Tutorial:Avatar creation

This page covers using the in game Avatar Creator to turn an imported humanoid model into a wearable avatar. If you are looking for how to import a model in the first place, see Avatar Importing Guide. For texturing, optimization, and full body tracking, follow the links at the bottom of this page.

The Avatar Creator is the tool that takes a humanoid 3D model already in the world and produces a wearable avatar from it. It places the head and hand proxies so your tracking maps onto the model, optionally attaches a volume meter tied to your voice and tries to set up face tracking.

This page walks you through the creation steps.

Before you start

You will need:

• An imported humanoid model in the world. See Avatar Importing Guide for that step.
• A logged-in account. So you can save to your Inventory.
• Builder permissions in the world. See Permission System for what builder access is. If you are in someone else's World you may need to ask them for this permission. If no one is around to grant them or the session just is not focused on building, opening your own world is the simplest path: see Create New World.

Many avatars import in a T-pose or A-pose. Leave the model in that pose for the creator step. The symmetric pose is what lets the Avatar Creator place both hands automatically. If you accidentally grab the model after import, choose Undo from the Context menu before continuing. If the model looks offset even after undoing you may need to import it anew.

Spawning the Avatar Creator

Open the Dash Menu, go to the Home page, and spawn an Avatar Creator. This menu consists of a Headset visual, two hand visuals and a UI Panel. Place the headset at the model's head as if it was wearing it, the two dots inside the headset indicate where your vision will be.

Aligning the head

After positioning the head in roughly the right spot it is usually best to use the alignment tools of the Avatar Creator Align Head Forward, Align Head Up, Align Head Right, Center Head Position, and finally Try Align Hands.

The last button uses the headset as a line of symmetry, which is why the Head should be aligned first.

Aligning the hands

If the model is symmetric in pose, the hands should already be in roughly the right place after Try Align Hands. Inspect both, and if one is off, adjust it by hand, for most Avatars aligning the hands based on the index finger is ideal.

If the model is not symmetric, uncheck Use Symmetry in the Avatar Creator and place each hand on its own. If your model should be Symmetrical but the hands appear offset you may have accidentally moved the avatar during setup.

Tool anchors

Tool anchors are the points where tools, attach when held. To customize them, check Show Tool Anchors in the creator. As with aligning the hands for most Avatars positioning the Tool Anchor at the tip of the index finger produces the best results. Showing the Tool Anchors will also show the Grab Spheres, and Tool Shelves. Grab Spheres are usually positioned in the palm of the hand so that the sphere covers the area of the palm. If you are trying to grab an object these spheres control where the object needs to be relational to your hand. Tool Shelves are generally positioned at the back of the wrist and act as convenient storage for your Tools.

Other creator options

The Avatar Creator has a couple of toggles worth knowing about:

• Setup Volume Meter adds a volume meter component to your head proxy. This Volume meter gets set up to Animate your whisper bubble. See Voice modes if you are wondering what Whisper is.
• Setup Face Tracking wires up face tracking inputs if your Avatar supports it and Resonite can Identify them.
• Protect Avatar Adds avatar Protection to the Avatar to prevent others from wearing and saving the Avatar.

If you check Protect Avatar, only the user who clicks Create will be able to equip the avatar, as the avatar Creator will add SimpleAvatarProtection (Component) to the Root of the Avatar as well as every Slot with a Mesh Renderer on it. If you are not logged in, the Avatar can no be created with Protect Avatar enabled. Avatar Protection is also not usable if you are in your Local Home.

Pressing Create

When the head is aligned, the hands look right, and the optional toggles match what you want, press Create. Once you have done so remember to save the resulting Avatar to your Inventory even before equipping, to avoid losing progress.

Always save before equipping a different avatar, even temporarily. Equipping another avatar from your Inventory discards unsaved changes on the current one. If you have been editing for a while, save first, then swap.

After creation

Two things commonly need attention right after the first equip.

Geometry over the eyes

Some models have hair, helmets, or face structure that covers the view. There are two main ways to fix it.

The simplest fix is to move the head proxy target. Inspect the equipped avatar with a developer tool. Under the avatar root you will find a hierarchy that includes a Head Proxy slot with a Target under it. Move that Target slot back along its Z axis (Blue). The head visually moves backward, taking the offending geometry behind the camera with it.

Pulling the head too far back can stretch the spine when looking down, which lifts the avatar's feet off the ground. Move only as far as needed.

If proxy adjustment is not enough or your avatar has a muzzle that you don't wish to see, attach a RenderTransformOverride (Component) to the offending slot itself (the hair, helmet, hat, or whatever piece is poking through) and set ScaleOverride to (1, 1, 0.01). The slot becomes invisible in the wearer's first-person view but still renders in mirrors, cameras, and for other users.

Using near clip can be a commonly suggested way to solve this problem, however as it affects anything within it's set distance, including your own hands, menus, and other effects, it is generally not recommended.

If you get blinded

If the first equip puts geometry directly on top of your eyes and you cannot see, three reliable ways out:

• Use Emergency shortcuts to respawn yourself.
• Switch to desktop mode and use the third person camera to navigate while you fix the new avatar.
• If you imported with someone else, have them adjust the head proxy or the head bone's render override while you stay in the avatar.

Avatars built through the Avatar Creator already have a RenderTransformOverride (Component) on the head bone, added automatically by AvatarUserViewHeadOverride (Component). Whoever is doing the rescue can find it on the head body node and set its ScaleOverride to (1, 1, 0.01) to immediately hide every head mesh from the wearer's first-person view, without affecting how the avatar looks to other users or in mirrors. This is the fastest unblinder when proxy adjustment is too slow.

Textures and material orbs

Each renderer on the avatar holds one or more material references. The renderers sit just under the avatar's Armature slot. Two ways to access the materials:

• Material orbs spawned at import. If you checked Spawn Material Orbs in the import dialog before pressing import, every material on the avatar appears as a physical orb floating near the model. Reach for these first; they are the simplest path.
• Pull from the renderers. If no orbs were spawned, equip the Material Tool empty, aim at any part of the avatar's mesh, and press the secondary action. The tool extracts the material into an orb in front of you (This does not work well with avatars that have more than one Material and use Skinned Meshes). As an alternative, open the avatar in the Scene Inspector and find the renderer's material reference; the inspector exposes the material fields directly without needing the tool.

Bringing textures in

Drag the texture files (typically PNG or WEBP) from your desktop onto the Resonite window, or import them through the File Browser. Each texture lands in the world as a 2D image that you can pick up and drop into a material slot.

Assigning textures

With a material orb in hand, either use the Material Tool and pick Edit Material from the Context menu, or grab the inspector panel directly off the orb. The material exposes named fields for each channel: Albedo, Normal Map, Metallic, Emissive, and so on, depending on the material type.

Drag each texture into the corresponding field. The renderer picks up the change immediately and the avatar updates in place.

Imported materials may have a gray Albedo Color as their default. After dropping in a texture, set the Albedo Color field to white. Otherwise the texture will look washed out or muddy because the renderer is multiplying it by the gray tint.

Choosing a material type

The default for most imported avatars is PBS Metallic (Component), which uses the standard physically-based metallic-roughness workflow. Two common alternatives:

• PBS Specular (Component) for content authored in the specular-glossiness workflow.
• XiexeToonMaterial (Component) for stylized toon-shaded looks that do not need PBR realism.

You can convert a material from one type to another through the Material Tool's context menu without losing the texture assignments. The tool replaces every instance of the original material on the avatar with the converted version.

Nice-to-have components

These are not required for a working avatar, but they are small additions that handle common edge cases cleanly.

Default user scale

DefaultUserScale (Component) sets the scale the avatar spawns at when equipped, and the scale it returns to when the wearer picks Reset Scale from the Context menu. Useful when the avatar is intended to be played at a specific non-default size, for example a tiny critter avatar that should default to 0.5 instead of 1.0. Add the component anywhere on the avatar and set the DefaultScale field.

Without this component, equipping the avatar simply keeps you at whatever scale you happened to be at when you put it on, and Reset Scale always snaps you to 1.0 regardless of what the model's natural size suggests. Adding a DefaultUserScale (Component) is what lets the avatar carry its own intended scale across both equip and reset.

Where to go next

Once the avatar is created and the view is clean, the rest is customization:

• Common Avatar Issues for known gotchas after creation.
• Avatar Standard for the optional best-practice components.
• Avatar Hub for more guides, community resources and avatars.
• Full Body Tracking for the FBT calibration flow.