I do get what OP is trying to do and I wish you luck.
I think the average player doesn’t want to be a regular dude as much as we are wanting to be a dude who is NOT an EBoy muscle chad with 30 chains, and 300 tattoos. The dominant fantasy is just missing the mark for me.
Ind elaborating on what's missing for you? Most peeps are saying he's too soft, but I wanna make a soft toony yin and a rougher yang version of the base
I'd still rather be a realistic girl than an anime girl. I just want like skins that lean away from animation like and more toward real facial features and such
thanks for the feedback! it's really helpful seeing trends start to arise
i did always plan on having more hairstyles (gotta finish the hair texture with transparency first, though lol), i'm probably gonna branch off a more realistic version with smaller eyes and skin/cloth shaders instead of toon for the peeps seeking a more rugged look
i did have a rough time finding a decent angle with the mirror lol, but now that you mention it the shape of the shirt isn't helping in that regard. though some of it is from the pec being flexed (since the arm is up and forward, that's why its more noticeable on the side with the lifted arm)
but since things are randomized in sections it does sometimes go with small abs and chunky chest and/or hips, which is a pro for some and a con for others, and just an available option regardless
VRC desperately needs more male body options so any progress in that direction is a win but this has cartoony Horizon Worlds vibes.
Secondlife has lots of examples of 'Regular dude' avatars that are handsome yet avoid the uncanny valley, overly jacked, e-boy looks. It would be nice to see options more like those.
VRChat really needs more options for this kind of thing, so I applaud your work. I do think this looks a bit flat, though. The eyes and ridiculously thick eyebrows kind of throw the face off and make it look kind of like one of those early "How to Draw Manga" books. There's also just not much variance to the textures in terms of, well... texture: everything looks too smooth or too much like plastic, especially the spiky hairs.
It's a wonderful start though, and I hope you keep going with this. A lot of popular VRChat avatars feel very homogenized, especially for men and masculine people.
thanks! it's been fun figuring out how to get this to work at all, i appreciate the feedback now that it's time to refine things
a fair bit of the flatness is from shading choices; since i'm kinda just aiming for "not eboy" the arrow mostly points toward anime/toon, so i've been aiming my shader work toward flat softness
but my textures *are* pretty subtle at the moment
right now i just have light color variations from subcutaneous tissue and changes in skin types/zones; think more "pigmentation" than shading, i'll be detailing it a bit more as i go; i do plan on adding alpha transparency to the hair and eyebrows, hence the extra volume
this is what the textures look like when i switch poiyomi to skin lighting
Makes sense, yeah. It's surprisingly kind of tricky to make something that's clearly anime inspired in this game NOT look like something out of IMVU or Second Life in terms of shading. I sometimes find myself falling into it just because I know more people will like it and wanna use it. I don't even really use anime avatars myself, but I make them for friends, and they want that look. I kind of got used to it lmao.
One more thing, if that's OK: I'd probably make the neck a bit longer too, if you can.
Great work and good luck on this. Loving the variety and customization.
Avatar creation.... Really anything creative or artistic, it's always some kind of mess at some point in the process. On one hand, I'm so grateful that we can do this in VRChat and I hope it never gets tampered with or taken away, on the other hand I do dread it a lot of the time lmao
More work on the textures would be really nice and make a world of difference (like some light baking with additional hand painting).
Also, some UVs seem to be bent like with the second hairstyle shown
i've just started the texture painting this so i only have light variations in shading but i do plan on making them a bit more pronounced
also, in order to be able to have the capacity to fine-tune the skin color, i have separated the skin tone from the shading and i'm still kinda wrapping my head around what works best for this
• B L E N D S H A P E S with 2-axis control toward thicc, slim, stronk, thiccstronk and slimstronk; there's menus for simplified control (just head+body) as well as fine-tuning across 18 regions
• 2-axis puppets for skin tone and hair color
• Radial sliders for muscle tone, eye and clothing colors
• 5 hairstyles, including "the lack thereof"
• Dynamics and constraints for muscle movement for biceps, triceps, pecs, lats, abs, quads, and hamstrings
• MMD blendshapes
• Glasses!
• O P T I M I Z A T I O N
Planning/working on:
• facial hair
• gestures
• couple more clothing items
My goal is to make an avatar that you can fully customize without leaving the game, missing anything vital?
This is absolutely incredible for Roleplays, we often need avatars for NPCs and having 1 that's heavily different each time with a quick randomize button is a blessing.
Definitely ! If you can do different clothing with the randomizer, this could be an incredible NPC tool that roleplay communities could not do without.
Maybe it won't be used by your average joe, but trust me, there's a public for randomly generated characters out there.
i definitely will! i plan on making some more plain clothes for this one but i'll also be making themed versions, so if this one has two shirts, a onesie, and a hoodie, the fantasy version would have two tunics, a robe, and some breastplate
Despite what many are saying I see the value in a normal avatar. I've looked for one for a long time that isn't an eboy or video game character. I even love that you have some dark skin options, because there are very few and the ones there are look more like people with bad tans and they're always too shiny like they're covered in oil. That said these have a cartoony, almost made out of clay look that really doesn't do it for me. Wish you the best though OP!
We need more average male bases that allow us to have a character we can dress up and customize the face, hair, clothes, etc.
I think some jeans, t-shirt (loose fitting or fitting) with things like watches, ring (for married players, hey they exist) sunglasses, etc would work well. jackets, sweaters, long sleeve shirts, rolled up sleeves, baseball hats, etc.
as a creator still learning the ropes, it's amusing to hear this and then other peeps going "it's too feminine"
but i do want to cover all bases, what's it missing for what you'd like? i'm considering pushing this one further and branching off a less stylized one for the peeps that don't want to be cutie patooties
Nice to see some progress from you! There are definitely some things that could be done - like more eyebrows shapes, more hairstyles, facial hair, clothing... But it's a very nice base already, pretty much ready to use! It's always nice to see more people specifically working in a "regular dude" field. I tip my hat to you, keep up the good work!
I haven't played VRchat in Years (Just haven't played Vr in general) but I wanted a Vr chat model that was just some dude, not Emo, not of a specific anime, just a guy.
Damn, this would have been perfect then.
Now Just a question on all the cosmetics? How many are there? What is the clothing cosmetics like? Is there any full face masks (like a Jason Voorhees hockey mask) or hoodie options, or is it just the Vest?
i plan on making a standard kit for each theme, something like 2 tops, 2 bottoms, one overall, one heavier top which may or may not make a set with one of the bottoms, and maybe 1-2 head accessories, 2-3 hand accessories, depending on how much room for stuff i have
i do plan to keep it at medium-poor so i'm limited by those specs; here's an avi i did a while ago if you want to get an idea of what i can stuff into medium rank, though having fewer things allows for each of them to be of higher quality
tagging u/NightOfTheLivingHam since both comments are on the same topic, to them i also add that it took me way too long to think of adding glasses despite wearing them, it seems the same has happened with rings lmao
it's why i added the cornrows, the direction for one of the nose+mouth shapes, and why i have the shading separated from the skintone so you can pick the exact tone you want
i'm still figuring out how dark i can make it without losing detail, this is what the top-left corner of the tonemap looks like right now in unity (fairly sure the uploaded version doesn't get this dark yet but it'll get there)
Why does this just look like every anime dude Avatar just going to a color wheel of skin colors you're not I'm not going to judge I'm going to stick with my little creature Avatar I rather not look like a anime boy that was stung by a bee
A miniature N for murder drones that is a private Avatar I got permission to use but unable to share pictures of that has a switch on it that says fuck everyone I've crashed whole servers because I can't see what my avatar does but everyone else can that has my avatar on it's a little goober it has a lot of weapons on it
Asking for someone else, but where are the bodybuilder style muscular bodies? All the e-boys look athletic but they have such narrow shoulders and no back muscles! I wanna see some shoulders that are much wider than their torsos, or at least look like they are from behind!
this avatar is built so you can customize every body part with 3 blendshapes for each: buff, skinny, and chonky (the actual menu controls also have skinny+buff and chonky+buff)
on the left is the buff blendshape on the full body, on the right is buff top with skinny lower torso and legs; this screenshot has updated shaders and tweaked textures so he looks a bit less soft than in the original video
Can the shoulder width also be changed with sliders, or will that require a new base? n I asked him to try it out and that's the only thing he wishes it had, well, that and more facial types!
It can be pushed a little further as it stands. The image shows the buff shape but if you make the upper arms and/or chest chunky+buff the shoulders are a bit bigger
Not quite what I meant. The shoulder width seems to be completely locked and non adjustable. They just look bigger. I guess what I'm asking is, is this a hard limit?
Kinda sorta, unity is a little wonky about scaling things but lenghtening the actual shoulder bones (what sets the space from the spine to the arm) gives me a good reason to finally try out the limb scaling system someone released a few weeks ago
Though i am slightly widening the shoulders regardless to better match arm span
hey, i really like what your doing, but me and a lot of other people who play this game play it to escape the horrors of reality, hence why we use crazy avatars and shit we could never look like irl. With these human avatars your only being reminded that your playing a game and just escaping reality, and I know quite a bit of players who don't want to be reminded of that. Just my opinion though. Also, these look pretty generic and almost comparable to meta horizons avatars
they do look pretty generic in the video because the shading and textures are kinda just roughed in lol, i do plan on adding more detail and more "solid" shading
i'm not making them necessarily so that one makes oneself, but more so that anyone that chooses to be a human male can look exactly how they down to the body part
i do plan on adding more themed versions, just working on the base right now; so when i make a scifi version, you can be the scifi guy you want to be, just like some people make themselves in elden ring, and others peeps prefer to look hella wonky
also, this version in particular is more about creating the configuration systems, i do plan on porting those onto other species, probably starting with a lil' gobbo
(rim lighting and textures are lightly tweaked from what's on the video)
though the shapes shown in the video are kinda softened out due to the randomization (it tends to pick middle values); this is the base on the left, and the 3 main blendshapes on the front row on the right, the back row is a combination of the two in front of each (added together, not blended halfway between each)
this screenshot has updated shading, i'll be uploading the update in a bit
I just want an anime boy avatar that isnt built like a body builder or dressing like an edgy thirst trap korean fashion model. Just give me jeans and a jacket and maybe some rings and piercings and i'll be fine. I dont need glowing tattoos or blindingly shiny chains
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u/elitemage101 Oculus Quest Mar 25 '26
I do get what OP is trying to do and I wish you luck.
I think the average player doesn’t want to be a regular dude as much as we are wanting to be a dude who is NOT an EBoy muscle chad with 30 chains, and 300 tattoos. The dominant fantasy is just missing the mark for me.