Collaboration Avatars

#1

Is there a possibility we could have various options for the Avatars used during collaboration? We would like to use this for presentations, but the “pill” shape of the avatar seems out of place. Could there be additional options to swap out avatars to fit a specific theme? Or even add the functionality to import our own models for the Avatar?

#2

Hi Garrad

Would you like to add your own fixed model to replace the pill? That should be quite easy to do, but say animated arms and hands and head are a lot harder.

We have been talking about replacing the avatars, but we don’t have anything to show yet. I would love to hear what you would want instead!

Best,
Maciej Fijalkowski

#3

My immediate idea was something simple like a triangle made to look like a torso with a simple sphere for a head, maybe eyes just to show direction. If we had the option to upload our own model, similar to the ability to add in our own warehouse, we could make our own, maybe with logos or even faces plastered on it. Just some basic requirements like maximum size dimensions would go a long way. I understand you would need four different models, one for the body, one for each hand, and one for head. That would be very handy.

#4

I heard a wonderful idea just the other day from a friend of mine. What about avatars using the same code from VR Chat. Its a unity program as well and may have some compatibility options.

In addition, using a system where there’s a mirror object in the warehouse that lets you change basic options on a couple progenerated models like hair color and style, shirt color, gender, etc. Just keep it simple with 12 options or so.

#5

Hi Garrad,

This might be a good idea. It seems there is some standard file format, .vrm, for VR avatars. This would be a starting point. It would still be potentially quite some work to figure out how to import and use such avatars.

As you’ve seen, we have stuck to our simple models and nobody in our team is familiar with animated avatars. We’re happy with our minimal robotic avatars and we’re generally focusing on other goals like making editing as complete as possible or getting the best possible performance when rendering any user model, no matter how complicated. But we’ll keep in mind for future research options like loading .vrm files.