audio sources should be OGG apparently
#avatar-optimization
heady smelt
do it
honestly it's always helpful to get more videos and explanations
when you give info and reasons for why's and how's, people are more willing to care
will all those new rules about optimization
i guess the general FPS will go up in about 6 month 👌
sudden jewel
Unity re-encodes audio to OGG by default
heady smelt
oh nice
gleaming yacht
heh yeah
sudden jewel
it sets it to quality 5, which is tbh a bit high
OGG degrades really gracefully
you can go as low as 3 or so and not lose quality for ambient sounds
birds chirping, wind, etc
karmic condor
Unity also re-encodes any uncompressed audio to 24bit48khz audio
surreal topaz
I think Noenoe is pretty decently optimized
Forward pass, ForwardAdd and meta. I think meta is unused except during light bakes, and ForwardAdd is just an additive pass added per realtime light, which is pretty standard for shaders
heady smelt
when are you going to reveal the good stuff to us, tupper ? 👀
surreal topaz
Considering recent developments, it's a fair bet that it'll be optimization related
Avatar performance border indicators for example
And probably good SDK documentation too
sudden jewel
We're pretty focused on optimization during this development cycle.
You'll find out soon though
oops i meant 
sudden jewel
I mean, if you believe that and then we deliver, that sounds like underpromise and overdeliver 🤔
which is a pretty great policy imo
works for me
heady smelt
i'm just shit posting as always
i'm really happy that we got this much info in such a short time
it's really nice
also the maximum dyn bone transform allowed is currently 30 bones and 1 colliders
would it be possible to have 50 dyn bone if there is not colliders used ?
broken relic
das allota bones
heady smelt
well, from what tupper said
if you have 30 dyn bone and 1 collider, it will roughly be similar to having no collider and 60 dyn bone
so if you sacrifice that collider, shouldnt the limit on the dyn bone be around 50 ?
i dunno, it kinda make sense to me
surreal topaz
I accidentally yeeted a foot while merging skirt bones
heady smelt
rip
karmic condor
Be hard core and have the multiple of dynamic bones to (colliders +1) be less than 30
surreal topaz
Actually it's rekt because I merged the bone lmao
heady smelt
just mirror the intact leg
surreal topaz
Wonder if there's a way to weight all unweighted parts to a specific bone
Skirt now controls foot, nice
heady smelt
you can use a modifier
surreal topaz
Help
heady smelt
to transfer weight from a vertex group
to another bone
kung's video explain that
he is doing it to transfert neck weight to the head bone
heady smelt
Would be nice if people made tutorials on dynamic bone optimization
shut sequoia
they do
shut sequoia
shut sequoia
oh, he one of those?
heady smelt
you've been asking for days
Yea
we told you how
a lot of people did
Takes too long because the cats tool doesnt work with more than 10 bone groups
shut sequoia
Just merge them manually?
heady smelt
No
do it manually with "merge weight"
Too much work
we told oyu that already too
this fucking guy
shut sequoia
Wait, so you want a guide to teach you how to do a thing you don't want to do?
shut sequoia
Kuro (send e-girls)Today at 4:22 PM
Would be nice if people made tutorials on dynamic bone optimization
gets guide
"Wait I don't want to though..."
patent leaf
heady smelt
Skirt and cloth is low resource so im not even going to bother with that... Its the hair that is the main problem
shut sequoia
skirt and hair usually
So, again, you want a guide, which you have, but you don't want to fix the issue?
heady smelt
especially long hair
shut sequoia
I'm not even trying to give you trouble, I just don't understand.
heady smelt
Yea but there arent any tutorials on skirt optimization
🤦
There is a showcase
Not a tutorial
shut sequoia
What? A Showcase?
heady smelt
Hello I need some help with an avatar.
So I have an emote that spawns a little duck in my hand.
Someone bragging about a 2 bone dynamic bone skirt
Here's what it's supposed to look like.
shut sequoia
Bragging? That's a pretty good guide.
heady smelt
However in game its either blinding bright or just colorless.
shut sequoia
I've watched it, haven't tried my hand at it though.
heady smelt
It shows the weight painting, how its set up... It's a good video
Like this.
Is there a known reason why it does this?
I've tried changing the textures a bit but it still does the same.
calm spade
This doesn't seem to be about optimization ?
heady smelt
I'm just trying to fix and thought this was help board.
patent leaf
heady smelt
or even #avatars-2-general
since it's not related to an animation
just a fucked model/shader
visual dock
Alright i've got one question, i normally keep my bone rigs very simple and eleminate bones all the time but what is the "cause and effect" of say, leaving a few face bones intact?
For an example lets say 6 bones, what does that efect performance wise or add stress to and how much?
(I've read over that vrc doc and didn't quite understand that section of it fully so is why i'm asking, its out of curiosity.)
sudden jewel
Extra bones that aren't rigged, animated, and not affected by DynBones don't really have an affect on perf
visual dock
ah, i see. It just made me wonder was all since i normally make bones to do my blendshapes then delete them and wondering if something like that if shortcuts were taken would effect performance.
Thanks for the answer, tupper.
sudden jewel
Sure thing
shut sequoia
been having this problem recently while atlasing. I'll have something named "Stocking Red" then something called "Stockings.004" which would be a stripe in it stockings or something
When I atlas them, the colors just merge, which I'm guessing is because it's the same material/texture just with different color settings
Here's a video, keep forgetting to turn off audio recording so it has music in it just as a heads up. https://puu.sh/C2Z3I/5a47cac078.mp4
distant forge
Might be a nice feature to add in the cats atlasing plugin: it should generate some 1x1 (or 2x2) color squares in the corner of the texture map and sample those for solid color materials
shut sequoia
Hm, I guess I see what people mean by discoloration now. When I atlas my hair, the colors mess up like crazy
distant forge
The color tints are a bit more challenging. It could be a good use of the vertex color channel but that will require shader changes to use properly
Oh that could be an error in material settings make sure color is white in blender. In unity is it fine
shut sequoia
oh good point, lemme check it out
I'll just uhhhatlas the whole thing into one material and check unity
nah, looks the same in unity unfortunately
distant forge
So the model probably depended on reusing one texture with two different colors on top. If it's a detailed texture one way to atlas it without doubling the texture is to use vertex colors but that requires a shader that supports vertex color
bold cedar
hey there, quick question. how big is the performance impact of using a lot of textures in a single material?
for example by using occlusion maps, details maps etc.
shut sequoia
pls someone know the answer to that, i'm curious too
safe swift
How do disabled objects or models with dynamic bones/skinned meshes get treated when it comes to approval? Would they take less priority over something that is on by default? (for instance like dancing/animated avatars or objects that are animated or have dyn. bones for extra coolness (or whatever else reason)) For instance I have a model that has 0 dyn. bones by default, but go up to 100 when enables dance, or I have another avatar that switches clothes through emotes and is multiple skinned meshes that way, or some wiggly props that have to have dyn. bones, but otherwise are under 50 with that being off
shut sequoia
we gettin that unity Unity 2017.4.15f1 LT optimization guide now ? :3
winter kernel
Not this soon xD
shut sequoia
i know, just messing around lol
smoky lantern
So will there be a VRC made dynamic-bone-like addition in 2017?
One with interactivity?
I think I saw a ghost of that mentioned at one point.
heady smelt
not until they talk about it in an official announcement
robust lava
I think they have to ask the original creator for his permission
sudden zodiac
To create their own dynamic bones? No as long as they don't "steal" code
shut sequoia
do they need to for any reason?
heady smelt
better optimization ?
more control over their own code
can adapt or add more colliders type depending on what the community ask for
pine flame
heady smelt
usually it's a good idea to have your own solution for stuff
you have way more control and can better adapt it to your own uses
it's one of the main reason they dropped playmaker to make their own scripting/node tool
bold cedar
thanks @heady smelt
heady smelt
np @bold cedar ofcourse it starts adding up a little, but if things share the same materials it won't have to load all the textures all the time and you can batch most of the drawcalls into a handful
fading rapids
I don't recommend using Poiyomi's shader. Here's a few of my reasons, and why it's not actually as optimized as people seem to think.
shader_features, and multi_compile:
First of all, unless something is meant to be changed at runtime, then you don't need to use "multi_compile"
The downside of the way this shader is using these is that you almost single-handedly end up making Unity error out. Unity has a limit of 256 keywords. Each shader_feature and multi_compile counts as one, multiplied by the amount of keywords that you add to it.
For instance : #pragma multi_compile _OVERLAY_OFF _OVERLAY_ONE _OVERLAY_TWO _OVERLAY_THREE takes up 4 different keyword slots.
In the entire shader, you have 32.
If you've ever looked in the console in VRChat and seen errors about "Shader Feature Keyword Limit reached" It's most likely due to this shader, and a few other select shaders.
Unity has a limit of 256 of these, and Unity internally takes up around 60 of those slots.
This means not only is the limit 196, this shader single handedly takes up a little over half of what Unity internally does. That's ridiculous.
To add to that, if you're using the "Transparent" version of the shader, and the opaque version on your avatar, you're now taking up 64 slots.
I don't think any more needs to be said on why that's not great.
If a shader is written properly, it doesn't need to take up 32 keyword slots, much less 64.
For comparison, my XSToon takes up only 7, and even that's something I'm trying to slim down.
So, next time you see your console spamming "Shader Feature Limit Reached!" You know at least one of the people you should be looking at.
Poiyomi - you don't need to skip a few calculations for rim lighting, nor do you need to skip calculations for specularity, or any of that, really. Most of your shader features are pointless. They should only be used when you need to cut out large, expensive chunks of code. Nothing you're cutting out is large or expensive, aside from the texture samples - which also don't need to be a multi_compile, but instead can be made into a shader_feature instead.
heady smelt
thanks for the explanation, appreciated
spring merlin
also lerping on a toggle value is mad cheap, saves the keywords too
sullen vector
Well, from what i know people usually use it because the GUI is easy to understand and use even for people new to unity, tho it's good to point that out.
surreal topaz
That's a downside to super-configurable shaders like those
If they're not implemented correctly
surreal topaz
Optimized
This used to be this:
Basically, I erase at least 50% of the rows by merging them upwards. If there's too many skirt bones after that, I find three close-by "columns", reparent the left and right columns to the center bones respectively, then merge them all into the center.
Gives good and optimized results with no manual weightpaint work required.
heady smelt
using the same method as rokk
from this https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/459913635989553169/513383180867207175/unknown.png
and it still looks really good with dyn bones
it may be a good idea to give those bones some blur t the end if you have hard red edges
safe swift
i did pretty much exactly the same, first or first two rows into hips and then leave 1 bone, and get rid of every 2nd row
I'm still interested how do disabled skinned meshes and dbones get treated, as my world is mostly about avatars having some little different things from eachother and all about some kind of animations
heady smelt
yes because you decimate too much
thorn ginkgo
Yeah, the automatic decimation in Cats doesn't necessarily work well for all avatars. Try separating by materials (remember to join again afterwards!) and decimating each part individually.
bleak swift
wait
bleak swift
the decimation modifier is in a new update of cats ?
bleak swift
where i find it ?
heady smelt
good job
surreal topaz
Took me 2 days lmao
Just merging bones on like half my avatars and atlasing 1 or 2
Oh I think the google sheets thing is acting up, I submitted my world and saw it appear in the list, now it's gone from the list
heady smelt
rip
bleak swift
i have used the decimate in everything in my avatar
and i still with 22,036 faces ._.
safe swift
you need tris not faces
bleak swift
really?
heady smelt
yes
heady smelt
10'828 tris to go
bleak swift
and now for some reason
i have used the decimation of cats and my avatar don't have any parts missing now
sudden jewel
@surreal topaz almost enough D: you've got a few issues still. I'll DM you.
surreal topaz
Oof
surreal topaz
Yeah, I saw
karmic condor
Good news, I made the tutorial on optimizing audio that I said I would make. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stPh3N3SH5Q&feature=youtu.be
surreal topaz
Alright, think I finished optimizing all my avatars
For real this time I hope lmao
I counted the transforms and it should be fine
karmic condor
that's more than 60 bones though
heady smelt
well
sudden jewel
You could merge all 60 of those into maybe 3 bones total and get the same effect.
karmic condor
you got this!
heady smelt
do i just keep the ones at the top
sudden jewel
Nah, you'd choose 3 bones going down the center in a single chain, parent all of the bones in those "sections" to those three bones, then use the Cats "merge to parent" option
that's the easy way
something like that
Sadly 60 dynbone transforms is not "optimized"
3, definitely
sweet mason
I use 3 bones for hair or other thing. no need for more
sudden jewel
@heady smelt Shift-right click the bones you want to merge to the parent, then click this.
Alternately you can select the parent bone, press Shift-G, click "Children", shift-right click the parent bone to deselect, then press that button.
tired badger
I'm starting my stream where I'll be optimizing for the next 2 hrs. Gonna get this girl down to like 4 dynbones or so.
If people want examples or ask questions in chat. Am I allowed to post link?
Eyetracking and everything to show what i'm doing
sudden zodiac
in #shameless-self-promotion definitely, but here not sure
tired badger
Gotcha thanks
karmic condor
Any way to preserve blender albedo data with the new atlas tool?
tired badger
That deduction. Hnnggg
heady smelt
looks good
tired badger
Got a pretty damn good system down now for this .
heady smelt
you also parent them to the legs ?
heady smelt
yes
tired badger
they parented to that which is parented to the leg bone
so i can do physics on dress still.
heady smelt
nice
heady smelt
i reduced the bone count
how many bones do you have now ?
more than 3
LOL
in total ? just for the hair ?
less than 200
iuno
its fine tho
shut sequoia
its not fine if you've still got more than 50 lol
tired badger
Bringing it into game now.
Wish i could scan my own stuff so I can compare to previous
shut sequoia
ayyy
heady smelt
well
shut sequoia
damn she has like no bones now
shut sequoia
who said?
tender sundial
heady smelt
pardon ?
i tested a massive particle animation in vrchat beta 2017
no lag
doesnt make any sense
but okay
shut sequoia
did you test 20 people in the same room with unoptimized avatars while a mirror is on/
heady smelt
dyn bone isnt the same as particles
shut sequoia
if not t hen your test shows nothing except t hat your particles work fine alone
heady smelt
if you have more than 50 dyn bone, you are still not optimized properly
@tired badger just a little question, are they parented to the original leg bone or to the leg bone used for FBT ?
visual dock
I cringe when people say they have over 25-30 hair bones total...
I try to keep mine at 15-20 at best for the extremely detailed ones or i'll have no more than 10.
main horizon
Same. Because when a dynamic bone hits a collider, all heck breaks loose. And I definitely don't want to slow other people's performances down.
karmic condor
Brought 50 bones to 29, so nice
visual dock
My most recent model has a dynamic bone root parent of 9 bones and 1 collider in my neck for my entire hair atm.
I think my skirt has 12 bones. maybe 14.
One thing i should ask though is if anyone can give me a few good collider examples for hands.
I feel the way i do it isn't accurate enough.
sudden jewel
@heady smelt Big particle simulations don't accurately represent the load players put on VRChat. VRChat 2017 will definitely have lag, especially if you've got badly optimized avatars.
Remember: dynbones is the devil
@main horizon Actually DynBone colliders affect perf even when they're not hitting a bone.
tender sundial
though it does skip a bunch of logic if they're not hitting
I noticed when I was reading dynbone code that it was dividing by a square root and wondered whether they could get better performance by switching it out for fast inverse square root, or whether that optimisation doesn't pay off anymore these days
there's also a bunch of places where they calculate some stuff that could totally be cached
like square-of-sum-of-radii
polar bolt
Also a little extra step regarding dynbone colliders - 0 length is better as the collision checks are simpler for spheres than capsules (there's a check in the code if length is 0)
tender sundial
yes
sudden jewel
If you want, try doing some deep profiling of the DynBone code. You can do it with what you've got 😃
tender sundial
yeah ok, this paints a different picture. the biggest cost is their failure to reuse vector objects during subtraction
unless using the profiler has made .NET unable to optimise that away, which happens all the time in Java but I dunno about .NET
tender sundial
chipping away at this does improve performance but only a bit at a time, and I gather vrchat might have already improved whatever I'm looking at anyway
how can mere subtraction and addition be slowing it down this much lol
but anyway, about 30% of the total update cost for me is doing the colliders, and the rest is outside the collider stuff entirely
marsh trail
Cloth interacts directly with the mesh, dynamic bones affect only the bones, collision-wise cloth seems more precise, but its applications aren't that vast
Performance-wise it comes down to how detailed the mesh is (polygons) for cloth and how many bones are used for dynamic bones
sudden jewel
@tender sundial Its refreshing seeing someone actually digging into deep profiling on dynbones, haha
But now you know our pain 😃
smoky lantern
I cringe at clipping meshes more than I cringe at frame loss at this point. But maybe the acceptance of frame loss is a learned helplessness. 😏
I used to worry about my avatar's level of optimization until I saw the wall of shame that is the Public World listing. I'm glad I've never been that bad. But I have a few models that would be ruined by the guidelines as they are. I'm glad you're doing something about the Hoppous with over a hundred meshes and the MMDs with a thousand dynamic bones, but it's still stifling to someone that was already being considerate. As long as you aren't imposing these guidelines onto the users just trying to make more out of a private avatar than a toony shader MMD, I guess it's okay.
Not that 10 materials = 10 draw calls anyway. 10 materials can still be 30+ draw calls.
Adds up quickly when you want models to be affected by lighting in a convincing way.
sudden jewel
The primary concern is DynBones and DynBone colliders. Skinned meshes comes third, and materials fourth. All important to optimize, but if I had to choose an order, that's it
visual tinsel
The bones and polygons on a SkinnedMesh?
marsh trail
I think they're honestly just guidelines, optimization has always been a big deal (even in 2017 when people thought avatars close to 20k were abominations since they thought such a lesser amount lead to lag), they've been mentioned as guidelines in the past up to this point, however i do hope they do stay like they are, guidelines if they turned into prerequisits for making an avatar... well that certainly wouldn't be pleasant for a large portion of the community, especially those that are already very conservative when it comes to lag inducing entities
jovial grail
Well, it looks like I have to rethink some of my decisions https://puu.sh/C3Hom/97b11ded22.png
In my defense, I hang out in rooms with 2-3 people at most
sudden jewel
What plugin thing is that?
marsh trail
If it's for personal private use, nobody can yank your chain over it, but that's alooota bones .-.
sudden jewel
"Collider affected transforms" isn't a thing.
The only thing that matters for colliders (generally) is the number of components, since each component = one collider.
ohhhhhh wait
I see
Sorry i'm tired
smoky lantern
Silly Tupper.
jovial grail
It's my own tool and that counts how many transforms are affected
Since you can exclude some of them
sudden jewel
That's neat. I've been thinking of whipping something up like that but I hate creating UIs
you should put that on a Github somewhere 
jovial grail
check #event-system-sdk2
sudden jewel
oooh. let me.. play with this a bit.
and scroll through the source to make sure you're not doing bad things 🙃
jovial grail
It's likely that there are off-by-one errors tho because I'm not sure how transforms are counted
Like I've noticed dynamic bones don't seem to work if there's only one bone in the chain
smoky lantern
Lul
sudden jewel
I can help you with that, its pretty easy.
If you're off by one per script it isn't a huge deal. but root is counted.
marsh trail
Oh neat new tools :o
sudden jewel
Oh. You don't have a license on this. You should establish a license.
Otherwise I can't link it places.
smoky lantern
Adding end length to dynamic bone scripts is counted, right?
jovial grail
Let me see
sudden jewel
Ideally a lot of this is functionality we'd like to add to our SDK.
smoky lantern
I do that for my tongues every now and then. Or ears.
So if I had a script with one bone in the chain but added an end length of 1, would that simulated bone be counted?
marsh trail
Doesn't the end lenght sorta just, extend affected bones' lenght?
Pretty sure single bones don't work out so leaf bones are useful in those cases, although i tend to just make pivot bones for the appropriate sections
sudden jewel
jovial grail
👀
sudden jewel
smoky lantern
My understanding was that it simulated additional bones. I can see it affecting the weight of the bone on the hair.
marsh trail
Das some good spaghetti
sudden jewel
But yeah anyways. Like I said, your call on licensing. We'd likely implement our own stuff, we don't like copy-pasting things that users provide-- although we appreciate the insights. The existence of this tool (and other tools like it) indicate that our own SDK is lacking... which it is
marsh trail
Huh... i mean correct me if i'm wrong then, i've always seen it that way but i may be wrong
smoky lantern
Maybe it's a stretch to assume end length is that powerful. I thought it added additional simulated bones that took a portion of the weighting from the original end bone.
But that is probably a stretch.
sudden jewel
Unsure, might be worth digging into DynBone's source to see what its doing.
The tooltip seems to imply it adds a bone at the end of each chain
smoky lantern
^
marsh trail
Hmm, alrighty then
pallid abyss
Thanks to Tuppers advice I feel more confident and comfortable with blender 8D yay!! I am so proud of myself!
amber hemlock
General unity question if I have some assets imported like dynamic bones, but my avatar isn’t using them, they are not contributing to the download size of the avatar once I upload it, right?
worn lantern
@amber hemlock Correct.
If an avatar isnt using anything else in the project, then it won't contribute to the upload
amber hemlock
Because I noticed if I have multiple avatars in the scene, and another avatar was using dynamic bones, and I want to export the package of one avatar it includes all of the dependencies all of the other avatars in the scene
worn lantern
Thing is I have like 50 avatars in one scene and the file size is still only dependent on what is attached to a specific avatar.
I really need to clean up my scene
amber hemlock
Sweet thanks
heady smelt
How do I merge bones?
sweet mason
in cats there is an option to merge the bone(and the weigh) with its parent bone
granite finch
I just made this feature request on VRChat's canny.io
would be nice if its even possible to do
shut sequoia
This one's a bit rough to be honest. I feel like it would lead to hostility as opposed to "hey man, might wanna fix that." Maybe just preventing use of these in public worlds, or giving world owners an option disallow them when they create an instance, forcing them to be gray or red avatars instaed? I only know of 2 doing that currently. A few have stated that they might as well just sell avatars instead since they're, currently, not checked..
and in the case of commissioned avatars. there's nothing they can do about it since there's currently no incentive for commissioners to optimize avatars
granite finch
valid concerns yeah
I just want something to help me when i start gettgin 10-15 fps and then have to spend 5-10 minutes playing hunt-the-witch while getting dizzy/sick in VR
i don't get dizzy/sick when things are running 30 or above
VRchat gets super glitchy when it starts chugging that slow too, selecting people to turn of ftheir avatar does not work half the time
and you have to keep cliking on them over and over until the menu finally shows up
most of the time I have found that it's non VR users that never even know their avatar is killing VR users
becuase poorly optmized stuff impacts VR users much worse
like the non-VR people in the room are running at 70 fps while me and all the other VR users I am asking what their frames are are sitting at 15-20 holding upchuck away in a corner
sometimes we just run away and leave to a different room/world
but there are lots of times where we don't want to leave cause we like what's going on there
marsh trail
Yep, can see where you're coming from, VR is far more hardware intensive compared to the standard desktop mode, both implications will however lead to hostilities either by or towards not-so-well optimized avatars and their "creators", and may infact not motivate users to optimize (which i assume is the intention) but just stop altogether, it's double edged blade, it can both go well or go south, realisticaly speaking, people will definitively be more strict and constantly check for "who be thou that laggeth me gameth?" and possibly just resort to blocking them altogether at times
I agree it would be very nice to have statistics over what is being used and how much it affects in terms of performance, but i can still unfortunately see the negative implications of such aswell
There's already alot of people that straight up block people if they think a model is lagging them, even if it really isn't, and not just blocking them via the safety menu, straight up get out of my face and cease to exist untill i unblock you which does leave some feeling pretty... y'know, if you put such a system into play however it could actually sort of lesser the effects of such, as much as it could monumentaly excalate them
And preventing their use in public worlds... well that's another can of worms altogether, it'd not only make ehm' feel horrible for their creations to be blocked by others (which inherently is what it would do) but would also alienate their content to private areas
But this is just my opinion on the matter based on what i've seen and experienced myself from sep-oct 2017 up to this point
unreal jungle
I'd like to at least see how many materials and meshes someone has
Also i think most of the poorly optimized avatars are a result of the creator either not knowing or griefing
marsh trail
Don't take me wrong here though, i'm all up for more details on how performance intensive things really are, as i'd like some myths to be confirmed and/or debunked altogether, but i can again, also see the relatively negative implications of such
unreal jungle
When i was first starting i wasn't sure what i was doing and i made some pretty inefficient avatars
But with some elbow grease (and a little help from shaderforge) most of my recent stuff is only 1 or 2 materials
Although i have one in the pipeline that's gonna have to use 3...
sweet mason
I start with game asset and not mmd model so when I switch with more complicate avatar I wantes to keep my avatar as simple . I never pass the 20k and use few material
marsh trail
Some avatars are just more complex honestly, there's a norm that's usually followed, as the name states is considered "normal" however some avatars require more than the "norm" applies to, and i'm afraid that those cases, as optimized as they may be, and as well designed as they may be, they might end up being alienated if more restrictions are applied or if people stick too much to the norm
I personally joined VRC due to the freedom it allowed for users to upload whatever they wanted within reason, however it's turning more and more strict and alot of people like myself aren't really fond of that fact, limitations are a major detriment for me per example, as that literaly inhibits ones own "freedom" in said case
I'm not saying the norm is unacceptable or any shenanigans like that, but if you're too strict about it, alot of people will suffer over it, and may even be put out of it entirely
So all that i ask, is honestly, be reasonable i suppose, if it's not too much of a performance hit on your side, don't necessarily alienate somebody for not following the norm, this again, is all my own opinion, based again, on my own experiences with people and what i've seen or heard people do, it is in no way aimed towards starting an argument, but it is my honest opinion
shut sequoia
I don't think 10 materials and 50 or less bones is really a detriment at all, what scenario do you really need those 20 materials? WHy not weight paint the bones? Having a bunch of colliders definitely won't help either, i've seen hair clip through avatars with 10
marsh trail
At the moment, it is not, but more restrictions are being applied as patches are rolled out, those are what i'm talking about, at the rate that it is indeed going, it wouldn't surprise me if those numbers dropped extremely quickly
shut sequoia
the limits they've set seem very reasonable. if anything, to go forward with the idea of displaying avatar info like that it would probably better help to just put a symbol on the social menu if the avatar fits within the performance parameters set, and one that displays if it doesn't. Not above the name or anywhere near it, but on the social menu.
What's being restricted? And why would they drop when we're going towards a huge patch that will make them have less impact on us?
if anything, them raising would make sense come the 2017 release
marsh trail
Also those limitations are for avatar worlds by the way, i haven't seen any hard-capped information about avatars have said limitations
shut sequoia
Most likely because those are a lot easier to monitor and check quickly as opposed to personal ones.
People will likely go to personal ones via commissions and self uploads to try and circumvent that which doesn't make much sense since the logical progression is implementing something to monitor private avatars
as far as I know, they pop in the world ID and it spits the avatar info out
marsh trail
I think they're implemented since they're public-accessible and could in one way or another be used for ill-intentions
Easier monitoring seems... farfetched
shut sequoia
yeah, for the popular worlds there's more people using them than just that somewhat-unique avatar someone might personally have
marsh trail
Also mic, not to sound condescending in any way, shape or form, but how long have you been in vrchat exactly?
shut sequoia
At this point something like 10 months
marsh trail
So you've gone through the "creator crisis'" i assume?
sweet mason
creator crisis ?
shut sequoia
Not sure what that is actually? Like lack of inspiration for a new avatar?
I've only ever uploaded my own, but I don't quite get what you mean
marsh trail
No, things straight up not working, then being hard-capped like the audio sources per example
shut sequoia
Hm, besides trouble atlasing, not really.
marsh trail
Huh, i could've sworn it happened atleast less than 10 months ago...
Remember ONSP's audio component?
shut sequoia
i've only ever had audio on two avatars, but they worked fine. most trouble I had there was messing with the distance so it wasnt too large
marsh trail
Basically audio was extremely quiet, i found a workaround by messing with the audio rolloffs, the audio rolloffs were always free to mess around with, and i know such for a fact as i had tested them, extensively myself, but now they're hard-capped per example
That's one example of the "creator crisis'"
It's much more manageable now, even if the rolloff is completely capped, but hey, it works
grave crystal
the falloff is pretty terrible for anything not a voice though...still wish they'd remove that
marsh trail
It wouldn't surprise me if materials, dynamic bones or hell, even meshes got hardcapped, regardless of the change to unity 2017
As backwards as it may sound, after all that i've seen happen, it really wouldn't surprise me if it did happen
grave crystal
I can't remember the last thing added for avatar creation, only removals and restrictions. It can get frustrating...
marsh trail
Eyup
timber blaze
the unity 2017 update adds stuff
grave crystal
did I miss what the update adds for avatar creation?
timber blaze
custom render textures probably being the coolest thing
since you can have stateful shaders without needing cameras
marsh trail
Per example, anybody that used controllers for animations got scott free when legacy got nailed, so those people never complained about it, so if you've never gone through something, you won't really think anything bad can happen
Regardless of there being alternatives
timber blaze
maybe people shouldn't have used an animation system literally marked as "legacy"
marsh trail
It was used for loops, relatively simple, unity still supports it up to its latest version
timber blaze
but you can still do that
grave crystal
fair point, they also should have given a warning instead of "anything made this month now has to be converted"
timber blaze
really easily
marsh trail
Again, there's alternatives
Doesn't change the fact that those that used it, didn't apreciate it being nailed
I understand the reasoning behind it, but all i'm saying is, things got removed and are being restricted, new things may come and that's great, but i fear that more will vanish than will appear
But as with all things, time will tell now won't it?
grave crystal
there's a lot of history of removals and restrictions...and as much as I'd like to believe it'll get better, nothing has shown movement in that direction.
I'd imagine the custom shader renders are caused entirely by the update to 2017 and not them actually working towards it specifically
timber blaze
they are, but it's still a fantastic new feature
marsh trail
Anyway... that's enough of this as i need to go now, again all i've stated was based on my own experiences, hope i didn't offend anyone with my explanations, but yeah, i just hope it gets better, some new additions would be nice, the community really drives this game home to be honest
Have a good one peeps, happy avatar makin'
heady smelt
sweet mason
chose another model lol. that one is way to broken
wary relic
That his fault though for throwing the avatar descriptor' on all bones
amber hemlock
I have been given a friends avatar and asked if I can fix it for them, I have no idea how it works but apparently it uses legacy animations. I don’t know anything about them other than the yes they do not work anymore. Is there a tutorial on how to fix it?
sweet mason
put the animator or animation on the bone. something like that
patent leaf
@amber hemlock #animation pinned messages, first one could help
amber hemlock
Thanks much. Sorry for wrong channel.
patent leaf
How do you check that? 🤔
shut sequoia
viewpoint dragging💞
karmic condor
Yes, I just got it working and it already saved my butt
patent leaf
Ty
tough warren
I have 2 skinned mesh renderers and tupper can't stop me
patent leaf
sturdy socket
!ban Urnsheme
surreal topaz
@marsh trail there's no reason to use legacy for looping animations
I'm just not very happy about the fact that they keep removing stuff but not offering anything in return
People overused legacy for sure. I only ever used it for blinking and world objects, although it had a few more non-exploit uses that are now gone
visual scroll
I'm not quite sure if I understand dynamic bone optimization well
if I have 2 bewb bone + root bone and 6 colliders:
3 + (6 * 3) = 21
1⃣ That's how it counts?
2⃣ Will it be more optimized if I use 2 separated dynamic bones without root bone?
3⃣ If I add some hair bone without colliders will it work like that:
1 + (3 + (6 * 3)) = 22
or like that:
4 + (6 * 4) = 28
surreal topaz
@visual scroll excuse me but
6 colliders?
Generally, you can assume
Every transform affected by a dynamic bone script is +1. For every collider this transform responds to, add +1.
With 6 colliders you will probably not get your avatar approved for putting into public
So in your case it's 3 + (3*6)
Same impact as 21 transforms
For just some breasts
visual scroll
i gave up on publishing avatars month ago, so that's just for making private avatars at least bit more optimized
surreal topaz
If you wanna make stuff more optimized, minimize the amount of colliders
Having just 1 collider on either your hand or middle finger gives similar results and only a fraction of the impact
marsh trail
I mean sure, there's no reason to use legacy animations for looping as there clearly is a viable alternative, but it was still very easily accessible even for relatively new users, myself included from back then
Overused? Definitively. Completely useless? Not entirely.
I'm "fine" with ehm being removed for a better cause but i'm not that happy about the fact that another thing is down the drain that i used alot myself
surreal topaz
Yeah, same
Arguably, legacy was harder to use though
The main use case for legacy is painlessly toggling animations on/off
marsh trail
I mostly used them for constant idles myself, be it a tail wag, pre-made animated blinking or even an ear twitch
Most of the time all in a single animation file all looped together properly
surreal topaz
Oh yeah, I guess
That's still possible with an animator on each individual root bone, or just on the armature
Minus the blinking which you'll have to put on the Body
marsh trail
And at times making it really easy to disable blinking when using certain face shapekeys
surreal topaz
Yeah, that's the main reason I pushed that blink prefab out the door so quickly
Since it's not exactly easy to set it up manually, but with a prefab it's a 3 second job
marsh trail
There's a blinking prefab for that?
heady smelt
yes
rokk made one
you just need a "blinking" blendshape
and you can use the provided animation file
marsh trail
Huh, that's pretty neat, my latest avatar just straight up doesn't blink, guess i subconsciously still reject the notion of it being long gone, even though there is an alternative, i just kinda refuse to learn it, since i feel like i'm being pushed towards it, irrational, i know, but that's unfortunately how i feel towards it
marsh trail
Many thanks
surreal topaz
"Blink" blend shape is needed actually
But you can change the animation
I just import the package, add an Animator to my body, then assign the BlinkController controller
And if I have to disable blinking in a gesture, I copy the keyframes from the provided SuspendBlink animation
heady smelt
you can always modify the animation file if you use another blendshape for "blink"
surreal topaz
Unfortunately, Unity's F2 system is dumb
surreal topaz
And only allows you to alter the path, not the actual value or property
So you can't F2 Blink into Wink for example
heady smelt
yep, it's very annoying
marsh trail
Quite unfortunate...
heady smelt
it's just a small annoyance that's really unnecessary
solid bane
oof 😂
heady smelt
because I cant post it in #avatars-2-general
this channel isnt for you random image dump
its not random
upload your picture to imgur and post the link to the appropriate channel
amber hemlock
@surreal topaz wait public avatars need approval now?
surreal topaz
Yes, check the sheets in #public-world-request for examples @amber hemlock
Avatars are automatically checked for the amount of dynamic bones on them for example, as well as materials
agile gust
well public worlds with avatars get checked. the avatars themselves when made public dont
surreal topaz
More than 50 dynamic bone transforms could mean your world is denied
agile gust
30
surreal topaz
Private worlds and avatars not in worlds are fine still
agile gust
its 30 dynamic bones
amber hemlock
Hm... what stops people from putting in a private world portal in a public world that is later updated to contain all their public avatars 🤔
agile gust
not much but they do at own risk of a mod going yeah dont like this and banning that account from uploading
agile gust
just same as you can also update avatars after world is made public but really doing it at own risk end of day
amber hemlock
Warning at 30 dynbones seems ridiculously lenient lol
agile gust
to be honest its colliders people really need to stop putting everywhere
amber hemlock
I’ve never read the dynamic bone scripts. If you even can; I have no idea how efficient they are
agile gust
not very efficient but other than cloth its all we have right now for that kind of dynamic movement
amber hemlock
We have rag doll don’t we?
agile gust
would be great long term with the new unity a vrchat official version comes in that is alot more focused on vrchat's setup and say allows them to add to security features with them
surreal topaz
@amber hemlock it's not that lenient tbh
This isn't about script counts
This is 30 bones affected by a dynamic bone script anywhere
agile gust
which in a lot of models with any long hair is pretty much the hair alone
surreal topaz
Yeah
amber hemlock
Yeah that’s pretty lenient if you ask me
surreal topaz
Skirts are a bigger issue too
@amber hemlock I'm assuming your models don't have skirts
Or dresses
amber hemlock
You can do whole skirts with only 2 or 3 fun bones
surreal topaz
Or they do, but have little hair bones
agile gust
you can eventually but not all skirts like that and some may require a complete redo of weight paint
surreal topaz
Yeah you can technically do that, but it's a pretty big quality loss
Compare texture atlasing, which is lossless and can even be automated
amber hemlock
At that point just use a cloth for the skirt
surreal topaz
Nope
amber hemlock
Instead of 30 dyn bones
surreal topaz
Can't do that either, too many skinned meshes.
amber hemlock
What’s the limit on skinned meshes
agile gust
1
amber hemlock
Oh fancy
surreal topaz
Besides, cloth is buggy, laggy, and doesn't fit all skirts
amber hemlock
Interesting that props can’t be skinned now though that’s gonna get awkward
agile gust
cloth on long skirts ive found is pretty much a no go. like only skirts ive ever seen really work with cloth are the Shimakaze skirts
surreal topaz
Apparently you get more leniency with regular mesh renderers. Even though that only encourages more lag tbh
@agile gust yep
amber hemlock
That means you can’t have a single prop that follows more than one bone. Right?
surreal topaz
Yeah, so I guess people will now split up the meshes, increasing draw calls.
amber hemlock
Since if it’s not skinned it just follows its parent
agile gust
well tbh this is just public world avatars
amber hemlock
Something like say, a stretchy accordion wouldn’t work
surreal topaz
Props can be skinned if they're disabled by default
But my cloth sleeves are rip
Interestingly, dynamic bones are still counted if disabled
amber hemlock
Oh ok that’s fine then
agile gust
yeah props arent hit as hard since they arent there 99% of time anyway.
amber hemlock
1 always on skinned mesh per avatar sounds fair, any more need custom animations which might be disabled by people’s trust settings so that avoids always-on animation abuse to an extent
Or at least discourages it
surreal topaz
I think you can go up to 2 skinned mesh renderers though, so that at least allows cloth
surreal topaz
Some guy on reddit got mad about the optimization limits lmao
surreal topaz
I think the collider and skinned mesh renderer limits could use a few tweaks.
How about a max of 2-4 dynamic bone colliders, but every affected transform counts as an extra bone? This means you can have two colliders on your avatar, but you have to keep the affected bone count extra low. If you have 5 hair bones and they respond to colliders on your left and right hand, that will count as 15 affected transforms.
Because right now I can have 50 dynamic bones that respond to a single collider, but I can't have 5 bones that respond to 4 colliders.
Similarly with skinned mesh renderers. We can have one renderer with 10 materials, but not two renderers with 2 materials total.
Perhaps the limit should still be ~10 materials total, but every extra skinned mesh renderer counts as an extra material, or perhaps even two. This means 2 skinned mesh renderers with 1 material each counts as 3-4 "materials". To offset the overhead of an extra skinned renderer
still perch
you should optimize any
heady smelt
still trying to find excuses to not optimize ?
amber hemlock
1 texture, 2 materials, No dynbones... only thing bad about my avie is vert count and the fact that the single texture is 4K by 4k
Any automatic, lossless UV packers?
Preferably with the option to downsample specific islands
amber hemlock
It feels needlessly huge though lots of unneeded detail and empty unused space
still perch
i mean if you can pack it the same in lower then sure..
amber hemlock
Oh I can’t pack at all. It’s just what cats autoatlas spit out.
That’s why I’m asking if there’s any tools to pack for me
still perch
that was more a general thing "if you can pack something into a smaller texture without any downsizing then sure"
amber hemlock
Ah yeah I could move stuff around without downsampling anything for sure. It’s just I’m ocd and moving UV’s around tends to blur textures a little no idea how to do it losslessly
Like I assume I’d have to move the UV’s in perfect pixel-length distances
jovial grail
There's surely better solutions than dynamic bones
It saps cpu resources regardless
Wouldn't a gpu solution work better?
heady smelt
it use the CPU
jovial grail
VRC and unity are usually bottlenecked by cpu, afaik
VR does use a lot of gpu but I'd think with it being unity it still has more free resources than the cpu does
heady smelt
help plz
anyone?
this isnt related to optimization ?
also google it
yh i just need help
but thx
karmic condor
Can’t help you the text is illegible
heady smelt
nvm
jovial grail
Are you trying to ads VRC_AvatarDescriptorEditor instead of VRC_AvatarDescriptor
Also that's not how you add components. Click add component in the inspector
safe kayak
im doing something wrong
when i go to upload
my upload thingy wont create the camrea for vrcsdk
:/
heady smelt
not optimization related tho
safe kayak
which one would it go in though
avatars isnt for advanced users
so its either this one, mmd or rigging
tired badger
Just released a tutorial with some advanced stuff in regards to optimizing Dynamic Bones. https://youtu.be/hqobredT-sc
calm spade
tired badger
It's longer then it took to pin. You sure man :P/
grave crystal
it's about even if watched on 2x speed though 😛
tired badger
Alvin and The Chipmunk VRChat Tutorials
grave crystal
Often times I wish I could make some of them reach that point (4x speed)
mossy solar
they limit the bones but they won't limit meshes and draw calls -_-
or rather materials I should say
tired badger
Maybe I should have used this for tutorial cause relevence.
shut sequoia
@mossy solar they do though
50 DynBones, 2 DynBone Colliders, 10 Materials, 2 SKinned Meshes
dark dirge
xps models have the most bones you will ever see
static sky
Lord of the Scuffed
smoky lantern
You can't sacrifice the xps boobs. They are the top tier. Please no.
silent slate
ahahahha
surreal topaz
I wonder, would it be possible to use joints to decrease the amount of dynamic bone transforms a bit?
Suppose you have a skirt with like 16 columns and 4 rows of bones. Normally that's too many
But what if you drop one "line" of either empty game objects or just regular ol' bones down the middle? Like a line of bones going from your hips straight down toward the ground
And then only apply dynamic bone to this extra line of bones, move the rest with joints?
This is an avatar optimization channel, your question does not seem to be about optimization of avatars.
@pallid abyss
Literally the last messages in #vrchat-general-2 are about the server issues right now
heady smelt
Help?
cant upload my avatar Oof
Upload servers seems to be borked, might take some time to fix
yeah hope so
Is it many others that have that problem?
vocal river
everyone
heady smelt
ok thx for the info
plush star
north sand
unactive
sudden jewel
I've added a new section to the bottom of the Avatar Optimizing Tips that includes recommended counts/numbers.
shut sequoia
They say if you've been a good optimizer and you leave warm prefabs and atlases, Tupper will leave an extra collider in your stocking
calm spade
That would be counter intuitive 🤔
still perch
The numbers look good 
twin atlas
VIDEO PENDING
jovial grail
👀
misty jay
the hair keeps falling off in the back yet its moving the way i like and there are no other bones that I can exclude so any ideas what I can do? QnQ
calm spade
How is it attached to the head ?
misty jay
i put the dynamic bones on the head. I am not that good at unity so I have most likely done something wrong
calm spade
Oh, that's a lot of bones
You should probably check the last video pinned
You'll be able to reduce the bone count by a lot with some weight painting
Joining your meshes might also prevent things from floating away
misty jay
ohh! Thank you so much for the quick reply dear, highly appreciated! ❤ ^^
woeful crescent
Why so many bones in just the head?
jovial grail
Hair usually has the most
When in mmd it would give more possibility for movement
And mmd doesn't care about optimization because it's not realtime
karmic condor
Siblings move the same so all those bones can be combined and it would move exactly the same
jovial grail
For vrc yes, for mmd with rigid bodies it would be like putting dynamic bones onto everything separately
lost stirrup
DID they increase it from 30 to 50?
smoky lantern
Those prerequisites for avatar worlds is actually lenient enough for some of my more complex avatars. I'm pretty relieved actually.
Especially the skinned meshes part.
That's gold. I appreciate it.
knotty mortar
l,pk
shut sequoia
30 is suggested, 50 is the max
surreal topaz
Auto weights are king now
smoky lantern
Auto weights?
The only practice I'll need to adjust is the way I handled colliders on my hands. It bothered me seeing a gap between what I was touching and my hands so I used two on each hand for fidelity/immersion purposes. But I'm sure I could get a decent effect with an empty with the collider component if I position it properly and get the right length/radius.
I've only used the above with a couple models anyway. It should be an easy fix.
Anyone know whether IK scripts have a significant enough impact on performance? Probably a hard or silly question, but I have a model with a lot of pistons taking advantage of Aim IK to make them work properly..
surreal topaz
IK is pretty CPU-intensive
smoky lantern
It is?
still perch
Yes.
smoky lantern
My understanding was that if I wanted to rig up an entire model with Final IK, it'd be more performance friendly than VRC's current IK. But I don't think we're allowed to do that anymore, thanks to a few bad eggs ruining it for the bunch (which seems to be the overall trend right now).
If I could do that, I probably wouldn't need a bunch of individual scripts, but that's okay.
surreal topaz
@smoky lantern a few things
The game already uses Final IK for their IK, that's the reason it's even allowed on avatars.
As far as I know, the game uses the VR IK component for your avatar, and Full Body Biped IK if in full body.
It uses a few Limb IK solvers if you don't have finger bones mapped(?)
We're still allowed to use all the Final IK components. The "bad eggs" you mentioned were people using the "footstep triggers" on the VR IK component, which allowed you to do some malicious stuff.
Those footstep triggers have been removed, but the components are all still perfectly fine and useable.
A lot of people only used Final IK for footstep triggers, which is why people keep mistakenly saying "Final IK is removed"
There's no way to properly do your own hand and head IK right now. And even if there was, doing it yourself would almost certainly not be more performant.
smoky lantern
A more optimal IK is the topic though.
distant forge
I feel like this became a bit off topic
smoky lantern
Silly.
distant forge
(People were basically using that footstep trigger exploit to swap out your own avatar's animator with a custom one after load.)
smoky lantern
Oops, edited it.
surreal topaz
If they only swapped out their animator, the exploit would probably not have been fixed
They were also spawning any object and unparenting objects from their avatar
I've seen people spawn their own world inside Presentation Room
Anyway, a more optimal IK is probably more up to the devs. One of the devs (I think hackspanner) has already said that he'd like to see customizable IK at some point in the future.
Hope that makes its way into the game soon
I heard they're already reworking the current IK anyway
agile gust
is there a quick script or something i could run in unity that shows how many bones affected by dynamic bone components etc. i can remember seeing one a while back
heady smelt
check the documentation about optimization
it's pinned here
and there is a link to a tool that does that
at the bottom of the doc
surreal topaz
Friend of mine never joined his meshes
Now his world got denied and he has to rework hundreds of avatars
heady smelt
nice
agile gust
wait meshes damn. can understand maybe bones lets face it 99% of us have been pretty lazy with bone merging but meshes are literally 1 click in blender
surreal topaz
Yeah
shut sequoia
I can see how people forget
But i never get past unity when i forget
But there's no excuse once you know, and it's one thing Tupper says like 100 times in his video.
sudden jewel
I've added videos to the Avatar Optimization docs, as promised. 😃 https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/avatar-optimizing-tips
heady smelt
:PogChamp:
sudden zodiac
Woop woop new tutorials from the tutorial master himself 
sudden jewel
they'd be a heck of a lot longer without the tools you and cats provide 😄 thanks hotox!
gray wing
awesome! more Tupper tutorials!! 😄
wide breach
is there something wrong with the pumkin's avatar tool? its not telling me my total dynamic bone count?
http://puu.sh/C5zXy/c0d6b04fd3.png
heady smelt
it's a bit bugged currently
wide breach
ahh, ok
heady smelt
for me, it will just make my dyn bone script stop working 🤷
wide breach
so i should remove the plugin then?
heady smelt
if it doesnt break anything, no need
wide breach
rip it broke something http://puu.sh/C5A0B/a2172f4fd8.png
heady smelt
open the console to check
heady smelt
yep
wide breach
im watching weight painging tutorials and it seems so complicated lol
heady smelt
a bit in the beginning
but you get used to it pretty fast
Just finished watching the new videos
Great job Tupper
Short, straight forward, well explained and very easy to follow 
sudden jewel
There's a few editing mistakes and a unrendered "tip" in the atlasing video that Primere didn't save so I'm encoding a new version now. it'll be up in a bit. No real appreciable changes
thanks svel 😃
amber hemlock
When sliding islands around in a manual atlas, is it possible to move in exact pixel offsets so I don’t blur the textures?
sudden jewel
G-(X/Y/Z)-number-enter
G for "translate", X/Y/Z to choose axis, number to choose pixels, enter to confirm
You might have to mess with settings to get the units down to pixel size? Unsure
amber hemlock
Thanks. It’s a different non-power of two on each axis sadly
heady smelt
will the dyn bone settings get tweaking a bit btw ?
For example, we can use 50 dyn bone max and 2 colliders, which would roughly = ~150 dyn bone transform
if we don't use any collider, should the number of allowed transform goes up ?
sudden jewel
we kind of accept the fact that 50 transforms + 0 colliders != 50 transforms + 2 colliders
its just how it do
I mean ideally you don't use any colliders because they're awful and terrible
the "i guess you can use two" is a concession
wide breach
sorry for the dumb question im still new to unity but why are coliders awful?
sudden jewel
it isn't a dumb question 😃
heady smelt
i guess there isnt anyway to check for personal avatar yet
amber hemlock
Dynbones colliders specifically are bad or are capsule collisders on avatars also bad?
sudden jewel
Basically each DynBone script checks a bunch of transforms (bones) and moves them around based on how you're moving. This is already pretty expensive due to the math involved and due to how DynBone is coded.
Colliders add on more "cost" to that calculation because every time DynBones runs (60 times a second), it also has to check if its within the radius of a collider
which is also expensive
which takes up tons of CPU time, which kills your frames
amber hemlock
I tried to imagine how dynamic bones work when I was setting it all up with colliders and all I kept thinking was wow this is a lot of crap to check it most have insane overhead
heady smelt
wasnt dyn bone bound to only 1 core ?
which make it awful from the start just because of that
sudden jewel
calling it "bound to one core" is a vast oversimplification of the problem
multi-threading something is not a magic wand, nor does it solve all problems
heady smelt
it's the best way to explain this to the average users
but i know that you can't really use more core for dyn bone
unfortunately
sudden jewel
well, there's simplifying an explanation, but then there's also simplification to the point of incorrectness
heady smelt
🤔
amber hemlock
Seems like it makes its own collision layer matrix with every bone/ collider
wide breach
ohh that makes alot of sense, thanks for the explination Tupper!
dam dident know dynamic bones ran 60 times a sec nowonder alot makes peoples computers lag badly
heady smelt
a thing to add, adeon, is that dyn bone collider are doing th calculation all the time
sudden jewel
yes, it has a max of 60, which is what most people set it to 😃
heady smelt
even when they are not actually colliding with anything
wide breach
so i bought this avatar from someone and if thats the case what can i do to remove them without msking them stay static or look bad? http://puu.sh/C5AJr/9ea007e8a0.png
gleaming yacht
Can my dynamic bones and your dynamic bones run on separate threads?
wide breach
let me take a look at it sec
sudden jewel
You could merge those down into two or three bones and be fine.
heady smelt
you could also take 3 bone from the sides, and merge them in the middle
sudden jewel
Who is selling commissions that badly optimized??!
heady smelt
the self claimed jiggle god
sudden jewel
More like "my OC'd i7 is crying" god
amber hemlock
what is the impact one one cloth vs say, 6 dynamic bones with a collider
heady smelt
i would honestly like a comparison with values about that
take like 10 dyn bone from a skirt
and then compare it to cloth component with 100/200/300/400 vertices
sudden jewel
You can profile it yourself in Unity Play Mode with the profiler open 😃
amber hemlock
Like in the hair above I just think “delete the bones, make it a cloth with a capsule on the skull”
sudden jewel
Hair using cloth is usually pretty awful.
Both for appearance and perf.
For one, they have to be a second mesh. For another, hair tends to be complexly modeled, so is usually 500+ verts.
barren jungle
cloth used on anything with 3D volume tends to make it inflate and deflate like a balloon when moving as well
amber hemlock
Yeah I only use cloth on very low poly stuff
heady smelt
well, tupper
amber hemlock
Long hair strands tend to work well but I don’t know the performance impact vs dynbones
sudden jewel
I wouldn't consider cloth an alternative to DynBones unless you've got like... <150 verts on the mesh
heady smelt
and there is barely any difference
so that's why i don't get why it's so awful when compared to dyn bone
sudden jewel
Well consider the situation in which people start swapping from DB to cloth
its an entirely different set of problems
plus, its harder to set up properly
amber hemlock
Makes sense. My cloths tend to be 20 to 100
sudden jewel
Its much easier to use DB and just optimize your bones a bit (and do some trickery as noted in the videos pinned in here)
Kareeda's video has some really clever stuff in it
as does Bananers' video
heady smelt
something different from your video ? i should check it i guess
sudden jewel
yes, the videos I provided are dead simple stuff
intended to be short, to the point, and simple
shut sequoia
"Who is selling commissions that badly optimized??! " Everyone.
Since private avatars "get around" the limits (for now ?)
sudden jewel
well the limits are intended specifically for public avatar worlds, since anyone can wear them
if I could choose to be in a room full of people wearing avatars they made themselves vs a room full of people wearing public avatars, i'll probably have better FPS in the first instance
because people take a lot more care with their personal avatars.. usually
heady smelt
nothing is said about the polys in the doc, future change for sdk planned ? 
sudden jewel
The doc focuses on things that currently adversely affect performance the most 😃
heady smelt
nice
shut sequoia
yeah unfortunately at least one world i was happy got declined plans on just distributing more packages, likely without any attempt to optimize them
but i guess there's not much you can do there. since we know they're not optimized, it's easier to just block them i guess since they typically have a watermark
wide breach
why did the the guy who made this avatar put so many bones together like this? http://puu.sh/C5BtI/e02c1a38d7.png
i understand on the hair to make it flow but here?
shut sequoia
that looks like you loaded the FBX into blender and not the .blend
wide breach
this is all i have http://puu.sh/C5BxH/7f71e57f4e.png
i dont have a .blend file
shut sequoia
ah
sudden jewel
Imported FBXes sometimes have issues with bone rotations
thankfully it doesn't really matter
it just looks dumb
shut sequoia
hitting "fix model" usually fixes that look for me
wide breach
before i continue do i need the .blend file to be able to fix the issues or would i be able to try and edit this one?
shut sequoia
I think you'd open the fbx in blender, then save that somewhere and the defautl should just be a .blend since that's what blender saves things as normally
yeah just checked and it works
So just load the FBX in, hit "Fix Model", then go to File and "Save As" and it'll let you save it as whatever and it won't overwrite your FBX
wide breach
oh, ok
shut sequoia
then you've got a .blend and you're basically free to do whatever you want from there
wide breach
sweet, thanks for the info!
safe swift
Would it be possible for a mod to drop me a spreadsheet for my ava world? Want to be sure that it doesn't get denied and doublecheck if I haven't missed anything. (Also 4 of them should show 52/54 dyn bones, but 4 are off by default/enabled by fingerpoint)
safe swift
oki, ty ❤
sudden jewel
The profiler looks at all bones, even if they're disabled-- those still count 😛
heady smelt
amber hemlock
They still are animating even if they have no vertex groups
shut sequoia
whaaat
safe swift
what i mean is that the script is disabled and it doesn't do any calculations, right?
but the profiler still takes those into account, unless they do make calculations when script is disabled
amber hemlock
Disable your dynamic bone hair, run to the right, stop, then activate your hair - you’ll see it whip the side like it would have as if it was always active, because those bones were still being simulated
The scripts are on the bones not the model
jovial grail
But scripts don't do any calculations if they're disabled
They might keep the old values from before being disabled
Otherwise what would be the point of being able to disable them
amber hemlock
I mean if you are disabling scripts ok. Can’t tell you about that, I never see people do it. Everyone just deactivates the prop and leaves the bones doing their thing invisibly
safe swift
i use it for tongue
jovial grail
Bones are attached to the armature, it's just that their additional movement gets changed
In addition to the movement from the armature
I've been thinking of making a toggle for my dynamic bones myself
Disable by default and enable when needed, instead of making a separate avatar altogether
I guess it wouldn't be very reasonable to go through each animation and check the enabled ones so they're just all assumed to be enabled
amber hemlock
Too bad bool animation toggle dsoent work on avatars
jovial grail
Doesn't matter, people have figured out ways how to make toggles
jovial grail
Just look for toggle props
animator parameters would be wonderful and simplify everything
amber hemlock
Is it synced? Late joiners won’t see it backwards?
jovial grail
It's not quite synched, it has to be rendered too
amber hemlock
I would love fully featured state machines for avatars
safe swift
it will be desynced, but you can have double animator setup where first enables 2nd animator that enables bones every N sec
amber hemlock
Instead of just time based states
Turing complete time to program in state machine
jovial grail
I do wonder why don't we have triggers to set animation parameters for avatars
You have it for worlds, but not avatars
amber hemlock
No idea, given even udon doesn’t sound like it will be enabled for avatar scripts by it would be a nice bone to throw for more complex avatar content
Just some animation bools is all I need
Maybe because it’s all local?
Desync would eventually become a problem for complex states
jovial grail
Not any worse than the current options
smoky lantern
Toggling animators is a bug anyway, but it works. You just need to figure out how to make those keyframes or copy and paste them from somewhere else and change the directories.
I think toggling animators will probably disappear with 2017. 😭
It's one of my favorite tricks.
mossy solar
I wish I knew how to toggle 😦
smoky lantern
Toggling props is pretty easy. Toggling animators is also easy enough. There's a prefab for the former, but the latter is more something you plan your entire model around and it'll only work for that model.
amber hemlock
ok i just moved all my islands around to texture atlas, and now my avatar's all miscolored... how to i bake the texture to the new spots so it looks normal again?
sudden jewel
sometimes colors in blender don't match the colors in unity all that well
try importing it into unity and setting up a basic shader for it to double check
karmic condor
yes if you redo textures in blender it will more likely change the uv map which is what determines what part of a texture goes where.
sudden jewel
Oh I see what you mean. You have to click the camera next to the old UV map in the Data section of the mesh object in Blender.
Then you have to bake. Of course if you were just shoving around UV islands without creating a new UV map... well, then you just borked the model. 😛
woeful crescent
@sudden jewel When we gonna get the 2017 update?
shut sequoia
#announcements lmao
silent slate
ty, removing outline fixed it
jk
bold cedar
got an optimization question: let's say i grabbed the source for the standard unity shader, and i use that instead of the pre-compiled version. would there be any performance difference?
gleaming yacht
Depends on the changes you make. And if you don’t make any, why do that? 🤔
heady smelt
pretty sure the standard shader is already well optimized
i don't think it will make any significant change in performance
distant forge
One common reason to duplicate standard is to set Cull Off for certain materials or cloth that need double sided rendering
wide breach
has anyone used this shader before?
http://puu.sh/C6bn0/ec394c2466.png
im trying to find the emissions but i cant
smoky lantern
There's already a double-sided standard shader on the Unity Asset store for free.
Sooo.
wide breach
this is an anime shader https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/typea-animeshader-129285
smoky lantern
There's just not a version that handles specular maps properly that's double sided.
wide breach
ah
smoky lantern
I was responding to another comment.
wide breach
ok ok xD i
smoky lantern
There may not be emission. I know a few people that won't add emission to their custom shaders for performance reasons.
I've seen that one before, but I haven't tried it. It's surprising how different an effect all the toony shaders can have.
I'd use that one for a cel chading effect, but you can do the same with the right light ramp settings.
wide breach
yea, i really like how it look on the avatar just my ahatar normaly has emissions and it looks bad without it :/
smoky lantern
You could always try Reflex Shader 2. It's free on booth, I think. It has really nice settings for emission if you like that.
wide breach
hmm, ok. is there a way to make a diferent like material and just cut put the parts for emision and put it over the shader?
smoky lantern
Yes.
Some shaders just have emission masks, but you could easily make it a separate material. Though, it may impact optimization, so I can't really recommend it.
wide breach
wait what i added the reflex shadeer and it changed all the options for the anime shaders? is it supposed to do that?
sudden jewel
Xiexe's handles both culling and emission. And it is free/open source 😃
wide breach
oh sweet, thanks. let me go check them out