How to work around Write Defaults with your VRChat avatar. Fixes many common issues with toggles.

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[@ToolboxMotley]

This video will explain the effect of Write Defaults on your VRChat avatar, and describe how to change your animations to conform to the two possible setups. If you are having issues with a feature failing to activate or deactivate properly, follow this video first, as problems stemming from Write Defaults are incredibly common. Write Defaults is a function that changes how your avatar's objects and settings are handled by animations. With Write Defaults On, your Hierarchy and the settings for everything within are saved and referenced the entire time you're in the avatar. If an animation isn't actively modifying something on your avatar, that thing will be reset to its default state. With Write Defaults Off, only the initial state of your Hierarchy and settings matter. After that point, everything is controlled by animations. If an animation plays that affects something on your avatar, those changes will remain in place even if that animation ends. Let's look at an example. In my Flight tutorial, I demonstrate making an animation with a single frame turning on the avatar's flight platform. The state to which this animation is attached is activated when the Flight parameter equals true, while an "Off" state with no animation is triggered when the Flight parameter equals false. This works with Write Defaults On, because once the Flight animation is no longer playing, the platform reverts to its default state, which is off. If this is done with Write Defaults Off, however, the platform stays turned on, because it was never told to turn off by an animation. To fix this, we need an animation to tell the flight platform to turn off. There are two ways you can go about this. The first is to make an animation exclusively dedicated to turning off the platform. After making this animation, you just have to attach it to the "Off" state in the Animator for it to function. The second method keeps your files a little more consolidated. In the existing Flight animation, you turn off the platform at frame 0, and turn on the platform at frame 1. After that, you attach this same Flight animation to the Off state in your Animator, but set its Speed to -1 so that it plays in reverse, thus turning it off instead of on. This same principle can be applied to most other features, as well. With invisibility, you give the "Off" state an animation that re-enables the skinned mesh renderer. With an item toggle, you make an animation that turns the object back off. And so on; with Write Defaults Off, you have to manually revert the changes you make with your animations. It's important to ensure that *all* states in any given Animator are consistent in having Write Defaults either all on, or all off. Mixing states is likely to result in unpredictable issues. When adding new features to your avatar, check first to see what your previous animator layers are using. Unity defaults to having Write Defaults On, but many premade avatars will use Write Defaults Off instead, as do VRChat's own base Animators. If you're using a premade avatar or working with the Locomotion, Additive, Gesture, or Action Animators, you'll want to check the existing animator states for Write Defaults Off. If the existing animator states use Write Defaults Off, you have two options. Either follow the directions I gave earlier for all new animations, or try simply changing all existing states to Write Defaults On. Generally speaking, animations set up for Write Defaults Off will work fine with Write Defaults On; very few creators actually make use of the niche advantages provided by Write Defaults Off, so it's likely worth it to try converting to Write Defaults On across the board, and check to see if everything still works properly. As stated earlier, new animator states will default to having Write Defaults On. Combined with the fact that animations take less effort to create with Write Defaults On, the main advantage of keeping Write Defaults is convenience. It takes substantially less effort to work with an avatar using Write Defaults On. The advantage to Write Defaults Off, meanwhile, is that you get a little more control over the avatar. For example, you can transition out of an animation partway to leave it at the midpoint, useful for something like a charge blaster that gets gradually more intense as it's charged. Or, you can activate a sound effect and immediately return to a ready state in the animator layer, rather than having to let the full sound play before transferring off of the animator state as would be needed with Write Defaults On. Ultimately, I recommend using Write Defaults On if you're just starting with avatar work. It's much easier and faster to work with. Write Defaults Off is a hard sell, but you might consider it if you want a lot of features that need to continue playing through after you've pressed a button to activate them, or just have a huge amount of features in general, as too many Animator Layers will start to cause framerate drops in VRChat. Just be aware that you'll need to be highly meticulous to make WD Off work fluidly. Hopefully, this video has told you what you wanted to know regarding Write Defaults. If not, feel free to ask any further questions in the comments below, or join my Discord at discord.gg/grR8tFpP to ask around. I also offer commissions and tutoring services, both of which can be requested at the Discord channel linked previously, or by messaging me directly at Toolbox Motley#0372.

[@lorddracoola9658]

Thank you! This explanation helped immensely! While my avatar skills aren't there yet, using the -1 speed for the off to reduce the number of parameters is a great tip for optimizing parameter memory slots! Now, if only I had figured out that my animations had Loop Time enabled by default earlier... 🤣

[@ToolboxMotley]

Yeah, Loop Time defaults to on or off based on how you make the animation, strangely. X) Making it through the Animation window drop-down will make it have Loop Time on, while making it through right-clicking in the File Explorer makes it have Loop Time off instead. The inconsistency can be confusing.

[@lorddracoola9658]

@@ToolboxMotley Oh wow, yeah that's excellent information to remember, despite Unity's inconsistencies. Thanks for that!

[@laserbeampussydestroyer6279]

Setting animation speed to -1 to create an "off" state... that's a nice little time-saver thank you!

[@ztoogemcducc6360]

Dude thank you so much this fixed an issue i was trying to solve for hours

[@TheGuardian5555]

Well done Toolbox!

[@Halu437]

Thankies!

[@KeeneRaccoon]

Excellent job as always Toolbox, very clear and concise! ^-^

[@joeypunkrock11]

Thanks for the tutorial! Am I correct in saying then if you have toggles to show/hide something, they will always be shown to say users with high shield levels if you use the write defaults on method. Using the write defaults off method, you can ensure the toggles are always off for those users. For example, I can have two clothes toggles, and if a user has a high shield level they both won't show, instead of both showing at the same time?

[@ToolboxMotley]

Your Write Defaults setting won't make any difference in whether someone sees your objects when their Safety Settings are disabling your animation. What they see of your toggles depends on which ones are on or off by default in the Hierarchy; if you have a shirt turned on by default in the Hierarchy (Animation Controller irrelevant, in this case), they'll see it. Whereas if the shirt is turned off (name is greyed out) in the Hierarchy, it won't show up if they have animations turned off. Hope that clarifies things. :)

[@drewplez]

master teach me more 🙏

[@anonshrimp8299]

So I have a confusing problem and this video sorta helped. Basically I have toggles and they work on my end but they wont show up on others end. I am not sure what the issue could be.

[@ToolboxMotley]

Sounds like they're not synced. Synced is a relatively new setting added to the parameter list, and unfortunately, it's off by default. You'll need to go to your avatar's parameter list (not the controller parameter list), and click the Synced checkbox for all the parameters that drive things you want other people to see.

[@JaySynthVibes]

@@ToolboxMotley i have been having the same problem as anonshrimp8299, I wanted to ask how would i find the avatar's parameter list?

[@playing_games]

Can you make a jump scare pop up on peoples screen to the person. You are close to four quest 2 so I know how to make one to my avatar and scare people

[@ToolboxMotley]

Off the top of my head, you'd probably want to use Leviant's Ubershader for making something that pops up on people's screens. I'm not sure what you mean with the second sentence.

[@playing_games]

Like, can you make a video where your avatar can jump scare people? Because I see videos where they have fake loading character and the closest person gets jump scared.

[@Wheelies_xd]

How much do you cost to do a customized wheelchair avatar for people in wheelchairs?

[@ToolboxMotley]

That'd depend on the level of detail; if the arms need to roll the wheels, that'd take more time to set up, and thus cost more. If the arms don't have to move, it'd be much faster to set up. I'm also not a modeler, so you'd need to have the model itself already made. X) Custom locomotion animations are pretty tedious to set up in Unity, and I haven't done a lot of work with them yet. I've heard that they're easier to make in Blender, but I haven't looked into how that works, so far. Ultimately, I'd estimate the work to take 3 hours on the low end, up to 10 hours on the high end. At my current rate (subject to change in the future), that'd be $30-100. As I said, though, I'm not terribly experienced with custom locomotion yet; it's something I've been meaning to tackle at some point, so I may reach a point where I can do the work much more quickly, and thus much more cheaply. Time will tell.

[@PhobosARK]

Whats ur user on vrchat i wanna meet you!

[@ToolboxMotley]

Oh, uh... Same as here, ToolboxMotley. As a heads-up, though, I'm a somewhat private person on VRChat, so I may not accept invite requests very often. X)