The VRChat Creator Companion is Now Live!
We’re excited to announce the 1.0 release of our Creator Companion tool!
As a recap, the VRChat Creator Companion is designed to help make creating content for VRChat easier. It’s been available in Open Beta since our “Creator Toolbox Update” announcement three months ago, and is now ready for general use.
The VRChat Creator Companion (VCC) helps you:
Set up your computer to make content for VRChat including downloading the Unity Hub, the required version of the Unity Editor and the SDKs.
Create new projects quickly from its built-in template for Avatars, Worlds and UdonSharp projects.
Update your projects - migrating them from the old package format to the new one, and installing new versions of the SDK and community packages.
The VCC is optional – you can do all of the above without it, but we think it’ll make creators’ lives a lot easier.
How Packages are Changing
The VRChat Package Manager (VPM) is a library used by the VCC to handle the new package format we’re using. This format is compatible with the Unity Package Manager and uses the “Packages” folder of your project instead of “Assets”.
This makes it much easier and cleaner to change and update packages – they always perform a “clean install” without you needing to delete anything in your project. Additionally, packages can declare dependencies on other packages, which can have their own dependencies, and so on. The VPM can manage all of this, and automatically get everything you need in order to use a package.
Compatibility with Existing Prefabs and Packages
Many existing prefabs and packages will continue to work without changes while others will require some updates.
If you’re a prefab or package creator yourself, you can read our docs on Converting Assets to a VPM Package to learn about the process. You can also try out the Package Maker tool which automates much of the process.
If you find something that doesn’t work with the new system, you can reach out to the original creator and ask them to upgrade their packages.
You can also create a Package upgrade request to let both the author and other creators know about an issue with a package, and find out when they’ve updated for compatibility.
Distributing Community Packages
The VRChat Creator Companion comes with two sources for packages:
The Official Listing – which has our SDKs and core tools.
The Curated Community Listing – which has some fantastic add-ons made by our community members.
We’ll be developing a way to create and distribute your own User Package Listings for packages not submitted or accepted into the curated list. You could make a listing for your own packages, or join a community of creators and list your packages together. Getting this feature in is a top priority for us.
Until then, you can distribute your packages as ZIP files which users can extract into their projects’ “Packages” folders, or even .unitypackage files that automatically import into the “Packages” folder.
Legacy Package Deprecation Timeline
We use the term “Legacy” to refer to the previous SDK package format distributed in files like “VRCSDK3-WORLD-2022.07.26.21.44_Public.unitypackage”.
We will distribute our SDKs in both the new VPM format as well as the Legacy format until the end of 2022. Starting in the New Year, we will only distribute the VPM format in order to streamline our development and focus on the many other exciting things we’re working on for creators.
This means that Package and Prefab creators have until the end of the year to migrate to the new system so we’re all on the same page moving forward!
Roadmap
We’ve got a new Roadmap page for the VCC which we’ll keep updated as we continuing out development process.
The next big change is taking the VCC from a Unity app to a native framework, which will improve performance, launch speed, and unblock work on a revamp of the VCC’s overall design, which is still at a “programmer art” level.
Take a look through the roadmap to see what else we have planned.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Requirements for the VCC?
The VCC has been developed and tested on Windows 10. We’ve heard that it runs just fine on Windows 11 for most people, but have not fully tested it there. Use caution, and make sure you back up your projects no matter what OS you’re using!
What About Mac / Linux Users?
The Command-Line Interface version of the VCC has been lightly tested on Mac and Linux. It is a text-only version designed to work cross-platform and will be an important part of the Continuous Integration and Automation features we will release in the future.
Do I Have to Use the VCC?
No, you can install Unity Hub and the supported Unity Editor(s) yourself, and use these templates to create new VPM-compatible projects:
These templates include our Package Resolver tool, which is essentially the VPM library and a simple Unity Editor window. When you open a Unity Project which uses VPM packages, this tool will check whether all the required packages are present in your project, and install them for you if needed.
Note that the Package Resolver does not let you discover, add or remove packages. It only restores the ones already assigned to the project. You’ll need to use the VCC or the CLI to do those things, or modify your manifest and project files manually.
Where Do I File Bugs and Feature Requests?
With so many tools, packages and acronyms, we thought it was best to answer this with a page: Bugs and Feature Requests.
How Does the VPM Work with Source Control?
Generally, you commit your assets and not your packages, similar to working with NuGet or NodeJS. You do want to commit the Package Resolver tool, which will restore the packages required for your project when it is opened. Full details on the page Using Source Control with the VPM.
Wrapping Up
The VCC should make creator’s lives a lot easier – both now and in the future. We’ll continue to expand its functionality, as we want to make the content creation process in VRChat a lot smoother for everyone.
With that said, as always, it’s best practice to make sure you’ve backed up your projects before an update! While we’ve extensively tested VCC over the last few months, if you’re migrating over for the first time, ensure that you’ve backed up your projects before doing so.
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