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Looks: several texture sets in one avatar

New in 0.3.0, the next update. The Looks box is in the Creator Kit now, so you can make and build looks today. Players choose a look in game from 0.3.0.

Many character packs come with more than one set of textures or materials: a red armour and a blue one, a clean suit and a worn one. A look puts them all into one Workshop avatar. Players choose a look in the game and everyone around them sees it.

A look changes materials only. The model, its bones, its physics and its face shapes stay as they are, so there is nothing new to rig.

Make a look

Open Tools → VR Realms Workshop, open the Avatars page and pick your avatar's skeletal mesh.
If this avatar has never been built, press Build Avatar Pak once. Looks are kept in the avatar's own folder, and the first Build is what moves the avatar there.
Open Optional: Looks. Type a name in New look, for example Red, and press Add look.
You get one block for every material on the body. In a block, pick another Material for that part, or pick other textures in the texture slots under it. The kit makes the look's material for you.
A part you leave alone keeps the avatar's own material. Its header says same as the avatar, and changed in this look once you pick something.
The 3D view beside the blocks shows the avatar in the look you are editing. Drag to turn it, wheel to zoom.
Press Build Avatar Pak, then upload as usual. Every look travels in the same Workshop item.

Add as many looks as you like the same way. The Look dropdown switches between them. The avatar's own in that list is the avatar with no look picked. You change that on the mesh itself, as before.

Material or textures?

Material: for a pack that ships its colour variants as ready made materials, and for a look that needs another kind of material, such as a glow or glass.
Texture slots: for a pack that ships several texture files for one material. Pick the other colour texture and you are done. Clear a slot to go back to the avatar's texture.

Some materials have their textures set inside them and show no texture slots. Use the Material picker for those.

Back to the avatar's own under a block undoes that part. Rename is beside the name box. Delete look is beside the dropdown and asks first.

What Build checks

Build Avatar Pak writes a Looks block into its log.

Textures and materials a look uses from outside the avatar's folder are moved in, so they ship.
If a look needs something that cannot ship, Build stops and names it.
You get a warning for a look that changes nothing, and for a material named like nothing on the avatar.
For every look it says how many materials it changes and how many MB of textures it adds.

Keep the textures of a look at 2048 px or under. A look loads on top of the avatar's own textures for everyone who sees it. Build warns you when a look is heavy.

Names

The name you type is the name players see. Use letters, digits and spaces. Default, off, none and reset cannot be used: they are how players ask for the avatar's own look.

Try it before you upload

Press Play Avatar after a Build. In the game, open chat and type /look to list the looks, /look Red to wear one and /look off to go back.

How players pick a look

On the avatar's card in the Avatars menu. An avatar with looks shows a small shirt button once it is downloaded. Tap it and choose from the list. The look you wear has a check mark.
In the quick menu: open Avatar, then Looks.
In chat: /look lists them, /look Red wears one, /look off goes back to the avatar's own.

The game remembers the look for each avatar, so it is on again the next time you wear it. In the current game, before 0.3.0, an avatar with looks simply shows its own look. Nothing breaks.

Under the hood

A look is a folder beside the avatar's mesh, such as Looks/Red/, and a material in it replaces the body material with the same name. That is the whole rule, and it is what the panel makes for you. You can make the folders by hand in the Content Browser if you prefer.

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