be at least a Good rating for quest.
One of the requirements is 2 or less material slots.
My avatar has 3 material slots, I think because my avatar uses 1 and I have 2 toggleable objects that each have their own slot.
Unity shows that all 3 meshes have their own material, even though the textures are all shared.
Is it possible to have only 1 material that all 3 objects use?

[buoyant holly]

you're going to have to combine the objects into your main mesh and use like bone scaling to toggle them if you wanted it only be one material slot

[warped apex]

Thank you 😁