Background

Stuck serving in the Singapore Armed Forces during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, my traditional avenues for community and creative expression were forced online. Craving the ability to express myself through fashion, I taught myself how to create custom accessories for virtual reality.

These assets were modeled in Blender, textured in Substance 3D Painter, and uploaded through updating avatars in Unity3D.

Thinking

I started this journey by recreating garments and accessories I had on my list of “grails” (deeply desired but largely unobtainable due to cost and/or rarity). By doing this, I was able to maintain a consistent direction and visually clear goal during my learning.

Optimization is a key consideration when modeling any game asset, especially within VR. Adapting basic geometric shapes to organic figures meant minimal polygon count, but lacked visual polish, while sculpting required significant time spent rebuilding meshes to avoid annihilating your rigging frame rate. Designing a more efficient workaround, I began copying sections of the target avatar’s mesh, working off that as a basis for closer fitting garments. This also reduced the amount of time spent weight-painting meshes for animation rigs, as data transferring the weights saved a significant amount of time in the overall process.

VR avatars are created through many different lenses of artistic direction and expression. Good character design is often recognizable by silhouette alone, so balancing proportions is crucial for aesthetic compatibility. Since my 9-10 avatar has significantly larger lower body proportions, my focus began with upper body accessories such as puffer jackets, large earrings, and backpacks.

Maintaining this balance calls for on-demand customization as well. If I wanted to change up my accessories, I needed the ability to toggle individual items on and off. This led me to adding animation toggles in Unity 3D, which are accessed through radial menus on each controller.

Software