Hidden costs, efforts and requirements

Hidden costs

Some avatars/items on booth.pm require you to already possess certain things. For example, a base model, paid scripts and/or programs like Photoshop to make full use of all the features that are offered.

This can add up quite a bit if it’s your first initial purchase. For example you buy a simple avatar for ¥1500 (about 15 dollars) and then realize in order to make full use of the avatar, you need the dynamic bones script. But that’s gonna set you back another 20 dollars so the total initial cost is more like 35 dollars.
Be sure to check this before blindly slamming the buy button.
Also keep in mind that most booth stores don’t do refunds since the buyer receives goods that can’t be returned.

For those that want to modify their avatars.

If you're considering to change the textures that come with the avatar, you will most likely need a piece of software to edit these textures. Below some recommendations.

In case you're interested in legally using photoshop I would recommend the Photography subscription plan from Adobe. This includes Lightroom and Photoshop for a "reasonable" 24 euro/20 dollars per month.
(this used to be a lot cheaper a few years ago, roughly 10 to 12 dollars per month. Sometimes Adobe has sale periods that offers Photoshop stand alone for roughly 11 dollars a month.)
Photoshop is quite popular among certain creators, and some are true masters of creating very detailed and well organized PSD files.

Other programs I notice that are used are CLIP STUDIO , Krita and GIMP with the advantage that these are a lot cheaper or even free to use. But you will have issues with certain specific photoshop features that won't work here.

I recently started using Krita, and I must say that I'm often pleasantly surprised how well it works with PSD files.

Hidden efforts

The content sold on booth.pm contains mostly Japanese, like certain settings in these avatars are in Japanese. Things like tags, descriptions, file names, annotations, etc., there is a high chance it’s all in Japanese. This can be a real head scratcher if you try to find or change something in your Avatar project.

Most Japanese users that distribute their items/models on booth.pm barely speak English. They will do their best to communicate with you, but this won't guarantee that it will solve your issue. If communication is a problem you might need to do quite a bit of research, use translation tools, read this guide, learn Japanese or ask someone who can speak and/or write Japanese to help you out or communicate on your behalf.

Also keep in mind that some creators will try to use English in their projects, but they contain spelling errors. This might cause extra effort in trying to figure out why something is not named as expected and/or will give you a hard time locating a certain item in ~~the~~your Unity project.

VRChat requirements

Of course VRChat has its own requirements you need to comply with.
You need a VRChat account (not a platform account like a Steam/Meta/Viveport/Pico account version!) and need to comply with the VRChat Trust System (Content Gating) before you can upload an avatar.

If you have questions about platform accounts and how to merge them with your actual VRChat account, please check out the VRChat Help Desk page.

It perhaps sounds logical, but it’s not the first time I helped someone and then realize that this person can’t even upload an avatar because the above requirements are not met yet.

If you are new to VRChat or need more basic information about VRChat then please read this handy guide.

With all this out of the way, let's start!