VixenWear Latex Ultra Inspector

A complete control-by-control reference for the VixenWear Latex Ultra inspector. The material inspector is driven by the VixForge Editor, and this page is laid out the same way: one section per inspector section, in the order the inspector lists them.

Built-in Render Pipeline / VRChat only - it does not compile under HDRP or URP. Every world-lighting integration (Light Volumes, LTCGI, VRSL) is fail-safe: it strips or no-ops cleanly in worlds that lack the system.

BASE NORMAL MAPS SURFACE SHADING DECALS POLISH SPECIAL EFFECTS OUTLINES EMISSIONS MATCAPS AUDIOLINK RENDERING VixForge Toon Shared Footer COMMON QUESTIONS

BASE

Section 1 of 12

Render mode, albedo, brightness floor, and UV animation.

Base

  • Rendering Mode - Selects the blend preset: Opaque, Cutout, Fade, or Transparent. This single dropdown drives blend state, depth writing, render queue, and the fallback tags. Fade uses straight alpha; Transparent uses premultiplied alpha so specular survives at low opacity (the correct mode for glass and wet-look latex); Cutout uses a hard alpha-clip threshold.
  • CutOff - The alpha clip threshold, shown only in Cutout mode.
  • Use Mask Texture + Cutout Mask + Mask Channel - Cutout mode normally reads the Albedo's alpha. If your texture has no alpha, turn this on and give it a black-and-white mask instead: white keeps the pixel, black cuts it away. Shown only in Cutout mode.
  • Color - The main colour tint multiplied into the albedo. In Fade and Transparent its alpha sets the opacity, so a material can go see-through with no texture at all.
  • Albedo - The main texture slot. RGB is the albedo; its Alpha channel is the Cutout threshold in Cutout mode and multiplies the Color's opacity in Fade / Transparent. Leave it empty to set opacity from the Color alone.
  • Minimum Brightness - A floor on the final lit result so the surface never crushes to pure black in unlit or very dark worlds.
  • Use Alpha Map + Alpha Map + Map Channel + Invert - Drives opacity from a separate texture instead of the Albedo's alpha, handy when your Albedo has no alpha channel. The map marks what to remove, the way a body-hiding mask is painted: black keeps the pixel, white takes it away. Leave the slot empty and nothing is removed. Pick the channel that holds it, or leave it on Auto, and use Invert if your map is painted the other way round. Outlines follow it too, so they cut away with the rest of the material.
  • Transparency - Fades the whole material out on one slider (0 solid, 1 invisible), so a single menu control can dissolve it. Works in Fade and Transparent; Opaque and Cutout ignore it.

UV Animation

  • UV Rotation - A static angular rotation applied to the surface UVs, in degrees.
  • UV Speed X - Horizontal UV scroll speed over time.
  • UV Speed Y - Vertical UV scroll speed over time. Combine with Speed X for diagonal flow.

NORMAL MAPS

Section 2 of 12

Macro normal map and the secondary micro-detail normal.

  • Normal Map - Tangent-space normal map for macro surface detail (leather grain, latex pores).
  • Enable Micro Detail - Turns on the secondary detail-normal layer.
  • Micro Detail Map - A secondary detail normal map for fine pores or hex-grid patterns layered over the macro surface.
  • Normal Strength - Intensity multiplier for the main normal map. Higher values deepen the perceived relief.
  • Detail Strength - Intensity of the micro-detail normal.
  • Detail UV Tiling - Independent tiling for the detail map so micro-texture can repeat at a different scale than the main UVs.
  • Card Normal Smoothing + Smoothing Pivot - For hair cards, fur planes and other flat pieces: bends the lighting normals outward from the pivot so the whole shape lights as one volume instead of a stack of separate cards. Set the pivot to the centre of the shape, in object space.

Bent Normals

Bake a bent normal map next to your AO in Substance, Marmoset or Blender and drop it here. Ambient light then follows the shape of the surface instead of washing over it, so crevices stay dark and forms read solid. Off by default.

  • Enable - Turns the bent-normal path on.
  • Map - The bent normal map.
  • Ambient Shaping - How strongly the bent normal shapes the ambient light falling on the surface.
  • Reflection Shaping - How strongly it shapes what the surface reflects from its surroundings.

SURFACE

Section 3 of 12

The packed PBR map, its channel routing, reflection / specular masks, and surface shaping.

Packed PBR Map

A single RGBA texture keeps VRAM efficient. The channel pickers below tell the shader which channel holds which property, so Poiyomi / Substance / Marmoset packings drop in without re-authoring. Default packing is R Metallic, G AO, B Displacement / Height, A Smoothness.

  • Packed PBR Mask - The texture slot for the packed map.
  • Global Metallic - Multiplies the packed map's metallic channel (0 = fully non-metallic regardless of the map, 1 = use the map as authored). Defaults to 0 because latex is a dielectric.
  • Global Smoothness - Multiplies the packed map's smoothness channel (default 0.5), a quick way to dial the whole surface glossier or more matte.

Channel Mapping

Tell each PBR property which channel of the Packed PBR Mask to read. Leave it alone for a VixenWear-native map, or hit Mochie Setup to match a Mochie / Poiyomi map in one click.

  • Metallic Channel / Invert Metallic - Which channel supplies metalness, and a flip for sources stored inverted.
  • Smoothness Channel / Channel is Roughness - Which channel supplies smoothness; enable the invert when the channel holds roughness.
  • AO Channel - Which channel supplies ambient occlusion, or None to disable AO sampling.
  • Mochie Metallic Map Setup - One-click translation: maps a Mochie / Poiyomi "Metallic Maps" texture (R Metallic, G Smoothness, B Reflection Mask, A Specular Mask) onto the packed slot, sets the channels, disables AO, and enables the masks. Drop the Mochie map into Packed PBR Mask first.

Reflection & Specular Masks

Reads two more channels off the packed map: a Reflection Mask that dims what the surface reflects from the world (probe / environment specular, clearcoat env, Light Volume, LTCGI), and a Specular Mask that dims direct-light highlights. Matcaps keep their own masks and are unaffected. Channel defaults match Mochie packing (B reflection, A specular).

  • Enable Masks - Turns the reflection and specular masks on.
  • Reflection Mask - Channel, Invert and Strength for the environment / reflection mask.
  • Specular Mask - Channel, Invert and Strength for the direct-highlight mask.
  • Reflection From Mask - Turns the black-and-white Reflection Mask into real metallic reflections: white areas go shiny. The roughness is worked out from your base texture and normal map, so no separate smoothness map is needed. Off by default.
  • Reflection Roughness - How sharp those reflections read; lower for a mirror finish.

Surface Shaping

Height (sub-section) - Where the height data comes from. By default it reads a channel of the Packed PBR Mask (Packed Mask Channel). Turn on Use Separate Map to load a standalone Height Map instead, with its own Map Channel, the way Substance and Marmoset export it. Height drives Parallax, Displacement and Cavity.

  • Specular Occlusion - How much AO also occludes specular / reflections, preventing glow in cavities that should be shadowed.
  • Cavity + Cavity Radius + Cavity Gloss - Sharpens the fine detail in your height source: pores, seams and stitching sink into shadow while ridges catch the light. Radius picks how fine that detail is (small for grain and skin, larger for folds), and Cavity Gloss lets those creases read glossier or more matte. Needs a height source above.
  • Cavity Reflection Blur / Cavity Reflection Occlusion - Use the same cavity detail on the reflection: Blur roughens it in the creases so it is not a clean mirror, Occlusion dims it there. Both leave the raised areas sharp.
  • Parallax Depth - Depth of the adaptive raymarch that fakes height inside the surface. 0 disables parallax.
  • Displacement Strength - Real geometric height pushed along the normal from the height source (needs tessellation to have vertices to move).
  • Tessellation Detail - How densely DX11 hardware tessellation subdivides the mesh for displacement, from 0 (coarse / cheap) to 1 (dense / smoother). Distance and screen-size adaptive, and capped so it can't run away. Leave at 0 if you aren't using Displacement.

SHADING

Section 4 of 12

The lighting model and every world-lighting integration, grouped together. Light Volumes, LTCGI and Stage / VRSL are each fail-safe: they strip or no-op cleanly in worlds that lack the system.

Lighting

Rim, subsurface, anisotropy, transmission, and energy conservation. Most of these belong to the polish layer and are gated by POLISH > Enable. AO Strength and Shadow Hardness now live in Shadow Detail.

  • Rim Light Strength - Intensity of the Fresnel rim glow around the silhouette.
  • Rim Light Power - Tightness of the rim falloff. Higher values pull the rim into a thinner edge band.
  • Subsurface Strength - Strength of the subsurface scattering lobe for soft, skin-like light diffusion.
  • Subsurface Distance - Wraps light past the shadow terminator so SSS bleeds gently into the dark side.
  • Subsurface Power - Tightness of the back-scatter highlight when light passes through thin geometry toward the viewer.
  • Anisotropy - Stretches the specular highlight along the tangent (-1 = vertical, +1 = horizontal, 0 = isotropic) for real latex-pull highlights.
  • Anisotropy Rotation - Rotates the anisotropic tangent around the normal, aligning the highlight to the visible stretch rather than the UV unwrap.
  • Transmission Strength - Strength of light bleeding through thin parts (ears, fingers, latex membranes) from behind.
  • Transmission Distance - Beer-Lambert absorption depth; shorter distances tint and darken the transmitted light faster.
  • Transmission Falloff - Angular tightness of the back-light term as the light moves behind the surface.
  • Multi-Scatter Compensation - Filament / Frostbite multi-scatter compensation that adds back energy lost at high roughness, keeping bright metals from going dull.
  • Horizon Specular Occlusion - Fades reflections that surface detail would otherwise leak through the body at glancing angles, keeping reflection probes, Light Volumes and stage lighting from showing through. Full by default; lower toward 0 to relax it.
  • Specular Highlight Clamp - Caps how bright a direct point-light highlight can get, taming the harsh sparkle very glossy latex can throw under bright lights. Effectively off at its default; lower it to clamp harder.

Micro Lighting

Brightens the raised detail so peaks catch a little more light. It is the light-side companion to Micro Shading over in Shadow Detail, which darkens the creases.

  • Peak Light - Master strength of the peak highlight.
  • Scene Lights / Ambient / Light Volumes / LTCGI / VRSL - Trim the effect per lighting system, so you can lean on it in one and ease off in another.

Cavity Lighting

Makes the Cavity detail react to the light direction: raised areas catch the light and creases fall into shadow as the light rakes across, on top of the flat Cavity shading. Needs Cavity turned on in SURFACE.

  • Strength - Master strength of the directional cavity response.
  • Scene Lights / Ambient - Trim it separately for the scene lights and the ambient.

Shadow Detail

Occlusion and shadow, gathered in one place. AO Strength and Shadow Hardness always apply; the dedicated maps below stay off until you enable them and read through the Albedo sampler, so they cost nothing against the texture budget.

  • AO Strength - How strongly the surface map's packed AO channel darkens ambient and indirect light. 0 = off, 1 = full, higher deepens the shading in creases.
  • Shadow Hardness - Sharpness of the self-shadowing cast inside recessed seams by the parallax raymarch.

Micro Shading

Makes occlusion react to where the light is coming from, so creases go dark when the light rakes in from the side and open up when it hits head on. Without it, occlusion dims everything evenly and reads as dirt painted on.

  • Strength - Master strength of the directional occlusion.
  • Scene Lights / Ambient / Light Volumes / LTCGI / VRSL - Trim it per lighting system, so you can lean on it in the ambient and ease off under a stage rig.
  • Assumed Direction - Scene lights, ambient and Light Volumes tell the material which way their light arrives; LTCGI and VRSL do not, so pick what to assume for those two. Above suits ceiling panels and overhead rigs, Camera keys it to where you are looking from, and Surface keeps it flat and just deepens the creases.

Occlusion Map

  • Enable Occlusion Map - Turns on the dedicated ambient-occlusion map.
  • Occlusion Map + Occlusion Channel - A grayscale map, and which channel to read, that darkens ambient and indirect light in creases and cavities on top of any occlusion already packed into the surface map. White = no change.
  • Occlusion Strength - How strongly the map darkens the ambient / indirect lighting.

Baked Shadow Map

  • Enable Baked Shadow Map - Turns on the baked contact-shadow map.
  • Baked Shadow Map + Shadow Channel - A grayscale map, and which channel to read, painting regions that always read as shadowed - baked contact shadows under straps, seams and deep folds. Black = no shadow.
  • Shadow Strength - How dark the baked-shadow regions get in direct light.
  • Shadow Affects Ambient - How much the baked shadow also dims ambient / indirect light in those regions (0 = direct light only).

Light Volumes V3

The full VRC Light Volumes V3 stack.

Alongside baked volumes the material also receives Point Light Volumes - point lights, spot lights (parametric / attenuation-LUT / projected cookie), cubemap-tinted point lights, and quad area lights (the "TV GI" path: an area light driven by a video RenderTexture), plus per-light EVSM shadows. All of it projects into the same L1 spherical-harmonics path and rides the controls below. These lights only appear in worlds running the LV V3 runtime; older or no-LV worlds fall back to deringed light probes.

  • Enable Light Volumes - Runtime gate for the whole Light Volumes path, so VRCFury can toggle it without a recompile. Off by default.
  • Light Volumes Intensity - Overall contribution of Light Volumes lighting.
  • Light Volumes Specular Mix - How much Light Volume data feeds the base specular lobe.
  • Light Volumes Clearcoat Specular - How much Light Volume data feeds the clearcoat-specific specular.
  • Clearcoat Specular Tightness - Shrinks the clearcoat's Light Volume specular lobe so a bright point or area light reads as a tight glint instead of a broad wash (0 = soft / wide, 1 = tightest).
  • Specular (Dominant Mode) - Uses the dominant light direction instead of the full L1 reconstruction for cheaper specular.
  • Point Light Volume Specular (Per-Light) - Opt-in: gives each point, spot and area light its own size-aware specular highlight for sharper, more accurate glints on glossy latex, instead of deriving point-light specular from the blended light direction. Off by default.
  • Point Light Volume Shading - How softly point / spot / area lights wrap across the surface normal (higher = softer falloff).
  • Shadow / Volumetric Normal Stability - How geometric the normal is that drives V3's point / spot / area-light shading and their baked (EVSM) shadows. At 1 (default) a stable geometric normal is used, so parallax, detail normals, wetness, and drips no longer smear the new shadowcasting and volumetrics; lower it to let surface bump feed back into the point-light shadow mask.
  • Normal Bias - Offsets the sample point along the normal to fix light bleed at sharp edges.
  • Position Offset - Manual world-space sample offset for thin or sleeve geometry that samples the wrong cell.
  • Additive-Only Mode - Adds Light Volume light on top of Unity's probe baseline instead of replacing it.
  • Use Deringed Probes (Bakery L1, opt-in) - Opt-in Bakery L1 deringed-probe fallback for worlds without Light Volumes.

LTCGI V2

LTCGI area lighting, with per-lobe mode and color tints.

When a world bakes its LTCGI into the Light Volumes atlas, the material's direct LTCGI sampling is skipped automatically so the surface is not lit twice. In every other world the controls below apply directly.

  • Enable LTCGI - Runtime gate for the LTCGI path, off by default; VRCFury can flip it without a recompile.
  • LTCGI Intensity - Master contribution of LTCGI area lighting.
  • LTCGI Specular Mix - Area-light specular contribution, dialed independently.
  • LTCGI Diffuse Mix - Area-light diffuse contribution, dialed independently.
  • LTCGI Mode - Which lobes the area lights feed: Both, Diffuse Only, or Specular Only.
  • LTCGI Diffuse Color - Tints the LTCGI diffuse contribution.
  • LTCGI Specular Color - Tints the LTCGI specular contribution.

Stage Lighting & VRSL

VRSL DMX routing, geo-warping, color hijack, and the additive GI stage wash.

VRSL Stage Hijack links this material directly to world-space DMX buffers. When stage light is detected it overrides the native AudioLink color arrays and physically warps tessellated vertex positions to match stage configurations in real time, mimicking a Moving Head fixture. It contributes nothing in worlds with no DMX node.

  • Enable VRSL DMX Link - Master toggle that connects the material to the world's VRSL DMX buffers.
  • DMX Base Channel - Which fixture sector / base channel this material reads from the DMX universe.
  • Override Strength - How strongly the stage data takes over the surface (0 = no override, up = full hijack).
  • Pan/Tilt Geo-Warping - How far the tessellated mesh physically warps to follow the fixture's DMX Pan/Tilt values.
  • Color Hijack - Lerps the AudioLink color toward live DMX RGB so the stage can wash the palette without disabling FFT-driven color movement.

GI Wash Overrides

Separate from the hijack above: instead of overriding emission, the GI wash spills the DMX fixtures' colour onto the material as real additive light (the stage lighting you up). It reads the same DMX channels as the Color Hijack.

  • Intensity - Master strength of the additive stage wash. Above 0 enables it.
  • Specular Mix - Fresnel-weighted specular highlight from the wash.
  • Color Saturation - Desaturates the wash toward luma so it tints the surface rather than repainting your design.

DECALS

Section 5 of 12

Place up to four logos, stickers, brand graphics or tattoos on the latex. Each layer is positioned right in the Scene view: select the material on your mesh and drag the on-screen gizmo handles to move, scale and rotate the decal. All four layers share one texture sampler, so they cost nothing against the texture budget, and the whole section stays off until you enable it.

Setup

  • Enable - Master switch for the whole decal section. Off by default, so existing materials are untouched.
  • Decal Masks (RGBA) - One optional packed texture whose Red, Green, Blue and Alpha channels can each limit where Decal 0, 1, 2 and 3 appear. Leave it white to let decals show wherever their placement allows.

Per Decal (0 - 3)

  • Enable - Turns this individual layer on.
  • Decal - The image to place (logo, sticker, tattoo, and so on).
  • Tint - Colour multiplied over the decal; the colour's alpha sets the layer's overall opacity.
  • Position / Scale / Rotation - Where the decal sits, how big it is, and its angle. Easiest to set by dragging the gizmo in the Scene view. Rotation Speed slowly spins the decal over time.
  • Side Offset - Nudges the left, right, bottom and top edges independently to stretch or crop the decal box.
  • UV Source - Which UV layout to place the decal on (the main set, or a secondary set if your mesh has one).
  • Mask Channel - Which channel of the Decal Masks texture limits this layer.
  • Coverage From - What decides where the decal shows. Texture Alpha uses the image's own transparency and is the normal choice. Luminance uses how light the image is, Luminance Inverted uses how dark it is, which is what painted shading or muscle definition on a white background needs so those drop straight in from another shader. Ignore Alpha covers the whole decal box, for images whose transparency is unusable.
  • Color Blend - How the decal combines with the latex underneath: Normal, Darken, Multiply, Lighten, Screen, Add, Subtract or Overlay.
  • Strength - Makes the decal glow, for neon logos or lit signage.
  • Smoothness Offset - Makes the decal read glossier (positive) or more matte (negative) than the surrounding latex, so a printed sticker can stand apart from the shine around it.
  • Mirror UV / Symmetry - Flip the decal, restrict it to one side, or mirror it across the body's centre for symmetric placement.
  • Tiled - Off keeps a single decal clamped to its box; on repeats it across the surface.

POLISH

Section 6 of 12

The polish master gate, clearcoat, and thin film.

Enable is the master gate for the whole polish lighting layer (clearcoat, thin film, plus the SSS / transmission / anisotropy / rim / multi-scatter terms over in SHADING > Lighting). Off collapses the material to a flat GGX base.

  • Enable - Turns the whole polish stack on or off.
  • Mask - Optional grayscale mask scoping the polish layer to painted regions.
  • Mask Channel - Which channel of the mask to read.
  • Clearcoat Strength - Intensity of the dielectric clear coat lobe layered over the base.
  • Clearcoat Smoothness - Smoothness of the coat (1 = mirror-sharp gloss).
  • Specular Anti-Aliasing - Toksvig-style geometric spec AA that roughens the normal from screen-space derivative variance, killing spec sparkle at mid-distance.
  • Clearcoat Flattening - Blends the coat's normal toward the geometric normal so the glossy film reads smooth over rough underlying texture.
  • Clearcoat Tint - Color cast of the coat reflection. White is neutral; colored tints attenuate the under-layer per channel for oil-on-water looks.
  • Clearcoat Reflectivity - Base Fresnel reflectance of the coat. 0.04 reproduces a standard dielectric exactly; higher values brighten the grazing-angle reflection.
  • Thin Film Strength - Strength of the interference rainbow across the coat.
  • Thin Film Thickness - Optical thickness of the thin film, which sets which wavelengths shift and therefore the iridescent hue.
  • Cavity Gloss Blur / Cavity Gloss Occlusion - Use the Cavity surface detail to break up the clearcoat reflection: Blur roughens the mirror in the creases, Occlusion dims it there. Needs Cavity turned on in SURFACE.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

Section 7 of 12

The extra effect layers: the soaked wet look with run-off and real droplets, the melting goo with slime shading, writhing, drips and touch, procedural glitter, an animated flipbook overlay, a true infinity mirror, a living inner-cosmos volume, and effects that react to where the material is being viewed from. The VixForge Toon shader carries everything here except the wet and goo effects, which are liquid-latex tricks that do not fit a toon surface.

Mask Source, on most of the effects below - Borrows an Emission layer's Map so the effect only shows where that layer does. Pick the layer, then the channel your mask sits in, and Invert Mask if you painted it the other way round. Paint once and several effects can share it. The layer you point at has to be switched on. Leave it on None and the effect covers everything.

Wet Effects

The soaked look, streaks running off, and real droplets that swell, fall and dry out. Turn it on, paint a Mask for where the water sits, then work down the three groups.

  • Enable - Master switch for the whole wet layer, off by default.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Where the material is wet. White is soaked, black is dry. Leave it empty and the whole material gets wet.

Soak

The just-out-of-the-pool look: the surface darkens, goes glossy and its fine detail smooths over under the film.

  • Wetness - How wet it reads overall.
  • Darkening - How much the soaked area darkens, the way a real surface does when it takes up water.
  • Smoothness - How close the water film gets to a mirror.
  • Film Sheen - The bright sheen on the film. It rides on the clearcoat, so keep Polish on for the strongest version.
  • Normal Flatten - Smooths the fine detail under the film so the wet area reads slick.

Streaks

Water running off over the soak. Set Strength to 0 for a still, evenly soaked look.

  • Density - How many streaks run across the surface.
  • Thinness - Higher gives narrower streaks.
  • Coverage - How much of the masked area they occupy.
  • Flow Speed - How fast they run.
  • Strength - How strongly they show.
  • Bump - How raised each streak reads, for a rounded bead that catches the light.
  • Gravity Flow - Streaks run down in the world instead of down the texture, so they fall correctly however the model is unwrapped and however you tilt. At 0 nothing changes.
  • Run Direction - Turns the runs away from straight down, in degrees.

Wet on the beat

Wet Effects used to be completely deaf to the music. These three each sit on a band you pick, and are shown only when AudioLink is enabled.

  • Beat Wetness - The beat wets the surface further, so the whole material glosses up on the hit.
  • Beat Flow - The beat drives the streaks along faster.
  • Beat Twist - The beat turns the run direction, so the streaks swing off vertical and back.

Droplets

Real drops: they swell on downward-facing wet patches, neck, pinch off, fall, sway, slide along the body, splat on the floor and dry out.

  • Amount - How many drops form across the wet area.
  • Scale - Roughly how big each one is.
  • Glassiness - Clear and refractive, or a milky bead.
  • Fall Length - How far a drop falls before it fades out.
  • Sway / Wobble - Surface-tension wobble and a breeze on falling drops.
  • Surface Slide - How far an attached drop runs along the body before it lets go.
  • Floor Splat - Lands drops on the floor set under Goo Effects > Floor and spreads them into a fading puddle.
  • Pooling - How much those splats build up. At 0 each spreads and fades on the spot; turn it up and they stay wider for longer and overlap, so the ground reads as liquid gathering under you. Needs Floor Splat.
  • From Writhe - Drops fall from wherever the writhing has drawn the material out, so one comes off the tip of a tendril rather than appearing beside it. Needs Writhe under Goo Effects to be doing something. Ships at 0.
  • Custom Particle + Particle - Use your own image instead of the built-in bead, so the same physics throws sweat, bubbles, sparks or petals. The alpha decides the shape, and it is drawn upright with the neck at the top, so paint it the way a drop hangs.
  • Blend - Mixes between the built-in bead and your image. Part way keeps the bead's shine over your shape.
  • Spin - Turns each one a random amount so they do not all face the same way. Leave at 0 for anything that should stay upright.

Goo Effects

Latex that melts, hangs, writhes and drips. Turn it on, paint a Mask for where it melts, then reach for the groups you want: Melt for the sag, Slime Shading for the wet look, Writhe to make it move on its own, and Floor to let it reach the ground.

It moves your mesh, so turn Tessellation up under Surface for smoother strands. If the goo disappears while your body is off-screen, widen the mesh bounds or set an Anchor Override.

  • Enable - Master switch for the whole goo layer, off by default.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Where the material melts. White melts, black stays put.

Noise

Swap the built-in randomness for your own texture. One image drives the whole effect at once: the tendrils, the writhing, the leading edge as it forms, the cling strands and the veins in the slime. Greyscale, tiling, no alpha needed.

  • Custom + Texture - Turns your own noise on and takes the image.
  • Blend - Mixes it against the built-in noise.
  • Depth - Whether it reads as printed on you or as something with volume.

Melt

The sag itself. Sag Distance is the master, so nothing here shows until you raise it.

  • Sag Distance - How much the material melts.
  • Stretch Distance - How far the strands stretch, in metres.
  • Strand Variation - From even strands at 0 to wildly uneven at 1.
  • Tendril Scale - How big the tendril pattern tiles.
  • Flow Speed - How fast the melt flows over time.
  • Underside Bias - Leans the melting toward downward-facing surfaces, where it would really drip.
  • Flow Direction - Which way the slime runs. Straight down is 0, -1, 0. Point it sideways and it crawls across you instead.

Goo on the beat

Goo Effects used to be completely deaf to the music. These three each sit on a band you pick, and are shown only when AudioLink is enabled.

  • Beat Swell - The beat swells the goo, so it surges on the hit and settles back.
  • Beat Flow - The beat drives the melt along faster.
  • Beat Veins - The beat brightens the neon threads running through the slime.

Sway

A gentle swing through the tendrils.

  • Amount - How far the tendrils swing.
  • Speed - How fast they swing.
  • Surface Follow - Runs the goo along your body instead of sinking through it.

Writhe

The goo moves under its own power instead of just hanging: the surface swells, sinks and crawls over you like something alive underneath. It does not need Sag Distance, so a material can writhe while hanging perfectly still.

  • Amount - How far the surface pushes out.
  • Scale - How big each swelling is. Turning it up gives finer writhing and shrinks the push to match, so if a fine setting looks tame, raise Amount rather than fighting it with Scale.
  • Speed - How fast it all moves.
  • Tendrils - Changes the character, from an even rolling boil at 0 to most of the surface going still while a few places reach a long way.
  • Crawl - Lets the swellings travel across you rather than pulsing where they sit.
  • Surge - Gathers the movement into a wave that climbs you.
  • Fold - Reach for this if the movement ever looks like it is on a timer. At 0 everything drifts the same way at the same speed and the eye picks up the repeat; turned up the material folds over itself so swellings turn, stall, double back and pull apart, and it never comes round again.
  • Wander - Lets them push sideways, up and underneath instead of only straight out from your body, changing course as they go.
  • Stretch - Pulls them long instead of round, so the material reads as being drawn out rather than as lumps inflating.
  • Run - Lets the writhing feed the melt, so wherever the material has been drawn out thin it also sags and runs. This is what turns a tendril that waves into one that hangs and drips off its own tip.
  • Wetness - Makes the swellings go dark, deep and glossy with the veins brightening along anything drawn out. It takes its colour and gloss from Slime Shading, so setting those changes both together.

Floor

Where the ground is, so the goo can actually reach it. It finds the floor from the avatar itself, so the goo lands properly in any world and keeps up when you walk up stairs. This floor is shared with the droplet Floor Splat.

  • Melt To Ground - Pulls the goo down toward the floor so strands can reach it whatever your height.
  • Source - Avatar Feet finds the ground from your avatar. Switch to Manual Height for a prop that is not worn.
  • Height - The floor height to use, for Manual Height.
  • Contact - How many strands make it all the way. At 1 every strand reaches and pools; lower and only the longest get there while the rest hang as drips.
  • Collision - Stops the melt at the floor instead of passing through it.
  • Pooling - Spreads landed strands sideways into a puddle.

Formation

Animate Amount from 0 to 1 and the piece builds itself out of the goo, starting at your feet and climbing up you. Put it on a toggle or a radial for goo that rises off the floor, reaches over you and becomes your gear. The edge is tendrils, not a line: they reach up, sag, curl over and swing while they climb, borrowing Flow Speed and the Sway settings above so the whole thing moves as one. It sits at 1 by default, which means fully formed and switched off.

  • Amount - The wavefront. 0 is nothing, 1 is fully formed. This is the one to animate.
  • Reach - How far it has to climb.
  • Edge - How deep the wet band is behind the leading edge.
  • Break-up + Break-up Scale - How wild the strands at the edge get, and how many of them.
  • Drip - How stringy those strands are.
  • Grab - How far they reach past the edge.
  • Lift - How far they pull away from your body and settle back as they climb, which is what makes them read as separate tendrils taking hold rather than a pattern sliding over you.

Slime Shading

Turns the melt into wet slime: a deep glossy film with a mirror highlight, light coming through where it thins out, and neon veins threaded through it. Push Amount above 0 to switch it on; Colour and Thickness do most of the work from there. Off by default, so an existing melt looks exactly as it did.

  • Amount - How far the slime look takes over. This is the switch.
  • Colour - The colour of the film.
  • Gloss + Metallic - How wet and how metal the film reads.
  • Coat Strength + Coat Gloss - The clear layer over the top and how sharp its reflection is.
  • Thickness - Thicker swallows more light and pools on the undersides; thinner lets the veins and the body underneath show through.
  • Absorption - How quickly the film eats the light passing through it.
  • Translucency - How much light comes through from behind.
  • Underside Pooling - Gathers the thickness on downward-facing surfaces.
  • Refraction - How much the film bends what you see through it.

Veins

Neon threads running through the slime. They brighten around the silhouette and wherever the film runs thin, so they read strongest as it stretches and drips. Appears once Slime Shading is above 0.

  • Colour + Glow - The colour of the threads and how brightly they burn.
  • Scale + Thinness - How big the pattern tiles, and how narrow each thread is.
  • Flow - How fast they travel through the film.
  • Pulse Speed + Pulse Depth - A heartbeat through the threads, and how deep it goes.
  • Edge Bleed + Edge Falloff - How much they gather at the silhouette, and how sharply that falls away.

Drips

Thick drops that gather on the material, hang on a long string and let go, then land in a flat pool. These are their own thing, not the water droplets under Wet Effects: they fall slowly, draw out into a thread as they go, and spread wide when they land, so tuning one never disturbs the other. They take their colour and gloss from Slime Shading, and they land using the Collision and Pooling settings under Floor. Drops keep landing and spreading rather than stacking up, so a busy floor reads as goo gathering under you rather than a puddle that grows while you stand still.

  • Enable - Turns the drips on.
  • Amount + Coverage - How strongly they show, and how much of the material sheds them.
  • Scale - How big each drop is.
  • Speed - How fast they gather and fall.
  • Stringiness - The one that makes it. At 0 a drop pinches off cleanly the way water does; turned up it stays joined to you as it falls and only snaps near the end.
  • Fall Length - How far a drop falls before it fades out.
  • From Writhe - Sheds them off the tips of the tendrils instead of at an even rate all over.
  • Pool Spread - How wide each one spreads when it lands.

Cling

Strands of goo reach off your outline and take hold of whatever is behind you, dragging it into the slime as you move past. Stand near someone and it reads as the goo latching onto them. It needs a copy of the screen, so it costs framerate in a busy world and it is off by default. For it to pick up other people your material has to draw after them: if the strands come out empty, raise the Render Queue above 2500 or set Rendering Mode to Fade.

  • Enable - Turns the cling strands on.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Where they reach from, so you can be covered in goo but only reach from the hands and shoulders.
  • Reach - How far the strands go.
  • Spread - Aims them. At 0 they point straight out from your body; turned up they lean across the screen toward whatever is beside you, which is the setting that makes it look like it is going for someone.
  • Strands + Break-up - How many there are and how choosy they are.
  • From Writhe - Grows them out of the reaching places, so the webbing hangs between the parts that are actually moving and the calm areas stay clean.
  • Speed - How fast they move.
  • Pull - How hard they drag the background along.
  • Distortion - Ripples the view through them.
  • Edge Falloff + Opacity - How sharply they fade from the silhouette, and how solid they are.
  • Colour Source - Match Slime makes the strands look like the material they came off. Custom opens the four below, for when the goo should read one way on you and another as it reaches out.
  • Colour, Absorption, Gloss, Vein Colour + Vein Glow - The separate look for the strands, used when Colour Source is Custom.

Touch

The material dents, bulges and goes wet where someone touches you. Paint up to four areas into the Zones texture, one per colour channel, then drive that zone's Press slider from a VRChat contact receiver through your animator. That is the whole setup. It works on its own, so plain gear with no melt still presses in. Give each Press slider a curve that overshoots and settles back rather than a straight ramp, and the material springs like real slime instead of sliding to a stop. Right-click every Press slider you animate and tick Animated (when locked), or locking freezes it at whatever it reads in the inspector and nothing moves in game.

  • Enable + Zones - Turns Touch on and takes the texture holding your four painted areas, one per colour channel.
  • Press Red / Press Green / Press Blue / Press Alpha - How hard each zone is being pressed. These are the ones you animate from a contact receiver.
  • Depth - How far the press pushes in.
  • Spread - How far the dent softens out past the painted area, so you can have anything from a fingertip press to a broad squash.
  • Rim - Piles material up around the edge of the press, which is what makes it read as something soft being squeezed rather than a dent stamped into a solid.
  • Shading - The one to leave up. Without it the surface moves but still catches light as though it were flat.
  • Tendrils - Squeezes strands of goo out around that same edge.
  • Wetness - Puts a gloss spike on the contact.
  • Flow - Slides the slime pattern out of the way of the press.
  • Veins - Brightens the threads where the material is squeezed.

Glitter

Tiny flakes scattered across the material, each tilted its own way, so they catch the light one at a time and twinkle as you or the light moves. They are generated in the shader, so there is no texture to make and no resolution to run out of. Once flakes get too small on screen to draw individually they settle into a smooth sheen, so glitter never turns into crawling noise at a distance.

The Flakes

  • Enable - Master switch for the glitter layer, off by default.
  • Anchor - UV follows your unwrap, so flakes stretch where the UVs stretch. World Space keeps every flake the same real size across the whole avatar, which is usually what you want for an all-over finish.
  • Density / Flake Size - How many flakes, and how big each one is.
  • Coverage - What share of the surface gets a flake at all. The number is honest: 0.35 puts one on about 35% of the possible spots.
  • Scatter - How randomly the flakes tilt. Low keeps them lying flat with the surface so they flash together, high sends them everywhere for a rougher, busier sparkle.
  • Sharpness - How briefly each flake flashes, from a broad shimmer to hard, quick pinpricks. It changes the character of the sparkle, not how much of it you get, so both ends of the slider are safe to use.
  • Colour + Tint - Tint gives every flake one colour. Iridescent gives each flake its own hue for a holographic finish, with Rainbow Amount setting how far the colours spread. ColorChord takes the colours from the music.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Limits the flakes to part of the material.
  • AudioLink Band / AudioLink Amount - Makes the flakes flare and multiply on the beat. Shown only when AudioLink is enabled.

Glitter Lighting

The flakes are lit like a real surface rather than painted on, so they answer to whatever is lighting the room. Lit By chooses which lighting that is.

  • Lit By - Natural uses the world's ordinary lights and reflection probes. Light Volumes, LTCGI and VRSL each tie the glitter to that one system, so it lights up in worlds running that system and stays dark in worlds that do not. Everything takes light from all of them at once. Always Lit ignores lighting completely, so the sparkle shows even in a pitch black room.
  • Brightness / Ambient Sparkle - The flash from direct lights, and the flash from the surrounding room. Turn Ambient Sparkle up if the world has no strong light and the glitter looks dead.
  • Minimum Light - Stops the flakes going completely dark in an unlit corner. Leave it at 0 for glitter that behaves like a real surface.
  • Take Light Colour - Whether the flakes take on the colour of the light hitting them, or keep their own Tint and use only the light's brightness. Turn it down to keep your colour under coloured stage lighting.
  • Over Clearcoat - Where the flakes sit relative to the shine from Polish. At 1 they sit on top and cut through it, so glitter stays crisp on a glossy material. At 0 they sit underneath like flakes in real car paint, dimmed by the coat and fading out at glancing angles. Only appears when Polish is on, and it makes no difference to materials without a clearcoat.

Viewer Context

The material can tell where it is being drawn and who is looking at it, and react to that on its own. Nothing here needs an animator, a menu or a parameter, and everyone sees their own version at the same moment.

  • Enable - Master switch, off by default.
  • Show - Only in Mirrors hides the effect from everyone else while you still see it in a mirror, and Never in Mirrors does the reverse. Only in Photos and Never in Photos catch the in-game camera and screenshots, so you can add a detail that appears only in someone's photo, or keep an effect out of every picture taken of you. Only in VR and Only on Desktop split by headset and flatscreen.
  • Seen By - In VR you can send the effect to one eye only. There is no other way to get that look.
  • Distance + Near Distance / Far Distance - Fades the effect in as someone comes closer, or as they back away, set in metres.
  • Face-On Only - The effect only shows when the surface is turned toward the viewer, so it hides at glancing angles.
  • Hidden Level - What the effect drops to when the conditions are not met. 0 hides it completely, higher values just dim it.
  • Affects - Point it at your emission, your decals, or both.
  • Also Hide Outlines - Hides the outline on the same terms as the glow it traces, instead of leaving the line sitting there on its own in a mirror.
  • Reaction Glow - An extra colour that rides along with everything above. Pair it with Distance for a material that lights up when somebody leans in.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Keeps the whole effect to part of the material: white is where it applies, black is left completely alone, so one patch can vanish in mirrors while the rest stays normal. The Reaction Glow follows it too. Leave it empty and the effect covers everything.

Distances and angles are measured from the real viewer, and mirrors are handled properly, so a reflection reacts to where the mirror is looking from rather than lighting up wrongly.

Flipbook

An animated overlay that plays across the surface, then blends over the material like a decal. Drop a GIF or a set of images onto Frames and it bakes into one flipbook; or point it at a sprite-sheet laid out in a grid. Off by default, so existing materials are untouched.

  • Enable - Master switch for the flipbook layer.
  • Is Spritesheet - Off reads an imported flipbook (a GIF or image sequence baked into one array, dropped onto Frames). On reads a single Sheet texture laid out in a grid, where you set Columns, Rows and Frame Count.
  • Speed (FPS) - Playback rate in frames per second.
  • Tint - Colour multiplied over the flipbook.
  • Position / Scale / Rotation / Side Offset - Where the flipbook sits, how big it is, its angle, and independent edge nudges. Easiest to set by dragging the gizmo in the Scene view. Rotation Speed slowly spins it over time.
  • UV Source - Which UV layout to place it on.
  • Coverage From - What decides where the flipbook shows: the image's Texture Alpha (the normal choice), its Luminance, Luminance Inverted (for painted art on a white background), or Ignore Alpha to cover the whole box.
  • Blend - How it combines with the latex underneath: Normal, Darken, Multiply, Lighten, Screen, Add, Subtract or Overlay.
  • Opacity - Fades the whole overlay in and out.
  • Mirror UV / Symmetry / Tiled - Flip it, restrict it to one side, mirror it across the body centre, or repeat it across the surface.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Limits the flipbook to part of the material.

Infinity Mirror

A true infinity mirror. The surface reads as glass over a light that reflects away into the distance, a receding tunnel of copies that shifts as you move around it. Off by default. Idea and special thanks to Ghostpaw.

  • Enable - Master switch for the effect.
  • Pattern + Pattern Texture - What sits at the bottom of the tunnel: a Ring of Lights, a Dot Grid, or your own Texture.
  • Glow Colour - HDR colour of the lights.
  • Reflections - How many copies deep the tunnel goes.
  • Depth / Fade Per Layer / Recession - How far back the tunnel reaches, how quickly each copy dims, and how fast the copies shrink into the distance.
  • Vanishing Point - Where the tunnel recedes toward on the surface.
  • Depth Reach - How far down the tunnel you can still see.
  • Motion - Sets the whole stack drifting and spinning, with every layer deeper moving further than the one in front, so the tunnel genuinely falls away from you instead of sitting still.
  • Opens Up Close + Full Depth Distance + Approach Curve - Keeps the tunnel flat from across the room and deep once someone walks up to it. The distance sets where it reaches full depth, and the curve tunes the walk-up.
  • Rainbow Depth - Shifts the hue deeper into the tunnel for a spectral falloff.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Limits the effect to part of the material.
  • AudioLink Band / AudioLink Amount - Pulses the glow with a band. Shown only when AudioLink is enabled.
  • Beat Depth + Beat Twist - The beat pushing the tunnel in and out, and kicking the vortex round, rather than only brightening it.

Chromatic Bloom

Needs AudioLink. AudioLink runs a real analysis of the track into 240 bins, and almost nothing uses it. This lays the twelve notes out across the material and lights each one in its own colour as it sounds, so a chord shows up as a chord instead of one lump of brightness. If nothing lights, raise Sensitivity: a single note is quiet next to a full mix. Off by default.

  • Enable - Master switch for the effect.
  • Layout - Wheel puts the notes round a circle, Rings stacks them outwards, Bars lines them up.
  • Strength / Sensitivity - How bright the notes read, and how quiet a note still has to be to light.
  • Octave - Which octave the layout is keyed to.
  • Note Spacing / Offset / Repeat - How far apart the notes sit, where the run starts, and how many times it repeats across the material.
  • Placement - Where it sits, how big it is, and how far it is turned.

Note Swarm

Needs AudioLink. ColorChord keeps a set of running lights, each one locked to a note it picked out of the music, and nothing had ever read them. This scatters them over the material as drifting blobs that appear and vanish as the harmony moves. Off by default.

  • Enable - Master switch for the effect.
  • Strength / How Many - How bright the swarm reads, and how many blobs are in it.
  • Note Spread - How far apart the notes scatter.
  • Size / Softness - How big each blob is, and how soft its edge.
  • Drift Speed / Wander - How fast they move, and how far they stray as they go.
  • Placement - Where the swarm sits, how big it is, and how far it is turned.

Sonar

Needs AudioLink. AudioLink publishes where the music physically is in the room, and nothing had ever used it. A wave leaves the actual speakers, crosses the room and washes over you, lighting the side turned towards the sound and leaving the far side dark. Walk around a club and it arrives from wherever the speakers are. Turn Chronotensity FX on and it lands on the beat instead of on a free clock. Off by default.

  • Enable - Master switch for the effect.
  • Comes From - Where the wave starts. Leave it on the music for the real speaker position, or set it to You or Whoever Is Looking to have it radiate from somewhere else.
  • Colour / Strength - HDR colour of the wave, and how bright it reads.
  • Speed / Rings / Edge - How fast the wave crosses, how many rings it carries, and how sharp its leading edge is.
  • Faces The Sound - How much brighter the side turned towards the sound reads than the far side.
  • Range - How far away the sound can be and still reach you.
  • AudioLink Band + AudioLink Amount - Which band launches the wave, and how strongly.

Spectrum Ribbon

Needs AudioLink. AudioLink remembers the last second and a half of the track and nothing read it. This draws that history onto the material as a moving readout, so you carry what the music just did and not only what it is doing now. Off by default.

  • Enable - Master switch for the effect.
  • Style - Bars, Line or Mirror.
  • Colour + Colour From The Music - Your own colour, and how much the notes actually playing take it over.
  • Strength / Line Thickness - How bright the readout is, and how heavy the line is in Line and Mirror.
  • Runs / Flip Direction - How many copies run across the material, and which way the history scrolls.
  • Height / Trail Fade - How tall the readout stands, and how quickly the older part of the track dims out behind it.
  • Placement - Where it sits, how big it is, and how far it is turned.
  • AudioLink Band - Which band the readout traces.

Inner Cosmos

The surface becomes a thin window onto a living volume of energy with real depth: look into it from any angle and it parallaxes and swirls like you are peering into a contained galaxy, and it never repeats. Off by default. Original effect designed by Claude (Opus 4.8) for VixForge.

  • Enable - Master switch for the effect.
  • Deep Colour + Bright Colour - The two colours that set the mood, from the far depths to the bright core.
  • Brightness / Density / Contrast - Overall glow, how cloudy the volume is, and how hard the light and dark separate.
  • Swirl / Rotation / Spin - The spiral, a static angle, and a continuous rotation over time.
  • Scale / Warp / Depth / Flow Speed - Size of the pattern, how much it twists, how far into the surface it reaches, and how fast it drifts.
  • Stars - Turn up for a night-sky sprinkle of stars.
  • Quality - Raise only if you see banding.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Limits the effect to part of the material.
  • AudioLink Band / AudioLink Amount - Pulses the brightness with a band. Shown only when AudioLink is enabled.

Living Energy (AudioLink)

A separate layer that only wakes up with AudioLink and turns the whole volume into cosmic energy that moves to the music. Shown only when AudioLink is enabled.

  • Living Energy + Reaction Band - Turns the layer on and picks the band it listens to.
  • Comet Tails - Streams tails off the stars along the way the galaxy spins.
  • Arm Whip - Whips the spiral arms out on the beat.
  • Cosmic Breath - Breathes the whole field in and out.
  • Depth Spectrum - Lights the depths bass to treble, near to far.
  • Flare Colour - HDR colour for the beat flares.

OUTLINES

Section 8 of 12

Two stacked outlines around the silhouette, an inner and an outer, each with its own colour, glow, width, scrolling texture and AudioLink boost.

Each outline draws as a shell ahead of the main pass. Width is a real thickness that grows the line as you raise it and shrinks naturally as the camera moves away, like a real object. Both are off by default, so a material without outlines costs nothing.

If your outline traces part of a shape and then stops, the model has several normals in that spot and no width setting will close it. These two settings fix it, and they apply to both outlines.

  • Outward Direction - Where the line gets its outward direction from. Leave it on Mesh Normal and nothing changes. Run VixenTools > VixForge Mesh Fixes > Bake Outline Normals on your avatar, then set this to Vertex Colour or UV4 to match what you baked. Baking writes copies into VixenTools/BakedMeshes, never touches your model files, and tells you up front which meshes actually need it. Spherical is there if you would rather not bake at all: it pushes everything away from one point, which is spot on for a rounded piece and rough for anything else.
  • Spherical Centre - The point everything pushes away from, for Spherical.

The line can use its own depth settings instead of borrowing whatever the material uses. These apply to both outlines.

  • Depth Write - On lets the line block what is drawn behind it. Turn it off if the outline is punching holes through hair or other see-through pieces.
  • Depth Test - How the line is compared against what is already drawn. Leave it alone unless the outline is being hidden by something it should sit in front of.
  • Depth Push - Nudges the line towards or away from the camera. Reach for this if your two outlines fight each other, or if a line keeps sinking into the material.
  • Slope Depth Push - The same nudge, scaled by how steeply the surface is turned away from you, for the places a flat push does not quite clear.

Outline 1

The inner line around the silhouette.

  • Enable - Turns the inner outline on.
  • Color - Solid colour of the line.
  • Emission - HDR glow colour added on top for a neon edge.
  • Width - Real thickness of the line; grows as you raise it and shrinks with distance.
  • Mask + Width Channel - Optional mask, and which channel of it thins the line; set the channel to None for an even line all the way round.
  • Fade Channel - A second channel of that same Mask texture, this one fading the line rather than thinning it. Black takes the line away completely. One texture, two jobs.
  • Tint From Texture - Pulls the line toward the colour of the material underneath it, so one outline can follow a multi-coloured texture.
  • Lighting - At 0 the line stays flat and unlit. Turn it up and the line sits in the room lighting with the rest of the material.
  • Opacity - Fades the whole line in and out.
  • Texture + Texture Scroll - Flow a pattern through the line, and scroll it in X / Y over time.
  • AudioLink Band + AudioLink Emission Boost - Which band drives the line, and how strongly it pumps the glow.
  • AudioLink Width / AudioLink Hue / AudioLink Scroll - The beat pushes the outline wider, shifts its colour round the wheel, and drives its texture along faster. The outer line follows the inner one as it pulses, so the two never overlap.

Outline 2 (Outer)

A second line sitting just outside Outline 1, for a two-tone edge, say a coloured inner line with a black outer one. It has the same controls as Outline 1 and always sits outside it, so its Width adds on top.

  • Enable - Turns the outer outline on.
  • Color, Emission, Width, Mask + Width Channel + Fade Channel, Tint From Texture, Lighting, Opacity, Texture + Texture Scroll, and the full AudioLink set - The same controls as Outline 1, for the outer line.

EMISSIONS

Section 9 of 12

Five stacked emission layers, the Pathing effect, and a multi-region colour mask. Every layer's AudioLink controls sit inline with that layer and appear only when AudioLink is enabled.

Emission Exposure & Layer 1

  • Exposure (All Layers) - Extra exposure multiplier over every layer for fine bloom control.
  • Color + Map - HDR tint / intensity and the texture defining where layer 1 emits.
  • Strength / Hue Shift / Hue Cycle Speed - Brightness and colour for this layer on their own sliders, so a single radial puppet can drive either one straight from your menu without animating an HDR colour across four curves. Hue Cycle Speed rotates the colour on its own with no animator at all.
  • Mask Channel - Which channel of the Map marks the layer: R, G, B, A, or Auto if you are using a plain black-and-white mask.
  • Color Cycle - Range keeps the colour inside a slice of the wheel instead of running the whole rainbow, and at 0 it runs the whole wheel. Beat Speed drives the cycle from the music, so the colour only moves while the track does. Beat Range lets the beat widen that slice. Rainbow spreads the colour along the Beat Travel direction.
  • Placement - Where the map sits on the material, how big it is, and how far it is turned: Pos X, Pos Y, Scale and Rot, with rotation in degrees.
  • Movement - Drift X and Drift Y slide the map across the material, and Spin turns it in degrees per second. Set the two drifts together to send it in any direction you like.
  • On The Beat - The music moving the layer rather than only brightening it. Push X and Push Y shove it sideways, Twist spins it, and Hue shifts its colour. Shown only when AudioLink is enabled.
  • Beat Travel - Sends one beat travelling across the layer. Direction and Angle aim it. Under Travel, Amount is how much of the layer the moving beat takes over, Length is how long one beat takes to cross it, Sharpness tightens the beat from a smear into a pulse, and Glow flares its crest. It follows this layer's band, and Volume or Peak Hold fall back to Bass.
  • AudioLink Band / AudioLink Amplitude / AudioLink Color Blend - Which band drives layer 1, how strongly it pulses, and how much AudioLink's colour replaces the emission colour. Shown only when AudioLink is enabled.

Emission Layers 2-5

  • Enable Layer 2 (and layers 3, 4, 5) - Each adds a fully independent extra emission layer, off by default.
  • Color + Emission Map 2 + Mask Channel - HDR tint, texture, and mask channel for each layer (layers 3-5 mirror these controls).
  • Strength / Hue Shift / Hue Cycle Speed - Every layer gets its own set, so you can put a brightness dial on one layer and a colour wheel on another.
  • Placement / Movement / On The Beat / Beat Travel - Every layer gets the full set described above, so each one can sit somewhere different, drift its own way, and answer the beat on its own terms.
  • AudioLink Band / AudioLink Amplitude - Which band reacts on each layer and how strongly it drives that layer's brightness, so you can route bass to one and treble to another. Shown only when AudioLink is enabled.

Pathing

Runs light along a path: chase lights, loading bars, energy running down a limb. Paint the path into a texture as a black-to-white ramp and the glow travels from the black end to the white end. All four channels are read, so one texture carries four separate paths.

  • Pathing - Master switch for the effect, off by default.
  • Path Gradient + Panning - The black-to-white ramp texture, and how it drifts over time.
  • Source - Read the path from the gradient texture, or pick UV X or UV Y for a straight sweep with no texture at all.
  • Blend - Add glows on top of your other layers, Replace takes over where the path is lit, and Multiply tints them.

Per Path (Red, Green, Blue, Alpha)

  • Type - Fill wipes along the path, Path sends one pulse through it, Loop repeats seamlessly, and Dashed marches a dotted line.
  • Color - HDR colour for this path.
  • Speed / Start Offset / Width / Softness - How fast it moves, where it starts, how long the lit part is, and how soft its edges are.
  • Gap - Spacing between dashes, for the Dashed type.
  • Steps - Snaps the movement into that many jumps for a chunky, mechanical feel. Leave at 0 for smooth.
  • AudioLink - Brightness pulses with a band. Beat Travel moves the path to the beat instead of the clock. Waveform and Autocorrelator paint the live audio along the path, so it reads like a scope trace. ColorChord colours it with the notes actually being played. Shown only when AudioLink is enabled.

Multi-Region Color Mask (RGB Zones)

Each channel acts as an independent zone mask. The zone tint multiplies into the albedo (white = no change), and the emission boost adds zone-colored glow on top, letting you paint hard-edged feature zones without a second material.

  • Multi-Region Color Mask - Turns on the three-zone color mask.
  • Region Mask - The mask texture whose R, G, and B channels define three independent zones.
  • Red Zone Tint / Red Zone Emission Boost - Albedo tint and added glow for the red zone.
  • Green Zone Tint / Green Zone Emission Boost - Albedo tint and added glow for the green zone.
  • Blue Zone Tint / Blue Zone Emission Boost - Albedo tint and added glow for the blue zone.

MATCAPS

Section 10 of 12

Up to five stacked material-capture layers with a shared projection setting, plus a Car Paint look. Each layer has its own Tiling & Movement and Offsets sub-sections, and can be frozen to read as part of the material rather than a sliding reflection.

Global Settings

  • Projection - Blends matcap sampling between camera-aligned and mesh-aligned. 0 = pure camera-aligned (sliding / reflective), 1 = pure mesh-UV-aligned (glued to the geometry). Higher values pin the matcap to the surface and reduce the sliding feeling as the camera moves. Applies to every layer; for a per-layer lock, use that layer's Freeze instead.

Car Paint

A layered paint look. The Base and Flip colours travel with your view for a pearlescent flip-flop, metallic flake sparkles at grazing angles, and Gloss sets the wet clearcoat shine. A matcap layer with its Blend Mode set to CarPaint feeds into it. Off by default.

  • Enable + Amount - Turns the look on and sets how strongly it takes over.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Paints the look onto part of the material only.
  • Base Colour + Flip Colour - The two colours of the flip-flop, seen face-on and at a grazing angle.
  • Flip Amount + Flip Falloff - How much the colour shifts toward the Flip Colour, and how tightly that shift hugs the grazing edge.
  • Flake Colour + Flake Sparkle + Flake Density + Flake Sharpness - Colour, strength, count and crispness of the metallic flake.
  • Gloss Smoothness + Gloss Metallic - The wet clearcoat shine over the paint.

Matcap 1

  • Enable - Turns layer 1 on.
  • Texture - The material-capture sphere texture.
  • Mask + Mask Channel - Mask, and which channel, restricting the layer to painted regions.
  • Tint - Colour tint applied to the matcap.
  • Rotation - Rotates the matcap sample.
  • Intensity - Brightness of the layer, now up to 6 for a strong, over-driven glow.
  • Blend Mode - How the layer combines: Add, Replace, Multiply, or CarPaint, which drives the layer through the Car Paint group above.
  • Opacity - Fades the whole layer in and out over the base. Pair it with Multiply or Replace to cover the base and read as latex; Add only lays highlights on top. Full by default.
  • Lighting Mix - How much scene lighting modulates the layer versus reading it as a pure unlit overlay.
  • AudioLink Band + AudioLink Amount - Brightens this matcap with the music, on a band you pick. Every matcap has its own pair, so one can answer the bass and another the treble. At 0 the matcap ignores the music entirely. Shown only when AudioLink is enabled.

Tiling & Movement (sub-section) - Freeze stops the matcap sliding as the camera moves, so it reads as baked-in detail that turns naturally with the avatar (0 = classic reflective matcap). Tiling repeats the matcap around its centre. Scroll / Animate gives continuous motion: Pan X / Y move it over time (Pan Y = up / down), Spin rotates it, Speed scales the animation.

Offsets (sub-section) - Position Offset nudges the matcap statically: Offset X moves it side to side, Offset Y up and down.

Matcap 2

A second matcap layer with the same controls, including its own AudioLink Band and Amount, Tiling & Movement, and Offsets sub-sections. Tip: drop a red/blue/black region mask into both Layer 1's and Layer 2's Mask, set Layer 1's channel to R and Layer 2's to B, and each colour zone shows a different matcap.

Matcap 3, 4 & 5

Three more matcap layers, each with the identical control set - texture, mask and channel, tint, rotation, intensity (up to 6), blend mode, opacity, lighting mix, its own AudioLink Band and Amount, plus its own Tiling & Movement (with Freeze) and Offsets sub-sections - for additional stacked zones. All off by default.

RENDERING

Section 12 of 12

Culling, blend and stencil overrides. The Rendering Mode up in BASE already sets sensible values, so leave these alone unless you need a specific result.

Models must be triangles. If yours looks torn into triangles or shredded, select the model file, open its Model Import Settings, turn off Keep Quads and hit Apply.

  • Cull - Which side of each face is drawn. Back suits most models; switch to Off for flat single-sided pieces like hair cards, skirts or wings that need to show from both sides.
  • Depth Test - How the surface tests against the depth buffer. Leave at the default unless you are layering effects.
  • Color Mask - Which colour channels the material is allowed to write.
  • Offset Factor + Offset Units - Depth-bias the surface to fix z-fighting against a coincident mesh.
  • Z Clip - Clips geometry at the near / far planes. On by default.
  • Alpha To Coverage - Smooths hard cutout edges using MSAA coverage.
  • Flip Backface Normals - Flips the lighting normal on back faces, so single-sided pieces light correctly when Cull is Off.
  • Ignore Fog - Excludes the material from the world fog.

Blending - How the material combines with what is already on screen. Rendering Mode sets these, so change them only for a specific blend.

  • RGB Blend Op + RGB Source + RGB Destination - The colour blend equation and its two factors.
  • Alpha Blend Op + Alpha Source + Alpha Destination - The same, for the alpha channel.

Stencil - Stencil-buffer routing for masks, portals and effects that read or write the stencil.

  • Reference - The stencil value this material compares and writes.
  • Comparison - The test against the buffer that decides whether the pixel draws.
  • Pass + Fail + Z Fail - What happens to the stored stencil value on each outcome.
  • Read Mask + Write Mask - Which bits of the stencil the test reads and the write touches.

VixForge Toon

Companion Shader

A cel and anime sibling to Latex Ultra. It shares every section on this page, and adds control over how light falls off the surface.

VixForge Toon carries the same toolkit as Latex Ultra - PBR base, matcaps, emissions, decals, outlines, AudioLink, Light Volumes, LTCGI and VRSL - so every section above applies to it unchanged. Two things differ: it adds the Shading Options block below, and it drops Wet Effects and Goo Effects, which are liquid-latex tricks that do not fit a toon surface. Reach for Toon when you want a stylised look, and for Latex Ultra when you want a physically based latex finish. Toon can also do a fully realistic pass, so you can stylise the body and keep realistic boots on the same avatar.

Shading Options

  • Enable - Turns the stylised falloff on. Off, or with Style set to Realistic, the surface lights like a standard PBR material.
  • Style - Picks how light falls off:
    • Ramp Texture - Reads a gradient you supply, unlit on the left to lit on the right. Leave it white for a clean two-tone.
    • Cel Steps - Posterises the light into flat bands.
    • Soft - A smooth, rounded falloff.
    • Hard - One crisp terminator line.
    • Realistic - No stylising, the full physical response, for realistic parts on a Toon material.
  • Gradient - The ramp texture, read left (unlit) to right (lit). Shown for the Ramp Texture style.
  • Offset - Shifts where the ramp is read. Shown for the Ramp Texture style.
  • Count - The number of flat bands, 2 to 8. Shown for the Cel Steps style.
  • Light Wrap - The Realistic style's own softening of the terminator, the way skin, fabric and fur do, without losing energy.

Shared Falloff Controls

  • Edge Softness - How sharp the band edges are, for the Ramp Texture and Cel Steps styles. Low is crisp, high blurs the step.
  • Light Wrap - Pulls light further around the surface so more of it reads as lit and the terminator softens. Available on every style but Realistic. 0 keeps the plain terminator.

Common Questions

FAQ

Which shader should I use?

Latex Ultra for latex, vinyl, rubber and anything else glossy and synthetic. VixForge Toon for cel and anime looks. Clothing Pro for fabric, from silk and satin through to wool and fleece. Fur Pro when the whole thing is fur. They share the same lighting and the same toolkit, so whatever you learn on one carries over.

Can I bring my materials over from Poiyomi, lilToon or VRChat Toon Standard?

Yes. The inspector translates an existing material across in one click, and it can convert a whole avatar at once. It takes a backup first and the whole thing is undoable, so you can try it and change your mind.

Do I need AudioLink, LTCGI, VRC Light Volumes or VRSL installed?

No. The shaders carry their own copies of what they need, so they work whether or not you have any of those packages. Each reaction stays off until you switch it on, and it then responds when a world actually provides the data.

Can I switch effects on and off from an expression menu?

Yes, that is what they were built for. Effects turn on and off live, so an animation or a menu toggle drives them in the world. One thing to remember: if you animate a control, tick Animated (when locked) on it before you lock the material, so it keeps responding afterwards.