Kobult Patch Notes

----- 4.0.3 - 07/20/2026 (Patch) -----

- Migrated snout VRCFury Global Collider to vanilla Global Collider.

----- 4.0.2 - 03/07/2026 (Patch) -----

- Added snout Global Colliders to interactions shutoff by zeroing out both parent GameObject scales.
- Applied correct eye color swap animations to Standalone Demo FX controller.

----- 4.0.1 - 03/03/2026 (Patch) -----

- Improved pupil shapes on eye textures.
- Removed outline mask layer from body texture saves.
- Removed tongue_forked blend shape due to it stacking poorly with visemes and face tracking.
- Packed body and eye textures into the provided Blender saves.
- Renamed Shading Gradient (Quest) to Shading Gradient (Standalone).

----- 4.0.0 - 03/01/2026 (Major) -----

A proper overhaul of the avatar base to bring it up to speed with current community standards such as face tracking, MMD blend shapes, VRC Light Volumes support, etc., and personal standards with greatly improved edge flow, improved Unity implementation, and more.

It's been a long time coming and took a heap of work, so I hope you enjoy! And if you were dissatisfied in any way with your previous download of this avatar, I hope these changes can make for a fresh new impression of the asset.

Note: I recommend starting a new Unity project with the provided files and then porting any personal changes back over instead of attempting to update your project in-place due to the scope of the changes and restructuring of the included Unity project.

Topology:

- The entire model's topology has received a final pass, re-cutting and rearranging loops to greatly improve edge flow and density.
- The eyes have been entirely remodeled and their method of interfacing with the body mesh has been iterated on and finalized. No more
  iris/pupil cut into the side of the sphere for no good reason.
- The pupils have been sunk inwards to improve the avatar's gaze at side viewing angles.
- MMD heart and sparkle effects have been built into the eyes.
- The avatar's head has been moved backwards slightly and back of skull/neck flow has improved.

UV Map:

- UV map has been cleaned/polished to match the new topology changes.

*Since the topology was finalized in-place with no new unwrapping, any 3.X texture should still be largely compatible with the model, requiring few tweaks if any. However, I recommend reviewing the listed texture changes and improving/remastering your edits accordingly.

Rig:

- Added a new digitigrade rig variant.
- Added belly, butt, thigh, and toe bones.
- Added eye root bones that affect the region around the eyes for deeper customization.
- Added forearm twist bones.
- Bone positions and weight painting has been adjusted and improved.

Blend Shapes:

Blend shape count: 269 (up from 64).

*Due to the change in topology, all existing blend shapes were remade and a fleet of new blend shapes were created. Changes include:

- UnifiedExpressions face tracking blend shapes (including some dormant/enthusiast shapes not touched by standard FT controllers).
- MMD (JPN) eyes, mouth, and brow blend shapes.
- New blink + eye look up/down blend shapes.
- New, more expressive visemes.
- Expanded expression blend shapes, including additional expressions derived from the new face tracking and MMD sets.
- Expanded eye shape customization and added new corrective blend shapes to improve mixing pupil width/height adjustment with overall
  shape changes.
- Expanded and improved body customization fleet:
- Remade and adjusted existing body shapes.
- Increased tail thickness potency.

  New customization options include (but are not limited to):

  - Low and high weight blend shapes (and variations on the high weight blend shape to exclude the head, belly, and both).
  - Heavy chest, waist, and belly variants.
  - Hips, butt, and calves size.
  - Overall legs size.
  - Neck thicker/thinner.
  - Forearm/feet (ankle) style.
  - Two new brow shapes.
  - Horns small/large.
  - Beaked, draconic, and serrated snout options.
  - Snout shorter/longer/narrow shapes.
  - Snout 'fang' size (+ individual side options).
  - Hand/feet claw + body spike sharpness.
  - Flared body spikes for expressions.
  - Three symmetrical ear notch options per ear.
  - Messy + bigger ear fluff options.

  Additional miscellaneous blend shapes:

  - Breathing (nostrils, chest, belly, throat, and combined options).
  - Bicep and hamstring flexes.
  - Additional limb shrinking blend shapes for cosmetic clipping reduction.

Texture:

- Brightened under-brow color for improved contrast.
- Added a tongue center line detail.
- New QR code/branding plane.
- The spike/ear fluff gradients have been added to the default blue texture.
- Increased eye sclera emission.
- Greatly increased eye shine emission to have it visually stand out from the sclera.
- Added MMD/expression hearts and sparkles to eyes.
- Included new separated layers, decals, and masks.

Unity:

- Remade the provided Unity project and greatly improved its organization to bring it up to spec with advancements in my personal
  projects.
- Added a fleet of new and updated menu icons.
- Upgraded Poiyomi version to 9.2.67 to include VRC Light Volume support.
- Migrated standalone materials to VRC Toon Standard with a new three-band shading setup.
- Implemented Unified face tracking via Adjerry91's Face Tracking Templates.
- Added an MMD mode toggle.
- New, more complex demo avatar that features:
  - In-depth body and eye shape customization.
  - Tail length customization, wagging, puppeting, and expression/mood reactivity.
  - Tail, ear, and body PhysBones that scale with the body sliders.
  - Global PhysBone collider on snout for improved interactability. (Requires VRCFury)
  - Body hue, mouth hue, and eye color customization.
  - Optional cartoon outline toggle.
  - Named preset toggles to demonstrate customizability and act as starting points for further experimentation.*
  - Randomizer toggles that cover body shape, body color, and both.
  - A reactive expression system with boop/headpat interactions, a mood slider, special manual expressions, and the ability to swap
    gesture hands, utilize combo-style inputs, and disable expressions entirely.
  - Automatic overlay keyboard detection (ex. XSOverlay, OVR Toolkit) and expression shutoff for typing.
  - Added forearm twist bones for better flexing.
  - Updated custom locomotion controller to inversely scale player animation speed with player height and improve repeated jumping
    behavior.
  - Added a minimum brightness slider.*
  - Added several Unity scenes to choose your desired avatar configuration, including a 'lite' scene intended for custom uploads and
    face tracking/digitigrade variants for both the full demo and lite configuration.
  - Included prefabs/presets of all of the avatar variations, PhysBones, twist bone constraint components, and digitigrade constraint
    components for user reference.
  - Included categorized animators for optimized animation editing.
  - Categorized the customization parameters for cleaner animator layer or menu editing.*Features reduced on Standalone VR version.

Miscellaneous Tweaks:

- Updated ReadMe.
- Included Poiyomi decal coordinate .txt files for user reference.
- Included new default avatar thumbnail.

...and more I'm probably forgetting or is too subtle to include here. This list doesn't do the overhaul justice, so go ahead and give the download and new demo avatar a try!

Thanks for your interest in the project!

----- 3.4.0 - 07/22/2024 (Minor) -----

- Completely re-UV-unwrapped/retextured eyes to utilize a new texture where the pupils are baked onto the irises. This should allow for
  easier usage of custom eye textures in future edits of the avatar. The provided GIMP/Photoshop saves have naturally been updated with
  this change.
- Adjusted the position, weight painting, and edges of some faces at the top of the base of the ears to reduce hard edges appearing
  from a side view when the ears are animated/posed upwards.
- Adjusted the blend shapes and some geometry under the eyes to reduce clipping when blinking/closing eyes.

----- 3.3.3 - 03/05/2024 (Patch) ------

- Tweaked ear PhysBone settings to utilize the 'Advanced' integration setup at a higher stiffness value (from none to 0.5) plus the
  'World' immobile type at a higher immobile value (0.6 to 0.8). This results in ear PhysBones with more flow when standing still while
  keeping them from going crazy when running around.

----- Unity 2022 Port - 01/07/2024 (Patch) -----

- The provided avatar packages have been updated for use with Unity 2022 and more importantly the Poiyomi Toon VCC community package,
  reducing the avatar packages to ~8.5 and ~7.5 megabytes for PC and Android respectively and the total download size from ~140MB to
  40MB. This should streamline things for new and future users of the avatar base, though no action is required from this update.

----- 3.3.2 Correction - 12/21/2023 (Revision) -----

- The surprised-expression-correction system (whose revision had broken things more) has been scrapped in favor of directly integrating
  the pupil customization into the expression layer/states. The files have been updated accordingly. As a consequence, swapping out the
  avatar's preset expressions has become a less straightforward process, as one now needs to double click a given state to delve into
  its blend tree. I apologize for any future inconvenience caused by this.

  Merging these changes into the FX controller that you may have customized yourself is wholly optional, but it does fix a less-than
  unnoticeable visual bug.

----- 3.3.2 - 12/20/2023 (Patch) -----

- Remade the surprised-expression-correction system to no longer rely on an extra synced parameter & parameter driver, hopefully fixing
  any strange behavior at low pupil width/height values at the start of the transition to the surprised expression when viewed from a
  separate client. (Superseded by 3.3.2 Correction Patch)
- Tweaked surprised minimum pupil width/height value slightly.
- Added initial 'unzipping provided file' step to the ReadMe.

----- 3.3.1 - 11/12/2023 (Patch) -----

- Tweaked idle pose to make avatar head level.
- Tweaked Tail_006 weight painting to reduce appearances of a "hump" on the tail when colliding with the floor collider.

----- 3.3.0 - 10/23/2023 (Minor) -----

This update mainly serves as a modern pass of the project to better organize/optimize things and is not deemed crucial for existing users to use as an update.  However, if you find it worth it to do so for the new features, note that the project from this update forward has a different folder/scene hierarchy structure and issues will arise if the package is simply imported over an older project.

New Features:

- Added tail wagging/posing + new custom icons. Tail wraps inwards when AFK.
- New smile blend shape.
- New, alternative/extra expression animations are now included in project (some utilizing the new blend shape).

Changes/Fixes:

- Changed the rig mesh name from 'Kobult' to 'Body' to be more in line with standard avatar creation practices. The avatar's animations
  have been tweaked to account for this.
- Organized the project's animations into proper subfolders.
- Fixed some improperly tagged customization animations.
- Overhauled FX controller.
- Optimized body customization layers and pupil customization layers into just two layers (down from ten) using Direct Blend Trees.
- (PC) Changed eye color customization to instead animate the emission intensity slider of the animations, halving the number of
  required states in the layer and total eye materials.
- Somewhat reordered the VRC Parameters list.
- Tail PhysBone collision radius now increases with the tail size slider. Tweaked radius falloff graph.
- Rebuilt the main animator to list the animations in a more appropriate order.
- Fixed right hand ring finger angle in open hand animation.

----- 3.2.1 - 06/16/2023 (Patch) -----

- Tweaked head/ear weight painting to prevent sinking around the base of the horns.
- Switched to custom thumbs-up animation in Unity project.
- Increased freedom of ear PhysBone angle limits.
- Updated ReadMe to inform the user that the packages are made for the Creator Companion and that the rig was exported via Cats blender
  plugin.
- ReadMe is now included in the provided Unity projects.

----- 3.2.0 - 05/12/2023 (Minor) -----

- Added toggle to swap the hand used for controlling expressions.
- Removed closed eyes expression (redundant, due to it being a standalone toggle) and replaced it with the previously unused sad
  worried expression by default.
- Removed blep expression due to jank.
- Added a toggle to turn off the built-in Jump-And-Fall animations.
- Tweaked mouth roof detailing.

----- 3.1.1 - 05/11/2023 (Patch) -----

- Fixed hand gesture freezing.

----- 3.1.0 - 05/10/2023 (Minor) -----

This update includes:

- A simpler, more user-friendly expression controller & some tweaked expressions.
- A 'Mood' parameter that affects how open the eyes are.
- Built-in customization of specific parts of the body.
- Additional roof-of-mouth detailing (this and the faux throat shadow are now baked in/on by default).
- Slight tweak of the inner leg section of the secondary color on the texture.
- Fixed front teeth.
- Fixed vertex colors on the front of the roof of the mouth.

Update your projects with the new packages at your own discretion.

----- 3.0.0 - 02/18/2023 (Major) -----

The avatar has been significantly refined to improve both in-game performance and depth/ease of customization.

Topology:

- The arms/hands, feet, spikes, ears, ear fluff, tongue and horns have all been entirely remodeled.
- Spikes are now detached from the main mesh and simply clip into the model.
- The topology on the legs/knees and head have been cleaned up to restore quad structure/optimize for flexing.
- The foot pads have been removed to be consistent with the hands. (I was never really keen on them in the first place, though they
  shouldn't be to hard to transfer from earlier versions or remodeled if desired.)

UV Map:

- New UV map layout with a focus on sensible vertical symmetry for easy mirroring of designs and tweaked island sizes for more
  consistent resolution distribution.

Rig:

- Avatar is now in a more natural A-pose by default.
- Generally improved/cleaned up weight painting.
- Tweaked some bone angles/potions for more organic flow throughout the armature.

Blend Shapes:

- New, more expressive visemes.
- Separated brow and eyelid blend shapes to allow for more expressions through combinations.
- Show teeth, open mouth, and blep blend shapes.
- A few more eye blend shapes, including the ability to remove the eye shines (scary).
- Body customization blend shapes (brow, chest, waist, belly, thigh, feet, tail, claws and nostril adjustment). These should also allow
  for more feminine edits of the avatar, especially with the brow type blend shape. I mean, and body customization in general (y'know,
  like an actual avatar). *2026 note, I don't stand by the use of 'feminine' here.
- Additional shape for the built-in horns.
- Ability to disable the spikes in certain areas (or all at once) and shrink some joints to prevent clipping through clothes.

Texture:

- Upgraded to a 4096x texture.
- Overall cleaned up texture saves, now with color-coded layer groups and other quality of life changes.
- The separate billboard mesh has been removed and replaced with a more standard custom credits plane in the model's head.
- The spikes and ear fluff now allow for tip fades, for just that little bit of extra detail/color.
- Optional faux throat shadow for perceived depth.

Unity:

- Remade provided avatar to be practically the same as the demo avatar to preserve the customization a potential buyer would be
  familiar with and potentially miss if absent.
- Tweaked view position to improve avatar feel.
- Adjusted custom open hand animation to be less awkward.
- Created standalone blend tree to fix the default idle (a separate tree will prevent things from being overwritten/reverted when
  imported).

Unfortunately, due to the scope of the changes, assets from earlier versions are - for the most part - entirely incompatible with this latest version. Still, I'm fairly confident the improvements more than make up for it.

And, hopefully with all this, the avatar should graduate from "Ooohh, that's why it's $10." to just a decent deal.

Let me know what you think!

----- Beginning of Documented Patch Notes -----