Layers

What are the different layers used for in VRChat? What special properties of some specific layers should you know?

Below I've listed the currently used (+ reserved) layers and their use cases based on experimentation using my layer inspection tools.

My layer research is currently ongoing and information on this page may still be incomplete!

Any object set to 19-21: reserved2-4 will be forced to 0: Default on build (You can still manually force the layer during runtime)

No	Name	Description	Visual elements	Notes
0	Default	Default layer	Avatar pedestals Emojis
1	TransparentFX
2	IgnoreRaycast
4	Water		Portals Mirrors
5	UI		Remote camera lens Player scanning highlight	Interactive objects on this layer can't be interacted with unless the menu is open Colliders of remote players exist on this layer
8	Interactive
9	Player		Remote players Remote player chatbox
10	PlayerLocal		Local player without head	VRCMirrorReflection refuses to render this layer ~~anymore (because it's creepy?)~~
11	Environment
12	UiMenu		Nameplates Remote camera nameplate
13	Pickup	Default pickup layer
14	PickupNoEnvironment
15	StereoLeft
16	StereoRight
17	Walkthrough
18	MirrorReflection		Complete local player (shown in mirrors and cameras)	Only layer that isn't rendered by the main camera (local player's sees the headless copy of themselves on layer 10) Colliders on this layer don't block VRChat raycasts
19	reserved2		HUD Main menu Camera UI Camera lens Tooltips Expression menu	Will render over everything
20	reserved3
21	reserved4