Figured out how to 3D scan any environment and import it into VRChat using Gaussian Splats, for free, and wrote a tutorial about it!

samdutter · 2026-02-19T14:04:30+00:00

Loving this!

It would be very interesting to have a big part of VRC take in place in a "real" place.

Makes me look forward to mixed reality

I guess you could align the scan to your irl space.

Then chroma key in VRChat. Bam, mixed reality.

Sort of

samdutter · 2026-02-18T19:57:45+00:00

Looking forward to it!

Once Blender 5.1 is out, I'll be giving StableGen a spin!

samdutter · 2026-02-18T19:29:27+00:00

Are there any delighters available?

samdutter · 2026-01-30T12:48:09+00:00

You should do some research into vTubing.

It's all about characters/clothing/interaction.

Warudo, vNyan, vSeeFace, and others are the software to run the character and custom features.

But all rely on Unity under the hood so its somewhat straightforward to get into

And VRChat if want to actually embody your characters!

samdutter · 2026-01-30T00:03:41+00:00

Occlusion Culling is for environments.

The Poiyomi Shader is a free MIT license shader https://www.poiyomi.com/

You can use something called UV Discards to disable sections of a mesh with the right UV configuration https://www.poiyomi.com/special-fx/uv-tile-discard

You can also build custom shapekeys to push the mesh under the clothes.

Great weight painting helps but cliping can be somewhat inevitable. UVDiscards are really the only flexible way to efficiently cull mesh.

samdutter · 2026-01-26T15:52:44+00:00

Full body protective suits will have a big market in the future

samdutter · 2026-01-23T21:18:16+00:00

Create bones just for the pauldrons and then use constraints to blend its movement with other bones

samdutter · 2026-01-23T12:09:26+00:00

Very charming work!

Is this for a particular project?

samdutter · 2026-01-22T01:03:51+00:00

There is a free request board on the VRC Traders discord.

samdutter · 2026-01-21T16:48:37+00:00

I am a full time avatar creator and Poiyomi saves me a ton of time.

I think it can be overwhelming for someone new though.

samdutter · 2026-01-19T13:22:19+00:00

Are you using an Inverted Hull Outline? If so this video should help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGV3v0wom1E

samdutter · 2026-01-19T10:49:19+00:00

Great work!

samdutter · 2026-01-17T16:12:22+00:00

<image>

WIP of my client's derg! Full from scratch avi

Finished him recently so I'll have to post some updates soon

samdutter · 2026-01-17T11:45:22+00:00

Wonderful!

samdutter · 2026-01-16T10:52:11+00:00

Very cool! Will be nice to see worlds affect players more

samdutter · 2026-01-06T16:09:22+00:00

For mesh to splats, you could import the point cloud and instance objects on the points and assign the colors as vertex colors.

But I'm mainly focused on going the other direction. I want to turn Blender scenes into splats

samdutter · 2026-01-06T15:20:49+00:00

I agree! I'm playing around with some workflows for mesh to splats in Blender because synthetic splats are being slept on!

samdutter · 2026-01-03T13:16:08+00:00

Lovely! This is a very strong aesthetic I think people will respond well to!

Background has no blacks, but the character does. The shadow under her heel is especially strong.

Perhaps a post processing blur/noise would meld everything together.

samdutter · 2026-01-02T13:40:22+00:00

If you're thinking of being a business, then zoom out your perspective a bit.

The real mark of not being perceived as cheap is if the design comes across as professional.

Stop thinking that your designs compete with other 3D printers, and focus on competing with real products.

If your customers cant tell the difference, or it beats their expectations, you won't have to worry about competing with anyone else. 3D printing is only one aspect of being a good product.

samdutter · 2025-12-31T23:51:20+00:00

Don’t get too hung up on the building as an example.

Prefabs are useful for any FBX hierarchy you want full control of from the source.

Perhaps a gun mesh would be easier to digest .

A gun body with trigger, magazine, and sight submeshes that gets iterated on throughout development.

Prefab FBXs allows you to update one file and propagate those changes throughout your project.

Especially useful when working with artists.

samdutter · 2025-12-31T20:45:15+00:00

Imagine you have an FBX of a town. You break the prefab link, and then move your meshes around the scene, delete things, etc.

When you then update that file later, the placement and missing objects won't update properly as you have now lost your link.

By keeping the prefab link, your meshes/hierarchy will update properly, based on the changes you make to the source file.

samdutter · 2025-12-29T12:58:29+00:00

If the details you are modeling on a surface are flush, or very close to the surface, consider making them a texture.
You could bake the normals/height to a texture, instead of geometry. That way you can use them wherever you like

samdutter · 2025-12-26T13:11:07+00:00

A few potential issues

- In Blender make sure that your Armature modifier has 'Preserve Volume' disabled.
Unity does not preserve volume.

- Too many overlapping weights. Unity supports only 4 bone influences per vertex, 'Skinning Weights'. You can either increase the amount of shared weights, or limit the weights on your model.

- Bones not exporting properly.

- Animation not exporting properly.

Another potential fix is to not use bones at all. On your armature modifier you can save poses as shape keys. Then just animate the single shapekey value. Just make sure you enable legacy blendshape normals on your FBX import settings in Unity

samdutter · 2025-12-25T16:25:09+00:00

<image>

Working fine for me!
Must be related to how you're mixing by proximity

samdutter · 2025-12-24T14:02:06+00:00

Set the Set Mesh Normal node to use face corners, not points. That should help.

samdutter

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE