Messing Around with VRoid Studio

Owing to the same sort of circumstances that led to the creation of this site,^[1] I ended up making some 3-dimensional models of myself. I used a piece of software called "VRoid Studio", which was recommended by multiple sources as a beginner-friendly program for making VTuber avatars and the like. Granted, the program has been on my radar for a while, given how often various VTubing tutorials recommended it, though for a variety of reasons I wasn't ever interested in using it. For one, I never actually saw it recommended by anybody I knew personally. Additionally, I wasn't exactly too keen on the particular flavor of anime-style it seemed to cater to. Furthermore, the fact that the software seemed design to ensnare me into a particular ecosystem gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Good ol' cabin-fever turned out to be enough to overcome all of those objections.

With all of that said, how do I feel about it? Pretty good all things considered.

I'll let the results speak for themselves.

I am quite chuffed with how these turned out. They aren't perfect, but I would feel comfortable doing some VTubing or VRChatting with these.

(Apologies for not taking of photo of me in my power armor. It's having some issues right now.)^[2]

Anyhow, VRoid Studio -- it's a program. Let's run down some assorted ➕s (goods) and ❓s (whats) and ➖s (bads) about it:

Das Goods

➕ It's very easy to create a reasonably appealing humanoid character with no prior modelling or texturing experience. Sure, the result might look a bit generic, but it doesn't take too much effort to make something "not half bad."

➕ Multiple clothing templates can be combined to form complex, multilayered articles of clothing. For example, the dress up there is a combination of the "dress" and "pencil skirt" templates.

➕ The hairstyle editor is very robust and powerful. Again, I'm not familiar with 3D modelling, but, like, I was astounded with how capable it was.

➕ The limits of all the sliders can be overridden by manually typing in the numbers, in case the default limits feel a bit constraining to you.

The Whats

❓ While its support for custom textures allows you to break away from the generic anime style it pushes you towards by default, I could not make my nose look right. It should look a bit rounder and more button-like, rather than like a point.

❓ There's a whole "accessories" tab, but the only accessories available are glasses and animal ears. I mean, they're nice glasses and animal ears, but given how much of the UI they take up I would have expected more options.

❓ The "do you want to save?" dialog boxes that appear when switching between different contexts are pretty bewildering from a UX perspective.

❓ There are four breast-related sliders. I wouldn't say this is a bad thing, necessarily, but it sure speaks to an odd allocation of resources.^[3]

Los Bads

➖ Despite the embarrassment of boob-sliders, there are no sliders to increase muscle mass or otherwise give your character a non-waifish physique. There might be a workaround by using the bodysuit clothing template, but I'm not sure if it would give acceptable results.

➖ As good as the the hairstyle editor is, it's the only means of making (relatively) freeform geometry. For example, those shoulder-pieces on my dress are actually made of hair. That's not too bad, except for it being a very unwieldly interface to make a looks-like-a-sphere-if-you-squint that I can't even attach to the proper bone.^[4] As such, it's hard to find an interesting pose where the shoulders don't look detached.

➖ The texture editor is jank in several ways. Even with the mirror drawing mode activated, I kept on getting rows of pixels at the seams on the UV map that would update on one side but not the other. Also, drawing directly on the model seems flat-out broken with some articles of clothing (such as shoes).

➖ No, I am not interested in making a pixiv account.

Conclusion

All in all, it's a nice program, but its limitations are already making me consider Learning Blender.

I'll be sure to share my yummy tutorial donuts with the class.

Notes

1. Being sick for multiple days. ^

2. What I mean here is that, in spite of all this time, I have not come up with a full-body design for the power suit that both (a) looks good and (b) does not look hopelessly derivative. I've made various components that fulfill one or the other criteria, but very few that fulfill both (let alone as a cohesive whole). ^

3. Odd, but all too explicable. ^

4. Believe it or not, but people literally make things like earrings and headphones out of hair. ^