VRC AV3 Creator Tooling/Workflows

A mix of tooling, references, and other useful bits for Avatars 3.0 Creation.

Tools

VRC-Related

• SDK3-Avatars - Core SDK
• VRChat Creator Companion (VCC) - This will become very useful soon, hopefully

Unity

Core

Tools that are universally useful when creating avatars.

• Avatars 3.0 Emulator (Lyuma) - Test av3 systems in-editor. Can test local-remote sync, toggles, gesture layer, etc.
• Pumkin's Avatar Tools - Copy components hierarchically between scene prefabs, reset avatar pose, etc.
• Avatar Evaluator (VRAM Estimator) (Thryrallo) - Estimate avatar VRAM usage. Essential for optimization.
• Hierarchy2 (truongnguyentungduy) - Annotate and organize Unity hierarchy, showing scripts. Free alternative to other hierarchy tooling.
• Avatars 3.0 Manager (VRLabs) - Flexibly merge animator controllers. Useful for building systems modularly and installing prefabs.
• Copy Bounding Box (Jessica92) - Transfer or generate bounding box from one Skinned Mesh Renderer to all children of a specified prefab. Prevents premature renderer culling.

Unity-related

• AssetBundleStat (lox9973) - View actual compressed size makeup of .vrca files. Useful for optimizing download size.

Niche

Tools that are very useful in the area of their specific functionality.

• AnimatorExtensions (DJLukis.LT) - Fix some rough edges in Animator editing. Requires Harmony.
• VRWorld Toolkit (OneVR) - Use to set up post-processing. Ignore most other functions.
• Lightbox Viewer (Hai) - Material lookdev assistant, double check shading setups.
• ComboGestureExpressions (Hai) - Handle complex hand gestures. Doing it by hand isn't worth it.
• VRCFury (Senky Dragon) - Tool with eclectic functionality. Useful Write Defaults ON -> OFF converter included.
• VRCAutoUpload (Senky Dragon) - Skip upload confirmation screen. Useful for fast iteration.
• SmartTexture (Silent) - ScriptedImporter to create packed textures. Doesn't create extra assets.
• Texture2dArray Import Pipeline (pschraut) - ScriptedImporter to create a tex2darray from a set of textures. Doesn't create extra assets.

Blender

• Blender to Unity FBX Exporter (EdyJ) - export FBX with correct settings, removes unnecessary armature rotations and ensures uniform 1.0 scaling.
• Apply Modifier With Shape Keys (przemir) - Apply modifiers to meshes with shape keys. Slow but effective.
• Bone Manager (fin) - Name and manage bone layers without Blender's ancient, unintuitive system.
• LoopTools - Included with blender. Trivializes loop cleanup (spacing, circularizing, smoothing).

Workflow Notes

Unity

• Prefix filenames with asset type. m_ for materials, t_ for textures, fbx_ for models, a_ for animations, ac_ for animator controllers, etc. This sorts them automatically.
• Enter Play Mode Settings (Edit -> Project Settings -> Editor): Experimental option to disable reloading scene/domain on play mode. Speeds up playmode immensely. May cause issues.
• Slider at the bottom right of the project window controls thumbnail/item size - fully left makes it a detail list