This guide is designed for people receiving a custom Unity project from me, typically as a result of custom avatar work. It does not apply to individual assets.
- Step 1: Install Unity Hub
(if you already have the VRChat Creator Companion installed, you can skip this step)
Download Unity Hub from here and install it.
- Step 2: Install the VRChat Creator Companion (VCC)
(if you already have the VRChat Creator Companion installed, you can skip this step)
Download the VCC from here and install it. Also please note that you may be required to log into your Unity account. If you do not have one yet, you will be prompted to create one.
- Step 3: Unpack the project
You should have received a zip file containing the project from me. Unpack it somewhere (the project can be several gigabytes in size and contains a lot of files – make sure to unpack it somewhere where this will not be an issue and where you will be able to find it easily).
- Step 4: Add the project to the VCC
Start the VCC and go to the Projects tab on the left side.
Then click on the arrow on the top right and click on “Add Existing Project”. Then navigate to the directory you extracted earlier and select it.
The project should now appear in the project list. Click on “Open Project” next to it.
This will start the Unity Editor and open the project within. This process may take anywhere from a few seconds to over ten minutes, depending on the project size and your hardware, so do not be alarmed if it seems like nothing is happening at first. Give it some time to process everything.
- Step 5: Start the upload process
Once the Unity Editor finishes loading up, navigate to the top and select “VRChat SDK” and then “Show Control Panel”.
This will open a window and ask you to log in with your VRChat account, if you have not done so yet. Log into your account to continue.
Once logged in, click the “Builder” tab and then select the avatar to upload. Depending on the project you received, this may just have one or multiple avatars. You can only upload one at a time, so if you have multiple versions to upload, just repeat the same process with the other versions once this one is finished.
It will then show some statistics on the avatar. Click the button “Build and publish for Windows”. This will start the build process, which may take a few minutes.
After the build process, a form will appear in the editor. Enter the name and description of your avatar as you see fit and make sure Sharing is set to “private”.
If this is your first upload of this avatar, it will not have a thumbnail picture yet. I put some basic thumbnail to get started into the project already, but in order to use it, you need to check the box “Upload Image” and then click on the “Scene” tab on top of the form.
You can use your mouse to navigate the 3d scene. On the left side, click on “VRCCam”.
A camera will be selected in the scene and you can see what it sees in the bottom right and it will have some red, green and blue arrows next to it. Click and drag those arrows to move the camera and try to align it with the picture. Move it away from the picture to zoom out or closer to zoom in and move it up and down and left and right as needed until you get a decent framing that you are happy with. There are other way to replace the image later and you can skip the step on future uploads of the same avatar, but on your first upload, you have to get started this way.
Once you are happy with the image, go back to the “Game” tab and click on Upload. This might take a moment and you will get a message when the upload is complete. Congratulations, your avatar is now available in game! You might have to restart the game for it to appear in your avatar list. If you have more versions to upload, just repeat the same process.
- Step 6: Quest Version
You may have received a second project with a separate Quest version of the avatar. If you did not order a Quest version, you can skip this step.
If you have a Quest project, add it to the VCC the same way as the other one. But before you open it, have another look at your PC project.
In there, click on your avatar on the left side and then look at the inspector window on the right. Scroll down until you see a component called “Pipeline Manager” and a “Blueprint ID”.
Select that long character string and copy and paste it somewhere (like Notepad). I would recommend labeling it for yourself with the name of that avatar version and saving it somewhere, but it is not strictly required.
Then open up the Quest project the same way you opened the other project.
Once the Quest project is open, click on the avatar object on the left side there and look at the inspector on the right again and scroll until you find the “Pipeline Manager” component again. This time, the “Blueprint ID” field will be empty. Paste the string from earlier in there and click “Attach”. This will tell VRChat, that this is the Quest version of your avatar from earlier.
Now just upload it in the same way you did before.
If you have multiple avatars, you need to upload the Quest version to each one of them separately. Once you are done uploading the first one, go back to the Pipeline Manager form and click on “Detach”. This will empty the Blueprint ID field again and allow you to paste the ID for the next avatar. Each of your PC avatars will have a unique ID, so you will have to repeat the process for each one of them that you wish to have a Quest version on.
You are done! Enjoy the avatar and let me know if there are any issues or difficulties with the upload process!