VRChat&Neos Avatars

Index

VRchat/ Neos Avatar Modding prices

Similar to Stickers, my VR avatar models tend to have toony textures. I prefer not to use Substance painter. I instead opt for manually modifying texture PNG's in Sai, my normal art program. expect bold toony linework for my retextures.

I do not make avatars from scratch. To commission me, you need to first get a suitable avatar base from VRCarena . Avatar bases range from 20-50 USD but some are free. Most creators also require me to purchase the base to customize it for you, so consider their price 2x most of the time. Also, I all ready have dynamic bones. 

I will retexture your avatar according to your ref sheet and add publicly available cosmetics per your request. I can also modify meshes of accessories or add more bones to armatures for additional fees. I can also customize gestures and add toggleable accessories for your avatar for additional fees. 

My prices are heavily subject to avatar complexity. In addition to purchasing the base for yourself (and likely me as well) An estimate of commission prices are as follows: 

• Avatar Retexture with a few static accessories(hats, glasses, ect) ~400 USD

• Modifying armature with more dynamic bones (eg flowing hair or clothes) ~200 USD

• Modifying meshes of accessories and/or model ~200 USD

• Avatar accessory toggles ~30 USD per additional toggle

Note that there is a plethora of amazing avatar creators out there with far more experience than me. I am not a seasoned blender/unity modeler. If you want more advanced features look elsewhere, I promise I wont be offended! 

My Vrchat Avatars

Yellowcake 1.0 (Nicoreda Chakdal) 

Yellowcake 2.0 (Alber Jackal/Coyote)

Protocake (Nicoreda Protogen)

RexCake V1

Dexter Shepherd V1

Samson Kittyfox V1

Some VRchat vids

Below are some of my favorite VRchat worlds, the left is a quaint little record shop and the right is a very trippy world with dynamic fractals, weird physics, liquid mirrors, and even a ball pit! The pre-selected music is excellent psybient like Carbon Based Lifeforms.

Neos showcase

NEOS really is the future of VR. It honestly does everything that VRchat doesn't and more. Everything thats done in unity for character and world creation is handled *in VR, in NEOS itself*. It is such a cool experience operating all the technical parts of unity in engine. Items can get spawned in and out at will, the possibilities are literally endless. I recommend everyone try it out, even though its a little overwhelming at first. The community is almost entirely furries. Frooxius is a furry and they developed the engine that made it possible, the Froox engine. 

NEOS suffers from 2 fatal flaws currently, both should fix themselves with time: firstly the community is small, way way way smaller than VRchat, and thats a shame. VR takes a long time to setup and get working, and for most VRchat players if it ain't broke don't bother. But if you take the time, the small community will welcome you with open arms and teach you everything you need 1 on 1. My first time playing NEOS I was startled by devs who had spawned into my world just to show me around in person, it was such a cool experience. Lance the Lich almost exclusively uses NEOS now, I cant shake the VRchat itch though and spend time 50/50 in both. Eventually NEOS will overtake VRchat I am certain of that. 

The second flaw is demands on your computer. Everything is built in house and if you have too many people in a world, especially if they are all spawning in items, things get bogged. This is exacerbated in that NEOS will cache worlds that you've bounced between in a session. This is awesome because you can instantly teleport between worlds with no loading but you need to perform housekeeping. Thankfully NEOS has simple ways to clean worlds up. It also seems like optimization is way harder to achieve when building worlds in VR so keep that in mind.

VR raves

VRchat hosts awesome raves every weekend, with DJ lineups just like real venues. 

If you want the full experience though, catch a Furality con! They are bona-fide conventions in VRchat, held for several days. Tickets cost around 10-15 USD but its totally worth it! The furry DJ lineup is curated in part by Valant himself. Each Furality event has a new specially made venue with different themes, and they definitely go all out with it!

Cheap Full Body Tracking!

Glorious SlimeVR

So, you've spent some time in VR and now you want full body tracking. Vive trackers are the industry standard, but they require base stations, something you definitely dont have if you are an Oculus Quest or Pico user. Even if you have a Vive or Index headset with base stations, the trackers certainly aren't cheap. Accessories are expensive, they are heavy, and the battery doesn't last long. 

This market gap is in the process of being filled by a variety of creative devices from VR enthusiasts. VR is still sort of a fringe wild west as far as technology is concerned. Check out Thrillseekers channel to catch up on some of this novel tech. 

If you spend enough time in VRchat you'll hear murmurs about using Xbox Kinects for full body tracking. I went and bought an old xbox 360 kinect, and purchased the 15 dollar Kinect4VR software to try it out. My personal opinion is, its not worth it. Firstly the refresh rate on the kinect is poor. Kinect4VR has to do a lot of calculating between frames to generate your virtual skeleton and this results in slideshow legs. This could maybe be mitigated by getting an Xbox one kinect instead since its faster. Regardless, this wont fix the most glaring issues with this system. Firstly you need to be well lit against a mostly neutral background. I had some boxes in the corner and the algorithm kept thinking the edges were my limbs. Secondly, you cant lay down. The algorithm is expecting a standing pose and freaks out if you kneel. Thirdly and most importantly...**YOU CANT TURN AROUND**. The only way it works is when you are facing the kinect and standing in a well lit room with a sheet behind you, its a lot of prep. Even then, my kinect would always crash partway through. You also need to download microsoft SDK packages and get a power adapter for the thing, blah blah blah... dont bother.

Enter slimeVR. Originally a kickstarter for full body tracking, it was funded and trackers would ship out...eventually... but the site says they will ship by April 23 of 2023 now so woohoo! Here's the crowd supply website where you can still pre-order them for as little as 165 dollars for 5 lower body trackers. This delay in shipping times was not because of the usual Kickstarter fraud, it was actually because of the crazy chip shortage crisis in 2021. The modules that took a hit were the BNO085 Inertial Measurement Units (IMU's) BNO085 on ebay. Really all these things are is accelerometers, the same kind in every phone. The BNO's were the most precise modules though, and the best suited for full body tracking. Their market price is *supposed* to be around 5-10 dollars each. The Chip shortage made them impossible to find under 100 dollars, truly an absurd price hike. The price is going down slowly but they are still around 40 dollars. 

Thankfully, by the grace of this awesome team, they made the source code for their whole project public. You can find the Github page here. Not only did they provide the code, They also made a complete guide to make your own, found here. I followed their guide with a few tweaks, and after 2 iterations I now have set of 10 perfectly functional full body SlimeVR trackers. 

They have several advantages over vives. Firstly they are *very* lightweight. check the pic of me wearing them to get an idea of how small they are. Secondly is the battery life. Obviously this is dependent on what batteries you choose, but the tiny 1800mAh pouch batteries I used are way more than enough. I checked the operating current and it averaged around 80mA. Even if we assume the battery capacity is half of what it says it is, you should still get over 10 hours of use time on a charge, compared to 3 hours with vives. Another huge advantage is that you can cover them. Vive trackers need line of site with the base stations to work and its been a long time frustration for VRchat users who wanna snuggle up under blankets. Slime trackers connect with your router over 2.4gHz so blankets cause no issue. The resolution is almost on par with vives, tiny movements are accurately interpreted. I think vive trackers might have slightly less latency but the Slimes are definitely at least 30Hz, well above a refresh rate that would disorient you. Also with vives the usual setup is 3 trackers, one on your waist and 2 on your ankles. with slime trackers you have a minimum of 5, 1 waist, 2 on your thighs above your knees, 2 on your ankles. This alone makes the legs more precise since VRchat isn't guessing where your knees are. But we can go even farther and add more trackers. I typically use 7 slime trackers for VRchat, the additional 2 going on my feet over the laces of my shoes. Surprisingly most of my avatars interpret all 7 no problem. I can wiggle my foot independently of my ankle with precision. The synesthesia is real! We don't even have to stop there though, I have a total of 10 trackers. The other 3 are for the chest and elbows. That is the theoretical maximum that SteamVR allows, and I plan to try it out for games like NEOS which support it. And yes, unlike kinect4VR, you CAN turn around! in fact you can turn around, sit down, crouch, lay down, do handstands...DANCE?! (thats what wanted them for). 

I really only see 2 problems with slime trackers. Firstly, sometimes they drift. By drift I mean, one of them will start to rotate very slowly around an axis. However, up to this point i've only been using the cheapo MPU6050 and ICM20948 IMU's, and it even says in their guide that these other IMU's can drift. Toggling the power on and off usually fixes the drift. and it happens to a tracker maybe once every 6 hours. I assume if you are able to use the proper BNO IMU's you wont even have this problem. The second issue is sort of like the first, misalignment of the trackers sometimes. I have an oculus quest and it has to send data about my head position to my PC. The PC also has to interpret the positions of my slime trackers relative to wherever it thinks my headset is. As a result, sometimes things get a little scrambled. This usually only happens when you make a bunch of weird movements or spin around in circles a bunch or in my case, dance a lot and bounce the trackers around a ton. When you are finished with your yoga you'll stand up and realize your head is on crooked or you are stuck in a sassy hip thrust. You can do fast resets by going to your desktop and hitting the button, but thankfully there is a better way. The complete guide shows you how to do this towards the end of the document. All you need is to download OVR advance settings for steam and set a binding on your controller to perform the reset. This means all I have to do is occasionally stand at military attention for 5 seconds to press the oculus head reset button and my slime tracker reset button. It usually needs done every 15-30 minutes but i've gone for an hour or two without needing to during times where I wasn't moving as much. 

Now, onto the design. Firstly, i'm gonna say only make these on your own if you like a challenge and you want to have them ASAP! The devs are shipping out the real deal in April 2023  and im sure they will be better. Even though I all ready have this set, I still intend to buy some because I really want to support these guys, please consider doing the same!

I originally tried making these with ESP8266 microcontrollers and ICM20948 IMU's. The 20948's are at the bottom of the list with the least information. I spent around 15 bucks for each one but they still drifted and gave me weird problems. 

The second attempt was with MPU-6050 IMU's and Wemos D1 mini Node MCU type microcontrollers. I'd seen lots of success from other DIY'ers with the MPU 6050, and they are dirt cheap, around a $1.50 each. They totally work though! You just need to make sure you lay them flat when first turned on so they can zero out. The Wemos D1 mini has similar architecture to the ESP8266 but they are smaller, with less pins, and far cheaper. Considering these aren't dev boards and i only need a few pins it was the right choice. Additionally, Thingiverse has a selection of SlimeVR case models available. This one by Smeltie was designed to fit the Wemos D1 mini. I made a few additions to this case that you can find files for here. I removed the side vent holes, made the strap holders thicker, added a hole to connect to the Wemos for firmware uploads while its in the case, added vent slits to the case lid (also lets you see the indicator LED on the wemos), and made a circular slime emblem you can affix to the lid. Obviously you need a 3D printer to make these cases. I have an ender 3 and this is just the sort of object its great it making.

Follow their guide very closely for the Wemos and MPU6050 specifically. The only thing that I changed was the battery monitor system. In the code, in defines.h , make sure BATTERY_MONITOR  is set to BAT_EXTERNAL. My configuration uses a voltage divider for battery monitoring. I back-calculated the from a measured battery voltage to find resistors and necessary code tweaks to give accurate battery readings with this specific setup. The A0 pin is where the battery voltage is read from. The voltage divider is necessary since the wemos only reads up to 3.3v but a fully charged lithium cell is 4.2v. Using standard 1/4 watt resistors, connect wemos GND to A0 with a 240kOhm resistor, and the Vin to A0 with a 36kOhm resistor. Then, again in the defines.h code, for BATTERY_SHIELD_RESISTANCE change 180 to 80. With all that your battery percentages should be accurately displayed in your slimeVR server when running if you use this specific setup with identical modules. The only other recommendation I have is for the TP4056 *make sure you get microUSB type*, especially if its from Ali Express. I originally got type-C modules and they had no pull down resistors on the board, meaning every time you plugged them into a legacy device the chips would fry. The micro USB is a tried and true system and I highly recommend it for this application. 

Beyond the SlimeVR modules, I found elastic strap and velcro works great for attachment. Use separate Wemos microcontrollers for every IMU. Wires between joints would cause snags and random disconnects. You want everything to be soldered together in a neat little package in these units. I also made a docking station for the lot of all 10 trackers. The charger modules draw about a half amp at 5v each, so I opted for a 12 amp 5v power supply. Its pretty straightforward, I simply wired 10 male micro-USB connectors in series, only connecting the GND and 5v pins of each. 

I do my VR stuff in the basement, on the opposite end of our house from the router. These have zero problem communicating over 2.4gHz. I have a 5gHz router(100% necessary for quest to PC VR BTW). All of the data to and from the headset is streamed through my router. If anyone else is streaming videos while i'm in VR I usually have some performance issues. Surprisingly having 10 of these trackers all communicating with the router at the same time doesn't cause problems. I can only assume that the data packets sent by the Wemos node MCU's are small and concise, only really needing to send a few coordinate numbers. 

So there's the full rundown. These trackers are really cool and i'm super impressed with their performance, and price! Oh yeah, I totally forgot to talk about price. Well lets assume you all ready have a 3D printer and some extra filament, a soldering iron, spare resistors, and spare wire. Here's what you need to get a setup just like mine:

• 10 Wemos D1 mini $34 Amazon 

• 10 MPU-6050 GY-521 $30  Amazon 

• 10 micro-USB TP4056  $10 Amazon 

• 10 1800 mAh 804040 batteries $32 Ebay 

• 10 slide switches $8 Amazon 

• 10 Micro-USB male terminals $8 Amazon 

• 5v 12A power supply $15 Amazon 

In total, for 10 trackers that's $137 in parts for 10 trackers. Thats not including 3d printer filament, wire, solder, straps, and your time. Now consider that the price for the simplest 5 tracker setup directly from them is only $165. Their 10 tracker setup which is essentially equivalent to mine is only $300. Honestly their profit margins are very slim and considering they made the code and guide public, I'd only recommend making your own if you are either very impatient or really want them to be DIY. The build quality will certainly be better with the ones they manufacture. As said before, I plan on buying a 10-set even though I allready made these. 

Addendum: I plan on replacing the charging circuit with wireless charger modules for easier use. The new Blender/3D print models can be found here: V2 Atomic Slime Tracker Models 

Slime tracker commissions (sort of)