You can buy it if you like, BUT bear these things in mind first!

1. My yinglets' arms are close to the limb proportions you find in the yinglets of Out-of-Placers, meaning forearms are 2x as long as biceps; it was very important to me that I not compromise on this. For rigging this uncommon setup on PC, controller position is mapped to a point halfway down the forearm instead of on the model's hand, and because of that the model's hands are further out than your own. However, there's a tradeoff: grabbed items snap to the forearm controller position instead of to the hand, and hands/fingers do not move on Quest (this is why I do not recommend Quest-only users buy it for themselves). I have not found a way around this that keeps the proportions and improved elbow IK intact, but I've personally used this solution on my main model for over a year and have grown used to it. A public try-out base will be made available in the next few weeks so you can make a more informed decision; if you're on the fence, my advice is to wait until then rather than risk disappointment.

2. I haven't tried this with full-body tracking, so I wouldn't be surprised if this broke under those circumstances, but I aim to use the revenues from this to get a set of trackers and tweak the rig in this into something that works. This is going to be my main avatar as I continue to use VRChat on a weekly basis, any improvements I make to my own base will roll into the paid version.

3. This is my first paid base, and so some things are rough around the edges. I've made it entirely from scratch with free software (aside from a little bit of time in Aseprite), point-to-point modeling in Blender and painting in Krita; I bring all this up to say, if you'd like to support me beyond purchasing the base, five-starring it afterward and sharing this around to any interested parties would mean a lot. -v-

The yinglet species was created and developed in detail by Valsalia; it's fair to say at this point I owe a lot to the concept. Thanks, everyone. <3

I think that's it for now! I want to add a bunch of stuff to it, and enable all sorts of yinglet bases in VR (among other species), but for now, I'm breaking for a week, after which I'll polish what's here beyond "shippable" status before adding new features. With that out of the way, here's the purchase link:

I finished 0.96 thinking "Ah, time to relax!" and then it was made clear to me during a meeting with friends that the leg rigging couldn't wait any longer -- so I devoted the entire week of working hours (and then some) to releasing 0.97 -- and the following night of experiences made it clear to me that some bugs needed fixing and more work was needed to improve the new-user experience, so now we're at 0.975. The model now has full digitigrade leg rigging on PC, but also a whole bunch of customization options for character creation, including face/body sliders and separate hue sliders for the body and eyes. In retrospect I'm embarrassed as hell that I waited so long to rig the legs properly, but I like to think I went through my hard knocks fixing it.

Because this is now cloneable, I can confirm that this is very functional in six-point full-body tracking. Putting this in the hands of experienced FBT users (my life-partner and several good friends) was revelatory, and has convinced me to get a set of trackers myself right after Vancoufur. Body language changes a lot!

The next update will probably not come as quickly as this one, but it will feature retopologized hands/feet and toggleable clothing. We aren't done with body customization yet, but I consider this a pretty good start!

The public version of this is currently in the wild, but I'll be waiting till .98 to buy Furhub ad space for it. I'm committed to maintaining feature-parity between the free and paid versions of this, with greater customization through production files as the draw for the paid version. Any questions or concerns, please let me know. <3

CHANGELOG:

02/28/2024 & 03/02/2024

VERSION 0.97: THE "LET'S DIGRESS" UPDATE and VERSION 0.975: THE "LET'S DIGRESS" HOTFIX

(PC-only currently, will have Quest version added in less than 24 hours.)

Feature additions:

Radial menus for body characteristic customization:

Hue sliders! Only visible on PC, since it requires the Poiyomi shader. Body and eye colors can be customized independently.

Shelltooth length.

Snout length.

Snout width.

Snout roundness.

Ear roundness.

Ear length.

Belly size.

Chin height.

Hip width.

Underfluff density.

Digitigrade leg armature on PC version, using constraints. Your hip bones should no longer completely dislocate when you crouch! :D

Front and back fur patterns! In the "Base Fur" layer category in the .psd is a "Patterns" subcategory, with "Front Pattern" and "Back Pattern" subcategories that can be toggled, recolored, and customized as you please.

Credits page, accessible from the main circle menu! Tell all your friends!

"Read this first!" page, which summons a plane containing helpful tips for first-time users.

Geometry tweaks:

Raised feet slightly to prevent them from clipping into the ground.

Adjusted shelltooth angle to prevent it from clipping into the lower lip.

Retopologized legs! Now significantly less boxy, and they stick out less far in front of the body (I used Valsalia's "Anatomy of a Yinglet" as reference).

Retopologized ears. The inner part's concave now!

Added blendshapes for all the customization sliders.

Added a bit more volume to the breast size blendshape.

Tweaked waistline to be more yinglet-y.

Tailtip now tapers more to a point.

UV/texture tweaks:

Added front and back fur-pattern layers, toggleable in the PSD.

Repainted legs and ears.

Repainted the weird transparent pixels bordering the tops of the hard black sections of the legs.

Made eyebrow anti-aliasing pixels actual transparency instead of the default fur color.

Changed credits page to use pixelated fonts.

Condensed color legend on texture.

Added "Read this first!" UI elements to texture. (Will be cleaned up when I expand the texture canvas for clothing.)

Armature tweaks:

Re-weighted feet. Still not ideal, but hands and feet will be retopologized for the next update.

Constrained feet to plantigrade ankles.

Added glasses bone. This and the skirt bones will factor into the next major update.

Added bones for individual whiskers.

Other tweaks:

Assigned default values to most properties between 0 and 1.

Radial menus have been reorganized. All customization sliders are nested in a Customization submenu.

Fixed default lid minimizer not firing in eyelid animations.

Restored eye sparkles on Quest.

Known issues:

Feet rigging is passable but could be better; I'll throw myself at it after feet receive the hand retopology.

Hello, everyone! Last night I uploaded the 0.96 zipfile for Pixel Yinglets for VRChat. Barring any major issues, this update should be at the point where users should be able to comfortably customize the texture (though there's still some work to be done). The above pic is a Unity GIF of a yinglet customized with a custom color scheme created by bucket-filling colors in Krita, cycling through faces from one of the new radial submenus. Neither of these features were in 0.95!~

A look behind the curtain: While I consider this reasonably polished, there's still a lot of work to be done before 1.0 -- and I'm still listening for feature suggestions. 0.97 will add customizability sliders for the face and body (including the hue slider), and 0.98 will include some basic modern clothing. I consider these necessary before I start work on any bespoke elements that are meant to exactly match my former main model (and I miss looking at myself in VR, besides!), so I'll be working on these every work day until I reach that point. 0.98 will also be the point where I upload a public version; my goal is to exhibit this on FurHub and at Furality Umbra, I ain't stopping till I hit both those venues at least!

02/14/2024

0.96: THE "LET'S EXPRESS" UPDATE

Feature additions:

Radial menu ability to toggle facial expression hand gestures!

Two new submenus filled with facial expression presets! (The above option must be toggled off to make use of preset faces.)

UV/texture tweaks:

Eyebrows now no longer show what's behind the model.

PC version of model now has 2 extra material slots, for eyes and eye sparkles.

Eyes are now 20% emissive. (Emission color determined by color in pixelyingletbase-improved.png.)

Eye sparkles are now fullbright (no longer react to shading).

Quest version no longer has eye sparkles. (Fix coming in later patch.)

Other tweaks:

Hello, everyone! I've been hard at work on a few things, one of which is an update to the model. It'll be a few weeks before 0.98 releases, but I'm committed to working on it routinely until then: I want to get this in its absolute best possible shape before Furality Umbra, and that requires a few additions to the model to make it look and feel a bit more yinglety.

The above screenshot is from the first steps of 0.98's remodeling push: as this is going to be the update that'll also be going on FurHub and VRCArena, the focus here is going to be on model aspects the player's going to see first: the hands, head, and face. What you're seeing here are two important changes: first, nostrils that aren't just a painted-on cluster of pixels, and second, ears that have concave geometry lining up with what you find in the yinglets of Val Salia. This is particularly important, as the previous attempt to articulate the form of the ears through a pixel texture is one of the messiest aspects of the model to date. I still need to make sure this new look plays nice with the customization blendshapes, but I'm very proud of how this looks so far.

I have very charitably been sent a set of three Vive 3.0 trackers, which has brought to the forefront an incentive to recreate more aspects of the Yinglet Experience. Here are a few things I anticipate putting in 0.98:

Remodeled ears, snout, hands, and feet. Already mentioned, bears mentioning again.

Toggleable shirt, dress, shorts, and skirt. Technically the main feature of this update; also bears repeating. Shirt will have a spot for front and back graphics, easily replaceable in the texture.

Cleaned-up pixel texture. I keep noticing minor tweaks I could make, and I'm gonna make 'em! Just you watch!

Toggleable first-person snout. I've tried this out in a different model and it's now a top priority.

Ears (and possibly whiskers) animating to facial expressions. The Out-of-Placers comic has gone into exceptional detail describing and depicting how this is meant to work, and I want to make good on that.

Puppetable tail. I anticipate it being a circle menu option where you can position it with a thumbstick and set it in place. I might not be able to get this fully working for 0.98, but I want players to be able to have their tail lay as flat on the floor as their back, for the noodle-like nature of the yinglet body to be made obvious in that pose. Ideally, when you lay on your side, you should have the ability to see your body from the chest down to tailtip without interruption.

Texture map resize from 512x512 to 4096x4096. Oh, an eye-popping figure! This is not to add fidelity to the pixel aspects, but to instead give myself more room to work. More on this further down in this post.

Elimination of gap between bottoms of tearducts and top of snout. Finally! UGH!

I want to take this opportunity to highlight one of the key traits of where I've always wanted to take this model: I started on this with the intent of having it replace the original yinglet model I used for myself, and for there to be no reason for me to want to switch back to my former main. We're not only not there yet, we're still quite a ways off -- and one of the reasons for that is because of a difference in direction between Pixel Yinglets and the original. For comparison, here's the original in its current state:

Pixel Yinglets is currently more advanced than this, even when you only consider the eyes alone. The original's eye proportions look 'off' (they're spherical compared to the current model's oval shapes), and they're basically headlights with how emissive they are; I'm glad to have improved over those, and those traits won't be changing. The original's eyes do, however, have animating eyelids that move fluidly, as well as the wispy slit-pupil characteristic of a yinglet's eyes. This would be difficult to accomplish with the yinglet model's eyes in their pixelated state, which has me strongly considering for 0.99 making the "pixel" aspect of this either a toggle or a separately uploadable version (maintaining feature parity, that's important) rather than a given aspect of the model: to allow players to swap between pixelated and non-pixelated pupil and eyelid geometry sets, and to in turn also make a version of the body/clothing textures that's in a resolution you expect to see in any other VRChat model. In short: As of the eventual 0.99 update, in addition to Pixel Yinglets, you'll also have access to a featureset and aesthetic look equivalent to if the model package was just called "Yinglets", without any upgrade fees or anything like that.