Fuck me, even when I swore up and down (and even made a thread on the VRChat Steam Discussion board saying I quit)… I’ve gone back to it.
And I think it’s “the Wurm effect”, saying I’m going to quit and all of that shit (and even when I said this game is nothing but a way to get people to get into VR), only to come back. And the reason was someone said “since you can’t do VR, why not make custom animations?”
I will …admit, this was another reason why I had “quit”. But since I did, I felt semi-ready to learn (feeling that this might be the only thing close enough to VR(without having a headset)). Looked it up on Youtube, and one was showing me how to do a ‘super simple’ animation, of the model spinning around with no regards for gravity.
However, this ‘super simple’ thing was anything but, as the person goes from “click the record button” to “*poof*, your model is in the rotation bubble” with something called ‘Rotation’ in the Animation window.
The content creator felt like they did cover it, and was confused of what I was talking about. But even when I explained the problem in the video, they never responded to me. And this made me quite depressed, and gave the video a downvote.
Even more so, when knowing my only option to get help was to get back into one of the two Discord channels I left. And after much debate with myself, I re-joined and again had to wait up to a day until one of the staff allows me to post. Thankfully, it was done in only five minutes. Unfortunately, the #animation channel was pretty.. well, ‘dead’.
One person responded, telling me to do the same thing I’m doing (watch a tutorial), and it wasn’t looking good. Eventually I went to the #avatars section, and said;
Me: I’ve quit VRChat because I cannot pat people on the head like VR people can.
Person: Create custom animations!
Me: *attempts to look up how to do it, only seeing complicated shit*
Someone by the name of ‘Lolita Reishi’ came to my rescue, saying they had a head pat emote I could have (and showed me it). I didn’t particularly like how high the head pat animation was (aka, wouldn’t be useful for patting the heads of smaller avatars).
But, I grabbed it anyway (as this is the closest thing I can get, outside of VR). Lolita also taught me how to apply it to the latest dragon model I downloaded, from VRCmods.com (had it before I had ‘quit’).
It took awhile (and I also had issues with the model not actually being uploaded when looking in Managed Uploaded Content… so it seems what I was told yesterday, about Pipeline Manager being attached fucking things up, is now affecting me. Detached it, and it showed up.
There was also the issue of.. reinstalling VRChat. Ohh how words have no weight with me. The issue is with the Steam client, ‘locking me out’ with an infinite loading loop. I had to use the Steam Community website (and log into my account through it), to get it. And even with that, it claimed I already had the game installed (which I clearly didn’t).
Clicking the Play button, finally triggered a popup to re-download it. Got it done, and got in. I expected to be asked to login to my account, but it was still auto-logging me in through my VRChat account. Saw the modified avatar, with a new ‘Pat Head’ emote. Did the emote, and it looks like my avatar is knocking on someone’s door instead of patting someone’s head (due to the claw fingers being inside the hand).
But hey, it WORKED! 😀
This opens up so much potential for me, such as importing animations from Mixamo into a model. And as for the new emote, I feel it’ll work better on a smaller model (like the Murloc, or the Minecraft Story Mode-like Steve). Or, if I actually find a human model (that isn’t Amine), it would work with other human-sized avatars.
Later that day, I’m trying to get a new dance move for the dragon model (because “fuck you, I’m a dragon”). I found, the Macarena Dance to be a good one. I wanted to add more, but I told myself to just test this thing. And it’s a good thing I stopped myself.. because of the hell I went through.
See, I was following this video, and when it said to add the .fbx to the model, and add on to the existing rigging, I was getting an error about the ‘UpperBody’ not matching to the ‘Hips’. It felt like I was going in circles, and being told different things to hopefully fix it.
The problem started to make sense, even to me. The model’s skeleton, the Hips are named ‘UpperBody’ (instead of ‘Hips’, which is confusing the animation). It couldn’t find ‘Hips’ anywhere in the model (and neither could I), and I saw no way to rename ‘UpperBody’ to ‘Hips’.
And when all seemed lost, a super simple workaround was discovered by someone. Instead of fiddling around with the bone structure of the model, to make a duplicate of the animation (and use it (instead of the .fbx)), rename it to what you want the emote (ingame) to say, and then drag the model into the preview. Watching the animation, was quite hilarious.
All there was left, was to move it into the Animation folder, and upload it. Deleted the old copy and uploaded with no problem.
Ingame and infront of a mirror, I saw a new ‘Macarena!’ emote. WOO! I know how to do custom animations emotes now!! Very proud of myself.
However, now I’m debating if the Macarena is appropriate for Gandora, the ‘Dragon of Destruction’ in Yu-Gi-Oh!, and a more ‘roar’ emote would be better. Which what brings me to now, of trying to figure out what emotes would look best with its avatar.
In addition, I wanna try and learn how to add sounds to these emotes (the only thing I’m worried about, is trying to add sounds that aren’t copyrighted).
I need to ask for advice, of what premade emotes I should add to these models. One emote I’d love to have, is a ‘fly and breath fire’ emote for these dragon models.
As to close this blog post, I just wanna say.. meh. My head wasn’t clear when I said how I was “done” with the thing. Even with the boredom, and the sometimes feeling of ‘not fitting in’ (like the people with VR).. the community is what brings me back (just like Wurm).
As someone said, of a thread asking “So what do people do in here?”, “VRChat is pretty much a chatroom, but in 3D.”
And that pretty much convinced me, that I don’t -need- VR to enjoy myself. Sure, it would be nice to have, but it doesn’t replace of having friendships.
, not to give up (and try to learn how to do custom animations). I also never actually uninstalled Unity. I just couldn’t live with myself, to get rid of all that effort. And I feel I made the right decision.
Surely you guys can understand, right? I just need to stop doing this when I get pissed off (over something I cannot control). Walking away and coming back to it later, is the better thing to do.