When trying to customize an avatar, the parts don't stick, despite all being MA configured, and meant for the base I'm using

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Hi.

I want to preface this with two things: one, despite looking at a few tutorials, I’m kind of a newbie when it comes to all this (not just avatar customization, but Unity and Blender, as well), and two, if this isn’t the most appropriate/best place for this question, please do tell me, as I’ll gladly move it.

Anyway, I’ve got a Miltina base, along with a couple items to put on her, in order to create a customized avatar (links at the end of the post, along with SS of my hierarchy). However, when I drag an item to the hierarchy, for example, the costume, everything works just fine. However, when I drag another, the first one is now not sticking. Same if I add a third. Even though I looked at tutorials, most seem to only be about adding a costume or an item, so I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong when trying to attach the prefabs to the base. There is also the fact that I can’t use Unity’s play mode to check if that happens only when moving around the costume in edit mode, or if it also happens when using play mode, as, when I activate play mode, i can’t do anything. I can’t move the camera, I can’t move the model, nothing. This could be some weird configuration I messed up with, or something else, as, well, I’m a complete newbie (though, in retrospect, I could probably have researched that).

Still, I’d like to know if/what I’m doing wrong, as, according to the instructions of even the outfit, nails and hair, all you seem to require is to drag and drop, and NOT hit “Setup Costume”. While I did so the first time around, after many attempts, even after starting a new, clean project, I still can’t get it to work. I will also put the MA components for the three items as SS at the end of the post.

Also, there are two other things I’d like to ask, both minor (as my first priority is getting the actual items to work right), in decreasing order of importance:

One, I also got a makeup/eye texture pack, which, for the most part seems fairly straightforward, in that you open the face texture in an image editor, drag the makeup and eyes into it, and export it as a texture. What I don’t get is how to apply the masks that come with it, or rather, where to put them in the face texture material. I assume in one of the emission slots, as they are for emission, but I have no idea if they are meant to go on the regular or alpha materials, not to mention that I’d like to get a general feel for where to apply mask files, regardless of what they are. Also, what I need to do for the Alpha Face Material, as I’m not sure if I need to do any extra steps to configure it, or if I can just drop the same texture I made for the normal face material into the alpha material.

Two, if I wish to remove some parts of, say, the main model, like the tail, what do I need to do? I assume delete the actual tail mesh, and the bones? Is there any tool that could simplify this? Or would it be best to just toggle them off?

Three, and this is a “for when I have it working, and even got the textures and mask properly applied” thing, but I’d like to split the gloves and hand nails (which are one, unified item) into left and right. I assume I’ll need to edit it in Blender, but is it possible? And is it hard for a newbie to do so?

Anyway, thanks in advance for any answers.

Miltina Model (Just to facilitate the process):

Outfit:

Nails:

Hair:

Makeup/Eye Texture

Hierarchy Pt1

{3E2E67D3-8B95-443E-AF11-70EAA18288DF}
{3E2E67D3-8B95-443E-AF11-70EAA18288DF}337×525 18.9 KB

Hierarchy Pt2

{BBBBCE19-5B0C-4E05-AFAC-B6D734FF5686}
{BBBBCE19-5B0C-4E05-AFAC-B6D734FF5686}321×247 8.85 KB

MA Component (Outfit)

{F8A82675-0436-46F0-A59C-7DFB341053DF}
{F8A82675-0436-46F0-A59C-7DFB341053DF}521×584 43.6 KB

MA Component (Nails)

{DA0F9170-F21E-4382-AEE4-B6EBCE900E8C}
{DA0F9170-F21E-4382-AEE4-B6EBCE900E8C}511×569 42.5 KB

MA Component (Hair)

{AB6CEB63-53C5-4C86-B7C4-57FD8394440C}
{AB6CEB63-53C5-4C86-B7C4-57FD8394440C}513×619 40.4 KB

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When you enter play mode, you are automatically put into the POV of your camera “game view”. You can escape this by clicking the tab at the top of the view port that says “scene”. This puts you back into the normal unity editor view.

As for your MA issues, I am not totally sure. I don’t think I have ever run into that problem. I also don’t use MA often.

For the textures, it entirely depends on the shader you are using. Poke around in the material and you should find a tab that says “emission” or similar, and there will be a texture slot to put it in.

For the alpha face material, it may or may not need the same texture, depends on the model. Typically you can tell by just looking at what texture was slotted on the alpha material by default.

Removing parts of the mesh is best done in blender, but there are some tools that can let you remove parts of the mesh in Unity. I would recommend learning the way to do it in blender though, as otherwise you end up always dependent on what a given tool can and cant do, and the process is actually rather simple once you learn it. You can also split the gloves at this point. Though I would consider why you are splitting the gloves, if you want to toggle them separately, consider looking into/learning UV discards. They can let you toggle separate parts of the same mesh while not needing an extra material.

3

Thanks! I’ll look into those. Is there any specific settings I need to know in order to import/export objects between unity and blender?

4

I would 100% recommend learning the “manual way” as well so you can understand what tools like MA can do if you mean to do that on a regular basis.

For MA issues, they have a discord linked on their website https://modular-avatar.nadena.dev if you need advanced support.

I would note, ensure that the prefabs that you get with MA are with an armature, if so they will be merged to you armature. If you have a doubt you can always right click on it and redo the “Setup Outfit” action from MA to ensure it merges.
Sometimes items don’t have a humanoid armature, if so you need to use the “Bone Proxy” component to make the object follow a specific bone of your avatar (Hair objects for exemple).

As for modifying parts of your model, you can look at projects like AAO or D4rkOptimizer , they will remove unused objects, so with them if you remove the mesh or mark it as editorOnly, they will “clean” the avatar before upload.

For the texture you have quite advanced tools like TexTransTool to edit texture, but you are most likely having an easier time with an image editor.

I hope you can figure it all out.

5

Thanks! Is there a decent place where it could find the manual ways to install outfits, etc… or should I just look around youtube and stuff? Because, yeah, if this taught me something is that I’d probably know what was going wrong if I actually knew what said tools are doing for me in the first place.

Meanwhile… After fiddling with it a bit more, it’s working. I… wish I could say what the problem was, but I’m enough of a newbie that I don’t know enough to know how I solved, only that I must have been doing something wrong without realizing it.

I clearly have a lot to learn.

Still, I’ll look into what was already suggested, and try to improve. Not sure how often I’ll do stuff like this, but better to know it, regardless.

6

Also, so that I don’t make another post, Is there any way to limit a blendshape’s maximum value to less than 100?

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Not that i know of, aside of editing them yourself.

In general editing an avatar is a full still that can take a while to master. A good advice i saw on the internet was to avoid trying to look for vrchat specifics as they can give advices that aren’t always acurate or long term.
So yeah, look up for tutorials on avatar creation for blender. You can also if you want specifics (but still in manual way) look up what the CATS plugin does to merge avatars together.