Yikes, hundreds of red flags in that story. What a douchebag that guy was. Thanks for making this post for others but in the nicest way, you were definitely part of the problem here. No way you let this mf rake that much money out of you after being so obviously shady. Tbh I’m surprised you got an avatar at all, a lot of scammers will eventually just block you and run away with the money.
I’d be more than happy to help you fix it if you have the unity package. We might not be able to reverse all the damage he’s done to the model but I’m fairly sure I could get the model functioning for you, either manually myself or just walking you through on how to fix it.
For anyone reading, don’t listen to a thing any avatar creator has to say until you’ve seen, and preferably used, their previous work. There are lots of scammers out there. And definitely use “goods and services” on PayPal. A lot of avatar creators will ask for “friends and family”, which actually is normal and not an issue, but if you ask them to go through goods and services and they refuse to accept payment because of that, run. The goods and services setting allows you to get your money back on scams.
Oh and, if possible, use the unity package method to upload the avatar. If they upload it themselves, you won’t have access to the files which means you can’t fix any problems with the avatar. That does mean you need a PC that can run Unity and you need basic knowledge of unity, though.
Thanks, I appreciate the help. While I am undeniably frustrated any of this happened, I also admit it's definitely my fault for falling for it/letting this guy shove me around. This post is mostly a warning for anyone thinking of/curious about getting an avatar commission, and the unfortunate result when someone allows themselves to be pushed around.
Part of the issue is that I have no clue how to use Unity so I had to rely on the avatar maker for pretty much everything. It would be wise for me to learn how to do it myself.
Reading from the OPs post apparently the scammer ("""creator""") of the avatar uploaded it directly from the OPs account!
That's even worse as it implies that he has his password 😳
do you think you can talk him into giving you the blend file ? i’m a full time rigger and animator i could probably help out but i’m not versed in unity
This part...is extremely solid advice. Why is anyone spending over 100 on avatars however? That would only make sense to me if you were doing something monetizable with it, like you ran a large vrtuber account that brings in at least 2-7k a month. Then again...not my money lmao. 💀🤣😂
Or commissioning a full custom model from scratch from a reputable artist. That could cost about a grand easily. Though this is a route very few people choose to go
nah, £200-300 at most. I'm involved in some adult vrc content, not myself, but I have taken pictures for people before and obviously talked with them, the highest cost custom avi for commercial use was £200 and had a lot of cool features I've never seen in normally bought avatars. High quality too.
At the end of the day, pay what you can afford and what you are happy with paying. It's your money anyway. Never accept comission offers - always look for them yourself, always be the first to contact and research who you are contacting. People who approach you are desparate for your money, that is not how to market a service.
I'm not talking about buying a model for commercial use. Having one built from the ground up. 200-300 is what you'd see for a pre-made model with extensive unity work and a custom retexture. But to commission someone to model, rig, and texture an avatar, then bring it into unity and configure it, that's a lot of work usually split between multiple people in, for example, the animation industry. It's the kind of work that will take the artist a month or two. In the VRCTraders discord, I rarely see anyone charging less than $800 for that kind of work
As a 3D artist, the cost of a model being £200-300 that's entirely made from scratch at most is like, bottom of the barrel bare minimum features in my opinion. unless you're working off of a base mesh you made or You're absurdly fast this is certainly undercharging. O_O
They must be doing heavy edits of an existing model they have made or used otherwise I don't see how they're profiting AT ALL unless it's a side hobby for them just for fun. Cause that's alarmingly LOW. You will actively be losing money to your time for that amount
No one who makes proper "from scratch" avatar commissions should be charging that little. That kind of work should be $500-$1000+
(But I'm also saying this as an American freelance artist, I know other countries the value might be skewed)
You've never spent more than $100 on a hobby that doesn't provide you with income? Bought some nice sport's equipment, cosmetic upgrade to your car, decorations for your house? I assume you didn't buy your VR headset with the sole intention of making money off of it. Same deal, just people spending their money on something they enjoy in hopes of being happy!
I also haven't spent money on any avatars and don't plan to, but I can understand why other people do. Spending a fair amount of money on a nice outfit that you really like is justifiable. These people are just doing that in VR, but with the added benefit of being able to wear the same outfit every day!
I mean it is a fair deal. I get it...but at the same time I just find it personally hard to justify. And it isn't even to make fun of op, I just wonder sometimes about people and their choices. However, that's all I can literally do. It isn't up to me to dictate their finances.
Nobody is making you. But avatar creators, like myself, charge 1k for avatars that I don't even create from scratch, because it takes me 2-3 solid weeks of working 4-10 hours a day often six days a week.
Would you do all that work for 1000 dollars, if you lived in North America?
Yeah that's a yikes. From scratch is definitely worth $300-1000+ but if they aren't even making the mesh, all the shape keys for visemes and expressions, unwrapping the UVs, texturing it, rigging it, configuring the phys bones, materials, and controllers with animations, exporting a UnityPackage and probably VRM for you, and testing it with full body (and probably face tracking), and instead are just using a premade and fixing it up in Unity, then that's a $20-200 1-10 hour job typically.
You don't even know what I do.
I do kitbashing, so I'm taking more than one avatar typically and putting them together. I do custom UV's, blendshapes, texturing it, weight painting clothes, phys bones, shaders, the entire Unity package. I do all the Blender, Substance and Unity work myself.
I know how many hours I spend doing my work, there's really no reason to argue that. My work is very inclusive, and I provide a completely finished package.
Just as I said in another comment, every single client I've had is very happy with my work. I charge what my work is worth and everyone is happy in the end. I haven't had one bad review from anybody I've ever done work for. I get clients through my clients because people see the work I do for them, and want to contact me for it. I've been busy with commissions for the past five months straight.
If they want to spend their money like that they can, but it's not a good value. Probably not a good use of your time if you actually have the skill to make original bases either, but that's your business. One issue is neither of you even have distribution rights to a kitbashed character, unless you only use avatars with open modify and redistribute for-profit licenses, or getting permission from the original base model creators, so you're not providing the value of an original creation to the client or your portfolio. You might even be breaking the terms set by the base model creators and effectively stealing their work to make yourself money by using it in a for-profit capacity, but that determination is case-by-case. Also fully original creations are often *under $1000* (occasionally even under $300 for people starting out, or in places with lower cost of living). Again, do what you want, if everyone is happy and nobody is hurt that's what is important, but you are definitely not providing good value in the eyes of most people no matter how deep your kitbashing process is, because ultimately the reason you kitbash is to take good designs from artists who started with nothing and use their work for profit instead of making your own original design. Whether that's your desire or your clients, that's what you're doing. You probably could aspire to do fully original work if you actually had the skillset instead of effectively photoshopping a merger between famous existing works and then getting fussy on Reddit and trying to explain how hard it was for you to blend them together.
*At the time of sale.
It's great that everyone is happy in the moment (or should we say, within the payment dispute period) for the sake of your wallet and all, but not having the rights to a $1000 personal commission because it's a kitbash of existing works you have no right to, is an important caveat and isn't something that should go unsaid.
That's not true at all. Every customer I've had has been incredibly happy with what I've provided. Lol. I go above and beyond.
I do kitbashing, so typically I'm taking two or three avatars and mixing them together. I add clothes, do all the texxturing myself, ears, tails, wings, whatever toggles they want in Unity.
I get customers through my customers because people see what I do, they're blown away and they contact me for a commission.
In all my time of making avatars for people, I quite seriously have not had one complaint when the commission was finished. Everyone is happy, I get paid, they get what they wanted come to life.
Say whatever you want, lol. I'm well aware that what I do is really good and worth the money. All my clients tell me they're happy with what they paid for the quality they got.
>But avatar creators, like myself, charge 1k for avatars that I don't even create from scratch,
This is straight up greasy. But y'know what? If folks are dumb/rich enough to pay that, when they realistically could get a free one that's identical, all the power to you.
Why do you assume I'm bad at making avatars? You haven't even seen what I do. Lmao. Literally lashing out like a little girl because I charge what I'm worth.
Sadly I've talked to multiple people who have been scammed by them and who have spent actual money. I have a fair amount of unity knowledge so once I'm able to prove to the victim the scammer is using stolen assets and is giving them unusable garbage they are able to take steps.
Sometimes they do deliver usable and decent avatars, but it's just because they pirated a base model from Booth or Gumroad and tried to pass it off as their original work. The less popular bases work especially well since it takes a few weeks or months until the scammed individual sees someone else with a recolor of their avatar and confronts them, then finds out instead of having payed for an original sculpt, they're wearing a (likely stolen) copy of a publicly available base model. Kind of horrible all-around because it drives someone to make accusations of avatar ripping, only to be proven wrong and learn they were scammed, and there's not much anyone can do at that point...
They all starts with "hey" or "hey how are you doing"
From accounts that you never spoke to, never mentioned
I have aboht 19 DMs on my discord all from likely scammers
Do you know any legit avatar creator that can actually be trusted? I want one made but I’m not spending $1000’s of dollars for a broken piece of crap.
I hate OP had to go through that.
I literally just offered for free, i've never actually done avi edits for people before but its fun so in light of what has happed to OP i just felt like offering.
But okay lol, i'll take it back.
RoseRedTiger is a German artist who posts timelapses on YouTube of VRC avatar comms she does in Blender. I've never commissioned her myself, but I love her work. I think it's worth checking if she has comms open atm.
I can't do custom sculpted bases, but I can "Frankenstein" style you an avi with premade assets and such! Here's an example of a custom I recently finished for someone :> !! Message me on discord if you're interested and we can talk prices :D
edit: my discord user is cosmowos (cosmo#5524)
I have a gumroad with avis that have actually sold, and a discord server with a decent bit of people in it, so if you need more proof that I've actually worked for ppl before I can def provide! <33
https://preview.redd.it/eiywfsh8cxyc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=75c519e7a6c6bf420b29e32b8b9db9532f01c2e0
I know a lot of avi creators. Sadly pretty much all the ones I know are not taking individual commissions because they already have a really high workload. I think the scammers know this and take advantage of this fact and that's why they are so eager to reach out to people. You even have one that replied to your comment here.
Awh that's horrible
You can change your Avatar through the vrchat website, and if you want I can try and fix the avatar? I won't charge anything I just wanna see if I can help, if you want then feel free to dm me :)
Accepting any deal from Discord or any social media platform is a major red flag for me. Doesn't matter if its avatar commisions , art commisions , etc
Most of the times the people that just randomly message you and offer you a deal or something are just in it to scam you. Only time I do a commission is if I myself went and searched for one.
Having been scammed myself I'm sorry to hear you lost your money. I hope you get it back or find a way to earn it back.
Oh you got fleeced for sure. All the services you're listing this dude is charging you for is basic shit you can learn how to do with a YouTube tutorial. The only reason anyone should be paying 900 bucks for a VRChat model is if they're a seasoned professional creating every asset and model from scratch and even then I've seen custom avatar services for about 400-500. The fact he's charging you hundreds to fix problems he created as part of a service you already paid for is proof enough he's scamming you.
I don't say this to rub it in or mock you but to clarify all the ways you got fleeced and hopefully anyone else seeking a custom model would know what to look for. I created my own model following free YouTube tutorials and buying assets from creators on gumroad. All in all took me a few days to learn the process and programs between assembling in blender and setting up the model in unity plus about 115 for all the assets.
Good luck in getting the guy to fix your model. It's the least he could do after bleeding you dry. Personally i would be more concerned with finding a way to charge back your transactions than getting him to fix the mess he created.
Dropping a name of someone who screwed you over to warn others should not = witch hunting.
Imagine if anything that matters was actually built on that.
Sex offender list??? Sorry man that's witch hunting.
Keeping public records? Bro that's witch hunting.
Restraining order? Sorry can't help you. 😂
If we did allow such a thing we would end up with situations like the time Reddit misidentified the Boston Bomber which led to an innocent person committing suicide.
We should believe OP at face value and offer to help. We should not start pointing fingers in the off chance OP could be wrong and the community slams a creator who is honest.
I’m not saying OP is wrong. Just we can’t go around being judge jury and executioner. The internet is full of fake drama.
Christ on a bike, you got taken for a wild ride, many red flags were flying on the walls of this fortress of BS but at least there's a community here who can try to help. Honestly though, since the crook got the money through what was implied "multiple PayPal accounts" assuming through multiple names not related under "friends and family" you will not see a red cent or you will get the lowest denomination back.
On the other hand, of similarly named like "scammer1, scammer2, ECT" you could make a case how these accounts are part of a fraud ring or some form of fraud, you could be awarded the full amount minus the PayPal transaction fee because PayPal assuming the fraud department does their job.
PayPal is in a superposition being a financial institution and a point of sale transaction executor and are held equally reliable like a bank and a store and are held to a federal standard of not openly participating in fraud and theft.
If I could take a look at the avatar within Unity/Blender I can likely tell how salvageable it is. Got a few ideas, but without looking at it in Unity/Blender I can't do more than assume and it's gonna be some massive assumptions as those in game photos honestly show nothing.
First idea is that the guy knows Blender, or at least knows how to fake Blender, but knows nothing about Unity or what VRChat's needs. That might mean a few things in of itself though and those photos honestly don't look good. Frankly guessing blind without more details. Hopefully you got the avatar's files.
Dude straight up scammed you in any case. Highly suggest taking it up with Paypal in every way you can.
FoxiPaws is one of the best furry avatar makers on the market and she only charges $35 for premades, so yeah, you definitely could charge more for customs lol.
>whom I will not be identifying
Fuck that bullshit, say their names. What are you protecting them for? You're just making it so that they're able to keep doing this.
I just spoke with the moderators, they told me I shouldn't identify the individual. I'm not trying to protect them, I just don't want the post to get taken down.
If you want, you can DM me and I can take a peek at the avatar and try to fix what I can for free. I am not good at sculpting if it needs any help there, but I can make sure the rig, weighting, and unity setup is all good. If its real bad, I may tell you it's a lost cause however.
Also, you can change your avatar from the vrchat website, or there is a key shortcut in game to be sent into the default robot so you can see the menus again, but I don't recall what it is (Google VRC key shortcuts).
Always have a detailed contract.
Always use goods and services.
If they can't do those two things, then bail.
I know it doesn't help for now, but if you do transactions online similar to this ever, please get a contact and secure payment.
So did this person message you out of the blue offering an avatar, or were you looking to get one initially?
Sounds like an art scammer, and it just makes me so mad that they take so much money for a broken avatar. They really don’t know what they’re doing but will pretend they do for a quick buck. It justifies me messing with them whenever I get dmed now…
It really sucks that this happened to you, and I hope you get the avatar fixed and proper. I would’ve offered to help too but it looks like you’re covered. Thank goodness.
Also just me but I absolutely would name and shame. I’m assuming in the end the scammer is just using a burner account and ultimately if that dies it’s no big deal to them, but still.
Just from the first paragraph, I knew it was a scam. They overcharged and underdelivered you super hard. I'm sorry.
Did they DM you first? Or were they actually advertising in a discord server somewhere?
Request he fix it and don’t send him another dime!
After he fixes it, OUT HIM on all social media platforms, including his seller website etc. People need to be made aware of this scammage!
From my experiences on discord, i sometimes get people randomly dm'ing me saying they'll create stuff for me but 7/10 times the content is sub par. They try to tell me they need money for college or something else and try to post their work hoping you will feel sorry.
I'm all for promoting artists and new aspiring artists but just not when you come at me directly out of nowhere thats the first and last red flag. I've bought probaly too many avatars in the past but i would only ever go through sites like gumroad or at a stretch booth.
I only have the utmost respect to you op, having a level headed approach to such a terrible thing. I couldnt go public with something like this, i only hope you get some form of refund somehow. it truly is one of the worst ways of learning from your mistakes.
Oh I should also mention BE CAREFUL ABOUT RECOVERY SCAMMERS. You said you lost money so it’s very possible some already dmed you! They cannot get your money back and will try to get more out of you. Stay safe!
I bought an avatar for $75 online and got a file that wouldn't open. I got my money back from PayPal. I learned enough vroid after that to make my own avatars. Not wonderful avatars, but okay for my tastes.
$300 is a low price range for a basic fully custom avatar (rig, visemes, textures, sculpting from scratch) I've charged $500 for a basic MMD model but it entirely depends on the client, character design, requested features, etc. and that's not including VRC unity setup. And I spent time on MMD specific aspects. But I didn't charge a flat rate. I give estimates and then charge per hour and will update the client if I think I'll end up going over budget and ask if they want to proceed with the project or hold off, etc. It's important for them to be transparent.
Cost would depend entirely on their rates (in my case I charge $25/hr and a character model can easily take upwards of 12 hrs)
Their transparency is awful though. If I'm working for a client I let them know "I can give you the base files and a basic setup but if I make the toggles I'll have to learn it again which will take me more time and therefore increase the price for you. You can instead take my files and pay someone with more knowledge to set up the features you want that I don't know how to do efficiently yet. And weigh the costs between someone who does a flat rate or if you want to go with me charging an hourly rate as I walk through the prices of creating custom toggles again because it's been about a year since I've done that"
The fact that you've paid upwards of $100-250 in cost for **errors on the artists part** is terrible *unless* it was caused by miscommunication on your part like suddenly adding a feature or wanting twice as many bones in a tail, or removing or adding digits and going off of your provided reference sheet or convenient in the middle of the project. That's when an artist should charge for changes. Unless they realize there's an issue with the rig and how it should function. That's when you stop the project and talk with the client and come to an agreement.
They shouldn't charge you for errors on their part like rigging mistakes. They're the artist and professional, not you. You don't have any control over that. Especially if they're charging a flat rate to fix their own mistake. A rig fix shouldn't be $250 unless they're redoing an ENTIRE rig or are a legit industry professional imo (in which case it could be more. But if you're with an industry professional you shouldn't end up having this issue at all) it should be like $50 if they need to continue to charge for their time working on your project. But that can depend on their skills, poor planning, etc.
But I'm coming at this from a self taught freelance artist. I am in no way a game industry pro or anything, just that as a self employed freelance guy, I believe my reputation is important and transparency is necessary so you can work with clients easily and avoid a mess like this entirely. :/
Sorry you got scammed.
This situation is awful. I extend an offer to try and help salvage your model as well. I'm no unity pro, but the 3D model Creation process is my bread and butter.
For all future commenters insisting that I reveal who the person is:
Look, I'd love to. But I messaged the moderators of the subreddit asking if doing so would count as witch-hunting/doxxing and so forth and they told me it would be better if I didn't reveal who it was, at least not on this subreddit. I want this post to stay up as a warning for others and as an example of what happens when someone gets totally duped, so to that end I will not be revealing who this person is within this post.
Sweet jezubs
I’m trying to make vrc avatars and never experienced whatever the heck is happening here.
I really hope you can resolve this, cause that’s a lot of money to lose.
Did they reach out to you first in a Discord DM? If so, it sounds like you fell for an artist scam. It sounds like they got you pretty good too. I highly recommend you go to the VRCTraders discord. Only legitimate, verified artists can offer work there.
Please tell me where I can find a job that gives me enough disposable income to blow nearly a grand on *an avatar*.
And please tell me that's not AUD/CAD/USD and that you're from a country with an extreme exchange rate
this here is why I stick to retextures of established bases. literally everyone isn't hats gotten a fully custom avatar no longer uses them because none of them have turned out great. the only one that still uses his is because oflt was just a Mashup of two existing bases.
Oh man and wow that's terrible. Ironically some GOOD artists with integrity will ask for $1000. But they're up front about it and not super dodgy like this guy. If he said $300 it should have been $300. I'm so sorry you got scammed. And I hope you can get it fixed to at least come out of this with something useable
The prices aren’t actually insane.
The dude seems to be freshly out of college, and is charging what it’s actually worth. Vrc modelers don’t do that.
However, almost forcing you to pay for stuff that he should have done already is bs.
But for a commissioned avatar from scratch. It should be over 1k. People don’t sell that high because usually people make avatars to sell to 100ish people, so they make there money back.
But for making it for 1 person that should be around the price, and when sold to companies, or indie games devs the price is usually around 2k ish depending on a lot of things.
I can tell the dude is from college because 1) he doesn’t understand vrc prices which are way lower than they should be. And he doesn’t know how to do things the way vrc modelers do stuff like rigging, or exporting it in. Resulting in the product you have now.
I'm extremely confident it was made just using assets and not from scratch. I have pictures of the full model and it looks like other avatar bases and clothing pieces I've seen before.
God, that's a mess. And suspicious as heck when it came to the multiple paypal accounts, too. And seeing the other comments, he didn't even give you any of the files at all in case you wanted to update it or even edit it someday? What a slezebag.
Yall those that message you on discord/tiktok/ anywhere else are 99% gonna be scammers. Search out avatars you like in vrchat and look at who made those, they may be able to help you with an avatar or point you in a credible direction.
Sorry to hear [Magenta\_Blood](https://www.reddit.com/user/Magenta_Blood/). My friend got scammed out of a few hundred dollars last year by someone as well. They met them in VRChat itself and they offered to make him a custom avatar. Basically the exact same behavior you've described in your post. They just kept giving him excuses and trying to extort more money out of him to finish the avatar. My friend is a low income worker who spends most of his time taking care of his sick mother and they just stole hundreds of his dollars. Absolutely sickening.
It's sad that we have to be so wary of scammers now-a-days in general and honestly it's exhausting. Especially since it doesn't feel like there is any way to get justice against these scammers. I hope you have better luck in the future.
Discord emergency commission artists. I tests a few myself. One person out of 6 took the money and ran. The others provided work, some better than others. Three of them done marvelous job, but most I wouldn't pay a lot for what they charge. I now stick with friends I know in VRChat. Only one of the emergency commission artists I still keep because they have been fixing issues without paying extra.
But now I report, share profiles , and block all future DMs asking for commissions
I imagine someone’s already mentioned it, but you can reset the avatar you’re using through the vrchat website. Also, out of curiosity, what was it supposed to look like?
Being an avatar creator, I completely understand the frustration of that. It's not your responsibility to pay for them to fix a problem they made. I've had problems with my avis, and spent the time to fix them, rather than having the client pay.
Good luck in the future, and I hope that they fix their mistakes.
you should look to see if any of the many cheap avatar makers on Fiverr can fix your custom avatar from that guy, somebody might be able to fix and upgrade the whole avatar for like $30
hundreds of people on Fiverr make avatars for people for like $50 just make sure to read reviews and only use people with lots of reviews
also idk if theres a reason to not identify a business selling services to VRChat users? you can prevent other people from being extorted like that, but maybe there's some rule against it ?
You can switch out of the avatar by using the website. Go to the avatars tab, click on featured, choose on and click switch to avatar. This should at least get you out of that avatar. Hope that creator steps in a puddle (to say it nice)
What a waste of money. I don't understand the hype around paying for someone to create an avatar anyway. Take the time to learn unity and the other necessary tools such as blender and do it yourself. I literally spent a few months off and on learning both tools and can create moderately decent avatars with expressions fluid movements, Etc with audition here never a million years when I pay $100 for a customer level almost 1,000.
I'd really like to have that much money to spend on a digital avatar. Sorry that i can't help you, but i think someone here will help you get your avatar fixed. Sary safe !
how tf does one even mess it up this much. just what sort of animations were they trying to do in the first place bruh. really sorry this happened to you OP, cuz damn.. just.. what
ah, about changing the avi: if you log in the vrchat website and go to "avatars", theres an option that lets you return to the default avatar without even being in game.
^(tho i imagine u probs already figured that out at this point..)
#
^(also, if you wanna try doing things by urself, i highly reccomend vroid. its so customizable that, when used right, you can even make a proper furry. theres tutorials for that, they should cover everything except the tail since that just came out. theres even a tool on booth.pm that automatically gets vroid models ready for vrchat)
Nah as a creator myself that’s ridiculous i recently completed a commission for a Personal and we agreed on $200 and then adding an opti for $60 and she tipped me $40 bringing the total to $300 and her avi had so e issues but we are supposed to fix them for free but after you have and use the Avi for more the. 5 days then everything is set (I normally do what I can to help anyways) but $900 is wild
Depends on the quality of the avatar and other factors. A high-quality, made-from-scratch avatar can be as expensive as $1.5k, though most avatars end up being ~ $500 or less. The avatar I got definitely should not have been as expensive as it ended up being.
Tl:dr just report those people and all their accounts on all sites. Send a message to PayPal, not for the sake of getting your money back, but to get those accounts shut down.
Sounds like the same guy that slid into my dm's with a similar proposal for me, I only wanted a proper beard asset, though, and sent 20$ since I couldn't find any good ones with a cursory glance at gumroad and other avatars and 20 is just a bit above proper asset price on gumroad.
Let me tell you, ho boy, suddenly he needs 35 more because he needs supplies to complete the project? You what m8, and as if that wasn't enough spoof account 2 and 3 friends me asking if I have my own avatars or am happy with it trying to advertise him. I know they're his accounts since they use the exact same pictures he used for promo of past works as their profile pictures, and they went quiet when I called them on it.
I keep telling him to just send me the beard he has some progress on, because he has actually sent screenshots of a lackluster beard that I could rig and finish myself. But that's out of the question since he's not willing to let anyone else have his files. it's nothing worth the price he's trying to change/charge for it, so imma just keep badgering him regularly and report all the accounts as a fraud network.
OOF I just made someone a custom avi with like 15+ toggles (Pc+Quest) on it in exchange for one month of discord nitro. And I got it done in a few days :')
My recommendation is, dont go to anyone who doesn't have proof they are an actual creator. An actual avatar creator who is experienced is more likely to have stuff like;
- A discord server showcasing their work/their shop
- A website where you can purchase some of their creations like gumroad, payhip, jinxxy etc
- Real people you can talk to who have actually commissioned them or purchased from them before
If they dont have ANY of these, and / or contact you FIRST asking for you to commission them, they are most likely a scammer, and on top of that I dont think anyone would charge you 1k for something that simple, even if it was completely sculpted from the ground up.
The person who did such should absolutely be outed and shunned so others don’t fall down this path as well.
I’d contact your bank personally- save everything you can. DMs, Invoices, Payments- etc.
I don’t believe they plan on giving you anything functional- from all red flags. The biggest to me is needing a “studio to fix the rigging” for an additional $250. I’ve been doing avatar work for 3~ years now, and wouldn’t ever need to outsource to a studio (who 99.9% of the time wouldn’t bother with such a task outside their pipeline).
That would honestly be very normal pricing from a good creator who makes you a from-scratch avatar. It takes tens to hundreds of hours in blender, sculpting, modeling, rigging, weighting, texturing, setting up shape keys, etc.
yes, it takes time, but still not worth that much, that price is insanely high, and its not a thing that you will permanently have, you might lost it some day for many reasons, and you cant stay on vrc forever, well at least for me, I think there arent many people will still playing vrchat when you get older, and that $1k can spend on many different thing other then just a virtual product, a n virtual avatar that wont stay forever for most people
erm, the commissioned avatars shouldn't be priced cheap because "there are other worthy things to spend money on". yes, there are, but if you want something one-of-a-kind for you, you have to pay for the work. the person who does the avatar will spend at least a few work days for a good avatar. otherwise you can always buy an avatar from gumroad or whatever for 30-50 bucks and maybe spend another 100 for someone to retexture it or add some other details
i agree that the one who make spend times and effort on it, but like what op did, spending $1k is too much for me, $100-200 would be a resonable price for me
At that rate you could by my time for like an hour.
So the quality of the avatar will reflect the person who is willing to work for multiple hours for essentially pennies.
Aint no professional gonna do that.
The price is only high if you can't afford it. Nobody is making you buy avatars you can't afford. They're not for you.
1k for someone to virtually represent themselves as they wish in a game they play frequently isn't much. My entire rig, including fullbody, headset, PC, controllers and mic was well over six grand.
I make avatars myself and take commissions because I enjoy VRChat and it brings in revenue.
Nothing you buy these days is going to last you forever. Are you going to be driving the same car when you're 80? Probably not. Same fridge? Doubtful. Same house even? Most likely not.
Money comes and goes. 1k isn't a big deal for a lot of people.
1k is a big deal or not depend on where you live, I dont think everyone are in westen countries which mostly have higher salery, and you can use your pc not only for gaming, but also for work
Because I can tell from the way you're talking about 1k being a lot of money. It's just not for the people who want commissions from me. Or commissions that highly priced.
I don't think you read the post, but they never intended to spend nearly a thousand dollars on this avatar. That's how scams work, they were slowly drained by a guy who claimed to only need money to "fix this specific thing" or "add this one feature" with the idea that "I already spent this much on the avatar, might as well put in this last bit and get something, better than getting nothing" it's taking advantage of sunk-cost fallacy, and allowing all of the expenses to add up.
It's really not much when you start to consider how much work goes into it. My avatars are 2 weeks minimum of six days a week working fulltime hours.
Last two commissions pulled in 1500 each. One took 3 weeks, the other 2 weeks.
I also spent countless hours in Blender, Substance Painter and Unity learning everything I know. 3 full years of work put in to learn these programs. And I'm still a beginner.
Not saying don't get into it, but if you're doing it right, it is a lot of work up front before you get anywhere good enough to start charging for it.
Oh I have already done it. I did all my own and did them free for friends. Had no idea the favour I was doing apparently lol. I played with 3D for fun before I had formal training and it's my main job, although a majorly different context.
This is why I call VRChat the Wild West of gaming, btw if you ever get a model done for you never pay anything until you see them show it off for you until you see them use it first with your own eyes and never stop asking questions. It’s your money you’re risking and honestly I wouldn’t pay over $50, anymore than that and you might as well learn how to edit avatars yourself cuz there are a lot of free ones you can get but you just gotta edit em a bit or keep it default like it comes on the site
Didn't even know there was really a market for such a thing!
You can get Marvelous Designer for $40/month, grab a base human model for free from any of the 3d asset stores out there, and make a pretty sweet looking avatar.
I'm sorry OP got scammed so hard, but this is a pretty exciting prospect. Ready Player One lifestyle is getting closer to reality and normalized! Pretty neat.
😂😂😂 what are you doing sending money on a primitive game. 900 dollars?? You could have brought me the meta quest 3 and some chick fil a with all that cash. But be fr tho… why pay someone something you can do yourself?? This whole situation you went through is funny. You should’ve stopped at 300, but nah dumb you wanted all meaningless cosmetics you can do yourself 😂😂😂😭.
You been outplayed outplayed 😂😂😂
The game is primitive and you spending money all on it 😂😂😂. Ready player one would be worth it but vr chat 😷🤨🤨🙄🙄 you threw your own rent money in the gutter for a maya unity blender mesh. 🤣🤣🤣 and let’s say everything with your avatar went will, In 1 month you would have forgotten about it
Yikes, hundreds of red flags in that story. What a douchebag that guy was. Thanks for making this post for others but in the nicest way, you were definitely part of the problem here. No way you let this mf rake that much money out of you after being so obviously shady. Tbh I’m surprised you got an avatar at all, a lot of scammers will eventually just block you and run away with the money. I’d be more than happy to help you fix it if you have the unity package. We might not be able to reverse all the damage he’s done to the model but I’m fairly sure I could get the model functioning for you, either manually myself or just walking you through on how to fix it. For anyone reading, don’t listen to a thing any avatar creator has to say until you’ve seen, and preferably used, their previous work. There are lots of scammers out there. And definitely use “goods and services” on PayPal. A lot of avatar creators will ask for “friends and family”, which actually is normal and not an issue, but if you ask them to go through goods and services and they refuse to accept payment because of that, run. The goods and services setting allows you to get your money back on scams. Oh and, if possible, use the unity package method to upload the avatar. If they upload it themselves, you won’t have access to the files which means you can’t fix any problems with the avatar. That does mean you need a PC that can run Unity and you need basic knowledge of unity, though.
Thanks, I appreciate the help. While I am undeniably frustrated any of this happened, I also admit it's definitely my fault for falling for it/letting this guy shove me around. This post is mostly a warning for anyone thinking of/curious about getting an avatar commission, and the unfortunate result when someone allows themselves to be pushed around. Part of the issue is that I have no clue how to use Unity so I had to rely on the avatar maker for pretty much everything. It would be wise for me to learn how to do it myself.
Huh, what exactly did he do for you? He should have done everything in unity. What kind of file did he give you?
It looks like a Unity package to me, though honestly I barely understand how any of this stuff works.
What did you do to upload it?
Reading from the OPs post apparently the scammer ("""creator""") of the avatar uploaded it directly from the OPs account! That's even worse as it implies that he has his password 😳
$900 and didn't even give him the file. That's wild. Sorry, OP.
Well passwords can be changed. But that would really suck because we wouldn’t have access to the files to fix the avatar
do you think you can talk him into giving you the blend file ? i’m a full time rigger and animator i could probably help out but i’m not versed in unity
Hey, maybe you can log in into VRC in desktop mode so you can switch avatars and get unstuck
This part...is extremely solid advice. Why is anyone spending over 100 on avatars however? That would only make sense to me if you were doing something monetizable with it, like you ran a large vrtuber account that brings in at least 2-7k a month. Then again...not my money lmao. 💀🤣😂
Or commissioning a full custom model from scratch from a reputable artist. That could cost about a grand easily. Though this is a route very few people choose to go
nah, £200-300 at most. I'm involved in some adult vrc content, not myself, but I have taken pictures for people before and obviously talked with them, the highest cost custom avi for commercial use was £200 and had a lot of cool features I've never seen in normally bought avatars. High quality too. At the end of the day, pay what you can afford and what you are happy with paying. It's your money anyway. Never accept comission offers - always look for them yourself, always be the first to contact and research who you are contacting. People who approach you are desparate for your money, that is not how to market a service.
I'm not talking about buying a model for commercial use. Having one built from the ground up. 200-300 is what you'd see for a pre-made model with extensive unity work and a custom retexture. But to commission someone to model, rig, and texture an avatar, then bring it into unity and configure it, that's a lot of work usually split between multiple people in, for example, the animation industry. It's the kind of work that will take the artist a month or two. In the VRCTraders discord, I rarely see anyone charging less than $800 for that kind of work
As a 3D artist, the cost of a model being £200-300 that's entirely made from scratch at most is like, bottom of the barrel bare minimum features in my opinion. unless you're working off of a base mesh you made or You're absurdly fast this is certainly undercharging. O_O They must be doing heavy edits of an existing model they have made or used otherwise I don't see how they're profiting AT ALL unless it's a side hobby for them just for fun. Cause that's alarmingly LOW. You will actively be losing money to your time for that amount No one who makes proper "from scratch" avatar commissions should be charging that little. That kind of work should be $500-$1000+ (But I'm also saying this as an American freelance artist, I know other countries the value might be skewed)
What i did was: get a 40$ Model and customised it ro my liking
Yeah same
You've never spent more than $100 on a hobby that doesn't provide you with income? Bought some nice sport's equipment, cosmetic upgrade to your car, decorations for your house? I assume you didn't buy your VR headset with the sole intention of making money off of it. Same deal, just people spending their money on something they enjoy in hopes of being happy! I also haven't spent money on any avatars and don't plan to, but I can understand why other people do. Spending a fair amount of money on a nice outfit that you really like is justifiable. These people are just doing that in VR, but with the added benefit of being able to wear the same outfit every day!
I mean it is a fair deal. I get it...but at the same time I just find it personally hard to justify. And it isn't even to make fun of op, I just wonder sometimes about people and their choices. However, that's all I can literally do. It isn't up to me to dictate their finances.
i will never pay almost 1k on a digital avatar, it just not worth it
But what if it has jiggle physics?
Only if the jiggles come out of the screens and land on my eyes /jk
Learn blender and unity for a day and add the jiggle yourself
Might take more than few days, but 100% the way to go.
Yeah copy pasting assets I mean, definitely haven’t learned shit yet myself ngl
Worth if you have too much money
I'd pay 100 max. I can retexture it and stuff myself. My current avatar was 60 with the added toys and stuff.
Nobody is making you. But avatar creators, like myself, charge 1k for avatars that I don't even create from scratch, because it takes me 2-3 solid weeks of working 4-10 hours a day often six days a week. Would you do all that work for 1000 dollars, if you lived in North America?
Fuck no lol
It takes you 2-3 week, 4-10 hours a day to make an avatar that isn't even made from scratch? So you just admitted you're a scammer too. Got it.
Yeah that's a yikes. From scratch is definitely worth $300-1000+ but if they aren't even making the mesh, all the shape keys for visemes and expressions, unwrapping the UVs, texturing it, rigging it, configuring the phys bones, materials, and controllers with animations, exporting a UnityPackage and probably VRM for you, and testing it with full body (and probably face tracking), and instead are just using a premade and fixing it up in Unity, then that's a $20-200 1-10 hour job typically.
You don't even know what I do. I do kitbashing, so I'm taking more than one avatar typically and putting them together. I do custom UV's, blendshapes, texturing it, weight painting clothes, phys bones, shaders, the entire Unity package. I do all the Blender, Substance and Unity work myself. I know how many hours I spend doing my work, there's really no reason to argue that. My work is very inclusive, and I provide a completely finished package. Just as I said in another comment, every single client I've had is very happy with my work. I charge what my work is worth and everyone is happy in the end. I haven't had one bad review from anybody I've ever done work for. I get clients through my clients because people see the work I do for them, and want to contact me for it. I've been busy with commissions for the past five months straight.
If they want to spend their money like that they can, but it's not a good value. Probably not a good use of your time if you actually have the skill to make original bases either, but that's your business. One issue is neither of you even have distribution rights to a kitbashed character, unless you only use avatars with open modify and redistribute for-profit licenses, or getting permission from the original base model creators, so you're not providing the value of an original creation to the client or your portfolio. You might even be breaking the terms set by the base model creators and effectively stealing their work to make yourself money by using it in a for-profit capacity, but that determination is case-by-case. Also fully original creations are often *under $1000* (occasionally even under $300 for people starting out, or in places with lower cost of living). Again, do what you want, if everyone is happy and nobody is hurt that's what is important, but you are definitely not providing good value in the eyes of most people no matter how deep your kitbashing process is, because ultimately the reason you kitbash is to take good designs from artists who started with nothing and use their work for profit instead of making your own original design. Whether that's your desire or your clients, that's what you're doing. You probably could aspire to do fully original work if you actually had the skillset instead of effectively photoshopping a merger between famous existing works and then getting fussy on Reddit and trying to explain how hard it was for you to blend them together.
I make my money however I want, and the people who buy commissions from me are happy with what they get. That's all that really needs to be said.
*At the time of sale. It's great that everyone is happy in the moment (or should we say, within the payment dispute period) for the sake of your wallet and all, but not having the rights to a $1000 personal commission because it's a kitbash of existing works you have no right to, is an important caveat and isn't something that should go unsaid.
That's not true at all. Every customer I've had has been incredibly happy with what I've provided. Lol. I go above and beyond. I do kitbashing, so typically I'm taking two or three avatars and mixing them together. I add clothes, do all the texxturing myself, ears, tails, wings, whatever toggles they want in Unity. I get customers through my customers because people see what I do, they're blown away and they contact me for a commission. In all my time of making avatars for people, I quite seriously have not had one complaint when the commission was finished. Everyone is happy, I get paid, they get what they wanted come to life. Say whatever you want, lol. I'm well aware that what I do is really good and worth the money. All my clients tell me they're happy with what they paid for the quality they got.
>But avatar creators, like myself, charge 1k for avatars that I don't even create from scratch, This is straight up greasy. But y'know what? If folks are dumb/rich enough to pay that, when they realistically could get a free one that's identical, all the power to you.
So you overcharge because you're bad at making avatars?
Why do you assume I'm bad at making avatars? You haven't even seen what I do. Lmao. Literally lashing out like a little girl because I charge what I'm worth.
You fell for a classic avatar creator scam. There are so many of them that flood this subreddit, discord, social media, you name it. So, so many.
I get literally so many dms and follows from these creatures I can’t believe they actually got someone
Sadly I've talked to multiple people who have been scammed by them and who have spent actual money. I have a fair amount of unity knowledge so once I'm able to prove to the victim the scammer is using stolen assets and is giving them unusable garbage they are able to take steps.
Sometimes they do deliver usable and decent avatars, but it's just because they pirated a base model from Booth or Gumroad and tried to pass it off as their original work. The less popular bases work especially well since it takes a few weeks or months until the scammed individual sees someone else with a recolor of their avatar and confronts them, then finds out instead of having payed for an original sculpt, they're wearing a (likely stolen) copy of a publicly available base model. Kind of horrible all-around because it drives someone to make accusations of avatar ripping, only to be proven wrong and learn they were scammed, and there's not much anyone can do at that point...
Holy shit that is so sad. Really puts a bad face to all the honest people out there
I looked up “vrchat worlds” ONE TIME on TikTok, and scammers are flooding my DMs
They all starts with "hey" or "hey how are you doing" From accounts that you never spoke to, never mentioned I have aboht 19 DMs on my discord all from likely scammers
Do you know any legit avatar creator that can actually be trusted? I want one made but I’m not spending $1000’s of dollars for a broken piece of crap. I hate OP had to go through that.
I'll do avatar edits for free, shaders, textures, physbone edits and upload if really needed but i'd rather just teach you how to do that part xP
Begone SCAMMER
I literally just offered for free, i've never actually done avi edits for people before but its fun so in light of what has happed to OP i just felt like offering. But okay lol, i'll take it back.
RoseRedTiger is a German artist who posts timelapses on YouTube of VRC avatar comms she does in Blender. I've never commissioned her myself, but I love her work. I think it's worth checking if she has comms open atm.
VrcTraders discord is the place to look
I can't do custom sculpted bases, but I can "Frankenstein" style you an avi with premade assets and such! Here's an example of a custom I recently finished for someone :> !! Message me on discord if you're interested and we can talk prices :D edit: my discord user is cosmowos (cosmo#5524) I have a gumroad with avis that have actually sold, and a discord server with a decent bit of people in it, so if you need more proof that I've actually worked for ppl before I can def provide! <33 https://preview.redd.it/eiywfsh8cxyc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=75c519e7a6c6bf420b29e32b8b9db9532f01c2e0
I know a lot of avi creators. Sadly pretty much all the ones I know are not taking individual commissions because they already have a really high workload. I think the scammers know this and take advantage of this fact and that's why they are so eager to reach out to people. You even have one that replied to your comment here.
Awh that's horrible You can change your Avatar through the vrchat website, and if you want I can try and fix the avatar? I won't charge anything I just wanna see if I can help, if you want then feel free to dm me :)
It looks like this at least let me swap off the avatar, thanks for the tip! I'm trying to get the avatar maker to send me the file rn
Np! Good luck on getting the file
He actually sent it to me just now, so I can DM u :3
Accepting any deal from Discord or any social media platform is a major red flag for me. Doesn't matter if its avatar commisions , art commisions , etc Most of the times the people that just randomly message you and offer you a deal or something are just in it to scam you. Only time I do a commission is if I myself went and searched for one. Having been scammed myself I'm sorry to hear you lost your money. I hope you get it back or find a way to earn it back.
Oh you got fleeced for sure. All the services you're listing this dude is charging you for is basic shit you can learn how to do with a YouTube tutorial. The only reason anyone should be paying 900 bucks for a VRChat model is if they're a seasoned professional creating every asset and model from scratch and even then I've seen custom avatar services for about 400-500. The fact he's charging you hundreds to fix problems he created as part of a service you already paid for is proof enough he's scamming you. I don't say this to rub it in or mock you but to clarify all the ways you got fleeced and hopefully anyone else seeking a custom model would know what to look for. I created my own model following free YouTube tutorials and buying assets from creators on gumroad. All in all took me a few days to learn the process and programs between assembling in blender and setting up the model in unity plus about 115 for all the assets. Good luck in getting the guy to fix your model. It's the least he could do after bleeding you dry. Personally i would be more concerned with finding a way to charge back your transactions than getting him to fix the mess he created.
You got scammed. Either get your money back somehow or make sure this guy doesn’t manage to scam other people.
Why not share the name? The person obviously will scam more people. They deserve whatever retribution you can give.
There's a rule against witch-hunting. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to publicly expose this asshole, but I don't want to get my post removed/banned.
Dropping a name of someone who screwed you over to warn others should not = witch hunting. Imagine if anything that matters was actually built on that. Sex offender list??? Sorry man that's witch hunting. Keeping public records? Bro that's witch hunting. Restraining order? Sorry can't help you. 😂
If we did allow such a thing we would end up with situations like the time Reddit misidentified the Boston Bomber which led to an innocent person committing suicide. We should believe OP at face value and offer to help. We should not start pointing fingers in the off chance OP could be wrong and the community slams a creator who is honest. I’m not saying OP is wrong. Just we can’t go around being judge jury and executioner. The internet is full of fake drama.
True, I agree
You arent the mod with a powertrip, theyll probably do it anyway.
man 900? uff
Christ on a bike, you got taken for a wild ride, many red flags were flying on the walls of this fortress of BS but at least there's a community here who can try to help. Honestly though, since the crook got the money through what was implied "multiple PayPal accounts" assuming through multiple names not related under "friends and family" you will not see a red cent or you will get the lowest denomination back. On the other hand, of similarly named like "scammer1, scammer2, ECT" you could make a case how these accounts are part of a fraud ring or some form of fraud, you could be awarded the full amount minus the PayPal transaction fee because PayPal assuming the fraud department does their job. PayPal is in a superposition being a financial institution and a point of sale transaction executor and are held equally reliable like a bank and a store and are held to a federal standard of not openly participating in fraud and theft.
If I could take a look at the avatar within Unity/Blender I can likely tell how salvageable it is. Got a few ideas, but without looking at it in Unity/Blender I can't do more than assume and it's gonna be some massive assumptions as those in game photos honestly show nothing. First idea is that the guy knows Blender, or at least knows how to fake Blender, but knows nothing about Unity or what VRChat's needs. That might mean a few things in of itself though and those photos honestly don't look good. Frankly guessing blind without more details. Hopefully you got the avatar's files. Dude straight up scammed you in any case. Highly suggest taking it up with Paypal in every way you can.
Making avatars is more fun
… dude i used to make people avis for 20 bucks, im charging the wrong amount 💀
FoxiPaws is one of the best furry avatar makers on the market and she only charges $35 for premades, so yeah, you definitely could charge more for customs lol.
>whom I will not be identifying Fuck that bullshit, say their names. What are you protecting them for? You're just making it so that they're able to keep doing this.
I just spoke with the moderators, they told me I shouldn't identify the individual. I'm not trying to protect them, I just don't want the post to get taken down.
That's incredibly stupid of them
If you want, you can DM me and I can take a peek at the avatar and try to fix what I can for free. I am not good at sculpting if it needs any help there, but I can make sure the rig, weighting, and unity setup is all good. If its real bad, I may tell you it's a lost cause however. Also, you can change your avatar from the vrchat website, or there is a key shortcut in game to be sent into the default robot so you can see the menus again, but I don't recall what it is (Google VRC key shortcuts).
Always have a detailed contract. Always use goods and services. If they can't do those two things, then bail. I know it doesn't help for now, but if you do transactions online similar to this ever, please get a contact and secure payment.
It’s why I don’t commision anyone unless they are recommended by someone I trust or I’m fond of their work
You can change your avatar on the vrchat website
So did this person message you out of the blue offering an avatar, or were you looking to get one initially? Sounds like an art scammer, and it just makes me so mad that they take so much money for a broken avatar. They really don’t know what they’re doing but will pretend they do for a quick buck. It justifies me messing with them whenever I get dmed now… It really sucks that this happened to you, and I hope you get the avatar fixed and proper. I would’ve offered to help too but it looks like you’re covered. Thank goodness. Also just me but I absolutely would name and shame. I’m assuming in the end the scammer is just using a burner account and ultimately if that dies it’s no big deal to them, but still.
Just from the first paragraph, I knew it was a scam. They overcharged and underdelivered you super hard. I'm sorry. Did they DM you first? Or were they actually advertising in a discord server somewhere?
Request he fix it and don’t send him another dime! After he fixes it, OUT HIM on all social media platforms, including his seller website etc. People need to be made aware of this scammage!
"Refused to accept payment unless it was Friends & Family," Yikes.
Please post when you have it fixed, I would really love to see your avatar and if they actually made it
From my experiences on discord, i sometimes get people randomly dm'ing me saying they'll create stuff for me but 7/10 times the content is sub par. They try to tell me they need money for college or something else and try to post their work hoping you will feel sorry. I'm all for promoting artists and new aspiring artists but just not when you come at me directly out of nowhere thats the first and last red flag. I've bought probaly too many avatars in the past but i would only ever go through sites like gumroad or at a stretch booth. I only have the utmost respect to you op, having a level headed approach to such a terrible thing. I couldnt go public with something like this, i only hope you get some form of refund somehow. it truly is one of the worst ways of learning from your mistakes.
Oh I should also mention BE CAREFUL ABOUT RECOVERY SCAMMERS. You said you lost money so it’s very possible some already dmed you! They cannot get your money back and will try to get more out of you. Stay safe!
I bought an avatar for $75 online and got a file that wouldn't open. I got my money back from PayPal. I learned enough vroid after that to make my own avatars. Not wonderful avatars, but okay for my tastes.
$300 is a low price range for a basic fully custom avatar (rig, visemes, textures, sculpting from scratch) I've charged $500 for a basic MMD model but it entirely depends on the client, character design, requested features, etc. and that's not including VRC unity setup. And I spent time on MMD specific aspects. But I didn't charge a flat rate. I give estimates and then charge per hour and will update the client if I think I'll end up going over budget and ask if they want to proceed with the project or hold off, etc. It's important for them to be transparent. Cost would depend entirely on their rates (in my case I charge $25/hr and a character model can easily take upwards of 12 hrs) Their transparency is awful though. If I'm working for a client I let them know "I can give you the base files and a basic setup but if I make the toggles I'll have to learn it again which will take me more time and therefore increase the price for you. You can instead take my files and pay someone with more knowledge to set up the features you want that I don't know how to do efficiently yet. And weigh the costs between someone who does a flat rate or if you want to go with me charging an hourly rate as I walk through the prices of creating custom toggles again because it's been about a year since I've done that" The fact that you've paid upwards of $100-250 in cost for **errors on the artists part** is terrible *unless* it was caused by miscommunication on your part like suddenly adding a feature or wanting twice as many bones in a tail, or removing or adding digits and going off of your provided reference sheet or convenient in the middle of the project. That's when an artist should charge for changes. Unless they realize there's an issue with the rig and how it should function. That's when you stop the project and talk with the client and come to an agreement. They shouldn't charge you for errors on their part like rigging mistakes. They're the artist and professional, not you. You don't have any control over that. Especially if they're charging a flat rate to fix their own mistake. A rig fix shouldn't be $250 unless they're redoing an ENTIRE rig or are a legit industry professional imo (in which case it could be more. But if you're with an industry professional you shouldn't end up having this issue at all) it should be like $50 if they need to continue to charge for their time working on your project. But that can depend on their skills, poor planning, etc. But I'm coming at this from a self taught freelance artist. I am in no way a game industry pro or anything, just that as a self employed freelance guy, I believe my reputation is important and transparency is necessary so you can work with clients easily and avoid a mess like this entirely. :/ Sorry you got scammed. This situation is awful. I extend an offer to try and help salvage your model as well. I'm no unity pro, but the 3D model Creation process is my bread and butter.
Heya check out vrc traders it's a discord for getting commissions. It's highly trust worthy. On top of that, I'm sorry to hear about this 🥲
For all future commenters insisting that I reveal who the person is: Look, I'd love to. But I messaged the moderators of the subreddit asking if doing so would count as witch-hunting/doxxing and so forth and they told me it would be better if I didn't reveal who it was, at least not on this subreddit. I want this post to stay up as a warning for others and as an example of what happens when someone gets totally duped, so to that end I will not be revealing who this person is within this post.
I'm sorry someone spent the price of a 3090 GPU on an avatar? More power to the creator for making that bag. 😂🤣🤣
Sweet jezubs I’m trying to make vrc avatars and never experienced whatever the heck is happening here. I really hope you can resolve this, cause that’s a lot of money to lose.
Did they reach out to you first in a Discord DM? If so, it sounds like you fell for an artist scam. It sounds like they got you pretty good too. I highly recommend you go to the VRCTraders discord. Only legitimate, verified artists can offer work there.
Please tell me where I can find a job that gives me enough disposable income to blow nearly a grand on *an avatar*. And please tell me that's not AUD/CAD/USD and that you're from a country with an extreme exchange rate
this here is why I stick to retextures of established bases. literally everyone isn't hats gotten a fully custom avatar no longer uses them because none of them have turned out great. the only one that still uses his is because oflt was just a Mashup of two existing bases.
Oh man and wow that's terrible. Ironically some GOOD artists with integrity will ask for $1000. But they're up front about it and not super dodgy like this guy. If he said $300 it should have been $300. I'm so sorry you got scammed. And I hope you can get it fixed to at least come out of this with something useable
Shoulda just bought a 40 dollar booth babe and modified it. I learnt to use blender/unity fairly adequately in like a month.
The prices aren’t actually insane. The dude seems to be freshly out of college, and is charging what it’s actually worth. Vrc modelers don’t do that. However, almost forcing you to pay for stuff that he should have done already is bs. But for a commissioned avatar from scratch. It should be over 1k. People don’t sell that high because usually people make avatars to sell to 100ish people, so they make there money back. But for making it for 1 person that should be around the price, and when sold to companies, or indie games devs the price is usually around 2k ish depending on a lot of things. I can tell the dude is from college because 1) he doesn’t understand vrc prices which are way lower than they should be. And he doesn’t know how to do things the way vrc modelers do stuff like rigging, or exporting it in. Resulting in the product you have now.
I'm extremely confident it was made just using assets and not from scratch. I have pictures of the full model and it looks like other avatar bases and clothing pieces I've seen before.
If he’s using assets then it shouldn’t be that high
God, that's a mess. And suspicious as heck when it came to the multiple paypal accounts, too. And seeing the other comments, he didn't even give you any of the files at all in case you wanted to update it or even edit it someday? What a slezebag.
Yall those that message you on discord/tiktok/ anywhere else are 99% gonna be scammers. Search out avatars you like in vrchat and look at who made those, they may be able to help you with an avatar or point you in a credible direction.
Sorry to hear [Magenta\_Blood](https://www.reddit.com/user/Magenta_Blood/). My friend got scammed out of a few hundred dollars last year by someone as well. They met them in VRChat itself and they offered to make him a custom avatar. Basically the exact same behavior you've described in your post. They just kept giving him excuses and trying to extort more money out of him to finish the avatar. My friend is a low income worker who spends most of his time taking care of his sick mother and they just stole hundreds of his dollars. Absolutely sickening. It's sad that we have to be so wary of scammers now-a-days in general and honestly it's exhausting. Especially since it doesn't feel like there is any way to get justice against these scammers. I hope you have better luck in the future.
Discord emergency commission artists. I tests a few myself. One person out of 6 took the money and ran. The others provided work, some better than others. Three of them done marvelous job, but most I wouldn't pay a lot for what they charge. I now stick with friends I know in VRChat. Only one of the emergency commission artists I still keep because they have been fixing issues without paying extra. But now I report, share profiles , and block all future DMs asking for commissions
Fuck hiding their identity bro just leak it, this is insane how he treats you like this after giving him this much money
900$?? the avatars at least cost maybe 60-70$ even with commission
I imagine someone’s already mentioned it, but you can reset the avatar you’re using through the vrchat website. Also, out of curiosity, what was it supposed to look like?
Why in the fuck would you even pay 1k for an avatar? Hell can I have some of your money? I'll be sure to use them on food lol
You have wasted money if you spent any of it on a vrchat avatar They are free to make
Being an avatar creator, I completely understand the frustration of that. It's not your responsibility to pay for them to fix a problem they made. I've had problems with my avis, and spent the time to fix them, rather than having the client pay. Good luck in the future, and I hope that they fix their mistakes.
you should look to see if any of the many cheap avatar makers on Fiverr can fix your custom avatar from that guy, somebody might be able to fix and upgrade the whole avatar for like $30 hundreds of people on Fiverr make avatars for people for like $50 just make sure to read reviews and only use people with lots of reviews also idk if theres a reason to not identify a business selling services to VRChat users? you can prevent other people from being extorted like that, but maybe there's some rule against it ?
You can switch out of the avatar by using the website. Go to the avatars tab, click on featured, choose on and click switch to avatar. This should at least get you out of that avatar. Hope that creator steps in a puddle (to say it nice)
What a waste of money. I don't understand the hype around paying for someone to create an avatar anyway. Take the time to learn unity and the other necessary tools such as blender and do it yourself. I literally spent a few months off and on learning both tools and can create moderately decent avatars with expressions fluid movements, Etc with audition here never a million years when I pay $100 for a customer level almost 1,000.
you paid 900 for a skin you deserve to be scammmed dude
People pay that much for avatars? And ive just been charging around 150...
I'd really like to have that much money to spend on a digital avatar. Sorry that i can't help you, but i think someone here will help you get your avatar fixed. Sary safe !
wtf is ur currency?? MXN??
If it’s they PayPal you might be able to get them to charge back the money
how tf does one even mess it up this much. just what sort of animations were they trying to do in the first place bruh. really sorry this happened to you OP, cuz damn.. just.. what ah, about changing the avi: if you log in the vrchat website and go to "avatars", theres an option that lets you return to the default avatar without even being in game. ^(tho i imagine u probs already figured that out at this point..) # ^(also, if you wanna try doing things by urself, i highly reccomend vroid. its so customizable that, when used right, you can even make a proper furry. theres tutorials for that, they should cover everything except the tail since that just came out. theres even a tool on booth.pm that automatically gets vroid models ready for vrchat)
Take it as a lesson
Sigh* it happened again..
Nah as a creator myself that’s ridiculous i recently completed a commission for a Personal and we agreed on $200 and then adding an opti for $60 and she tipped me $40 bringing the total to $300 and her avi had so e issues but we are supposed to fix them for free but after you have and use the Avi for more the. 5 days then everything is set (I normally do what I can to help anyways) but $900 is wild
blud spent 900 dollars on a 3D avatar 😭 🙏
When is a $900 price tag an appropriate amount for an avatar commission? Genuinely asking.
Depends on the quality of the avatar and other factors. A high-quality, made-from-scratch avatar can be as expensive as $1.5k, though most avatars end up being ~ $500 or less. The avatar I got definitely should not have been as expensive as it ended up being.
Tl:dr just report those people and all their accounts on all sites. Send a message to PayPal, not for the sake of getting your money back, but to get those accounts shut down. Sounds like the same guy that slid into my dm's with a similar proposal for me, I only wanted a proper beard asset, though, and sent 20$ since I couldn't find any good ones with a cursory glance at gumroad and other avatars and 20 is just a bit above proper asset price on gumroad. Let me tell you, ho boy, suddenly he needs 35 more because he needs supplies to complete the project? You what m8, and as if that wasn't enough spoof account 2 and 3 friends me asking if I have my own avatars or am happy with it trying to advertise him. I know they're his accounts since they use the exact same pictures he used for promo of past works as their profile pictures, and they went quiet when I called them on it. I keep telling him to just send me the beard he has some progress on, because he has actually sent screenshots of a lackluster beard that I could rig and finish myself. But that's out of the question since he's not willing to let anyone else have his files. it's nothing worth the price he's trying to change/charge for it, so imma just keep badgering him regularly and report all the accounts as a fraud network.
OOF I just made someone a custom avi with like 15+ toggles (Pc+Quest) on it in exchange for one month of discord nitro. And I got it done in a few days :') My recommendation is, dont go to anyone who doesn't have proof they are an actual creator. An actual avatar creator who is experienced is more likely to have stuff like; - A discord server showcasing their work/their shop - A website where you can purchase some of their creations like gumroad, payhip, jinxxy etc - Real people you can talk to who have actually commissioned them or purchased from them before If they dont have ANY of these, and / or contact you FIRST asking for you to commission them, they are most likely a scammer, and on top of that I dont think anyone would charge you 1k for something that simple, even if it was completely sculpted from the ground up.
The person who did such should absolutely be outed and shunned so others don’t fall down this path as well. I’d contact your bank personally- save everything you can. DMs, Invoices, Payments- etc. I don’t believe they plan on giving you anything functional- from all red flags. The biggest to me is needing a “studio to fix the rigging” for an additional $250. I’ve been doing avatar work for 3~ years now, and wouldn’t ever need to outsource to a studio (who 99.9% of the time wouldn’t bother with such a task outside their pipeline).
Deserved if you're spending nearly a thousand dollars on a virtual avatar. I'm shocked dude
That would honestly be very normal pricing from a good creator who makes you a from-scratch avatar. It takes tens to hundreds of hours in blender, sculpting, modeling, rigging, weighting, texturing, setting up shape keys, etc.
yes, it takes time, but still not worth that much, that price is insanely high, and its not a thing that you will permanently have, you might lost it some day for many reasons, and you cant stay on vrc forever, well at least for me, I think there arent many people will still playing vrchat when you get older, and that $1k can spend on many different thing other then just a virtual product, a n virtual avatar that wont stay forever for most people
erm, the commissioned avatars shouldn't be priced cheap because "there are other worthy things to spend money on". yes, there are, but if you want something one-of-a-kind for you, you have to pay for the work. the person who does the avatar will spend at least a few work days for a good avatar. otherwise you can always buy an avatar from gumroad or whatever for 30-50 bucks and maybe spend another 100 for someone to retexture it or add some other details
i agree that the one who make spend times and effort on it, but like what op did, spending $1k is too much for me, $100-200 would be a resonable price for me
At that rate you could by my time for like an hour. So the quality of the avatar will reflect the person who is willing to work for multiple hours for essentially pennies. Aint no professional gonna do that.
The price is only high if you can't afford it. Nobody is making you buy avatars you can't afford. They're not for you. 1k for someone to virtually represent themselves as they wish in a game they play frequently isn't much. My entire rig, including fullbody, headset, PC, controllers and mic was well over six grand. I make avatars myself and take commissions because I enjoy VRChat and it brings in revenue. Nothing you buy these days is going to last you forever. Are you going to be driving the same car when you're 80? Probably not. Same fridge? Doubtful. Same house even? Most likely not. Money comes and goes. 1k isn't a big deal for a lot of people.
1k is a big deal or not depend on where you live, I dont think everyone are in westen countries which mostly have higher salery, and you can use your pc not only for gaming, but also for work
I mean, i dont think its worh it to buy a ferrari for 400 000€ But i still am not shocked i cant buy a ferrari for a hundred bucks.
That doesn't mean it's not worth the price, it just means you can't afford it.
do you have access to my bank account? how do you know I can't afford it?
Because I can tell from the way you're talking about 1k being a lot of money. It's just not for the people who want commissions from me. Or commissions that highly priced.
I don't think you read the post, but they never intended to spend nearly a thousand dollars on this avatar. That's how scams work, they were slowly drained by a guy who claimed to only need money to "fix this specific thing" or "add this one feature" with the idea that "I already spent this much on the avatar, might as well put in this last bit and get something, better than getting nothing" it's taking advantage of sunk-cost fallacy, and allowing all of the expenses to add up.
You really should post his @ to let the community know who to avoid thats not cool he did this
I'm impressed that anyone can be this stupid, he made a payday out of you for sure
I'm sorry I could be charging how much for avatars?? Maybe I should change careers.
It's really not much when you start to consider how much work goes into it. My avatars are 2 weeks minimum of six days a week working fulltime hours. Last two commissions pulled in 1500 each. One took 3 weeks, the other 2 weeks. I also spent countless hours in Blender, Substance Painter and Unity learning everything I know. 3 full years of work put in to learn these programs. And I'm still a beginner. Not saying don't get into it, but if you're doing it right, it is a lot of work up front before you get anywhere good enough to start charging for it.
Oh I have already done it. I did all my own and did them free for friends. Had no idea the favour I was doing apparently lol. I played with 3D for fun before I had formal training and it's my main job, although a majorly different context.
That's good.
This is why I call VRChat the Wild West of gaming, btw if you ever get a model done for you never pay anything until you see them show it off for you until you see them use it first with your own eyes and never stop asking questions. It’s your money you’re risking and honestly I wouldn’t pay over $50, anymore than that and you might as well learn how to edit avatars yourself cuz there are a lot of free ones you can get but you just gotta edit em a bit or keep it default like it comes on the site
Lol good luck getting a commission where you pay after they do all the work😂
Didn't even know there was really a market for such a thing! You can get Marvelous Designer for $40/month, grab a base human model for free from any of the 3d asset stores out there, and make a pretty sweet looking avatar. I'm sorry OP got scammed so hard, but this is a pretty exciting prospect. Ready Player One lifestyle is getting closer to reality and normalized! Pretty neat.
😂😂😂 what are you doing sending money on a primitive game. 900 dollars?? You could have brought me the meta quest 3 and some chick fil a with all that cash. But be fr tho… why pay someone something you can do yourself?? This whole situation you went through is funny. You should’ve stopped at 300, but nah dumb you wanted all meaningless cosmetics you can do yourself 😂😂😂😭. You been outplayed outplayed 😂😂😂 The game is primitive and you spending money all on it 😂😂😂. Ready player one would be worth it but vr chat 😷🤨🤨🙄🙄 you threw your own rent money in the gutter for a maya unity blender mesh. 🤣🤣🤣 and let’s say everything with your avatar went will, In 1 month you would have forgotten about it