What is booth.pm and for who is this guide?

What is booth.pm?

Booth.pm is a Japanese website where independent professionals can distribute their creations. And pixiv, the owner of booth puts a spin on it by saying "Creative activities are now more enjoyable". These creations vary wildly, but mostly focus on things like bags, clothing, acrylic stands, 3d models, jewelry, music, services, stickers and art. This all in a setting that most people would categorize as “homemade”.

In 2025 this market ballooned to a small powerhouse, generating almost 68 million dollars in revenue just on 3D assets alone.

These days it can be seriously attractive for Western users to buy from booth.pm as the value of the yen compared to the Dollar and Euro tend to be highly in their favour. Compared to 5 years ago, this can go up to a 40% increase in purchase power.

Since booth.pm is a Japanese website, the content tends to be focused on the Japanese speaking demographic. The people selling their products usually don’t speak English and can be limited in their ability to write English. Those that sell 3D models specifically for VRChat will assume you have some basic understanding of Unity, VRChat and/or be able to comprehend Japanese.

For the past 5 years I have noticed an increase of creators that adopt a bilingual or even trilingual shop interface. Usually in the form of Japanese, Korean and English.

Over the past years I have met some people in VRChat that were disappointed with their first time purchase or at least had a hard time getting their 3D asset/avatar to work.

This was for me the reason to make this guide so you don't need to pull hairs out of your head or clash with a language barrier to get basic questions answered.

This guide will cover:

• Explain the website booth.pm and their creators.
• Advice on deciphering Japanese text.
• Zip file issues.
  
• VRChat Creator Companion (VCC) - WiP

Yet to be included:

• Unity installation. (up for debate if this still needs to be included)
• What version of SDK to use. (up for debate if this still needs to be included)
• Additional shaders and scripts. (up for debate if this still needs to be included)
• Dynamic bone shenanigans. (up for debate if this still needs to be included)
• Unity basics. (up for debate if this still needs to be included)
• Photoshop basics. (up for debate if this still needs to be included)
  

This guide will not cover:

• Complex Unity/Udon.
• Learning Japanese
• Uploading avatars with Quest compatibility. (requested feature)
• Blender/Maya/3D modeling.
• Making adjustments to UV/Masks.
• SDK 2 to 3 conversions.

The goal of this guide

With this guide you should be able to understand what is going on with avatars you acquire from booth.pm

But before you even buy an avatar on booth.pm you need to become aware of certain hidden costs, efforts and VRChat requirements that we will cover in the next chapter.

Sheru’s booth.pm avatar guide © 2023 by ｓｈｅｒｕ is licensed under CC BY 4.0