busybee VRChat Stuff

Sometimes you need to be able to build and test an avatar from a different machine than what’s running VRChat. This can be a bit tricky. I finally figured out how to make the process less-awful.

These are the documentation files for my critter avatar. While some of the information in here may be of general interest, it is really intended as reference material for those who have purchased the avatar. As such, if you find any of this information helpful, please consider buying it.

Here are some of my collected notes on things that I’ve found helpful when it comes to building avatars for VRChat.

The intention is that this will be a living document that I add to as I learn more. This document is also currently a complete mess and will probably be split up into separate things at some point.

A commonly-desired feature for a VRChat avatar is the ability to switch materials, so as to change color schemes and the like. This requires a nontrivial amount of setup, and with the standard approach it is difficult to maintain cross-platform compatibility. As a result, creators will usually only set it up on PC, leaving Quest users unable to see these customizations.

Here is my approach to setting up material switching in a way that’s easier to support on multiple platforms simultaneously. This particular method is what I developed for my critter avatar.

This is a very simple guide to using Blender to work on the critter base mesh. It’s not a tutorial for using Blender itself. For more general references on using Blender and modeling, please see my avatar creator resources.

So you’ve adopted and/or become a critter and want to fulfill the obligation of being as many colors and patterns and materials as you can imagine. You have made an excellent choice! Here is how I do that stuff, myself. There might be better ways of doing it (there’s definitely a lot of things which feel like they could be automated, at the very least). If you find any improvements to this semi-annoying process, please let me know!

Please consult this document if you would like to set up a Unity project for uploading your own instance of the critter avatar.