Hi!
Before I worked for VRChat, I made a bunch of video guides on importing avatars into VRChat. These videos are a bit out of date, but still mostly relevant. In particular, the “big movements” are basically teh same-- import, correct model, optimize, export to Unity, set up for VRChat, upload.
Some stuff has changed, but I’ve been told that these videos are still quite useful! At some point in the future, I’ll likely make some updated videos and add more when new features come out.
To be clear, these videos are not official VRChat content. I run this channel on my own time, and do not monetize the channel. All views, opinions, and information in my videos are not representative of VRChat and do not indicate official endorsement or instruction.
Anyways, here they are!
MMD to Blender to Unity to VRChat!
The [in]famous one hour and forty minutes video covering importing an MMD to VRChat. This covers the full, up to date process as it stands today. Heavily employs Cat’s Blender Plugin. Covers Dynamic Bones, texture atlasing, animation overrides, optimization, and more!
There is a lot out of date here. You need to use the correct Unity version, you need to use Blender 2.8, etc etc.
Other than that, its mostly information regarding Dynamic Bones. Don’t overuse them! They’re horrible for performance and most people will just turn them off if they’ve above the VRChat Dynamic Bones Limit System’s maximums.
Manual Texture Atlasing
Please read the description for this video, I left out a very important step at the end.
Texture Atlasing is a super easy way to make your models super performant. However, some methods are more effective than others. This one uses the UV maps that your MMD already has to ensure that you are giving the proper detail to your models
This video is significantly out of date since Blender 2.8 released-- the process has changed quite a bit. However, using Cat’s Blender Plugin and Shotariya’s Material Combiner, you don’t really need to do this unless you want to have very fine control over how your UVs are laid out and want to optimize for texture memory usage-- which you should be!
Dynamic Bones are stealing your frames
Why are Dynamic Bones so awful? This is why.
I also have another video where I expand a little bit on this explanation.
Future Work
I have a few videos that I’ve started, given up on, started again, hated, deleted, started again, and gave up and went to play VRChat instead. Here’s what I plan on adding in the future, hopefully:
Brand New Full Avatar Import Workflow Video
Lots has changed in the avatar workflow-- software has updated, new workflows have been discovered, etc. This will cover a more generic avatar import workflow, not MMDs in particular.
New Manual Atlasing Procedure
Blender 2.8 changes a little bit about this process-- in particular, baking alpha is a bit of a pain. There’s a way to do it, though! We’ll cover it here.
Avatars 3.0 Video
You better believe I’ll have a three hour video digging into this because there is SO MUCH TO COVER
The ETA on all three of these is “Man, I dunno, I’m really busy with this job I’ve got”. 