Before, we've stated that virtual background problems on require virtual solutions, and we've figured it out how to apply virtual background on Zoom in the other way: real backgrounds covered with virtual foregrounds.

Instead of just either make foreground or background virtual, why not if we make both of them? And starting today, we've taken this opportunity to a whole new level by immersing ourselves into virtual reality.

Hey, I just become virtual. I'm no longer in SVG, but now also in GLF (3D) file. And while I can't bring the pr0xy-alt1e couple into the world of VRChat yet, I also brought Shiftine who's able to shapeshift herself into... me?

Some note on "I/me/my" vs "we/us/our" subject terminologies.

Okay, when I said I, that means me, Reinhart as a human person. However, since I've created many robots who loves to assist me, we decided to join a clan which now becomes the maintainers of this website, https://reinhart1010.id, as well as our proud username, @reinhart1010.

Found the perfect VRChat avatar. Even without a camera.

What's the first VRChat avatar which I want to have at first? A cat? A robot? An anime character? or the infamous, overpowered Ugandan Knuckles?

If you said an avatar of me, you're correct. And good thing that some websites and services like Ready Player Me offers avatar creation and customizations for VRChat. And that means I don't need to mess with Blender and Unity figuring out how to make a 3D version if me at first. But sure, someday I'll make myself blue-shelled as what I look here.

One of the main features of Ready Player Me is that you're able to create avatars exactly like yourself through selfies. And lo, now I have an avatar that looks exactly like me.

But there's a plot twist: I created this without opening my camera or send a picture of me, since I have to test whether this feature work without the need to send any pictures into the service.

Of course, I'm also interested to create a female character which matches the spirit of Shiftine or Alterine (aka. alt1e) and we noticed three main things:

1. Some outfits are only available for male avatars, and that means it's quite difficult to match our appearances.
2. Female avatars tend to be shorter than male counterparts, since at the time of this writing we're still unable to change the size of the avatars
3. (for alt1e) we didn't have a perfect basketball-esque, or at least, sporty outfit for her. A majority of the outfit choices are t-shirts coupled with jackets, and (as of now) you can't change the colors or even remix the outfit for the upper and lower parts of the body (like blue t-shirt, cyan jacket, and jeans; just like in Bitmoji)

So here we are: somewhat "official" Ready Player Me and VRChat avatars for both Reinhart and Shiftine. These are, just like dotfiles, are reproducible among Ready Player Me users so you can have the same look and feel with us.

And some Ready Player Me legal checks before we're fine.

As usual, we're strict when it comes into reading copyright terms and licenses, especially when this generously-generated 3D characters could be used in somewhat commercial way, such as profitably streaming VR games on Twitch and YouTube. Not to mention their Terms of Use and Privacy Policy regarding the usage of the service.

We also understand that Copyright and Licensing are different things, and copyright holders may grant different types of licenses for using copyrighted works, from the infamous "All Rights Reserved" to the ones we have in Creative Commons.

The Terms of Use we've reviewed was last amended on July 22, 2021, while the Privacy Policy was last updated on August 2, 2021. Here's what we know about them:

1. Wolf3D (the company behind the service) is based on Estonia, which is part of European Union. This means that they at least know to comply with the EU's strict electronic data processing regulations (e.g. GDPR) before releasing the service into the general public. Good.
2. All generated avatars © Wolf3D. See Clause 12 ("Intellectual Property") of their Terms of Use for more details. This is also the same case with other character, avatar, and sticker generators such as Memoji (Apple), "AR Emoji" (Samsung), as well as Bitmoji (Snap Inc.)
3. All generated avatars are permitted even for commercial use, except for:
   • Sublicensing, (See Clause 12.3)
   • Inappropriate, immoral, illegal, abusive, or harmful purposes at the sole discretion of Wolf3D (See Clause 6, examples given include using them for political and adult entertainment purposes)
4. When you decide to stop and terminate your Ready Player Me account, you're still able to use the already-generated avatars under the terms above (See Clause 16.3)

There's one thing that we're uncertain about the entire Terms of Use, and that's about license grants on using paid/premium customization assets provided in the future. (See Clause 8) Noting that this feature is currently under development, we're interested to see how will this be done.

Next Steps

And finally, as a software developer who commonly works for building web and mobile apps, I'm quite interested to develop things for the VR and AR space especially when both of them are being taught this Semester 5 of my bachelor college.

Chances are that we might finally partner with Wolf3D, Ready Player Me, as well as other of their services in the future, so let's see if I can finally understand how to use Unity and Blender (and hopefully some Godot, too).

As of now, we're gonna live in this specific VRChat world, and no, we didn't choose that home just because of the (in)famous "Welcome Home" signage at Gereja Mawar Sharon (GMS).

And soon, if my Unity skills are going up, I might want to show you one of my favorite, physical set of places in a new world on VRChat. That would be amazing.