A 3D artist trying to discover itself.

Evaluation -

The exhibition went well and the outcome was something I felt really happy with.

In comparison to the rest of the exhibition space, the piece was incredibly large. There were several conversations about size and how much impact it actually has.

Previously, there were points made about how the impact of seeing my work on a small screen compared to seeing it in VR were dramatically different, but I was really concerned about giving an immersive experience and how that would feel in a gallery setting.

If I used a headset, I’d be tethered to the experience and be acting as a tech helper the whole evening. To me, the point of VR is escapism from self. Having me right next to somebody guiding them takes away from the personal journey of self discovery that VR gives. At least with a large print, it’s more likely to pull you into the environment on a personal level, and not feel a bit awkward looking at a little screen while someone watches over your shoulder.

Honestly, the size of the piece and how much it stood out felt like a metaphor for myself and how it’s felt doing this course. Being an older student who feels both ahead of the class and behind my own peers simultaneously has led to a massive separation and feeling of disengagement with the class and how I work.

Because of my background, I’m used to a very specific, technical world. Maybe in another life, if I progressed into art instead of game design, my works would eventually be surrounded by other large scale pieces and feel more in a place of belonging. But instead, I’m the odd one out, taking up space with something that doesn’t quite fit the mold that I've been given.

Through this module though, I do feel like I’ve learnt a lot more in regards to expanding my own boundaries and taking my work into a different medium. I realised early on that I wanted this project to be a love letter and a thank you to my community. Years ago, VRChat was a stepping stone out of my comfort zone when I was battling severe agoraphobia and addiction. My online family loved me unconditionally and helped me find sobriety, confidence, and even my partner, Sif.

Previously, the photos I’ve taken of my avatars have been just for the sake of promotion and work instead of actual enjoyment. I really struggle to channel passion into my work because of the incessant nagging that everything must be perfect and precise. I always fight this inertial need to prove that I’m the best at everything I do, which turns it into a grind.

But this time, I actively forced myself to step away from that. Instead of obsessing over the details and technicalities, I took the time to just… build outfits that told the stories of my closest friends. like 5bi5's hoodie carrying a defiant quote from John Milton, or Johnny's signature fisherman beanie with the ears he's sewn on himself.

For the first time, I genuinely enjoyed creating these photos. Between this project and our fortnightly themed nights where I just throw things together for fun, it felt passionate and intimate and creative. Instead of stressing over perfection, it was just nice, genuine moments with the people I deeply care about.

Looking back at my time on this course, it’s been a strange ride. I came into it feeling like a total misfit, disconnected from the traditional arts and unsure of how my digital, VR-centric life translated into a physical gallery space.

Maybe that persistent feeling of not quite fitting in was what I needed. It forced me to stop treating my 3D work as just a technical portfolio piece and allowed me to take the time to see what I do in a completely different light. I still always feel a bit out of place bridging the gap between game design and fine art, but learning to let go of that need for absolute perfection and just enjoy the creative intimacy of the work has made me actually enjoy what I do.

Pushing past my own internal frustrations just to make something meaningful for my friends, without actually caring about how the final outcome would be judged, was exactly the release I needed.

It made me realise that my digital background isn't a barrier to traditional art.

It also made me realise I can add nuance and personal story to my work in ways that aren't necessarily part of the final product. In ways that I didn't necessarily realise until reflecting on my time.

Initial prints to see what layouts would work for the 3 pieces I wanted to display.

In the end I agreed with Ally that i'd have a higher impact just using one piece instead of trying to make the 3 work compositionally.

Another pixel sort I did of 5bi5 whilst playing around.

For our Night school theme ECHO_location , Ally asked for me to do some datamoshes for the promotion poster and the computer screens that would be on in the classroom. These are the some of the ones I created. They were made using a varying collection of tools including

After we finished the photoshoot I got each of my guests to rate the intimacy of the shoot and how it felt, and give a short comment as to why

5bi5 - 4/10 / 10/10 if no technical issues - "We both had technical difficulties and I still don't have full body tracking which meant I kept getting frustrated about that and worried about getting a good picture for you, but you were 10/10" John - 10/10 - "I really appreciated you spending time with me one on one like that and being patient whilst we got some really amazing pictures" Sif - 10/10 - "It felt natural for us to work together as we have always got along well and this felt like it just proved it to me."

I did ask them to be more critical but I think my friends like me too much to want to say anything negative What I got from the feedback was that in order to for vrchat to feel intimate, Full body tracking and face tracking are crucial for eye contact, facial expressions and body language, which is a large portion of human communication. In addition to that, current VR Technology still isn't at the point where there isn't constant technical issues, and the price gap between introductory (A secondhand Quest 2 for £150) or "full immersion" (£2k+ depending on setup) means that a lot of people will never really feel the level of intimacy that is potentially available without paying a substantial sum for technology that is at best, temperamental and still pretty buggy.

VR is Intimate.

especially for people like John, who lives in Rural Czech, where there is little social interaction, let alone with Queer Communities where he can feel comfortable as himself, VR is the only space he has the opportunity to spend time with people he enjoys the company of.

The only piece I ended up using for the exhibition was this one after agreeing with Ally that the most impactful choice would be to showcase my favourite and not compromise turning this one into a portrait for the sake of cohesiveness.

Additionally i had to go in and edit things I wasn't happy with in photoshop. - I removed the glow underneath the crease of the hood where it meets the shoulder - I edited the shoulder where the triangulation caused weight painting errors. - I removed the advertisement in the background next to the door - I removed the little dinosaurs off the table and chairs - I reduced the clipping happening between the achiles heels and the bench

I did all of this using the Lasso and generative remove tool.

I do worry about the ethics of using the generative remove tool and how generative image models are, and how the skill taken to airbrush things in photoshop vs using the removal tool makes the active process of making well produced photos lazier and less skilled. I chose to use the generative remove tool because I don't have the technical skills for photoshop and airbrushing, and didn't want the piece ruined by my own amateur mistakes.

After whittling down the shots to my favourite 3 pieces, I chose these ones of 5bi and John, and in Lightroom just messed around with the Levels

I actually did each of these projects seperately with photoshoots inbetween so I could scope the work I was doing and not overload myself then end up with too much.

These were my personal favourites from each shoot that weren't my final picks.

These were taken in the initial world 5bi5 chose. The use of a simple background.

In Jaskirt's Lecture about photography she spoke about capturing people in their natural environment, I took inspiration from that and allowed my guests to take me to their favourite worlds. This was 5bi5's first choice, which we did enjoy but decided that the world's lighting was quite flat and wouldn't have as much of a dynamic feeling to it.

For these portraits I used a large aperture so the background gets blurry, seperating 5bi from the background. I used a world light to create a yellow highlight on the tree and to try and create some contrast on 5bi but I don't think it was really effective. The light ended up having even tones and low contrast, which resembles high key lighting.

When we got into the world, I asked 5bi to just stand there and do what felt natural, and I spent 20-30 minutes just shooting him whilst not saying much.

I do feel like the final pieces I got felt a little flat and not very compositionally effective however it was the first attempt of this project so I guess it's to be expected.

After that, 5bi took me to their favourite world that they'd previously said they didnt want to go to because it's dark and they worried about bad lighting. I told them that's not their problem and we went there instead. This image was my personal favourite and really feels like a screenshot from a high fantasy game I'd like to play. I used a small aperture so that everything would be in focus. The lighting is Low key with a high contrast environment, with the bioilluminescent flowers and crt monitors creating strong highlights against a dark background and emphasising 5bi's silhouette in the foreground. I feel like it gives this picture a really stylized effect.

I was more happy to be shooting here than I was the previous world and gave more compositional opportunities.

I used a larger aperture to blur the background and added a front, left facing light to balance the strong highlights from the cybercity in the background. I did feel like the prominent shadow behind John created a strong composition, however the floor he was standing on is angled at 45 degrees and means he looks like he's floating. the only workaround for this would be to have him putting his back foot on a little step-stool.

ee moved along to another world he liked that he knew had really good lighting. I really love how the direct sunlight creates a strong silhouette against John's avatar.

Another shot similar to the first, with a high aperture. I also put a spot light behind him to get the rim lighting to make it feel like the cityscape is lighting him.

This was my personal favourite from the shoot. It looks realistic and immersive and felt like an actual candid shot. I love that it's a 50/50 of the detailed japanese shrine and the clouds creating a strong silhouette of john.

This was my other favourite from the shoot and as much as it's compositionally pretty with the strong background and silhouette, me and ally agreed that it didn't really showcase John or feel like a portrait. Additionally I always find elbows look clumsy in vrchat and are a bother unless you want to spend yet another £200-300 to get trackers for them which is entirely unrealistic for the average user.

John uses 6 point tracking, which is head, hands, feet, hips. VRC supports up to 11 point tracking, which adds chest, elbows and knees. I find that knees are completely useless, however chest and elbows lets you do a little shoulder shimmy if you feel like it and makes elbows look less clumsy.

Me and sif both already knew we'd be using Midnight rooftop for our final photoshoot. It's a highly popular world and has lovely lighting to begin with so not much work would be needed to try and get things to "work" This was his homeworld for a large portion of him starting VRChat and has been widely popular as a hub for most people. I chose this bench with the illuminescent plants around it because it just felt really cozy and i knew it'd give a good effect. Sif was hovering his hand in the air to try and get these shots.

Sif - London, now brum (my partner)

I chose sif because we met in VR and ended up visiting eachother, dating, moving in together, and now we live a very comfortable life together

I bought him the Kigurumi as a gift last year and he wears it most evenings. Unlike the others sif didn't really get much choice in the matter. He's usually my model for photoshoots and I knew he'd get me some good poses.

Thankfully sif has the best of both worlds with both FBT and face tracking, so I was able to get a really authentic shoot with him.

A bonus of using sif is i was able to get the exact pictures I needed for certain details without having to depend on other people.

Sif decided he wanted to use his main avatar so I ended up resculpting the Kigurumi a second time to fit it. He initially wanted it for his red panda avatar because it has less custom clothing but I suggested he used his main one for authenticity over showcasing just things i've built for my Cinners Storefront.

The weightpainting for the hood kept going to the shoulder/arm instead of the neck. sometimes this just happens and it means I have to go in and manually remove all of the weightpainting on the arms

The weight painting on the hood ended up asymmetrical and took a lot longer to clean up than I wanted it to

I have a recurring problem with armit weightpainting that I've never been able to figure out and see the same issue regularly in other creator's models.

I feel like a possible solution to this would be to add a secondary corrective bone for the armpit that has a 50% rotation constraint between the arm/shoulder, and the upper chest bones, however that would mean reworking the weight painting for not just the base and this outfit but all outfits I've made for the model.

I also had to resculpt the hair and cheek fur to fit inside the hood

This would run with a shapekey whenever the outfit is toggled on.

Additionally I did add an exclusive state toggle onto the VRCFury toggle menu so when the kigu is turned on the ears also get turned off, just because I felt two sets of ears looked goofy.

The mesh totalled at 6.3k Tris, which is incredibly low impact and will mean this outfit can be added to a model with a large amount of accessories and customisation if required.

The negative impact of doing low-poly work is that clipping is inevitable and means corrective blendshapes are crucial.

I created the fleece texture using a 3d perlin noise mask over a multiplied muted purple layer with a height modifier on it.

As much as i'd like to have this level of detail on all of my pieces for this project, texture work is incredibly time consuming and I wanted my focus to be on the photoshoot more than the technicality of my assets.

I used a capsule alpha rotated 90 degrees along a path to create the ribbed effect for the cuffs, then went in and filled the UV mask to clean it up.

I then proceeded to use the pathing tool to create stitchwork and make it look like it's been sewn together. The brush I used for this is one I made by hand a while back and don't really remember what I did beyond just experimenting. It's basically made up of a capsule following the path and a secondary alpha that's a soft edged dot that creates the ambient occlusion you get on a stitch line.

I then went in and hand painted ambient occlusion

The rest of the detailing

and finalised with the depth/normal maps, metallic maps, and reflective maps.

Sometimes meshes export with triangulation different to what is shown and you end up with zig-zag meshes like this one.

A simple solution is to triangulate the mesh then export it again

However I don't like doing it this way and would rather not have my mesh triangulated, it makes editing it in the future difficult and annoying.

Re-importing with triangulated mesh broke some of the fill layers so I'll have to fix that before continuing // a lot of time spent doing 3d work is just fixing errors.

I didn't realise until after the photoshoot but the triangulation actually broke the weight painting on the left shoulder and I ended up using photoshop to edit out the breakage.

I then imported it into unity and added my own shaders and created the animations to attach it to the rig using VRCFury.

JohnnyBunny - Czech Republic

John chose a fisherman's cap as his favourite item of clothing.

He explained that he didnt really know why he loved it so much, but when he saw it he greatly resonated with it and has wore it as a core item of his outfits ever since.

Additionally he bought and sewed some bunny ears onto the hat to personalise them and make them resemble more how he feels on the inside.

John is another close dear friend that has been a staple in my community for a long time.

As much as I wanted a deeper story about the items of clothing I'm creating, it makes sense to build this for John and I'm happy he decided that too. When our friends think of john outside of VR, we think of him wearing his favourite hat.

Initial Modelling

I did end up leaving the chains off the ears just because I wanted it to be best optimised and chains are quite inconvenient to weight paint

5bi5 - Idaho, USA

The reason 5bi5 chose this outfit is because growing up in the US with a highly religious family and ending up homeless and forced to join the military in the early 2000's meant that their start to life was rough and hold american christianity responsible for a portion of that.

The quote is from an epic poem by john milton, said by satan to beelzebub to justify his rebellion against god.

It highlights the rebel spirit and defiant ambition that 5bi5 resonates with.

The reason I chose 5bi5 as my first guest for this module is because over the last 4 years of me starting this journey they were one of the first to come forward and support my work and from that grew to something we both consider a lifelong friendship. Since then, we spend a significant portion of our time together. I consider 5bi5 my closest friend.

I chose not to focus on the technical side of my work in my sketchbook, I focused on showing the things I didn't like and changed to show experimentation and self improvement through better technique. I hope that makes sense.

Prior to experimentation I had a hang-up and need for all of my meshes to be singular as i was convinced it's better optimised to do so, however I don't know the facts on that matter and feel like where technology is right now in the gaming industry, it'd be irrelevant.

The reason I work so low poly is because my current experience in the game industry is making assets for a game that must run on an android framework, which is sort of the equivalent of a PlayStation 2.

This works in my favour as my current inspirations for my workflow are from ps2 era games, the games I grew up with.

These are the issues I had to overcome aswell as some of the work process.

The Hoodie front pocket wasnt aligning and wouldve ended up with clipping with the way I built it originally which was subdivision and a shrinkwrap

so instead I duplicated and edited the existing hoodie mesh to make it more form fitting with less work and better optimisation.

I found this to be an easier workflow and something new as usually I'd do something like a hoodie pocket as a 2d drawn on texture when I want my work to be both optimised and visually appealing

Additionally if I were to do the hoodie pocket usually I'd do it as one mesh instead of two meshes, again i wanted to experiment and see where it lead. I feel like the additional level of depth that it has from being a seperate mesh to be appealing.

For the hood, I had to de-symmetrise the mesh which made me uncomfortable. It will make editing it in the future difficult and I don't know an alternative to this process.

I was unhappy with the final result of this area but didn't want to compromise time efficiency for accuracy.

usually I would sculpt the laces to where they'd fall naturally with gravity

However in a want to experiment, instead I'm going to do them straightened outwards and apply gravity to the physbones in hopes it gives a more immersive effect to the outfit

The downside of this is that now clipping and direction will be a consideration when it comes to the photography aspect of this project.

I did a quick 360 view for 5bi5 before continuing onto rigging and texturing to make sure they're happy with the final result.

the rest of the detail work will be done with texturing.

For rigging I start with a blender plugin called robust weight transfer by @sentfromspacevr

Prior to having this plugin, I'd do a data transfer modifier with nearest face interpolated.

Then I go in and clean the weight paints manually in places I'm unhappy with it, along with making sure to add any corrective blendshapes to hide the mesh if it clips and I can't get it to not using weight painting.

The trouble with working in a low-poly workflow on something supposed to be highly customisable is that usually rigging will cause clipping if you don't have corrective blendshapes

This is also something that can potentially cause a risk with the photography part of this project if I don't spot somewhere that's clipping and it ends up ruining a good photo

UV unwrapping is mostly guess work and also sort of knowing what sewing patterns look like. if you can figure out what a tshirt looks like unstitched that's the mindset you have to take into UV's

I used Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro to create a python code that converts images into alpha layers to save doing it manually in Photoshop

Whilst I am greatly opposed to using Generative image models, this was done using math and code, so I feel that this is somewhat an exception to the rule. However in my professional projects I would never take this step for the satisfaction of knowing my work is 100% human made.

I then used photoshop to turn the graphic from the back of the hoodie into a transparent sticker.

I then went into substance painter and added fill layers using the alphas as masks to create an accurate representation of the outfit.

After this is went over to Unity, where I didn't do much documentation on rigging and attaching as I now use 3rd party tools to do the majority of the work for me.

I attach the outfit using VRCFury, prior to this I'd have to apply parent constraints to each individual bone, or merge it with the original package, however I like my work to be modular and customisable whilst also being optimised to the user's preference, IE not having every single outfit merged to the mesh and ending up with 300k Tris (70k is the recommended for good performance in vrchat, however my bases are usually 100k and in my personal polygons have the least impact on optimisation and I think the 70k limit is an outdated preference considering that they havent changed this in several years now and GPU's have increased in performance substiantially)

VRChat is an online platform where people can meet and come together in a way that is sometimes immersive enough to forget you're not in the room with the people you're around. Prior to trying this platform out I suffered quite severely from agoraphobia and an alcohol abuse problem. Unfortunately the reason I got so attached to VRChat in the start is because of the toxic culture around drinking and the rave / dj scene. It was a stepping stone out of my comfort zone with people who wouldn't judge me for being so attached to a reckless lifestyle.

After a while I found myself wanting to make something that i identified with more than the public models I was wearing, found it highly frustrating trying to customise pre-made bases without there being much documentation to do so. I was depending on friends teaching me, and they didn't really know anything either.

I found some tutorials online and self-taught myself from scratch, so I could understand the nuances of what I was doing, however I became so obsessed and attached to doing 3d work that I never wanted to stop. I found myself working on 3d models to an unhealthy degree and after 2 months I'd finished my first avatar and felt like i'd learnt everything there was to know about 3d modelling. The anatomy was terrible, the face was uncanny valley, the rigging was janky, and everything about it was just unpleasant to look at, but I loved it so much and was so proud of myself that I wore it everywhere without hesitation.

Through the process of making and starting to sell my bases, I found people who liked and appreciated my work and wanted to spend time with me as an artist just because they liked me as a person and wanted to watch me grow.

Being somebody who never really had friends prior to this, i started to find an online family who loved me unconditionally, and helped me through my darkest times to find the person I am today, happy, sober, loved, with a community that I dedicate my craft to and try to uplift in the same way they did for me.

Without my community, I wouldn't be where I am now, I wouldn't have gained the confidence and motivation to step out my front door and want to try to grow to places outside of my comfort zone.

Because of them, I love life.

My sort of Hobby - The thing I do outside of work and uni, is every fortnight me and my friends have a themed night where, the previous favourite gets to choose the next theme (myself not included, I just throw in the themes I want whenever I think of a good one)

It usually means on saturdays I get to take time to myself to make something silly, low effort, a bit rough around the edges as a bit of fun. The reason I want to bring this into my portfolio is because I feel it directly relates to the people and place aspect of my work and shows the sort of things I actually enjoy making.

During this specific module, we've had "Video Games" For this one, I kitbashed a rip of an outfit from Legend of Zelda, breath of the wild, onto my bunny base (Kitbashing is when you take something made by somebody else and re-rig it to something it wasnt made for, name originated from Gundam kitbashes) (Ripping is when you basically steal 3d models from games) Thankfully this one fit quite nicely without much sculpting.

I had to re-UV the hair to match my existing hair material. The way I did this was by stacking all of the islands into a singular box in one direction. It's not perfect but does what's needed for something that I only wanted to spend 2-3 hours on.

I also had to rebuild the UV settings in blender because it didn't come with materials. i don't remember what I did exactly other than set the material up to bake. I'm aware that this is also how you do multires baking but it's something I've struggled to wrap my head around. I hope that game design teaches me that as there's a lot of aspects to this medium that I can't get a grip with, without having somebody with professional experience show me.

I then imported it into unity and applied Poiyomi Shader with my personal settings on.

(A Shader is something made to simulate how light reacts to a 3d model. Poiyomi, Mochie and Liltoon are the popular ones used for VRChat.)

These settings are something I've been refining for years and work on whenever I release an update or finish building somebody's custom commission.

You can see in this image that the way the boots work is by having a corrective blendshape that shrinks the feet mesh to their bones. This corrective blendshape won't show unless the animations that trigger them are running. Pictures taken by friends:

"Fantasy"

For this theme I sort of cheated and did a kitbash of Sora's outfit from Kingdom Hearts 3 on my rat base.

The process was widely the same, however the leg fabric being so baggy meant that rigging it caused a huge amount of error that had to be cleaned up manually. I did have to re-rig the necklace and it ended up breaking entirely so I removed it. This project took around 2-3 hours to do.

I would have liked to have added the weapons to both of these bases but didn't really want to take any more time building something just to wear for a couple hours.

"Terrible Textures"

For this theme I wanted to make something really disgusting low-tier drag so I ended up taking inspiration from Katya Zamolochikova's various cougar characters and Gladys from Weapons.

I was a little disappointed that the detail I put into the skin texture didn't come across very well in VRC. Unfortunately as wonderful as a tool it is for easy to use MOCAP and Face tracking - Poiyomi and other lighting tools do have limitations due to it being a performant Game engine. maybe if a VR platform comes along made in Unreal Engine I'd consider swapping (If my pc could even handle that...)

I also added a glitter overlay on the leopard print. Additionally I also created a texture for Sif that looked like he'd been drawn by a child.