How to add a custom VR controller to the Steam Workshop
I had some serious trouble getting the Steam Workshop stuff working for VR, and I’m likely not the only one.
Install Steam VR on your system (even if that computer won’t be running your VR rig) It’s OK. It will allow you to edit your workshop content. I found it easiest to start with a controller that was already built, so download one like the horned controller and ‘Browse Model Directory’ and search the folders until you find it. I then copied this folder elsewhere and overwrote the content.
Run Steam VR and right click on the label to get the menu, then go to either ‘Upload New’ or ‘Modify Existing’ The trickiest bit here is where it asks you to specify which model. I mean I’ve got a bunch! What it actually wants is for you to pick an ‘.obj’ file which shares the same name as the ‘.json’ file which in turn specifies all the model names that are actually loaded. The Thumbnail File should just be an image prepared to show what whatever you’re making will look like to those that might want to download it. This is what people browsing the workshop will see. This is a similar process for lighthouse and environment models. Some gotchas I’ve encountered: Don’t miss that comma in the json after ‘thumbnail:”thumbnail.jpg”,” Bad ’.json’s are bad. Material (.mtl) files with no texture don’t seem to work. All textures have to be in 0-1 uv space. mtl -clamp off seems to just break. Since there’s not lighting anyways, environments need to have all the textures and lighting etc all baked in. This is what’s messing me up from getting the contraption stuff done right now as we have so much custom shader stuff, setting up a bake in Maya is a bit tricky. I’m sure I’ve broken and failed to get models working in 20 more ways, but this is the majority of how I’ve dealt with this so far.















