What's the easiest legal way to have your own avatar?

[Kethus]

Looks like even a professional modeler will need a week to make an avatar from scratch and frankensteining models seems to be illegal and there aren't any decent pre-made avatars that aren't 3.5' anime girls and even they are very poorly optimized. I don't feel like spending months learning blender is worth it just to have a unique character in a video game.

[Colorful Credit]

Commissions? There are plenty of great modelers out there who are willing to do commissions. You just have to look around a bit and it's the easiest way I can think of to get what you want besides learning the program yourself.

[Kethus]

I've read that many people who take commissions are also putting an avatar together from pieces they've obtained from somewhere and making a profit from that. I assume given the time it would take a proper original avatar without stolen assets would cost more than a gaming console.

[Colorful Credit]

Originally posted by Kethus:

I've read that many people who take commissions are also putting an avatar together from pieces they've obtained from somewhere and making a profit from that. I assume given the time it would take a proper original avatar without stolen assets would cost more than a gaming console.

Oh, okay. I think I see the major issue here.

Yes, an original Avatar with completely new and original assets would cost you upwards of $1,000+ given the level of details an animations. Models, clothing, shaders, textures, all of it takes an extreme amount of time to create. That's why a lot of these assets are recycled in and out of the game world. Now, not all of these assets are stolen. A good number of them come free with unity or can be straight up purchased on the Marketplace giving the modler the right to use these assets. If your primary concern is copyright, you can do a little research and request only certain asset packs be used.

The best advice I can give is just.... Do your research? Look into the modeler in question you want to hire and look up what assets best work for you. The two of you may need to do some back and forth work as some assets don't work well together but it can be done and it can be done cheap as long as you're willing to work off pre-existing assets

[Guh~hey~hey~♫]

Learning the basis of blender (enough to convert a model into a FBX file usable in unity), and, if you stick to the basis, learning to set up said FBX file to make a working avatar takes a couple hours.

Learning to properly and efficiently optimize most models you'll find in blender (mostly manual atlasing, decimation, bones merging and supression of uneeded meshes) without breaking something (like making unwanted holes in the mesh during the decimation or breaking the skeleton) takes around a week.

All of this can be easily learnt with step by step tutorial videos on youtube (search tupper, it will be a good start). For more advanced features, you will need to learn by yourself (aka search more advanced tutorials) and experiment.
Also reverse enginering "advanced" models from unity package you might find on google can teach you some things too (for shaders and dynamic bones set-up, or particle systems for example).

To find models you can go check nico nico video, blowroll, booth or deviant art.
Just check the terms of use in the read me beforehand (for japanese readmes, open it in notepad++ and translate with google).
Authors that dont want their models used for VRChat clearly mention it.
For the rest I think anything goes as long as you're just making a private avatar only for yourself, and not trying to redistribute or make a commercial use of it (I guess).

[TwIsT [S9N]]

Originally posted by Guh~heh~heh~♫:

Learning the basis of blender (enough to convert a model into a FBX file usable in unity), and, if you stick to the basis, learning to set up said FBX file to make a working avatar takes a couple hours.

Learning to properly and efficiently optimize most models you'll find in blender (mostly manual atlasing, decimation, bones merging and supression of uneeded meshes) without breaking something (like making unwanted holes in the mesh during the decimation or breaking the skeleton) takes around a week.

All of this can be easily learnt with step by step tutorial videos on youtube (search tupper, it will be a good start). For more advanced features, you will need to learn by yourself (aka search more advanced tutorials) and experiment.
Also reverse enginering "advanced" models from unity package you might find on google can teach you some things too (for shaders and dynamic bones set-up, or particle systems for example).

To find models you can go check nico nico video, blowroll, booth or deviant art.
Just check the terms of use in the read me beforehand (for japanese readmes, open it in notepad++ and translate with google).
Authors that dont want their models used for VRChat clearly mention it.
For the rest I think anything goes as long as you're just making a private avatar only for yourself, and not trying to redistribute or make a commercial use of it (I guess).

Just to add to this (which is all great info/advice), I also recommend some of the tutorials by Fruitpex (search Youtube for that channel) --Fruitpex's videos were what I used to teach myself avatar creation from scratch. It took me a few weekends between work to get the basics down, and about 6 months of weekends to build up skills with it, but I'm now pretty good at it, and it didn't cost really much at all because most all of the tools I used are either open-source, free to use for individuals, or otherwise inexpensive.

[Seamus Mcgee]

while a definite gray area you could always use game rips for avatars. if you are looking for an avatar creator you could try tafi avatar creator.