Interview with Hayweee: Part 2
From the new Across Realities Series, Starting with Avatars...
ArmaniXR: For part 2 of this interview (part 1 here), I join avatar creator Hayweee in VRChat to learn more about her journey inside and outside of social VR, including how she shares the Caribbean culture she grew up with. This is the entire interview, edited for clarity and brevity. For email readers, feel free to view directly on Substack for the full article text. 💙🧡
Feel free to also watch the video below to see and hear more about Hayweee.
ArmaniXR: Can you tell us more about your journey learning and making your own assets? How did that start? Can you take us through the years?
I first started getting into Unity and Blender from just purchasing my first VRChat avatar. I bought a model and I thought it was great, but I was really into purple eyes at the time. A lot of the models I was buying, because I had to take it into Unity to upload it, I had friends at that time that were well-versed in the VR world and avatars and knew how to do little edits. They showed me how to edit the eye colors, how to add little jewelry on little small bones, how to change different textures and stuff like that. So I first started with bare minimum, just choosing my favorite colors and labels.
Then I wanted to swap outfits because I had some models — I liked their face, I liked their hair, but their outfits were not my favorite. At that time, I was into The Sims a lot and into downloading Sims mods. There was a lot of Sims clothing that I was familiar with downloading, and I had used Blender once or twice for Minecraft-related things. With the help of YouTube and the help of some friends, they really helped me learn how to swap out clothes and different things that I could only do in Blender.
I was doing that for a while, making avatars using other people’s clothes, hair, bodies, faces, and all of that. Until there was a shift where a lot of creators no longer wanted Sims clothes and different assets from different games to be sold within the VRChat community. Once that shift happened, and I was buying assets, I felt like I could learn how to make my own, because I was looking at tutorials for weight painting and swapping out clothes anyway. I think a chain was the first thing that I made, like a necklace, a Cuban chain.
Then I got into Marvelous Designer and was making clothes. At that time, I did not care about the technicality of it, the optimization of it. It was crazy numbers, super big files for just a jacket, for just some pants. At that time, I was just learning how to design. Then as time went forward and I got complaints about my things being way too high poly, then I learned about optimization and the best ways to make things more user-friendly and more friendly for VRChat as a platform, rather than just making 3D models for them to look good. So it went from little edits in Unity to swapping things out in Blender and then making my own things and learning about optimization and making things look good.
For people who are very new to the concept of avatars in social VR, can you explain the avatar ecosystem? How would you explain bases and outfit swaps and repainting, and why does that matter?
It’s one thing to just buy an already made model and upload it because everything is already done for you. But in terms of swapping out clothes, weight painting is very important to make sure that things don’t clip. You need to have the knowledge of how to keep colliders and certain things that fall at a good distance so they’re not meshing in between, so they’re solid objects and not colliding with each other. Learning how to weight paint is very important, but there’s so many tutorials on YouTube. There’s so many different ways to do it.
In terms of buying bases and different assets, a lot of it is art made from an individual with their own desires, with their own sets of rules. There are assets, clothing, and bases made by people who say you can use this on any avatar you want. You can use it on a public model. You can use it on a model that’s used for free. A lot of people who allow their models to be sold on other avatars won’t let their models be used for free and in a public world, while others might. That’s all from the choice, the discretion of the person who made those things. Because it’s their art. They put a certain amount of time into it. There are a lot of people who steal. There’s a lot of people who rip. So to mitigate that, a lot of people put their bases and their clothes on restrictions, like not being able to use it in public worlds. Public avatars are easily ripped and stolen because it’s just right there. Whereas if it’s a private avatar that somebody is selling, that’s more exclusive in a way.
It’s very important, if you’re getting into avatar creation or making your own, that you read the guidelines that the creator sets for their things, just to respect them and their art and their time. It might seem like a lot. But as soon as you get into it, reading the posts that people make, joining Discord and asking questions, there’s a lot of Discord communities now for new creators learning. There’s different sessions for learning how to weight paint, learning how to rig, or whatever it might be. It’s very accessible and it might be a little overwhelming, but it’s not as crazy as it might seem, especially when you dip your toes in and find the right people to talk to and ask questions.
If avatars are something you have the time for, would you say it’s worth it to invest time into making your own avatar or even commissioning artists? Or does it depend?
It really depends on your interests…honestly, your hobbies, because avatar creation can be very time-consuming. Blender and making an asset, even just putting an avatar together from premade assets, takes a lot of time to weight paint, to put into Unity, and to put the features of the avatar that you want for toggles and this and that. All of it takes time. To get into it, I feel like it would really help if you had an interest in character creation.
For me, I was really into virtual worlds, open worlds, MMOs and stuff because you could do the character creation, because you can make whoever you want to be. I enjoyed dress-up games growing up. I am into fashion. I’m just into different design elements like that. So if that is something that you’re interested in, I would definitely recommend taking the time to learn to make your own.
Not only does it give you a nice, fulfilling, satisfying feeling being in game making an avatar that you spent a lot of time on, even if you didn’t actually make anything from scratch, even if you just put together premade things. Having a completed model in a game just feels very whole, very complete. It feels like a full-circle moment, like that long gratification of working on something and then finally being in that thing, saying, “I made this,” looking at yourself and enjoying what you made. Especially seeing it move — that was my favorite part in avatar creation.
But if that’s not something that you’re generally interested in, then going to any sort of public avatar world and finding an avatar—because there are so many available—is just as good. There’s a lot of free models as well when you join different Discord communities. There’s a lot of open resources already. But if you are very into it and you want the satisfying feeling, not only does it feel satisfying, but you can make a profit out of it too, because this is a growing community. People are putting a lot of money into VR. People are putting a lot of time and effort, and people really take this place very seriously. If that is something that you’re interested in, you can make a profit. It’s very good passive income if you’re very consistent with it, if you enjoy what you make, if you put the effort into what you make. I definitely recommend it, especially in this economic climate. If that’s something that you’re interested in, definitely get into it, because you can grow in many different ways.
As I’m talking with you I see how your hair is moving. I want to know more about your process with hair and how you got to this moment. What has your journey been with that, and specifically with this avatar?
In my personal journey, I’ve sort of moved away from avatar creation into asset creation. Avatars take a very long time to make, and after a while, it just got very frustrating for me. There are so many avatars being made, and it’s amazing. But one of the things that I found was lacking in this community was hair for Black people. There were a few creators that were making braids, making locks, but it was every once in a while here and there. I didn’t find that there were too many people doing that. So I decided to give it a go, even though there was not a lot of tutorials on it.
That was the learning curve, because there’s not a whole lot of resources in how to make locks and curls and braids with it being optimized for VRChat. But I did learn that there were different plugins and stuff like that for Blender that helped with that. When I discovered a plugin called Anime Hair Maker, which allows you to make braids and twists very easily, that really launched me in a whole different direction. I was like, now it’s time to focus on hair, because there’s a very big lack on that. I think my first POC hair was a puff. I did an afro puff with some curls coming out of it. That was really interesting to do because I’ve seen a lot of different afros and stuff like that in The Sims and IMVU, but how it was made was slightly different. It’s not optimized. So I was trying to find different ways that I could fill the puff with something and then have the curls on the outside to make it appear like it’s a puff full of curls.
I was really happy about this hair because I feel like I don’t see too many twists or box braids or anything like that. When I made this, there was a really good response with this hair, which is just twists, honestly. My most recent hair that found a lot of success on Instagram Reels and TikTok was my locks that I made. I took a lot of inspiration from how IMVU hairs are made, how they’re constructed. But I was trying to make it optimized for VRChat. That’s the number one thing, really.
I was trying to make some simple tubes that looked like the shape of locks. Then I added some loose curls on the end, but really the texture of the locks pulled everything together, especially the parting with the scalp and all of that. I was really just trying to experiment, but also use inspiration from already premade things, because there are already lots of locks and braids and twists in these 3D spaces, not necessarily for VRChat, but for other games. Using these things as inspiration and finding ways that we can make it our own, finding ways that we can make it for VRChat is great. I feel like that’s how artists create. They use references, they use inspiration.
What’s the story or lore behind Benji?
I was clothes shopping one day on this website called Dolls Kill, and I found a very cute plushie, which is this exact plushie actually. It’s like a bear and it has this skeleton and a cute little face, except it doesn’t have the mouth in real life. I do have this plushie on my bed currently, just because I thought it was cute. It reminded me of an edgy VRChat style that I was seeing a lot at that time. So I was like, yeah, this is quite perfect for VRChat. So I recreated it in Blender and added it to a few avatars, and it’s now here in my avatar world. So, a lot of pieces of me within my creations.
Would you recommend bringing things that players like into their social VR space? What’s your perspective on crossing realities?
I feel like it really depends on how you perceive yourself, how you perceive your environment. If it’s something that you don’t really enjoy, that you’re not too fond of, then maybe that’s something you don’t want to spend too much time in Blender doing. But if it’s something that you really like and you’re very interested in it, I definitely recommend bringing your favorite items into VR.
Bring your favorite pieces of clothing or your favorite hairstyles, because things like that get you excited to go into Blender and to do the very tedious things that you have to technically do. I find it adds another level of excitement when you can use your favorite things in game as well and show other people and tell them, “Hey, I actually own this thing,” or whatever it might be. It’s really nice to be able to share that with the virtual space.
Earlier we were talking about self-discovery and spiritual grounding. Can you say more about what you’ve learned with your journey there and what you’ve carried into social VR?
For me, it was really important to go through my own spiritual journey, my own personal growing path, because it really just helped me get more in touch with my art. I feel like with everyone it’s really different. Everyone is on their own personal journey, personal development, even if it’s not necessarily spiritual. I definitely recommend that people get more in touch with themselves, if that’s what they’re interested in.
I was at a point where I was struggling mentally, and I was using VR as a way to escape my own reality by coming in this reality and talking a bunch of trash with a bunch of people, laughing and not caring. But eventually I had to take off this headset and look at myself in the real mirror and sort through that. It was really important that I took the time in between my VR sessions, and even taking time away from VR, to really reconnect with myself, to really get deep into the roots of a lot of emotional things that I was going through.
So I could be more connected on an authentic level to what I was creating, rather than just creating from what’s trending or what I think people will enjoy, what I think people will buy. Really creating from an intentional space, making things that I think people could also learn from and connect and relate to. I definitely recommend everybody takes time with themselves to do that as well, if they have the openness and the will to do it. Getting in touch with yourself definitely helps you get in touch with your art as well.
What cultural or spiritual things would you want to see more of in social VR, in VRChat? What would you be curious about?
Yesterday I was searching through groups, and VRChat has these groups where there’s group instances and people meet up, like small communities within VR. I think I searched up “meditate” because I was trying to find if there were any meditation groups. I don’t think I found one. I do remember seeing a few meditation worlds, so those worlds might have their own Discord servers that maybe I’m not too familiar with.
But I feel like maybe more meditation, spiritually grounding, or just grounding in general, grounding your emotions. Not necessarily trauma dumping, but expressing freely, and also finding ways to stay present and feel more confident in the present moment and feel more relaxed. Nervous system regulation is something that we could use more in VRChat. Some more communities that go towards that. There’s a lot of great communities out there, though, so there might already be something that I haven’t run into yet.
I find a lot of VR social spaces to be very overstimulating, very loud. There are a lot of great dancing communities, but they get kind of loud, and club instances and things like that, there’s a lot of people. There’s a lot of sound. So I feel like more stillness, more peace, whether it be reading book clubs, different things like that, would be really cool. Things that introduce more peace into someone’s life. I feel like there are exercise groups or something like that that I’ve seen before, like in workout worlds. But I don’t remember seeing yoga worlds. I think that would be really cool. Being able to move in VR, there’s a lot of things that can come with that. Not only fast movements, but slow stretching could be really cool. Especially something that’s maybe women-led or encouraging for men to do things like that too. Just for everyone, honestly, I think that would be really cool.
What advice do you have for Black users or people of color, users of color or creators entering VRChat?
I definitely recommend people of color to express more authenticity in these spaces. There are a lot of very authentic personalities out there. I hear so many huge, hilarious, amazing personalities when it comes to people of color in these spaces. But as far as representing themselves, the avatars that they use to represent themselves, I feel like there could be more authenticity in that. There’s a lot of trendy-looking creations or creations that are very inspired by IMVU, GTA, and The Sims, which are cool. But a lot of that is very similar in design, similar in brand names that are worn by those avatars. Not every person of color is interested in wearing Hellstar or Nike, or little things like that that seem to be on all of these avatars. There are people who enjoy completely different things that you wouldn’t typically relate to a person of color or that culture necessarily.
That’s what’s so beautiful about these online spaces, is that you could be anything or anyone you want to be. Bringing in more authenticity, more personal touches, bringing in more of their own interests rather than what’s popular, I think would be amazing to see. Not everyone is alike. Everyone’s very unique and very different in their interests. I would love to see more designs of different skin tones that aren’t wearing what is typically shown or just what’s kind of here right now. Just things that are more unique to yourself.
For someone who’s just getting started in avatar creation, can you give a rundown of the software you recommend and what kind of pathway depending on skill level — beginner, intermediate, advanced?
Very bare bones beginner, wanting to upload your own model or a free model or any sort of model that you have handy that you want to upload: you will need Unity because that’s just what VRChat uses. Unity is number one, and I definitely recommend looking into Creator Companion (for VRChat). That’s very helpful because you can very easily put different shaders and stuff into Unity without having to look in all these different places and import all these different files. It’s all sort of in one launcher. I definitely recommend getting Creator Companion and Unity as a beginner thing and getting comfortable with that.
A more intermediate thing is getting into Blender and learning how to export and import your models from Blender into Unity. Learning the differences between a Unity package and an FBX file by itself. Blender has a wide umbrella of things that you can do, and it feels like the wild, wild west in Blender. That could be a beginner thing or a very advanced thing if you want it to be. If you want to get even more advanced with it, there are different programs to make clothes and different programs to texture. For a while I was in Marvelous Designer because I thought that was easier when it came to making clothes with more wrinkles and realistic draping rather than having to sculpt clothes in Blender. There are different texturing programs like Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, and Adobe Substance Painter.
Unity and the Creator Companion is the first and foremost thing. Then getting more advanced into customization, that’s Blender. Then texturing, in terms of making your own models, could be Substance Painter. Unity and Blender are my number ones, and then maybe Adobe Substance Painter and/or Clip Studio Paint. I recommend looking up tutorials, asking around, joining a Discord server, and asking your favorite creators or someone you really enjoy what their things look like.
How do you organize goals if you want to get more serious about different creations?
First and foremost, I always start with inspiration, something that really catches my eye and I’m like, wow, yeah, I need to recreate that. Sometimes that might be my own clothes. If I really like something in my closet that I think could look cool in VR. A lot of the time, it’s Pinterest. I am on Pinterest very often, just looking at different things that catch my eye because I’m a very visual person. I’ve also sketched out different ideas, different outfits together, just to see what it would look like as one piece. For me, it starts as the idea, the spark. I think the spark is very important because that’s what drives the rest of the creation. It takes me a while to create things, so I really need to be interested in it and have a good idea of what I’m making. It definitely starts in my own closet, Pinterest, and sometimes my journals and stuff like that.
Then I try to find a tutorial on something similar, like how to make the shape or whatever it might be. Sometimes I can’t find the exact thing that I’m making a tutorial for, but sometimes different techniques for making a necklace is the same technique that I would need for making waist beads or something like that. Finding little resources like that that would help me get there is really helpful.
Any shoutouts? Who helped you or inspired you along your journey, both in VRChat and outside of VRChat?
There’s so many people because I’ve been a part of VRChat since 2019. I’ve met so many people. I’ve unfriended so many people, but they are still very integral parts of my journey. First and foremost, I want to shout out my mom because VR is a very wild place. It’s a whole world within itself that you wouldn’t really understand unless you’re in VR itself.
She’s always been so supportive of everything that I’ve done. Hearing that I wanted to buy a VR headset, hearing that I wanted to stream in VR, hearing that I wanted to sell different things and take the time to make a website, she’s always been absolutely for that, even when I wasn’t too sure exactly what I was doing. She saw the interest there and just how much time I was spending in here and how many friends I made in here. She saw there was so much potential here and she was always so supportive. Definitely shout out to my mother. I love her so much. She even recommended me being here today doing this interview because I was very nervous and I didn’t really know what to expect. I didn’t think I had anything super important to say, but she was like, yeah, you should absolutely do it. It’s a great opportunity. So shout out to her because without her, I would not be here literally right now, in many different types of ways.
When it comes to the VR spaces, there’s so many people. Shout out to PoppyAlyssa. She was one of my first Black avatar creators or Afro-Latina creators making a lot of things for POC users on VR. She was very focused on curly hairs and the inclusivity of it all. Shout out to Swisa. She was also making a lot of dark-skinned avatars as well. Honestly, shout out to Hazie because Hazie got me into a lot of these avatars. First and foremost, she was one of the first creators where I ever favorited their avatars. Darcy as well. Shout out to Darcy.
I want to shout out Zenn as well because Zenn got me into learning about what playspace mover was and lots of different things. Shout out to my homegirl Bree, which I met through Zenn, and we’re still friends. She was one of the first ever friends that I made on VRChat, and we’re still besties. We’re still locked in. Shout out to Sache because Sache taught me so much about texturing. He taught me so much about material making and Unity.
There are so many amazing avatar creators out there, old and new. A lot of old avatar creators around 2019, 2020, 2021, when different styles were in, when people were using the same kind of faces and bodies, those are very foundational parts of what VRChat is now. I don’t think a lot of people realize how much influence they had on these games for it to look like what it does now. Father, Evan, Aika, Haruhichi for introducing me to a lot of spiritual things, Rico — thank you guys. Keep creating, keep expressing, because you definitely make a stamp, an imprint on people’s lives. You don’t even really realize it. They could be in your life for just a little bit, but they made a big impact.
How can our audience follow you, learn more about your art, your store, and support your work?
I have a few different platforms that I’m on. I try to make all of my names the same. You can find me in a lot of places under ItsHayweee. There’s three Es. I’m ItsHayweee on Twitch. Sometimes I stream on there. I also have my own Discord server, Hayweee’s Stash. I also have an Instagram, which I’ve been uploading a lot more 3D-based things because my 3D Instagram reel did really well. On Instagram, I’m Hayley.Sierra. I also have a Carrd with all of my links. It’s easiest to contact me on Discord if you have any types of questions or if you want any links to any specific thing. You can contact me on Discord by just “Hayweee”.