How to Optimize VRC Avatars the Easy Peasy Way
There are really only a few aspects that affect your optimization... tri count, mesh amount, material slots, texture size, lights/particles, and physbones.
❤ Tri Count ~> Start as low poly as you can. I start with a cube subdivided by 1, and later after applying I manually decimate places that have unnecessary loops. Models still look great at 30k tris, and can look good even lower than that. You can also bake a higher quality normal onto a lower quality model.
❤ Mesh Amount ~> Like layers in art editing programs, you eventually want to join your separated meshes into one mesh, or keep as few separated meshes as possible. If you can do something with blend shapes or animations, do that instead.
❤ Material Slots ~> If you can texture everything onto a single material slot, do it. Unless you're making something to be customized by others (plz seam and unwrap if selling bases), you don't even need to seam and unwrap everything. Solid colored pieces can be projected from view, only things being painted on need to be unwrapped. And, use masks instead of material slots where you can.
❤ Texture Size ~> You decide the texture size when creating image textures. Things often look just fine at the default texture size, which isn't hefty. You do not need 4k textures in VRChat. If you can make it even smaller you can do so, such as if something is all solid colors without anything painted on. Nobody will notice a difference.
❤ Lights/Particles ~> Not my forte, but lights almost always make avatar stats ouchie. I just wouldn't add them to avatars you intend to use often, but adding them to ones meant for photos or videos in smaller crowds/when alone, why not. Particles can be okay but. Don't ask me how, lol.
❤ Physbones ~> Physbones really don't add much pain to PC avatars, but almost all physbones drop Quest quality significantly. Make a separate version for you Quest avatars with fewer physbones. Personally I can't live without floppy ears and tails and just take the quality hit, but other various physbones I remove, such as extra hair bones or jiggle bones.
That's really it! It's not so hard to take steps to optimize and it's very satisfying to make things as clean as possible (but I'm not an expert okie, may be some other ways to optimize)! Please.. no more 30k+ tri necklaces for sale in Jinxxy 🥺🙏 i beg