avatar-optimization

[heady smelt]

Hey, quick question, if I remove a lot of the useless dynamic bone collisions on my avatar, will that help optimize it just a little bit? Or does that type of stuff have no effect?

[high kiln]

depends if it will move you on optimization limit i think colliders have 256 limit

[buoyant holly]

removing Dynamic bone collider's would definitely help as that's less colliders to check

[surreal oxide]

Question: Whats more optimized: Having clothes on a blendshape to shrink them out of existance or having them as seperate pieces that can be toggled on or off?
Ive been told by someone that the first option is the better one but i just wanted to verify

[buoyant holly]

"Seperate meshes
It's one less draw call per toggle, and draw calls end up being more expensive than just sending more polygons through in the first place. In practise, this is the most obviously expensive way of doing it, and merging things together will save a lot of performance in tight scenarios.
However, if you have shapekeys on meshes, combining them will make a mesh with more polygons which could be worse for performance. For that reason, it's best to keep faces and bodies/clothes seperate.

Shapekeys
Each active shapekey makes a mesh a lot more expensive to render, regardless of how many verts it affects, and the more active shapekeys, the slower the skinning process gets.
Surprisingly, this gets much slower than you'd think. Tests showed framerates getting crushed with high-poly meshes using a single shapekey, and the costs increased dramatically as more keys were active. This is not ideal if all those extra polygons are just there to be hidden.
Also, even if you use a shapekey to shrink your clothes, the armature movement will still move it and cause it to spike out. Not ideal!

Bones
Even if you shrink something with bones, other bones affecting it will reduce the effect of the controller bone without some weird trickery in Unity.
One workaround people use is to set up a second armature for items and then constrain them to the main one, but they'll lag behind in your perspective and the constraints aren't free.
Another workaround is to generate a bone with un-normalised weights from within Unity that can shrink a vertex group to zero by itself.

Seperate material slots with invisible materials
This is about as expensive as seperate meshes, as each material slot on a model is a seperate drawcall.

a breakdown of different methods

https://gitlab.com/s-ilent/SCSS/-/wikis/Manual/Inventory-System

[surreal oxide]

So keep the clothes seperated from meshes that have blend shapes cuz thats even worse.
Am i understanding this correctly?

[buoyant holly]

basically it's better for performance for like your face to be a separate mesh because it contains blendshapes because blendshapes get more expensive the more triangles in the mesh

[surreal oxide]

Hmm, thats gonna require some modifications to be made. Thank you for the info.

[buoyant holly]

glad to be of help sorry for adding to your workload

[surreal oxide]

No worries, Id rather know all of this now then find out after i start trying to make my own avatar from scratch.

Also one more question: would it be better to use a blendshape or a toggle on high poly clothes/items that arent connected to the main body/face, because the more polygons a blendshape uses, the worse it gets. More accurately: what would be the threshold for using toggles over blendshapes?

[dry igloo]

are blendshapes and shape keys the same thing?

[surreal oxide]

Currently the highest poly count items is a 3k flintlock, i assume that would still be best done with blendshapes.

[surreal oxide]

Yea. In blender they are called shape keys and in unity blendshapes, but they are the same thing.

Dont ask me why its like that tho, that i dont know.

[buoyant holly]

yes

[dry igloo]

thank you!

[high kiln]

it's because maya calls them blend shapes

so unity kinda focused on maya there

[buoyant holly]

because Maya is the game industry standard for modeling software

[high kiln]

i hate maya for weird crashes . i dropped it

but ye it is "industry standard" with zbrush

zbrush cool software tho

[normal nova]

Probably not a ton of interest to many, but I'm gearing up my 'instantly bake a game-ready version of any avatar' thing support more platforms. Compare here, VRC vs SL versions

TBD: source engine, gmod, ??? whatever else I can think of

But what's really nice is, because of how the bake thing is formulated, baking additional platforms past the first one takes only like 30 seconds more

[buoyant holly]

very cool out of curiosity what does it do on the second life version that's different than the vrc bake

[normal nova]

Well Unity uses PBR right? Diffuse, metallic, and smoothness

And a separate RGB emissive map

But SL uses an older specular setup, with albedo, specular, environment mapping, and a single channel emissive map that pulls colors from diffuse

CATS bake tries to cludge together a passable version of everything by doing some magic behind the scenes

[unreal plover]

Add support for arbitrary channel packing like in SimpleBake

[normal nova]

I have something like that, but its not just channel packing

For example, diffuse is, uhh

(1 - ((1 - emit) + (1- (diffuse * AO))) * (1-metallic)

buncha stuff like that

but its all handled for you when you hit autodetect, and since it doesn't really take any extra time to support more platforms I'll probably just add a 'bake for all' button

model once, use it everywhere!

[unreal plover]

Ah, yeah. Would be nice if more textures than just the PBR stuff can be baked too. Especially masks for effects in poiyomi

[normal nova]

Theres a couple but... its a lot of extra work usually

Ive wanted to bake thickness and detail maps for forever but I just havent had the time

[unreal plover]

Yeah usually I just bake it manually as a diffuse layer 🤷‍♀️

[normal nova]

Yee. Even now the transparency baking is temperamental around some edge cases

Having a subsurface shader would be so cool though

[unreal plover]

Subsurface can look so goood

I'm shifting my optimization workflow from Blender to Unity tho. Being able to preview stuff within Unity just makes life so much easier. Already got atlassing/armature/bone merging working. Just need to do some smart value gathering from existing shaders to automatically generate masks

And not everyone wants to learn blender

[normal nova]

Yeah, absolutely go Unity to get wider adoption

Part of the reason I want Bake to remain in Blender (and pretty much the reason I started it in the first place) is cause you have the whole Cycles rendering engine at your disposal. So like in my avatar above, I drew the colors as a mask, added a shader to color them, then used Bake to do 'fake realtime' glowing and ambient occlusion so the face has ambient light reflections and stuff

And the normal baking... that's one thing it would be absolutely amazing if you could get it into Unity somehow

[silver nova]

Making a shot in the dark- fake dynamics already exist in some capacity for quest and look very good for hair. If anyone has any resources for anything of similar vein to make clothes move in quest, let me know!

[ruby isle]

You can just do the same thing that is done to hair, for clothing

[normal nova]

Not that kind of fake dynamics x3 I think you're referring to animations

[silver nova]

Yes it would be animation~ thats what i heard. Im pretty new so please forgive me, i still have a lot of figuring to do haha

[unreal plover]

https://markcreator.gumroad.com/l/Polytool

This is a thing, but it's also 30 bucks. So I booted up my old project again 😅

[silver nova]

Saw this on twitter yesterday- they got a test version to see how it looks on your avatar it just wont publish

[normal nova]

Ah yeah! I was talking to them earlier. It still lacks the normal thing though, which is such a huge part of the quality

[unreal plover]

I'd say, just wait for Phys bones to come out

[buoyant holly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG2q09cld9E&t=1294s not exactly a tutorial but it shows a set of those being set up

[buoyant holly]

but still pretty cool to have a Unity tool that does the rest of it

[silver nova]

Oh thanks! I overlooked that notakid made a semi process video

[buoyant holly]

yeah that would be much less of a headache

[normal nova]

oh, I thought you were replying to me x3

[normal nova]

absolutely

I've wanted to make a Unity plugin that just calls Bake with your installed blender version in batch mode under the hood for a while

[unreal plover]

That sounds. Scary...

[normal nova]

unfortunately I also have very little free time lately :v

[buoyant holly]

yeah that could work as the user is less likely to get spooked because it's a Unity button instead of a blender button even though it's the same gosh darn thing

[normal nova]

nah, it's supported! Blender has a headless mode just for that sorta thing, and Bake is scriptable

[silver nova]

I was! Though the ladder part was general knowledge to others?

[normal nova]

I should just start calling it LODBake

saying 'Bake' and 'bake' as different things is not... helpful

[buoyant holly]

yeah that's a decent description of what it does

[silver nova]

That a thing thats coming out in the near future?

[buoyant holly]

yes sometime early this year

[unreal plover]

hopefully

[normal nova]

oh no, so 'baking' is the general concept of taking any complex thing, running it ahead of time and just recording the results. Animation baking is turning physical animations into recorded results. This is lighting baking

[buoyant holly]

like older video game models and models on mobile devices had a lot of lighting baked into the Avatar itself

[normal nova]

Lemme reboot and I'll show you a screenshot

[silver nova]

Oh gosh wait i wasnt i got you mixed up with nara lol

[normal nova]

oh whoops

[silver nova]

But still good info to have i need to learn a lot to get my crap to work

[unreal plover]

Problem is probably going to be setting up all the dependencies automatically of such a tool. Because any other button than "optimize my avatar" is going to scare the crap out of most people

[normal nova]

Yeeep

[buoyant holly]

even though unfortunately you need some sliders to adjust optimizing a avatar

[normal nova]

this person was talking about eventually making a web ui for vrchat avatar uploads, which would be rad

[silver nova]

So is animation baking what is being done for fake dynamics? i imagine its a headache for most things because it would take a lot of tedious work? No worry if it is that is why i went into the animation industry 🤣 (obviously not 3d though)

[normal nova]

More accesable is always good

[buoyant holly]

so how would that work

[normal nova]

I have no idea. Probably just use unity in a VM

[unreal plover]

That poor VM

[buoyant holly]

yes it's pre-baking animations so the tedious part would be making those animations

[silver nova]

Sounds like a usual day im up to the challenge

[buoyant holly]

and at this point it's not really worth the cost for someone to make a tool to Auto make fake Dynamic bones as Avatar Dynamics is coming out

[unreal plover]

Until people start capping out the performance limits of physbones

[silver nova]

I dont have enough trust in my heart for things to ever come out on time

Good that it is though~ alright thanks for all the help im off

[unreal plover]

o/

[normal nova]

the feilen army: original (wayyy too complicated), Excellent-rated desktop version, Excellent-rated quest version, second life version

[buoyant holly]

I can hardly tell a difference which is a good thing

[exotic fulcrum]

how do i also atlas the normals. when i atlas i only see the color textures in the atlas. what do i do about normal maps?

[simple ivy]

Can someone help me with fixing a polygon count issue that i am having?

why did it delete urs and not mine???

[halcyon wolf]

Idfk

maybe it hates me

[simple ivy]

lamo

[halcyon wolf]

But thats the issue i am having with my avatar

the polygon count is unreasonably high even though i lowered it in blender

it says it has 2billion poly's

even though it shouldnt

[radiant shadow]

read/write is off

[halcyon wolf]

Can i turn that on in Unity?

or something

[radiant shadow]

That is where you set it, on your fbx

[halcyon wolf]

Can you show me where to go to set it?

[radiant shadow]

your sdk should also warn you about this

old will not

[halcyon wolf]

I got the CATs blender plugin installed just how do i pull up the tab for CATs

[high kiln]

click on small arrow below options in top right

[halcyon wolf]

oh thanksssss

[halcyon wolf]

Erm help

[radiant shadow]

see error on bottom ?

[halcyon wolf]

Yeah

[radiant shadow]

likely descriptor on wrong place and no animator

[halcyon wolf]

How tf do I fix it

Should I pop in vc and stream it so you can walk me through it?

[radiant shadow]

nope

i rarely speak

[halcyon wolf]

Well what should I do then to fix the problem?

Cause it's been such a long time

[radiant shadow]

Just put your descriptor on root of avatar where it should be

[halcyon wolf]

Which would be where?

[buoyant holly]

use image editing software to arrange the normal maps in the same configuration as your color texture

[exotic fulcrum]

Ok. So just line them up as close as possible same as the original atlas. ok. i'll try that. Thanks

[drowsy falcon]

Can someone tell me how to combine materials in unity? I'm really new to this.

[halcyon wolf]

Ok the problem was fixed, but how do I properly get the first person camera positioned correctly

[acoustic latch]

the object called untitled. Where you have it, on Body, is not the correct place.

[scarlet bone]

How do I start making a character in unity? I have the sdk3 downloaded but it says I need to wait longer/ incorrect verison installed.

[sick timber]

First you need to have Unity 2019.4.31f1 exactly installed, or it will not show up in-game, second, you need New User rank in-game, so you'll get a notification in-game when you get that, and in your email.

[eager dirge]

Unlocking content uploading

You must obtain at least "New User" Trust Rank in our Trust and Safety system in order to upload content. You can get this by just spending a few hours in VRChat, hop some worlds, and make some friends. Give it some time and you'll be able to upload content in no time.

As an aside, you must have a VRChat account to upload content. That means you can't use a Steam account, Oculus account, or Viveport account to upload content like worlds or avatars.

[sick timber]

^ more info on the new user thing

[scarlet bone]

Thank you

[cyan zinc]

I uploaded an optimized fallback using the android SDK for an avatar I sculpted, but how can I see for myself what the android version looks like in-game from PC without a Quest?

[heady smelt]

i need help for optimizing my avatar for quest my brain cant take it

[ruby isle]

The only way would be to upload the quest version as-is to PC

[ruby isle]

What exactly

[cyan zinc]

Alright, I'll just do that under a separate private entry, thanks

[heady smelt]

everything 😅

[ruby isle]

Well we can't teach you everything. A majority of stuff can be found easily on google

[sick timber]

Cats blender plugin, would recommend

[heady smelt]

where would i find that

actually wait

[sick timber]

https://github.com/absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin

Features:
Optimizing model with one click!

And a few others things but that's what you're looking for

[heady smelt]

does it work with 2019.4.29f

[sick timber]

It's for blender

[heady smelt]

oh

sorry

lol

[sick timber]

technically it works with any unity version since you could export the model to a compatible format but eh

[heady smelt]

how do I import my avatar into belnder

ill just look it up

[sick timber]

Cats has a model import button

[heady smelt]

once i have the cats file where do i put it

[sick timber]

The github page has a section with install instructions

[heady smelt]

ok

[heady smelt]

where do i find the user interface its not showing in the file tab

[sick timber]

In Blender 2.8+, that was moved to Edit -> Preferences

[heady smelt]

ok

[heady smelt]

i cant do it ive been trying for 2 hours

everytime i try to import my avatar back into unity the color doesnt show up

[sick timber]

You'd have to reapply the material(s)

[heady smelt]

how

[sick timber]

Usually, just drag the material from the project to the part of the mesh with the slot

You may need to extract them from the previous model, or make new ones

[heady smelt]

wot

i am deeply confused

[sick timber]

I can't really explain it better

Nor have the time to

[heady smelt]

hey it wont let me save my atlas does anybody know why?

[ruby isle]

You only have 1 material. It's already atlased

[heady smelt]

how do i export it into unity

[ruby isle]

It should have already exported as a png

[heady smelt]

where do i find the png

[ruby isle]

Wherever you selected to save it

[heady smelt]

this is it right?

[ruby isle]

Those are materials

[heady smelt]

i have not been more confused in my life

[heady smelt]

i found this atlas

[ruby isle]

Did you atlas this yourself?

[heady smelt]

wdym

[ruby isle]

Did you create the atlas with cats or did the avatar just start with it

[heady smelt]

i think the avatar started with it it is from vroid

[ruby isle]

Then you don't need to do anything with it

[heady smelt]

ok then so how do i get the colors on the avatar to show up

[heady smelt]

because this is what it loks like rn

[ruby isle]

You have to make the material yourself if they didn't give you one

[heady smelt]

welp them im fucked

[ruby isle]

You might need more Unity experience to make avatars then

[hoary acorn]

Hey I'm kinda new to this server so I'm not sure if this is the right chat but I was stuck on something for the avatar I bought and was customizing. It seems like the shading on the face is different from the rest of the body when I go into certain worlds with low lighting and I was wondering if anyone knew how to fix this

[vocal zephyr]

does turning build into android gonna mess up my files?

[buoyant holly]

do you have different materials settings on your head compared to your body

[hoary acorn]

I checked that it didn't look any different when I looked over it but I can look again

[acoustic latch]

Someone else shared a twitter link recently from Poiyomi in 2019, you can try doing what is suggested and see if that fixes it https://twitter.com/poiyomi/status/1206348684922937345

poiyomi (@poiyomi)

If you have 2+ skinned meshes and you want them to have the exact same lighting you can force them to calculate lighting from the same position by dragging the spine(or any bone) into anchor override. This will force both meshes to sample lighting from the same location

Twitter · Dec 15, 2019, 11:01 PM

[radiant shadow]

guessing multiple meshes not anchored so light goes derp , that thing

[buoyant holly]

yeah I could see it going derp from sampling 2 different light probes

[hoary acorn]

hrm

it looks like they are anchored to the same thing but I found some sliders that could maybe need to be the same

I can't quite fix it right now

[buoyant holly]

https://twitter.com/Mark_creator/status/1480927966855057418?s=20

Mark (@Mark_creator)

Making optimized #VRChat avatars has always been a hassle to me, so I made a Unity tool that does it automagically: Polytool!
It can convert many PC avatars into upload-ready Quest and Quest fallback avatars with near-zero effort https://t.co/3njDx31M0X

Retweets

451

Likes

1475

▶ Play video

Twitter · Jan 11, 2022, 3:41 PM

https://github.com/absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin/wiki/Bake

[hoary acorn]

I figured it out

ty everyone

[buoyant holly]

so what finally fixed it

[hoary acorn]

I was looking back over all the shader settings and I happened to miss the one that actually mattered

so I just made sure the body and face had the same settings

[buoyant holly]

cool

[whole parrot]

everytime i try to use this I get an error and my avatar disappears

[mystic owl]

When creating an Avatar, is it possible to hide specific parts of the Avatar only for you but not for other players?
My Avatar has a big scarf which blocks some of my view when looking down. Is it possible to hide this scarf only for me (first person, but not third person view (like a mirror))?

[untold pike]

@mystic owl you could probably position the eye bones in such a way so that it is not blocked

[proper grail]

There is a built in animation parameter islocal, that can be used

[sudden hemlock]

Is there any way to separate an atlased material back into separate ones?

[proper grail]

in blender and substance painter its easier to work with, but a game ready model should be the least amount of meshes and materials possible

[sudden hemlock]

Just want it to be editable at the moment. I can't figure it out in blender at all.

[proper grail]

Ah, youre looking for how to assign faces to a new material

[normal nova]

I wrote a tutorial for 'grafting' models using custom normals (making them appear to be one mesh, without needing to make any geometry changes)

https://github.com/absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin/wiki/Grafting-Models

[buoyant holly]

very cool

[calm spade]

Are there benefits to this method compared to using the gret addon ?

[buoyant holly]

https://github.com/greisane/gret

[normal nova]

Gret does a few extra things to tweak the child mesh and I couldn't get it to work with my use-case, for some reason it kept breaking

[nova hornet]

Lol no
if it'd help I could hop in a call or VC with you and walk you through it

[heady smelt]

That would be great!

[nova hornet]

Alright
when would work for ya?

[nova hornet]

poke

[undone stratus]

Hey, I'm working on a Taidum retexture and the model wont upload to vrchat from unity- does anyone now how to fix my issue?

[ancient dagger]

So I'm looking at https://github.com/absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin/wiki/Bake and before I jump in, is there anything special I need to know for VRM models made using VRoid? Do I need to do any sort of conversion or anything specific? Seems like it handles VRM.

Just wanting to make my model viewable for those on Quest.

I literally have no idea what I'd be doing when it comes to going from Vroid -> Blender -> Unity.

[calm spade]

That's a bit vague, we could use a lot more information

[nova hornet]

Make sure to get rid of or replace anything that uses Transparency/Cut out as Quest doesn't support it

I think the Eye brows, Eyelashes, and Eyeliner, all use transparency by default with VRoid so they'll look a bit different on Quest if you don't change it

@copper plover you ok?

[ancient dagger]

Is there a way to fix them without painting them onto the skin texture?

[hearty marsh]

make it a solid color and shape the geometry into the correct shape?

[kind bane]

is there a way to fix material and mesh count while in unity or am i gonna have to import it to blender and work there?

[onyx harness]

The latter unless you just delete the objects with the mesh renderers.
But yeah, if you want to keep the meshes then you'll need to put it in blender and merge the meshes

[kind bane]

okay follow up question if im using the materials and meshes for toggles could it break if i merge them?

[onyx harness]

Yes, for some you could just change the pathing in the properties but for others you would have to create the keyframes again

[kind bane]

and just one last thing how do i even export the unity file into an acceptable blender format

[onyx harness]

Unity is usually just referencing a file in the project. Most the time this file is an fbx which is compatible with blender

Chances are the mesh renderers in the scene are referencing the meshes embedded in said fbx. Thus, you can select one of these renderer components, click on the assigned mesh and it'll locate it in the project window.

[kind bane]

wouldnt that mean that all my toggles have different fbx files?

[onyx harness]

the renderer isn't referencing an fbx, it's referencing a mesh which is embedded in the fbx.
This is where it took me. 'PrincessV5' is the fbx and 'Body' is the mesh

I just use this to find the fbx so I can take it into blender faster and also be sure I grab the right file.

[kind bane]

for me it finds this instead of it looking in the hierarchy

also just one more question. So my avatar isnt shown to quest users unless they allow my avatar but i just joined and my friend even with enabled avatar couldnt see the materials used for my avatar so i wanted to know how do i fix that?

[nova hornet]

Might be a texture issue not a material problem are your textures .dds? if so convert them to png or something

[whole parrot]

@normal nova im getting "cats uv not found" error when trying to use cats bake tool, do you know how to fix

[normal nova]

Try the dev version

[whole parrot]

dev version of what, cats?

[normal nova]

yeah

[whole parrot]

how do i access that?

[normal nova]

I believe there's a button in CATS in the addons menu to switch to dev mode

[whole parrot]

it still doesnt work 😦

[safe galleon]

Out of curiosity, if an avatar has a toggled sweater, does turning off the toggle (hiding the sweater) reduce the poly count for a user who is viewing the avatar by unloading it. or does the sweater remain loaded at all times anyways even when hidden?

[acoustic latch]

If you are using Blender 3.0, switch to the last stable release of 2.9 instead

[patent tusk]

As far as I know, everything you add to an avatar is considered when the game calculates performance of an avatar.

[safe galleon]

I see. I wonder if there is a way we could implement it, it may make it so that unhiding something might take a moment to show for others but could help save performance maybe? I'm not exactly a tech genius so for all I know I could be wrong, i'm more on the hardware side then software.

[patent tusk]

Oh, it's actually a lot more performant when you turn off the items and then turn them on later. It's just that VRChat is silly and doesn't care.

[whole parrot]

im using 2.92

[buoyant holly]

basically vrchat is measuring worst case scenario with the rankings

[safe galleon]

oh! so it does actually hide the polys then?

[patent tusk]

Yes!

A very poor avatar can be pretty performant all things considered

[safe galleon]

does that mean that avatars with alternate outfits actually have an inflated performance value as a result?

[buoyant holly]

yep but because there's no resource cap I'm not touching them with a ten-foot pole very poor avatars

[patent tusk]

Yes.

[buoyant holly]

and also the vram usage for the textures don't go away if you have a outfit toggled off

[patent tusk]

I just load all avatars and crash if that's in the cards lol

[buoyant holly]

myself I don't particularly care to see most random folks like poorly optimized anime avatars so I'm fine with fallbacks for them

[safe galleon]

Thats interesting to note. I'm only just getting into the avatar scene. Literally watching the tutorial on how to do things using blender, so i'm by no means knowledgeable.

[buoyant holly]

so if you do go with the lots of alternative outfit toggles good idea to have a second version of your avatar that only has one outfit for events/large crowds

[patent tusk]

I turned off animations and shaders and put in a size limit, sometimes people have interesting looking avatars that I kind of want to see so I just take the risk every time

if you go into a public world it's always a coin toss whether you get crashed within 5 minutes or an hour lol

[safe galleon]

Yeah. My computer runs vrc finally but it still lags out in some worlds. but I do like being able to see avatars properly now

which sparked my interest in making my own

[patent tusk]

I've ended up in the Booth rabbit hole and I'm stuck, help

[safe galleon]

Once corrupted, there is no return.

[patent tusk]

you're absolutely right lol

[buoyant holly]

yeah it seems on here you either turn into a booth girl or a furry

[safe galleon]

Why not both?

[patent tusk]

there's also the TDA army

but we don't talk about the TDA army

[buoyant holly]

oh yeah there's definitely some fur models on booth

[buoyant holly]

yes they're very unoptimized and break terms of service

[safe galleon]

i'm not impressed by furry models. i'm more preferential to felines since my sona is a feline. but i've never really found one that fits

[patent tusk]

I'm not a furry, and I find that while most furry avatars get no reaction from me, some of them make me feel a primal disgust that I can't help

I've seen one like that

[buoyant holly]

what aspect in particular do you find not your cup of tea

[safe galleon]

ive only seen nodachis and wickers (I know i butchered that. bite me)

[buoyant holly]

https://www.vrcarena.com/species/h1fZVCAGRiqHiJHJC5v8

[safe galleon]

oh or rex and protos. there is the occasional variety but mostly those

[buoyant holly]

https://www.vrcarena.com/species/Bg9o1zLYvlvhbbTWH7lG

a website that catalogs lots of furry avatars

[safe galleon]

huh. ive never heard of this site before

[buoyant holly]

and a decent spot to find demo units would be the map furhub

[safe galleon]

I can barely go there if its public. my computer despises it

[patent tusk]

but you can just make your own invite only or friends only instance

[buoyant holly]

yeah just make an invite-only instance so you can try on the avatars

[safe galleon]

I've seen a few. The other main issue is a lot of the avatars I've seen are predominantly masculine

[buoyant holly]

some of them have sliders to put on a more feminine build

[safe galleon]

Yeah. I've seen a few but between the lack of a public feline furry avi and then predominantly masculine avis its hard to find. I mostly run around in a mint or rusk avatar

[buoyant holly]

the website I linked also catalogs Booth models so you might be able to find some more obviously female cats that way

[patent tusk]

so, what, they have a Patreon and they're supplying stuff that others try to sell? that's p cringe ngl

[safe galleon]

How is it cringe to have a catalog that links you over to the site that you can buy it from

[patent tusk]

Oh, it's just a link repository?

[buoyant holly]

yes

[patent tusk]

okay, then I take it back 😂

I just noticed "DMCA" and "takedown" stuff at the bottom and that it's "supplying" avatars and stuff.

[buoyant holly]

basically that's if someone posts a bad link

[patent tusk]

ohhh, right

[buoyant holly]

like if someone posted instead of the proper shop they posted a unmentionable vrchat website that hosts avatars illegally you would want to take that down

[patent tusk]

oh yeah

it sucks that sometimes avatar creators think you're a thief of some sort when you're just stuck buying avatars on Booth 😂

[safe galleon]

sucks being broke and I have to use free stuff for now

[cosmic plover]

Does vrchat support LOD or would it do 1 of these 2 things or both

Report the combination of all lod tris as Tri count + material slot
Just remove the lod script

[onyx harness]

Right now there is no LOD support for avatars

[cosmic plover]

Sad, was planning on makeing event optimal avatars that weren't just get Tri count under 10k constantly.

I see how it could be exploited tho

That's even lower than 10k on quest

On quest excellent is 7.5k

[nimble agate]

Hello. Is there any way to check what shader is used on quest avatar?

[buoyant holly]

https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/quest-content-limitations#shaders

[tawdry venture]

IIRC, if it's a separate mesh, disabling it's renderer DOES reduce the poly count for viewers. But if it's a blendshape toggle, it always incurs the full performance cost even when hidden.

[limber lodge]

Hey hey everyone, someone here who has a video link or maybe can explain to me how the mesh toggle wheels works ? I don't really wanna toggle everything one by one but just scrolling on a wheel from 1% to 100% to toggle one animation after another. if anyone has any knowledge about that please dm me

[ancient dagger]

So I decided to give CATS a looksie and it seems like that while I was able to import my VRM Model without issue, trying to use BAKE results in a completely black model. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[calm spade]

Which version are you using ? They're not retro compatible

[ancient dagger]

Are you replying to me or someone else? If so which version of what?

[calm spade]

The version of cats, because the latest is not meant for blender 2.9X afaik

[ancient dagger]

🤔

Using 2.93.7 LTS of Blender.

I'm just trying to see how CATS works and if it's worth integrating into my workflow. I also wanna try and use it in the future to make a Quest-ready version of my avatar but getting stopped here kinda sucks 😅

[calm spade]

Are you sure that the issues aren't rendering related ? Since you're in rendered mode, could just be a material thing

[ancient dagger]

I honestly don't know. I've never used Blender before. I assume by rendering mode you mean the options you see when holding down Z by default? I did check all modes and didn't see my textures appear.

[calm spade]

Are your textures assigned in the image texture node ?

[ancient dagger]

Where would I go to check that?

[calm spade]

shading tab

[ancient dagger]

I assume this is the right view where I would find this answer?

And after comparing both models, I think the answer is no.

[calm spade]

Might have to add them correctly, but if the generated image is incorrect, I'd suggest asking directly in https://discord.gg/G7gfu4PK

[ancient dagger]

Yeah I think I'll hop in there at a later point.

This has suddenly become a lot more complex than I thought it would 😅

This is what the pre-bake model's view looks like for comparison:

[ancient dagger]

I'm also starting to think VRM models are just wonky as shit to begin with 🤣

[errant harness]

Aight so i have a model file i want made into a quest compatible avatar

I’ll pay someone like 10 bucks to do it

[calm spade]

https://ask.vrchat.com/c/commissions/avatar-commissions/35

[charred quest]

Whats up, im back again.
I've run into an issue here trying to optimize my avatar for the quest- and theres this un-fucking-editable shader for some goddamn reason thats stuck on one of the materials for my character. I can't delete it, i can only change its material but not its shader, and i need to change the shader in order for this to be one step closer to being compatible. How to do i go about changing it?

I can obviously change the static shader no problem, its just this greyed out "Standard" shader

ping me when the answer has been f o u n d 😩

[onyx harness]

It’s an embedded uneditable material. All models use them. Make a new material and apply it in the Skinned Mesh Renderer’s Materials section.

[charred quest]

bro... thank you

[hollow ermine]

Hello. I'm trying to help a friend with an avatar, he wants to make it quest compatible but I need to reduce the size of the model. I tried using decimation modifier in blender on the parts that don't have shape keys but it's not enough. What I'm currently trying is using CATS blender plugin to decimate the whole model, but that will merge all the parts. Is there a way to do that without merging and without losing shape keys?

[unreal plover]

merging meshes shouldn't get rid of shapekeys

[quasi creek]

Is there no such thing as a feature that just scales the model up and down?

what else is meant by 'reduce the size of the model'?

actual storage size?

Hello. I'm trying to help a friend with an avatar, he wants to make it quest compatible but I need to reduce the size of the model. I tried using decimation modifier in blender on the parts that don't have shape keys but it's not enough. What I'm currently trying is using CATS blender plugin to decimate the whole model, but that will merge all the parts. Is there a way to do that without merging and without losing shape keys?

missing: retopology

[clear wadi]

Can someone import a Tanjiro avatar for me, add a fire particle system to the sword and make it compatible with oculus

You can, somebody had that avatar and they had particles, I could see it and I was on quest

Particles work on quest

I’m not asking for some insane particles anyways

[charred quest]

Brb going on a murderous rampage

I was optimizing my avatar and Im getting closer and closer to being able to publish it

But uh- I was unlucky enough to be right on the edge of the file size lmao

I'm uploading a quest version of my avatar

That's probably why it's asking me to go under a limit

Yea

[acoustic latch]

Quest has size limitations for both Worlds and Avatars. Avatars have to be under the 10MB file size, worlds at 100MB now I believe.

[buoyant holly]

crunch compress your textures to get under the file size

[charred quest]

My guy

That's what I've been doing for that past hour. Rn I'm just ironing out the faults. I can upload the avatar just fine.

[ocean depot]

Quest Avatars still have a limit of 10k tris? Just checking real quick.

[buoyant holly]

https://i.gyazo.com/0a26714f4ae076ae77f3ae42a3279f86.png

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

[stone plover]

i dont know how to explain this so ima just post pics

i havent added any extra meshes to it

nvm

its an issue with my project ima just make a new one

[calm spade]

You have to enable read/write on the avatar settings

It's at the top of the list in the inspector when you select your model in your assets

[unreal plover]

update your SDK, it'll have an auto-fix button for it too :)

[stone plover]

this worked thanks

[ocean depot]

Thanks for the ref,. Looks like I have room to work. I'm already at 9.5k and I havern't done his bottom half yet...

[nova hornet]

CATS should have the option to decimate and keep shapekeys if not try looking into if you could retopologize
or try using https://mmemoli.gumroad.com/l/tOKEh Mesh data transfer to transfer shapekeys from the original mesh to the decimated one

Merging vertices by distance could help too

Also unless you need the mesh for like toggling outfits I'd recommend deleting the polygons on the body mesh under clothes

delete what is unneeded/unseen

[hollow ermine]

Thank you, I'll look into that

[sterile kestrel]

how do i combine meshes

[acoustic latch]

Requires using Blender

[sterile kestrel]

can you upload unity models into blender

[acoustic latch]

If it has a source file that is some sort of model format like FBX yes, but not just take something entirely created in Unity to blender

[sterile kestrel]

ok good

i made the model in roblox and autorigged with mixamo

also is it CTRL+J to bind meshes

[sterile kestrel]

it's fun and easy!

[lapis peak]

I am trying to remove meshes and extra hidden stuff under clothing of my VROID model but every time i bring a vroid model into blender the cloths are part of the body mesh. Why is this. For everyone on YouTube i see their clothes are separate.

[dry tinsel]

You're just mad they have a galaxy sized brain

[nova hornet]

Try separating by material

[nova hornet]

Unrelated to combining meshes
Make sure your FBX has read/write and legacy blendshape normals enabled
Also important to mark your FBX as 'Humanoid' so it animates in VRC
As right now even though you've rigged it using Mixamo it's not going to move (like legs walking, etc)
in VRChat atm since it doesn't think it's humanoid

Any advice for reducing poly count of hair?
I'm mainly worried about movement being weird with decimation
The hair was modeled using VRoid Studio

[lapis peak]

Thanks for the reply. After i separate by material i see that the clothes are still on the same mesh as the skin. everywhere I've seen after they do this step they have a nice mesh for all clothing. my mesh that says clothes just is of the base hair. and that doesn't even have a mesh its just a material.

[nova hornet]

2 things

1. Maybe this is good it means you don't have a body underneath the clothing to delete
2. Did you reduce material count in VRoid? that could've merged the body/clothing to the same mat but still have extra polys/tris

[lapis peak]

when i exported from vroid i selected 12 materials because not selecting one of those options causes problems with fixing the model in CATS. when i use Xray i can see the two layers so it is there.

[nova hornet]

Weird I've had no issues with Default material count and CATS
Anyhow try selecting a bit of the clothing and hiting CTRL + L on your keyboard if that successfully selects the clothes and not the body right click and separate by selection

[nova hornet]

I manually remove the transparency from the face and maunally_ish_ atlas that all down to one so the face isn't 6 materials but
That's a "me" thing having issue with the face having 6 materials not a CATS issue with VRoid materials

[nova hornet]

Seems decimating it is working fine down to 13kish so I guess I'll see if I can get the rest of the model lower

[lapis peak]

OH

[magic patio]

can somebody link me please to a document that lists all constraints on making a fallback avatar

its so hard to find on the website, I keep getting other weird shit that doesnt list it

[lapis peak]

i separated my meshes by "loose parts"

and that worked for me

Thanks a lot for your time @nova hornet

[nova hornet]

Np! Good luck and feel free to ping or DM for more assistance

[nova hornet]

For Quest

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

[magic patio]

thank you

I tried browsing through the Quest Section, why isnt it listed there?

[nova hornet]

Dunno where you searched I just scrolled down on the Performance ranking system doc

[magic patio]

this section

[nova hornet]

Mhm

VRChat docs be outdated af sometimes

[nova hornet]

Random but relatedish I hope they allow rotation constraints on Quest soon they'd allow for much better rotation of wrists/elbows/ankles and beyond

@magic patio You may also find this useful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MkgXcidxg4

[magic patio]

tuvm

[nova hornet]

Np I want people to have a good time with and in VRChat

Even though I probably won't see it
Thank you very much for trying to make a custom fallback

[sterile kestrel]

mamamia!

[sterile kestrel]

thanks alot dude!

[nova hornet]

Np! kinda surprised the SDK or PumkinsTools don't have an auto thing for those FBX settings

[whole parrot]

still looking for a fix for "cats uv not found" error when trying to use cats bake tool, using blender 2.92 and tried switching cats to dev mode, still getting same error, pls @ or dm me if you can help, this tool would be rly useful for me

[nova hornet]

Just a guess
Make sure the mesh has a UV and that it is named UVMap

[nova hornet]

I'm trying to pack a UVmap more densely and I'm noticing that when I do so the normals change even if I more the normal map the same as I did the diffuse

How do I do this properly?

[nova hornet]

nvm it was because the new normal map was set to sRGB not "Non Color"

[heady smelt]

So a guy made me a 2d avatar of my cat that passed away but he didn't optimize it for quest which I'm on and he refuses to help I don't have a PC or anything to fix it

[calm spade]

How is it unoptimized for quest if it's 2D ?

[heady smelt]

Idk no quest players can see it including myself but PC can

It's just a white block

I'm really sad idk what to do

[high kiln]

probably it isn't uploaded on quest

at all

[heady smelt]

But if that was true I wouldn't be able to use it right

At all

[high kiln]

check avatar stats

[heady smelt]

Bc it has both green and blue but don't go anywhere I'll check rn

Yeah it says it's uploaded to both

[high kiln]

when you click on avatar details how many polygons it have

[heady smelt]

200

[strong plank]

Help

I'm absolutely tearing my hair out right now

[heady smelt]

Really?

[strong plank]

yes lol this avatar is absolutely driving me crazy and just as I thought I finally got everything fixed and perfect the SDK has decided it has too many polygons even though it's well below the limit

I'm sure the problem is just something silly since this is my first time trying to make an avatar but I'm completely at a loss at this point

[heady smelt]

Damn ya I think that website or smth is broken or bug

[acoustic latch]

scroll up in your very tiny control panel, there should be autofix buttons

[strong plank]

I think I did all the auto fixes available but I could be missing something

[acoustic latch]

In that case, select the model in the Project view, usually the bottom of the screen, go to the Model tab in the inspector for it, and check the box for Read/Write and apply

or is it import, you want to enable it in the import settings, it is the first tab in the inspector when you select the FBX

[strong plank]

I LOVE YOU

thank you so much lmao

that fixed it

[velvet raft]

Would it be possible to have a hd version of an avatar that pc users see and a low poly version that quest users see or when uploading a quest compatible avatar do they have to be the same across platforms?

[sick timber]

Yes, in fact, you are intended to do that. Make sure that any removed props/bones have empty objects to replace them, or else you’ll experience desync.

[white pebble]

is it ok to use non square textures ? In this cse, the shape of the clothing I'm working on would call for a 1024*512 texture. Is it better to actually use a 1024x512 , or to use a 1024x1024 even if the whole bottom part is wasted ?

[buoyant holly]

1024*512 texture is perfectly usable as it's a power of two

and yeah that would be wasting vram to use a 1024x1024

[white pebble]

TY ! So now another question : is is better to use two 1024x512 textures, one for the color, the other one for the normals, but only one UV map set, or, only one 1024x1024 , split in two halves, top for color, bottom for normals, and use 2 distinct uv map sets ?

[buoyant holly]

two 1024x512 as your alternative method would require a more complicated Shader and extra a uv set would be adding more vertices

[white pebble]

ok, it makes sense. I was just wondering .... thank you !

[buoyant holly]

glad to be of help

[acoustic latch]

You wouldn't be able to use a split image for normal and diffuse, you have to set anything used as a normal map as normal map, and that would cause issues for using it as the diffuse, bad colors and such

[fluid anvil]

You can do it with other greyscale maps though

[dull halo]

Is there a guide on how to optimiaze my vroid avatars

So far all the avatars i make are medium

[worn socket]

A bit world related issue, some big avatars will see through the wall, any solution?

[onyx harness]

What’s pushing them into medium?

[dull halo]

Everything rlly

[onyx harness]

Oof. Then it sounds like a good amount of modelling work for reducing polygons, merging meshes, merging materials and thus textures, reducing/dissolving bones so on and so forth.

[icy ruin]

when I tried optimizing my avatar, it suddenly made him white, like, he doesn't look colombian anymore, is it cause of the background ?

I just need to optimize it and blender is being weird

[dull halo]

@onyx harness

[buoyant holly]

that one is easy to fix as vroid has a built-in texture combining tool on the export settings

[dull halo]

what do i do

[buoyant holly]

give me a sec grabbing a screenshot

[dull halo]

ok ty

[buoyant holly]

https://i.gyazo.com/3541306e74e266e711f81df7c1a79125.png

@dull halo

[dull halo]

ty

[dull halo]

what do i do to reduce stuff to get a good status avatar

@buoyant holly

[high kiln]

reduce materials from 11 to 4

[dull halo]

what else

[high kiln]

it should be good after only materials

[dull halo]

what about bone

or polygons

?

[high kiln]

polygons are fine bones too

you are below 32k

[dull halo]

that wtill give me good status? the green one?

all i get are mediums usually

[high kiln]

excellent even

if you talk about pc performance rank

you have also quest performance ranking

quest are strict with everything

[dull halo]

whats pc performancew ranjk?

the status im checking is the sttatus unity gives me

after i uploadmy ava

before i name it

[buoyant holly]

that's all you needed to do as the SDK only showed the material count has the problem

[dull halo]

oh ok ty

[dull halo]

what do i do if i wanna delete a avatr i alreayd uploaded to vrchat?

@high kiln @buoyant holly

[high kiln]

in sdk control panel

[dull halo]

where is that

ingame?

[high kiln]

control panel of sdk and content manager in unity

[dull halo]

where do i go ;o

nvm found it ty

[dull halo]

how do i reduce more polygons

[buoyant holly]

any particular reason you need to reduce the polygons

[cosmic shoal]

to optimize it?

that’s why you would

[calm spade]

[buoyant holly]

there's a checkbox in the reduce polygons section to delete transparent triangles so you can make everything under the the clothing transparent and then it'll delete all of those triangles without like affecting the overall topology of the stuff you can see

[nova hornet]

It's probably that the texture itself is white and it used something shaderwise to change that
So edit the base texture in a program like Photoshop or http://www.photopea.com

[icy ruin]

Tysm !!

[dull halo]

ty

[modest fossil]

Hey everyone! Might be a dumb question. But I recently saw some avatars with transparent textured hair that works on Quest- Is there a way to do that? (Cutting the mesh or convert the texture into mesh data?)

I’m kinda bummed cause I was porting MGSV models in but most of their meshes are transparent based

[sick timber]

Yes, you can cut out the mesh in blender with the knife tool in edit mode

Other forms of transparency cannot be faked

[hallow latch]

endangering the entire vrc playerbase atm

[dull halo]

How do i edit the lower leg and pelvis angles and what do i do?

Can someone help me

[unreal plover]

#avatar-rigging

[icy ruin]

I am using vroid to create models, but when I use blender, when I optimize the avatar, some of the hair texture disappears making the model look bald in some places, how do I fix this ?? The tutorial im using is from wacky demon fire

[unreal plover]

Disable backface culling or recalculate outside in Blender

[icy ruin]

Tysm !!

[blissful mulch]

How do you get a pc avatar to be quest compatible

[onyx harness]

Depends on what you need to reduce.

[frozen field]

Once you switch the unity file to an android build it will tell you what’s too strong or needs to be removed (might be good to make a duplicate file)

[worldly junco]

Any good guides?

[modest fossil]

Oh my god...

[sick timber]

It’s kinda your only option sorry

[modest fossil]

Welp. Anything for a good MGSV avatar,

[white pebble]

Hi !! How bad is it to use the same texture area for several parts of a mesh ? I have a lot of ribbons in my object, and I would love to save some texture space by making the uv islands for these ribbons overlap in a single island. They have the same color, same normals, same everything. Can it be bad for lighting ?

[onyx harness]

if anything it's better, using 1 texture for multiple parts instead of multiple textures that are the same. Uses less memory to get the same result.

[crisp ermine]

On a scale from one to "Don't do it" how bad of an idea is it to use alpha clipping to hide body mesh under clothes?

[proper grail]

Cutout is pretty cheap.

[left goblet]

I could not think of any situation where I would use cutout but hiding mesh under clothes is a perfect use case for it, that's brilliant

[ruby isle]

I use Cutout for facial effects instead of transparent

[icy ruin]

Update, the backface culling works !! Tysm :]

[nova hornet]

Use this tool as a base but depending on your poly/material/bone count you might want to take the model into blender and optimize it there
https://booth.pm/ja/items/2436054

[buoyant holly]

https://github.com/absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin/wiki/Bake this tool in the blender plug-in cats can help quite a bit with the triangle reduction and material reduction

[normal nova]

just fyi, link the main repo, I stopped updating my fork of the wiki page ages ago

[buoyant holly]

oops sorry

is this the right GitHub absolute-quantum

[normal nova]

yeah

[buoyant holly]

cool I edited the post

[alpine karma]

hi. so im trying to port my vtuber avatar to vrchat, and i want it to be quest compatible so i can have my friends see it. but for some reason the model is saying it has 120 material slots. how i can make that number smaller

[buoyant holly]

https://github.com/absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin/wiki/Bake this tool in blender cats makes it pretty easy to combine materials and cut down on triangle counts for the quest build

and you'd probably want to combine your materials on your PC build as well as that horrendously unoptimized 120 materials

[alpine karma]

(b) yeah, apparently the random corruption of my model made it impossible to use cats]

(b) gave me this:

(b) this works possibly tho : https://booth.pm/ja/items/1025226

(b) waiting for these buttons to magicly allow clicking again

[buoyant holly]

that tool doesn't help with optimizations but definitely handy forgetting vrm in vrchat

[buoyant holly]

oh dear and mostly was just suggesting cats because manually baking something with 120 materials would be tedious as heck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73REcZVWMhA but here is how you would do it manually

[alpine karma]

(b) well, it condensed my 120material slots to 21

[buoyant holly]

wow that was a lot of duplicate materials

and yeah that's definitely a big Improvement even if it could be better

question was the Avatar made in VRoid Studio

as that has some built-in texture combining tools

[alpine karma]

(b) yes

[buoyant holly]

then I would do the material combining in VRoid Studio and then run it for the vrm converter

[alpine karma]

(b) well... rn i want to test the current one that is 21 mats. but i have a different issue

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/583055343177695232/941800925926948874/2022-02-11_15-58-44.mp4

(b) i cant click build and test

[buoyant holly]

build and test is completely unavailable on the Android build

[alpine karma]

(b) yet also windows too

[buoyant holly]

do you have any errors in your console log

[alpine karma]

(b) not any recent ones but....

[buoyant holly]

try clearing your error log and then trying again so that we're not chasing old errors

[alpine karma]

(b) cleared and pressed switch build target to android:

(b) cleared again and pressed switch build target to windows:

[buoyant holly]

would you mind sending a screenshot where we can actually see the error log so we can figure out what's wrong

try clicking on the red stop sign

[radiant shadow]

multiple av's in scene , if one got error, you cant upload (seeing as you have multiple use collapse , likely lots of the same anyway)

[buoyant holly]

checking the error log it looks like you somehow have multiple gltf loaders installed

[alpine karma]

(b) how do i remove a package from unity?

[buoyant holly]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/upm-ui-remove.html

[alpine karma]

(b) thankyou

(b) so. mat count is down. but for some reason, between the lobby and the avatar testing world, the avatar became cursed

[buoyant holly]

that's because Quest avatars don't have any transparency support

[alpine karma]

(b) i give up for today

(b) huh

[buoyant holly]

basically the mobile chipset of the quest doesn't handle transparency as well

[alpine karma]

(b) ah

[buoyant holly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA733GlRwF8

this video shows how to like just use viroid to fix the transparency stuff by moving the textures that are transparent onto the base layer

[alpine karma]

(b) thanks

[buoyant holly]

hopefully it works okay

[normal nova]

the bug you saw earlier in Bake should be fixed with the dev version

[alpine karma]

(b) that was the dev version

[high elk]

Heyo! If i got a Prop with 1 active Material slot and therefore only use one material at a time, will It still come at the expense of having 3 Materials in total, when I got two other Materials to switch it out?
How is it with textures? If I use one material and several alphas mask textures, would it be more performant/optimized then having interchangeable Materials?
I think having one material with a rgb texture mask will be enough for my approach to save two other materials xD

[ruby isle]

VRChat will count all materials, inactive or not. So it will come out to 3 materials in total.
As for the textures, whatever uses the least amount of texture files would be the most performant. If you can achieve what you want with multiple materials without using any additional texture files then that's better. However if you need a different texture for each material, then masking will give you better filesizes

[high elk]

Thank you very much!

[willow tiger]

anyone know why "combine same material" from CATS would, instead of combining this pair of duplicate "ARM21_144" materials, make such a mess out of my materials:

from this:

to this:

like it just makes more materials out of thin air lol

[willow tiger]

i just combined stuff by hand and it stopped making a mess.

[unreal plover]

Perhaps UV channels are weird with the material? Oh nvm, you already found a workaround

[willow tiger]

Yeah, something about those arm materials was making cats bonk itself

[willow tiger]

any optimization wizards know

i have some normal and height maps for some of my materials

i'd like to atlas them into maybe a single material group, but i am not how to go about that

would manually stitching my maps into photoshop work?

[unreal plover]

@willow tiger You can stitch them together in Photoshop or bake them via Blender. (I like to use https://blendermarket.com/products/simplebake---simple-pbr-and-other-baking-in-blender-2 for baking in Blender)

[willow tiger]

ooh thank you

[willow tiger]

😎

[normal nova]

https://github.com/absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin/wiki/Bake

[heady smelt]

@ruby isle that is why I mentioned art style, some people like the floating cuz it looks better when their arms hang down

[ruby isle]

Even with fluffy sleeves, you can just increase the inner cone size and it still is considerably less polys

[worn socket]

Waiting answer of the original author of allowing use of certain model for modding or not

[heady smelt]

Then they risk it clipping their shoulders or having issues with the weight paint. Coning works, but it is too out of wack for some people.

[ruby isle]

Their body is already clipping through their shirt in the pic

And if it's that big, you can segment the cone and weight it accordingly

It's still way better than adding a few extra thousand polys for almost no reason

Or you can cylinder cap it instead of cone

Still better than thousands of wasted polys

[heady smelt]

I think you read me wrong, not the entire mesh flipped, I mean only visable areas

We are talking 50-100 extra polys. Not thousands.

Do half the sleeve, then cone, it makes the shirt appear to be fabric for a moment.

[ruby isle]

Ah yeah that's basically capping it with both cone and cylinder shapes

[heady smelt]

how

[ruby isle]

Why

[heady smelt]

im just uploading my uwu kawaii egirl with 88 million polygons stop being ABLEIST

[heady smelt]

Are the meshes W/O Read Write enabled?

[heady smelt]

what

[sick timber]

They would be, it's a different number

I don't think it'll actually let you upload that due to file size though

[unreal plover]

To have clothes not clip trough the body just make sure the topology is similar (i.e. each vertex on the clothes corresponds with one vertex on the skin) and use nearest vertex data transfer

[gloomy stratus]

Hi I'm trying to finish this model i'm making for VRC, only part left is testing the IK (FBT)
is there any way to test it without the FBT devices?

[calm spade]

You'd have to ask someone to test it for you

[gloomy stratus]

@calm spade do you know someone willing to test it? i can pay them if they want

[calm spade]

You can find someone willing in #full-body-tracking

[heady smelt]

I got you if you gimmie 3 hours for free

[hasty cliff]

Heya I'm really sorry if it's rude to ask yet if possible is anyone free to help me convert my vroid model to a file for vrchat? I tried doing it myself yet my PC can't download unity for some reason.. All I need is someone to do the unity process for me it doesn't have to be anything big. Also really sorry if I'm in the wrong chat to ask D:

[unique bear]

So I'm having problems with the atlas tool in the CATS blender plugin. When I try and set my materials to an atlas, it puts the materials in the wrong places.

Before atlas:

After atlas:

it also creates a weird view of some spots going invisible at the front, but visible in the back.

[heady smelt]

cats' texture atlas tool sucks

[unique bear]

any way to make the materials an atlas without it breaking?

[heady smelt]

do it manually

someone will probably help you witht hat later

[unique bear]

ok

[heady smelt]

im playing besiege so i cant

[unreal plover]

Make a 2nd UV map and bake textures to that UV map. Use something like UVPackmaster and SimpleBake to make your life easier, but otherwise you can do it with built-in tools as well

[unique bear]

I am completely new to blender, so I probably don't know how to do the things you said, or what to look for.

[unreal plover]

Probably not worth it then

[coarse vine]

I dunno if you still need it, but this is the guide I used to do my first manual atlas.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13-LzjODZ0RbBooAOK5uszoIuvb8yfy4vYxwXsaDdZZg/mobilebasic

[buoyant holly]

just finished giving that a read that was a pretty good tutorial

[gloomy stratus]

@heady smelt wow thank you so much! i'll let you know when the avatar is ready for testing 😄

[unique bear]

Ok, another question. In Blender, does all of the materials have to be textures, or can they be solid colors? And if they have to be textures, is there a way to convert the Blender solid colors to textures?

[buoyant holly]

if you have solid color materials that would be better for them to be on a texture that has all of the colors so you have one draw call instead of a draw call for each color

[unique bear]

so your saying that I would need to put a random texture for each of my materials, and set the solid colors as the one being visible on the model.

[buoyant holly]

no that's not what I'm saying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_1XfpEy80

basically have a texture with the color palette you want for the solid colors and use 1 texture to do the colors instead of a material for each color

as basically you want to use the least amount of materials possible for your avatar @unique bear

[unique bear]

Ok, I might have encountered a roadblock. So I using the manual atlas guide that Neranos posted earlier. I was converting all of the materials to the Diffuse BSDF like the guide said, but I had to stop when I came to these materials here.

I used a video to make a LCD screen effect for the visor here.

If I were to change these to the Diffuse BSDF, it would get rid of the effect.

[buoyant holly]

the way it looks you could just bake it out to a texture the LCD screen

[unique bear]

The material or the entire screen?

[buoyant holly]

https://i.gyazo.com/f66502dc29749018a8f68446ee20e7c9.png this as a texture as the rest of the screen is just pure blackness

[unique bear]

so I can take all of the materials listed above and bake that as one texture?

[buoyant holly]

yes

as your screenshot isn't displaying anything that requires separate shaders

like honestly you could fit your current Avatar on the screenshot I just posted with the rest of the colors in the corner

with it all being solid colors

[unique bear]

just to be safe, I will post the video I used to create the LCD effect. if you can watch it over and see if I need to do anything special before baking, let me know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sARkbkhDjk

[buoyant holly]

the facial animations displayed aren't going to transfer to vrchat

and also that's a much more intricate effect in the video compared to your screenshots

[unique bear]

would shape keys transfer into vrchat? if so, I already created some.

[buoyant holly]

yes you can use shape keys

so basically I would suggest you take all of your other solid colors and make a little color Atlas and have the lcd be a separate material as that actually qualifies as requires a separate Shader

[unique bear]

So convert all of the possible solid colors to the Diffuse BSDF and make the color atlas, and leave the listed materials alone for now is what I should do. got it.

[buoyant holly]

kinda as you're not going to be able to transfer the blender LCD Shader into vrchat

you would have to use a Unity Shader that emulates a lcd

[buoyant holly]

so basically that video tutorial is of no help for a vrchat avatar

[unique bear]

ah

[buoyant holly]

so honestly I'd suggest for a version one of the Avatar just going with a solid blue color for the eyes or something like this screenshot until you find a Unity Shader that does what you want https://i.gyazo.com/f66502dc29749018a8f68446ee20e7c9.png

[buoyant holly]

and most of those materials in your screenshot don't seem to be actually doing any anything

[valid sun]

im trying to make an emission glow in the dark
but its permanantly on

[lone abyss]

i have an avatar that has a couple of prop toggles

however the size is 11mb

how do i compress this?

[stray tangle]

use VRWorldToolkit's Build report to see which files in your avatar are 1: being used, and 2: how much space they take up

then you can lower their resolutions in the textures import settings

you should also enable Crunch compression with 100 quality for pretty much all your textures

that will further cut down on the download size

[dire pike]

to reduce the size of toggles, you can make toggles blendshapes and all be one material on one mesh on one texture

[buoyant holly]

bone scaling would be better for performance than blendshapes

[lone abyss]

Already figured stuff out

Models were beeg

Had to find smol ones

[dire pike]

hm, didnt know i could use for toggles, but good tip

[wheat nova]

Are there any other ways of optimizing an avatar that isn't just lowering the quality of the textures?

[buoyant holly]

you could combine the the textures so that their one texture without necessarily reducing their size which would cut down on the amount of draw calls

[wheat nova]

What do you mean by combine the textures

this avatar has one main texture for his whole body, along with 2 outfits

[buoyant holly]

okay then that's already relatively optimized

[buoyant holly]

But to answer the question the less amount to textures used the better so one big texture that has all of your little Textures in it would be better for performance https://docs.speedtree.com/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=atlasview.jpg

and I guess a question would be what's your current Avatar rankings stats

[wheat nova]

It says it is poor, also this isn't an avatar i have made but it is one i bought

the textures were all 4k

[buoyant holly]

would you mind sharing a screenshot so we can see why it's poor

[wheat nova]

can i dm you it?

[buoyant holly]

ok

[burnt quiver]

Hello I need help! I am trying to optimise my avatar but when I put the shader I want to use this happens (1st image is a before and 2nd image is an after)

[pure bridge]

what @heady smelt said, look for your shader's alpha or transparency options and the one you want is cutout. if that doesnt suit your needs try the others, and obviously dont leave it on opaque or none

[sick timber]

If you’re trying to make a Quest build, you’ll have to take it to Blender and use the knife tool to manually cut out the transparent parts.

[burnt quiver]

Oooooh alrighty ty I'll try it when I get back home <3

[sick timber]

#quest-optimization message
Also keep this in mind as shapekeys are likely to break otherwise

[distant osprey]

If i have a particle system with a bunch of particles and materials - does it has an impact on the performance as long as its not activated?
The particle system is a springjoint. The Youtubevideo told me to not turn off the parent constraint as this results in tracking errors and i just have to hide the mesh and the partikle systems. Does the 24/7 active parent constraint has an impact on the performance?

[ruby isle]

Anything not disabled will count against performance. However constraints are pretty cheap for performance. That being said, you can safely disable the constraint without any tracking issues

[distant osprey]

ty~

[earnest frigate]

Hey there, just got done uploading a png as an avatar but am confused on how to make it quest compatible. I've tried changing the shader to Mobile/particle/multiply but it doesn't seem to do the trick. I am unfamiliar with uploading avatars in general so any help would be appreciated! 😄

https://youtu.be/Z4IR2yR-3lI

Used this video as a guide for my current pc version of the png

[buoyant holly]

you'll have to cut out the shape with the blender knife tool

[earnest frigate]

When importing the png to blender to cut it would I have to texture it onto a plane or just have the image sitting there without being textured on to anything

[buoyant holly]

you would put it on a plane

[earnest frigate]

Alright got it on a plane. any idea on how to import it onto unity so textures can show??

[buoyant holly]

I would note that the quest shaders are one-sided so you might want to duplicate the plane in blender and flip its normals so it shows up on both sides

[earnest frigate]

oh my god im stupid

thanks

[valid sun]

hey

i am trying to get taught how to understand and be able to use glow in the dark emissions

from my end unity shows them as working but in vrchat they r not

is this a bug in the lighting like on an optimization side? or simply just a texture issue

[proper grail]

Most worlds do not have a skylight for this feature to work

[heady smelt]

Oh…that’s what I was missing. I should keep that in my back mind pocket

[modern tartan]

the SDK doesn't work for me

[karmic bobcat]

Question about materials: this is relatively minor, but I was wondering, if I made an animation out of two separate materials that use the same textures (minus an emissive map), would the textures be rendered in the VRAM twice or would it only take the same amount of space as with one material (again, minus emissives)

I hope that made sense

[unreal plover]

If you use the exact same texture it won't take up extra VRAM

[heady smelt]

Delete the avatar

[calm spade]

Stop entirely

[buoyant holly]

how the heck does that even happen

[heady smelt]

When you when you make every face on a model its own material

[buoyant holly]

basically everything from the looks of your stat readout

[buoyant holly]

like your readout is red

[calm spade]

Screenshot of the avatar ?

[buoyant holly]

can you take a screenshot that's not from like 100 ft away

[dawn coral]

I can't see anything there

[buoyant holly]

now that's a bit too close but there definitely seems to be other things wrong with the Avatar besides for optimization

[dawn coral]

Is that supposed to be an eye?

[heady smelt]

Looks like it got decimated to death

Are you speech to text talking rn

[buoyant holly]

where the heck did you get a model that's so heavy that 48 million is the decimated version

whoever the heck originally made that did a terrible job if it's that heavy

like that's past the rendering budget of AAA video games like 8 times even on the decimated version

[heady smelt]

You can't use raw sculpts in a game broski

[buoyant holly]

well it's not going to do you any good if everyone's framerate dies from trying to wear the avatar

https://gitlab.com/s-ilent/SCSS/-/wikis/Other/Avatar-Models if it helps here's a list of free to download Avatar models that aren't going to make computers explode

that's a bit of an odd insult

[stone ginkgo]

Sorry if this question has been asked before, but is there really any downside to GPU Instancing? Isn't it supposed to improve performance and optimization? Could I just enable it on my avatar? Using the standard specular shader..

[onyx harness]

Cmiiw but I don’t think it works on skinned meshes.

[buoyant holly]

yeah it doesn't do anything on skinned meshes

[stone ginkgo]

ooooh ok

I see

Welp, thanks for letting me know ;)

[burnt quiver]

I need help my model I commissioned (made in vroid I already did everything with the transparency) the bat wings on the avatars head are only visible from the back, from the front there invisible

[onyx harness]

You’ll need to change the culling of the shader usually in the material, depends on the shader you’re using.

[burnt quiver]

Well first I gotta find out how to get the avatar textures and stuff in unity, and I’m trying to make it quest compatible so I’m useing toon lit

[onyx harness]

Ah, the mobile shaders can’t have the culling turned off. You’ll need to add faces to the other side if you don’t want them to be see-through.

[burnt quiver]

How do I do that?

@onyx harness

[jolly pollen]

LMFAO this thread is ridiculous, good job

[onyx harness]

Light mode? You’re right. Blinding, it is.

[heady smelt]

just duplicate the geometry of the bat ear and make the normals are calculated outwards

also how did you make convincing bat ears in vroid im curious

[heady smelt]

Um...that's how most of my avatars on the pc side look.

[burnt quiver]

I diddent I commissioned it, and I think they made bunny ears and drew the bat ears. It looks amazing and it was only $10! Best money iv ever spent

[burnt quiver]

And can you maybe help me with this in DMS, I can share my screen and stuff I'm just very confused

[hollow pendant]

So has anyone been able to figure out how to add audio to gestures? I’ve made the animation, stacked the audio with an empty game object, unapplied the mask in the gestures, but the audio and the animation still plays whenever I spawn into VRChat. I’ve done this before, but I simply forgot how to do it. If anyone knows and is able to give me the rundown, that would be heavily appreciated.

[proper grail]

You might have it all correct but just be uploading it with the audio source on by default

[amber hemlock]

Is copying a dynamic bone chain with rotation constraints more optimized than having another dynamic bone script on a different chain?

My thinking is it would only get calculated once

This is for "backup dancers"

[ruby isle]

Yes much more performant

[amber hemlock]

This feels like cheating

[unreal plover]

It's what I've been doing for the last 2 years lmao

[blazing temple]

welcome to the world of game engines, you have to cheat performance now and then on background assets

if you made everything as if it were a hero asset UE5 would be the only engine you could even consider using, and you'd spend 20x as long making a game

[tribal ruin]

I've also been doing this. Mainly for improving performance on my own avatar, not on clones of it. It works pretty well for short hair, and symmetrical bones that are children of the same bone. No real reason aside from interaction that these need to all be simulated, since they move more or less the same way.

[unreal plover]

Only reason it's tedious to do it manually, which is why i wrote that little tool c:

[atomic fern]

Is there a way to combine Materials in Unity ? Why are they Even separated?

[high kiln]

use blender for that and cats plugin.

[atomic fern]

I dont have a .mmd or.fbx, just the unitypackage

[high kiln]

you can export fbx from unitypackage

[stray tangle]

not even export

[atomic fern]

Does the Avatar quality gets More worse reducing the mats?

[stray tangle]

the package will literally contain the FBX

[atomic fern]

I only have the prefab i guess

[high kiln]

depends if you make the atlas resolutiion good than you won't lose quality

[stray tangle]

where'd you get the avatar from?

[atomic fern]

But does that get me More Performance?

[stray tangle]

lol

throw the model away

[high kiln]

yeah that's a nope.

[atomic fern]

U saw that message?

[high kiln]

the site is blocked guess why.

[atomic fern]

Sorry i just dont find Models i like in .mmd to buy or for free

Like they all female

[burnt marsh]

I cant fix this.

[stray tangle]

look for avatars on Booth or Gumroad

[high kiln]

look in booth or on gumroad

[high kiln]

kek we said same thing

[stray tangle]

what do you need to fix

everything's fine

[burnt marsh]

Well it doesn't upload.

Odd.

[stray tangle]

check unity console for any errors

also avoid cropping the image so much

[burnt marsh]

FileNoException:[FILEPATH]

[atomic fern]

I looked like trough half of booth and i just dont like the Models😅

[high kiln]

hide other avatars if you have them in scene.

[stray tangle]

you're removing useful info

[burnt marsh]

I don't

[burnt marsh]

This is why I cant upload

[stray tangle]

screenshot the entire console

[burnt marsh]

FileNoException[FilePath] Not found

[stray tangle]

that tells me nothing

[high kiln]

getting banned for stolen avatar isn't good too.

don't you think

[burnt marsh]

How do I open console again

[stray tangle]

ctrl shift c

[atomic fern]

Hell nah that aint good

[atomic fern]

Is it that Bad on this specific Site?

[high kiln]

i haven't seen which one you linked exactly .

but don't say it;'s name anyway.

[burnt marsh]

Just this

[stray tangle]

bingo

[high kiln]

hmm it could be dynamic bones or something else.

[stray tangle]

you forgot to import Dynamic bones

[burnt marsh]

How the hell do I do that-

;-;

[atomic fern]

Like the First non oficial one that comes up if you Google vrchat Avatar

[stray tangle]

buy it on the unity asset store

[burnt marsh]

I'm new to this

[stray tangle]

or, alternatively

you can download "Dynamic bone container", which is free. it will allow you to upload the avatar using the dynamic bone components that were already set up on the avatar. however,.you will not be able to edit the dynamics or preview anything in unity

[burnt marsh]

Oh ok

I'll do that bc Im broke

[stray tangle]

you can also just remove the missing references to the dynamic bone component

and just not have dynamic bones

[burnt marsh]

And that will do what

[stray tangle]

make stuff not flowy

like hair or whatever

it'll just be stiff

[burnt marsh]

So the wrists will just be stiff

[high kiln]

no it will not have dynamics

[stray tangle]

the wrists had colliders

to interact with things like hair

[high kiln]

it will move

[stray tangle]

if you scroll up in the console, you will probably see more missing stuff

on things like the hair

[burnt marsh]

I did not see anything else

So I'm dum

Im gonna import the bones now

thx

It worked! Thanks!
Im gonna go test it offline now

Literally my only online test error

[stray tangle]

not even an error

just a warning

[burnt marsh]

Oh

Ok

Ok

Uhhhh...

Help...?

[high kiln]

might be bcs of shaders

[normal nova]

...not sure how it took me this long to realize that you can pack AO into the metallic map

[calm spade]

Which channel ?

[buoyant holly]

on which Shader

[normal nova]

Green, of metallic (on Standard)

Metallic uses R, smoothness uses A, and it turns out both Height and Occlusion use G

[hollow sierra]

So is optimising particle effects just impossible? VR chat just seems to ding you for any particle effectz

Well at least my particles aren't like... Very important so they can be turned off without issues

[ruby isle]

I mean you can optimize how many the emitters create and the features they have. But by nature, all particle systems render their own material and therefore will hurt performance

[hollow sierra]

Fair

Only one accessory I have uses particles and it's overall no biggie

[silk lintel]

can't you just multiply the AO on top of the color map?

is there a difference?

[nova hornet]

If you multiply the AO on top of the base color then it'll always be there
whereas I think AO on itsown like in the Metal Map or something
will just kinda change how shadows look when they are there

[tawdry venture]

Weird, Standard has a dedicated slot for an AO texture... Wonder why the metallic slot also has an AO channel.

Height does as well.

[wild monolith]

Yo could someone help me create an oculus avatar?

I've got a vroid avatar I'm wanting to put into oculus vr chat

I just cant figure it out -

[unreal plover]

#avatar-quest for Oculus Quest or otherwise #avatar-help

[wild monolith]

ah sorry

Thank you

[normal nova]

So, yes and no. If you premultiply AO into diffuse, you lose the ability to have seperate rimlight and phong masking

[silk lintel]

interesting

[normal nova]

The closest you can achieve to proper masking on Quest for example is to premultiply AO into smoothness, but the result is that highlights/rimlights in occluded areas have a higher diffusion radius instead of just being darker

but... fortunately cause they use different channels, you can just pack them and then use the same texture for the metallic and AO slots, saving you the work

badaaa

R: metallic
G: ao
B: <none>
A: smoothness

[buoyant holly]

oh that's what you meant by being able to channel pack them

[silk lintel]

oh ok

and does unity just know to look for AO on the green channel then?

[buoyant holly]

so what Channel does the detail mask sample

[normal nova]

The shader just always uses G, it's hard to notice cause most people just leave their AO as a grayscale RGB

[normal nova]

I have no idea

I imagine displacement and AO both use green cause sometimes it's useful to use AO as displacement, when you're trying to really save room

[normal nova]

I did some digging, appears to be alpha?

So you could pack it to your detail albedo or detail normal

[buoyant holly]

good to know

[proper grail]

Its in the shader code, if you find the _TextureSample and where its used in the code, each math expression can be limiter'd to Tex.rgba. Like Tex.r would only use red and so on

[normal nova]

Nothing in the standard shader uses blue, which makes some sense (generally if you're using a texture with uneven channels, blue gets the least detail)

[normal nova]

indeed, that's what I did

[proper grail]

Dont forget to uncheck is srgb in the texture settings for packed greyscale data, or else the value will get curved to a different value!

[normal nova]

It's not packed grayscale, they're all saved as sRGB

(or rather, metallic and AO are, smoothness isn't)

[proper grail]

...

[normal nova]

This is all for my CATS Bake thing, which is optimized for 'even if you don't mess with the settings it'll baaasically work'

[proper grail]

Oh cats, I was wondering how you got to packed textures before knowing the fun stuff that comes before that. sRGB is for perceived colors, unchecked is for data

[normal nova]

I know what sRGB is...

but it's a bit more than that: RGB is linear, sRGB is (intended to be) perceptually linear. So it makes more sense for AO

Metallic is generally less important, and as long as both Unity and the encoder (blender) know they're using sRGB, there's no distortion, just loss of precision at some levels

[stray tangle]

simple, don't use atlas

use CATS's Bake feature

because it actually packs all of the UV islands properly

if you have UVPackmaster installed, it'll use that to get an even tighter packing

also, it totally depends on how much stuff you need to pack into that texture

@hollow grotto

for help with the bake feature, consider joining the CATS blender plugin discord

[limber lodge]

Greetings everybody i'm hoping to get some help here, i have cut my body in 3 parts for reasons.. so now i'm facing a lil issue with the shading in unity it looks alright and in blender as well only in vrc i can see clearly the lines of the cuts, if i put my shader to unlit i don't see it anymore so i think it has something to do with the shadow stuff in the shader someone knows how to avoid these lines without needing to use unlit ? https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/646836667423916053/948373517353771018/unknown.png

[silk lintel]

could be mismatched normals

try recalculating normals on all three parts?

you can turn on face orientation and make sure that all the faces are blue

[limber lodge]

i will check that out

[limber lodge]

seems all blue

but the cuts can be seen

[silk lintel]

yeah, if they're 3 separate meshes, you may just have to bite the bullet and merge them all together

or somehow average the normals at the seams

[limber lodge]

average the normals ?

[silk lintel]

I'm guessing those three separate parts are 3 completely separate meshes in blender, right?

[limber lodge]

yes

[silk lintel]

like you go into edit mode for one of them at a time

yeah so

[limber lodge]

i seperated them from the main mash

[silk lintel]

since they're not physically connected, the "smooth shading" acts like there are seams where they're disconnected

there might be a way to use transfer vertex data or something to "connect" the vertex normals again without actually connecting the faces, but I've never tried that before

[limber lodge]

that would be interessting tbh

[silk lintel]

you could try this:

add a data transfer modifier to the middle mesh

set the source to the top mesh

check "Face Corner Data"