Vroid Studio & Unity - Awesome texture swaps (no extra plugins!)

I know it seems like I am telling you every two weeks, that there is a better way to swap textures, but this time it’s actually super awesome!
ZeroChronicles, one of my Discord members, discovered a way to add effects, without using additional plugins, animations or format changes.
Which means, in the end you will still have a .vrm avatar and can trigger the effects to your liking.
🕘Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:32 Making textures in Vroid Studio
1:53 Texture swaps in Unity
8:50 Testing in VSeeFace
Links:
Our Discord, the VtuberLibrary:
/ discord
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Music:
Intro by oddtop! Check out their stuff! oddtop.carrd.co/
"Hadron Collider" by Streambeats
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#VTuberguide #Virtualyoutuber #ENVTuber #VroidStudioTutorial #VroidStudio #Vroid #Unity

[@LadyAska]

I want to add a few extra infos here, that were discovered after the video was finished: The Element-size can actually vary...mine was 9 for my face, but for other people it may be 8. Just use the number that shows up under "Face" or your component of choice and you should be good. :)

[@zephyrbrightmoon6962]

This is so much better! We can have the blush glow in softly in a cute way or have the shocked shade glow in, all without the weird sliding effect. It makes it look much more natural! Amazing stuff! I can't wait to fix Hide with this and see what else you find we can do in Unity! Thank you so much!!! 💜

[@LadyAska]

IKR?! It's super exciting stuff! :D

[@ShujiWakahisa]

Holy cow this makes life so much easier instead of having to do the grid thing I was going to do for my facial textures. THIS IS GREAT!

[@LadyAska]

There are a few setbacks that we found out later, but it really depends on what you want to do with it. I would say depending on your intention for it, one of the 3 known methods will be perfect for you. :)

[@ShujiWakahisa]

@@LadyAska Yeah I do like this however when I used a textured like say tired (where you have dark bags under your eyes, I noticed when my eyes closed (Say for the full smile default emote) it.... connect with the bottom of the eyelids? If that makes sense??? Any idea how to fix this, I really love this method to swap textures.

[@LindCreations]

I was literally trying to figure out how to do this a few months ago. Now I can finally make my bf a proper scared emote for when he plays horror games!

[@luciusbright]

This is beyond amazing! Thanks for sharing and doing a step-by-step tutorial! All the best to you!

[@lampdevil]

Oh damn! This is a really nice technique! I'm going to have to give it a spin ASAP!

[@LadyAska]

Have fun! You can do so many cool things with that! :D

[@ZeroChronicles01]

YES! YAY!

[@zerochronicles7971]

YAY!~

[@katiekaliber]

Ty for this, exactly what i needed

[@LadyAska]

It has its limits, so you should definitely look into other options as well, to see which one is the best for you abd your project :)

[@GamingMaster4386J7C]

is their way to do it when its merger like the hair is combined?

[@TheSurrealAlice]

Hello, your tutorials are helping a lot ^^ thanks a lot for those

[@LadyAska]

Sadly not, I only discovered that later as well. Its stupidly set up this way by Vroid itself. (like for what do they even have the "eyelid category", if its not *actually* on there. :/ ) There is not much that can be done about it sadly. If you are ok, with another way, I recommend Suvivs solution with "animations". I have an earlier video on that as well, if you want to give it a go. (only drawback is, that you need more plugins and the output format changes to .vsfavatar...which is still usable with VNyan and VSeeFace, if that's what you want it to use for :) ) If you don't want to change format at all, you can also try Argama Witch's solution, which rotates your face texture to the effect you want. Doesn't look as smooth as the animation, but keeps the .vrm format intact. :) I'd say the best solution for you, really depends on what you want as the end result. ^^

[@TheSurrealAlice]

Hey, thanks for the response ^^ I dont mind changing the format, so I think I will try those things out and see what will work for me , thank you :>@@LadyAska

[@BunnyButtGaming]

So I can't for some reason get mine to show the material I created. I even named it so I could easily find it... Is there something I'm doing wrong?

[@LadyAska]

This is a bit tricky, as for some reason sometimes ( I did this so much times already and it still happens out of nowhere), the material doesn't show up. First, make sure you already have the materials attached to a copy of either body or face, otherwise Unity is unable to find them. If you did exactly that already and it still doesn't show up...the best and unfortunately worst way is to save your current project and start a completely new one from scratch. Import all your plugins, textures and your model and try again. It's super frustrating, but there is not much that can be done... sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. 🙁

[@BunnyButtGaming]

I seem to be having problems with the faces. Like when I go to the blend shape for the blush the blend shape for the shocked is still overlaying. Any fixes for this?

[@LadyAska]

Yes! You have to check in VSeeface, if one of the transition time sliders is all to the left. That can't be. the sliders should all be at least a bit to the right. I hope that will fix your problem. :) (if not, feel free to message me over Discord (link in the description))

[@moongmoong33]

hello please help me ~~ When i finished all the steps, but my New materials don't appear in Blendshapes material list. sad

[@LadyAska]

Hello! This could only mean, you didn't apply these new materials to copies of the sections they should appear in. I will do an update of this video in the near future, as this method has its flaws. If you don't mind having a vsfavatar instead of a vrm one in the end, I highly recommend checking Suvidriels tutorial on smooth textures. (or my old one, where I show how to use her plugin) I can't fully recommend this method anymore with some disclaimers, which I would love to explain in another video. :)

[@moongmoong33]

@@LadyAska thank you so much for replying. I will check your suggestion, and waiting for your new video. thank you

[@tenroy2212]

Great Method! Is there a possibility to deform this new mesh? It clips with ARKit/HANA tools blendhapes, especially puffing cheeks and as Sterling Dowall is there a possibility to mask the void when closing the eyelids? Thank you very much :D

[@LadyAska]

We found the setbacks later. We managed to get the eyelid problem solved, but unfortunately this completely messed up HanaTool. Atm, I would recommend this only for people who don't use HanaTool and for people who do, to make the texture swaps as animations, as this still gives the best results for HanaTool users. :)

[@tenroy2212]

@@LadyAska noooooooooooo (dramatic music) You mean the previous tutorial using Suvi’s modified Mtoon shader right? I sadly can’t use it since I’m already using a custom shader :/ Btw does the mesh integrator method for the eyes also works with custom blendkeys? I prefer to ask before I have to manually rename my 125 blendshapes lol

[@LadyAska]

@@tenroy2212 Yeah, I had the same idea and literally tried to rename all the HanaTool blendshapes...it didn't work and wasn't worth it, so don't waste your time 😅

[@tenroy2212]

@@LadyAska welp time to make the expressions in blender lol Thank you for the quick answer :D

[@sterlingdowall2975]

HI, so I followed this, did something similar to the shock texture except it's a shadow, so I have an expression that gives my model that anime look of "i'm going to mess something up"... It looks amazing!!! Until I blinked... Turns out that I can't get this shadow overlay to also cover the eyelids when it's closed, so I have this terrifying looking shade, then I blink and there's just two slots of skin colour. got any ideas?

[@LadyAska]

Will get back to you on this, because we experimented qiite a bit with it later and I think we found a solution for this. (just have to dig up my own notes on this :) )

[@sterlingdowall2975]

@@LadyAska thank you, i cant wait to hear back about this. While i am okay with preventing blinking, not using other expressions that move eyelids is a bit scuffed. Thank you for your time!

[@sterlingdowall2975]

@@LadyAska sorry for bothering you, just wondering if you ever found a fix for this?

[@Its_A_Gundam]

I am relatively new to avatar creation and have only used VRoid so far. Why do you need to delete the transparent meshes?

[@LadyAska]

Ok, I will try to explain it. In Vroid, transparent meshes are meshes that are still on the model, but you may have deleted textures on them (so they are basically transparent)...the wording of them is a bit weird, since it has nothing to do with material transparency in Unity or Blender. So let's say, you erased part of a dress mesh/texture in Vroid because your dress should look a certain way. If the transparent meshes get deleted, than Vroid does get rid of these "useless" parts. If you export your model into Blender, it is important that these get actually deleted, because otherwise you end up with some weird looking placeholders. While for other programs, like HanaTool, these meshes are necessary (because they need to use a certain default setting, which could be messed up, if the transparent meshes would just get deleted during export) It's a horrible attempt of an explanation, but in this case, I usually recommend to not delete the meshes, so these models can be used with HanaTool later. (the program that adds 52 additional blendshapes to your model, for advanced face tracking with iphone) I hope that helped a little bit. :)

[@Its_A_Gundam]

@@LadyAska Thanks 👍

[@xxEmoxGothicxGirlxx]

Does this setup also work for eyes?

[@LadyAska]

We are still experimenting with that, because while you absolutely can use a mask over the eyes, the eye movement would be lost, without additional adjustments. And we are still testing, if we are able to add eye movement to these "eye masks" as well :) A video will follow, once we figured that out.

[@xxEmoxGothicxGirlxx]

@@LadyAska Awesome! Thank you for all the work you and your discord put into these videos! They've been a huge help!