Those who have followed me on my old social account 
Buying an Valve Index VR Headset and playing a lot of VRChat was what started this hobby, seeing so many people in really cool avatars some publicly available, some custom made for the individual. I always wanted to have a custom avatar but commissioning one can cost hundreds of pounds so after some time I took the plunge and learnt to do it my self!
The plunge consisted of buying a base model, Mine was called the Snow Night Dragon and is part of the Rikkor species, these models are made by Genyu Nouji and are available from https://forestwind.booth.pm/
The model in question was very old and was not set up to work with the modern SDK for VRChat so that's where my learning started, I managed to quickly get it converted over and working in VRChat and customized the texture by basically hue shifting it red and using a few filters to fine tune it.
This was all rushed to have it ready in time for Furality in June of 2024.
The red little goober complete with tail ring and 'Maltezers' stuck in his fur... xD
Funny story is those used to be coloured marbles but my faffing with the texture made them look like chocolate balls so I just made the joke that I had Maltezers stuck in my fur haha.
Version 2 would come about a month later in July 2024! After Furality was done with I had time to sit down and work slowly towards some improvements I had wanted to do.
This version was actually a LARGE undertaking. Because in the process of making changes I actually had to rebuild the entire Unity3D project avatar project, translating bones and objects from Japanese to English and re-configuring everything to work correctly, this laid the foundations for future work making things a lot easier later on.
No more fluff Maltezers, no more tail ring and now with the addition of my signature tiny top hat and bowtie!
In this version the primary improvement was THUMBS! This was completed around the end of October 2024!
This was my first attempt at actually modifying the mesh of the model, something I had been reluctant to do for a while. After finally getting over the fear of messing everything up, got stuck in and made some thumbs!
I tend to use thumbs up a lot when I'm talking with people and am sorta agreeing with them but on an avatar with no thumbs it kinda doesn't work very well. So that was the primary driver for making them, Now I can do thumbs up as much as I like!
In this version, the biggest difference is in the eyes and texture!
I had spent about 2-3 days straight making new eyes that could move and look around as well as completely redoing the UV maps so I could make completely new textures in substance painter.
I also had to modify most of the blendshapes and added some new ones that allowed me to narrow and widen my pupils.
It was quite the undertaking but somehow I managed to get it done rather quickly.
I had completely rebuild the texture from the ground up, making it more detailed and adding many more polkadots!
Not to mention the EYES! I love how they turned out! It makes the character look so much more alive being about to look around and it lays the ground work for future full facetracking and eye tracking, once I get the mods for my index completed.
This was also made just in time for Furality in July 2025! Which was a blast!
Visually with the model I spent most of my time working on topology, which is how the mesh is laid out and where polygons are, previously the layout was pretty poor, it resulting is some very strange deformations when animating and moving around, it didn't look bad but it certainly could look better!
So with this version I improved a lot of the topology around the elbows, arms and legs. Also when I say it has one uniform body, what I mean by that is previously the model was made up of multiple objects like the body, legs, arms, feet. all separate object with geometry that was overlapping.
In this version I made the arms, body, legs and feet all one mesh with no overlapping geometry, this improves performance, can lead to more realistic deformation when animating and also solves an issue in VRChat where each object is shaded individually regardless of it's neighbors so shadows on the body would abruptly end at the legs and the legs would have it's own shadow gradient from light to dark..
Basically it didn't look realistic and it didn't look all that good.
I also slimmed down his legs to make them more leg like and less tree trunk like.
Redoing the texture using new processes resulting in a much better outcome, coupled with new UVMaps that I took the time to arrange myself.
This includes EVEN MORE POLKADOTS!
The results have been fantastic!
Well! I'm currently using this model in VRChat and very much enjoying myself!
That being said there is SO much more I want to do! Currently it's finished ENOUGH to use! But it's far from finished!
I have some issues I need to sort out, such as refine some weight painting on the arms, hands and around the base of the tail.
I still need to make a bunch more blendshapes so I can do more fancy things and also be ready for when I implement full face tracking!
Not to mention a massive list of little gimmicks and toys I can use to show off to people in VRChat!
I also need to put this avatar through the process of getting it working as a VTuber avatar as I haven't yet updated that one. It's about 2-4 hours work if it goes smoothly.
Generally there are going to be many posts and snaps about 3Dmodelling from me, I really enjoy just hyper focusing on getting stuff done and when things goes right it feels great!
So if you are interesting in that kinda stuff be sure to follow for more! I also stream often over on twitch if that's something that interests you.
Thanks for taking to time to read my long ass mess of a post! <3
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