But on the other end of the spectrum if you did want to get super into the texture painting + 3d stuff there's styles like Wayfinder www.artstation.com/artwork/lDdNAz

Which is then a whole rabbit hole of sculpting, retopology, baking, and materials. And it's a really fun art style to work in.

This sounds like a really cool project!

I think it depends on the style you want to work in -texture painting might not be necessary

Something like MakeRoom store.steampowered.com/app/2212670/...
uses simple models with vertex colors instead of textures

docs.blender.org/manual/en/2....

Not sure what level of material control there is in VrChat? I think that's all in Unity? Here's the math and nodes from inside of Unreal which should mostly carry over.

And Ben Cloward has a bunch of great resources
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFyZ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=q62C...

Hope that helps!

The old stuff is mostly for max or maya - but all of the fundamentals will transfer to Blender.

And if you're going for a more stylized texturing look I can write some stuff like this up if you want - bsky.app/profile/feig...

Hope that helps! ✌️

Rigging - I'm not super great with but I use stuff from this dude www.jeremyernst.com/devblog/cate...
and he's got some digital tutors stuff www.pluralsight.com/authors/jere...

or a decent alternative is stuff like www.3dmotive.com/courses/cate...

👋 A lot of it depends on where you're starting and where you want to end up - I'm assuming games since you mentioned low poly stuff?

A good starting point if you don't mind digging is wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Polycount

The downside is there's a lot of old 404'd links there 😭

Oh, completely forgot to mention -- this is super heavily inspired by some of the amazing work from @missdomme.bsky.social !!!

And eventually I'll try to tackle one of the full suit transformations!

Oh and the fog sheets - I'm using because they're cheap and easy to use.

But depending on your performance reqs you can also use volumetrics and @vuthric.bsky.social is the master when it comes to those!

asher.gg/create-fast-...

Oh, I also forgot to mention - I'm using exponential height fog and some exposure tweaks in my post process!

And this guys stuff helped me a ton with lighting:
www.artstation.com/artwork/eJqbEY

He's got a ton of videos to dig through.

Honestly I'm pretty terrible at lighting so take any advice from me with a grain of salt.

But (in UE5) -
Skylight with realtime capture
Lots of smaller lights and only a few key lights cast shadows
Fogsheets there's some in engine/content/
reference www.artstation.com/artwork/zD8OQZ

trial+error😅

Relate so hard to this and agree with what Mr. Hands is saying!

But I wanted to quickly add - the shame over a lack of progress is so tricky and can spiral quickly! It's good to remember that not every day has to be super productive. Some days can be for recharging your creative battery.

Oh man, awesome progress on those hit reactions!

Thanks! I still have so much to do on it. Pretty much everything needs to be optimized and that idle animation 😅 really need to fix that up. Oh, and the UI is abysmal right now. But it works.

Yup, whatever the player wants really. The body types ride the same rig so going from curvy to swole is a slider adjustment. Anatomy pieces I just swap out meshes.

I attached a super compressed and quick video of the character editor just to give a better idea. Everything still needs polish 😅

Mud people

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxRm...

🪤 😃