#vrchat advice

[ironicsoap]

How to get MMD Lip Sync to work in VRChat

Getting MMD animations to work in vrc is pretty simple but requires you know a few things!

(MMD here is Love ! Snow ! Real Magic, motion by hino and camera by Siva)

First, you need to add MMD shape keys/blendshapes. I use this chart to add them (you do not need everything here! just duplicate your models existing keys and rename them for MMD) You want to make sure you do NOT add an MMD blink (まばたき) if your blink key is already named Blink! It'll just double up the blink

After that, make sure your main mesh with the shape keys is named Body and your armature is named Armature

Onto Unity!

In your rig configuration, to get iris movement you need to have the eye bones assigned

Finally in your FX controller, you need to make sure that every state below your hands layer is Write Defaults On (to be safe, you could just make every state write defaults on)

Most tutorials / avatars already do this but it doesn't hurt to check! You click on the animation boxes and it'll tell you if write defaults is on or off

Changing the write defaults of a state does have a potential to change how your avatars animations behave, be careful!

Now you can go check out MMD worlds and see your lil guy sing and dance :D iy MMD World is the highest quality one, all of the dances have face animations as well. Make sure you always credit the motion creators if you post recordings online and don't use them commercially! They work really hard animating and its a jerk move to not credit. (more people don't credit = more animators request MMD worlds to remove their motions!)

[ironicsoap]

So sorry if you've answered this in some shape or form before, but I wanted to ask; is sculpting a viable option when it comes to making VRchat avatars??

Like I'm assuming it is, its just a matter of keeping polygons in check. But I can't really find anyone who does. or if they do its very minor tweaks to preexisting bases. Modeling, as much as I love it is hard for my brain to grasp and I found sculpting works way easier for me, but I just wanted to ask someone who's work I admire (and someone who knows what theyre doing) this question

If you want to make a decent quality avatar that is on par with most other avatars, I really don't advise it 😔 There are a lot of things that sculpt topology will make incredibly hard to do OR make it look bad no matter how hard you try. It's going to make UV unwrapping, texture painting, rigging/weight painting, and creating face shape keys very difficult.

You're going to struggle with striking a balance between tri count and the visual appearance of your sculpt, as you only really get 70k tris for an avatar (you can have more but.. your avatar performance ranking will go to Very Poor and more than 70k is truly so excessive for 1 avatar, *Especially* if you have lots of shape keys)

I'm not sure how knowledgeable/skilled you are in 3D, but you can retopologize sculpts so they have clean topology that fixes all of those problems, and sculpt->retopo->final avatar is a very very common workflow. I can name 4 popular vrc avatar base artists who do that just off the top of my head x) I personally don't do sculpt->retopo very often on my avatars but sometimes I do for more difficult shapes!

Bringing a sculpt to vrchat as an avatar is something that can be done.. but the amount of effort to make it decent quality is going to be enormous, and I don't think it would live up to a retopo'd model that had the same amount of effort put into it.

Ultimately it's up to you though! From the way this is worded I'm assuming you're making a personal model, so as long as you keep an eye on your avatar performance stats the only thing it's really going to do is make it harder to achieve the results you want

(Thank you by the way <3 :3)

[ironicsoap]

How did you start getting into 3d modelling? Any advice for beginner software or projects? Do you need a really good computer?

How did you start getting into 3d modelling? I saw that not a lot of 3D animation memes existed, and wanted to fill in that niche (this is from a few years ago, there's plenty of 3D animation memes these days! but I was one of the very early creators.)

Any advice for beginner software or projects? For beginners, don't do big projects unless you're insane like me and you love the challenge. (3D is a special interest of mine) You want to do small things and get a consistent stream of small wins for motivation! Still challenge yourself, but not so much that learning 3D feels insurmountable. It's a completely new very complex medium of art to a beginner, it doesn't make sense to start out creating film quality models. (Although you can if you are determined. I did that LOL) Basically every person I've known that decided to do something huge decided to quit on 3D immediately. But one person I know actually took my advice of taking it slow and they are really improving and doing bigger and cooler projects every day :3

Do you need a really good computer? You only need a good computer if you want to do realistic/film quality stuff! Toony, chibi, and low poly stuff doesn't need an ultra gaming pc.

[furbador]

VRchat and imposter syndrome

like.... how?

how?

how do i play without my imposter syndrome screaming at me???

i really want to play but all i do is going in avatar world, struggling to find a world to play in and when i do, i just can't talk because l’m scared and all.