cats-blender-plugin VS VRC-Avatar-Performance-Tools

You should use Cats Blender plugin in Blender. The recommended version is Blender 3.5, which you can find in their archives. And dev branch of cats, but I like this fork because keeps the bake tool. You can use Blender 2.8 (the version the latest official release of cats uses).

As for the stretchy-stretch, not sure. But if you use cats in Blender, you could probably automatically fix it. The latest version to use is Blender 3.5 with the Cats dev branch (just grab zip, add that). Though I prefer this fork for 3.5, because it keeps the bake functionality. Or Blender 2.80, if you prefer.

Hi I'm the newbie, I'm a Vtuber trying to animate with my 3dmodel that was created in mind for VSeeFace just for fun and to create some animations to post. I ran into a few problems like Blender not taking the .vrm format but i used a plugin called CATS to get it to import.Ive been trying on my own to animate with the model but doing anything like moving it slows my PC down a ton, I also have a couple concerns like why is there so many bones and colliders.Link to cats (using development version): https://github.com/absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin

Decimation of skinned meshes (your Mixamo characters) can be done with various tools. Results will vary. Depends a lot on the topology of the input mesh. Nothing beats proper retopology. There are paid assets on the asset store. https://assetstore.unity.com/?q=mesh%20optimization&orderBy=1 NanoLod is free but can't remember if it does skinned meshes. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/nanolod-automatic-lods-193314#reviews More advanced is Simplygon which has a free tier I think. https://documentation.simplygon.com/SimplygonSDK_9.1.27400.0/unity/ My favourite is a blender tool originally intended for VRChat avatars but works on any characters. https://github.com/absolute-quantum/cats-blender-plugin As well as simplifying the mesh data, I would recommend combining the separate parts into a single mesh and texture atlas into only one or two materials (one opposite, one with transparency for hair)

You can download the development branch from github for CATS, it should work with 3.5

I've used Models Resource for finding existing models, and some of them come with proper rigging/skeleton. If you manage to get such a model, you should import it into Blender using CATS plugin and do the necessary tweaks before exporting it as an FBX to then import into Unity. One thing to make sure is that is has all of the proper bones that VRChat needs for the Avatar Descriptor; if it doesn't, these can be added in Blender.

Model Link Ported to blender using Cats Blender Plugin

If you don't already, add https://github.com/Thryrallo/VRC-Avatar-Performance-Tools to VCC/unity project and it'll warn you if you're not using optimal image formats, which is just dxt5 for non transparent images, and BC7 for transparent ones iirc

I recommend using a tool like Thry's Avatar Performance Tools to get more specific metrics on what to improve.

Go slap the Thry avatar perf tools in your project and see what it says https://github.com/Thryrallo/VRC-Avatar-Performance-Tools/releases

oh i see. I also can reccomend this tool for checking vram in unity https://github.com/Thryrallo/VRC-Avatar-Performance-Tools

polycount isnt that important, just dont have it be ridiculously high (below 100k is fine, honestly, lower is always better, try to get it as low as you can) texture sizes depends, if your avatar uses a single texture atlas, it would be fine to have it be 4k, however if you have multiple textures you should keep it 1k and below per texture, since vram usage adds up quickly, and is one of the primary performance hogs in this game you can use thrys vram checker to list your vram usage and use it to help you optimise that https://github.com/Thryrallo/VRC-Avatar-Performance-Tools make sure to disable transparency on textures that dont need it, most wont need it never use crunch, it only reduces filesize, not vram usage, but it also adds load in lag due to uncrunch (this primarily matters for avatars, worlds can be okay to use in some cases, like hitting a quest size limit) another thing that you wanna care about is total material count that is active at once, since thats the drawcall count, another massive performance hog

the performance rating doesnt really relate to the actual performance of the avatar just because it goes into very poor due to toggles doesnt mean its actual state is above very poor limits disabled things incur no performance cost, the only thing you wanna care about is the total vram cost which you can check with something like https://github.com/Thryrallo/VRC-Avatar-Performance-Tools

Thry's Avatar Tools provide some metrics that the VRChat SDK does not provide. They are important metrics, though, and can help make your avatar perform better and not lag other people.