There's a bit of a story behind this. (long description warning!)

I have never played VRChat until two (or was it three?) days ago and what intrigued me to play is that you could create your own avatars and play as them, which started me on the quest to import my fursona in the game. But, like everything else in life - I encountered hurdles (in this case a whole lot of them).

Hurdle 1: I had no digital modelling skills AT ALL (the most I can do is digital art :P). So I jumped into this as a ignorant newbie in the complicated world of digital models.

Hurdle 2: I had a brand new VRChat account, and for those unfamiliar with the game, there's a "Trust System" which prevents brand new users (called visitors) from being able to upload their own content. The whole trust system is very enigmatic on purpose so people cannot take advantage of it, and all they said to improve your visitor status to "New User" (minimum rank to upload content) is to play the game and make new friends. Yeah... only problem is it took me over 27 hours of gameplay to get this trust level (yes I spent nearly all of my waking moments in the past two days playing this game -_-).

Hurdle 3: Complimenting Hurdle 1; I had much frustration with the Unity platform (software used to upload avatars onto VRChat) because I couldn't upload the avatar because of two reasons; 1) I am totally oblivious to coding and scripts (whatever scripts are...) and I cannot upload an avatar with a missing script... (why don't you do Improv instead of doing Shakespeare??). I recreated the project at least 3 separate times in hopes it would fix the issue (spoiler alert: it didn't). 2) I was using the wrong version of Unity, apparently you need to use an older version (from 2019 or something like that) in order to be able to upload avatars (thus uninstalling and reinstalling the software).

Hurdle 4: Finally after getting some sleep and looking up how to fix my scripting issues (which was remove the scripts that were missing) and uploading my first draft of the character, my feet where in the ground (my avatar's "Armature" was set too low, thus giving my character the appearance that the feet are in the ground). This was probably the easiest hurdle to overcome because I was not the only one with this issue and after a quick google search (or two), I was able to fix this (with lots of trial and error with my eye level afterwards).

My character is in no way "perfect" or "fancy" (I don't even have my clipped ear and my tail does almost nothing) - I used the base from an older "fursona maker" from a couple of years back (link: https://vrcmods.com/item/5264), but it's my character and no other character is exactly like it, which is why it's so special to me and why I persevered through all of these hurdles. I am finally able to play as my fursona in a video game!!

I probably put in 34+ hours between gameplay and digital modelling (or the lack of) into just being able to do this. Yikes.

I have a complete newfound respect for all of the digital modelling artists out there - it's most certainly not easy and you do need lots of experience in order to create some truly amazing models. There's plenty of Furry artists on VRChat who have made some amazing worlds and avatars - please do not take them for granted! They're the ones who truly make VRChat a more amazing place (despite all of the hate the furry community encounters in the game -_-). Although I did over hear a non-furry giving credit to the furry artists in the game (along the lines of 65% of all of the digital artists in the game are furries - not sure if the stats are correct but the person was giving credit!)

If you're looking to add me on VRChat - my username is NaveMcCanine (just like my FA account!) I'm not sure how active I will be now after binging 2 days out of my life to create an amateurish avatar on the game - but after taking a break I'll probably be more open to playing again! Please don't be offended if I don't friend you right away because of this. I don't actually have a VR set, I played the desktop version the entire time.

Oof - now I need to take a doggy nap.

P.S. While I was waiting to level up my trust rank, I spent nearly the entire time playing as Scooby Doo (from the "Big Al Avatar Corridors") and it made a lot of people really happy. Nearly every time I entered a world, people would go "SCOOBY!!!!" That was a highlight for me :) Fun fact - I did actually go as Scooby one Halloween when I was little (my big brother was Shaggy).