With the rise in popularity of the metaverse, avatars have become an integral part of how we portray ourselves online. An avatar acts as a virtual representation of you in the digital world. Avatars allow you to customize how you look and interact in online spaces like social media, games, virtual worlds and more. Creating your own unique and stylized avatar is a great way to express your personality online. But where do you even start to make your own avatar?
The process of making an avatar will vary based on the platform or app you want to use it on. Some apps have easy built-in avatar creators that allow you to choose from preset options. Other more advanced options give you the tools to customize your avatar from head to toe. This allows you full creative freedom when designing your avatar but requires more effort on your end.
In this guide, we’ll walk through the main ways you can create your own avatar for popular online platforms and apps. We’ll look at basic avatar creators, advanced 3D avatar platforms, and how to convert your avatar for use across the metaverse. Follow along to learn how to make your own stellar avatar online!
Making an Avatar with Basic Creators
The easiest way to make an avatar is to use basic avatar creator tools on popular platforms like social media sites or gaming services. Here are some places where you can quickly generate a default avatar or choose from preset options:
Social Media Avatar Creators
Many social media platforms have built-in avatar creators that allow you to customize a default profile picture. These creators offer limited preset options like different hairstyles, outfits, facial features and backgrounds. Popular social sites with basic avatar creators include:
– Facebook: You can create a personalized avatar of yourself for your Facebook profile. They offer cartoon-style avatars with tons of customization options.
– Twitter: Twitter has a avatar generator that lets you mix and match preset features like hair, clothes, expressions and colors to create a hexagonal avatar.
– Snapchat: Create your own Bitmoji avatar to use as your Snapchat profile picture and stickers. Bitmoji offers robust customization with many style and facial expression choices.
– TikTok: TikTok has an avatar builder in their Effect House section. You can customize things like your skin, hair, eyes, eyewear and more.
– Instagram: Use Instagram’s Avatar feature to make a virtual likeness of yourself for your profile pic and messages. Adjust things like hair, accessories, outfits and colors.
Gaming Avatar Editors
Almost every gaming platform comes equipped with avatar editors to customize your profile. For example:
– Fortnite allows you to change your character’s appearance from their outfits to their dance moves.
– In Roblox you can tweak your avatar’s body parts, clothing, colors and faces.
– Nintendo’s Mii avatars can be personalized with unique facial features and styled hair.
– Xbox Live avatars let you design a gaming persona to represent you online.
– Steam has profile customization tools to change your avatar, name color and background.
The avatar editors for most gaming platforms include libraries of different cosmetic items, skins, accessories and emotes to mix and match. This lets you create a one-of-a-kind avatar tailored to your gaming life.
Messaging App Avatars
Messaging apps also integrating avatars into their platforms. Apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have their own avatar creators built in:
– WhatsApp’s avatars are based on Facebook’s avatar system and can be used as your profile image and stickers in chats.
– Facebook Messenger’s avatar editor lets you make a virtual version of yourself for video calls, stories and messages.
– Snapchat’s Bitmoji avatars double as sticker packs to spice up your Snaps.
– iMessage on iOS has Memoji to create a lifelike avatar of your facial expressions and reactions.
Having an avatar as part of your messaging apps gives your chats and group conversations a more lively and personal feel.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Basic Avatar Creators
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
| Easy and quick to make | Limited customization options |
| Preset styles to choose from | Avatars can look generic |
| Automatically integrated into platforms | Can’t export for use elsewhere |
The main benefit of basic avatar creators is their simplicity and convenience. You don’t need any artistic or technical skills to make one—just choose from the preset options and you’re good to go. However, the downside is you usually can’t fully customize or export these avatars.
If you want more control over how your avatar looks or need one that works across multiple platforms, you’ll need a more advanced avatar maker.
Designing a Custom Avatar with Advanced Creators
To make a hyper-customized avatar from the ground up, you’ll need an advanced avatar creation platform. These allow you to manually customize every aspect of your avatar for a one-of-a-kind design. Here are some top options for making fully customizable avatars online:
Ready Player Me
Ready Player Me has a robust web-based avatar creator that lets you design remarkably detailed avatars. All the assets are voxel-based, allowing you to mold your avatar’s body shape, hairstyles, clothing, accessories and more down to each blocky pixel.
You can take your Ready Player Me avatar into hundreds of 3D virtual worlds that integrate with the platform. This makes it easy to maintain a consistent avatar across metaverse experiences.
VRoid
VRoid Studio is a free 3D avatar program from Pixiv. It provides tools to customize looks, hair, clothing, expressions and poses. Once complete, you can export it as a file or use it as your VTuber model.
Avachara
Avachara has a web-based avatar maker with anime and manga inspired style. Make highly detailed avatars choosing from thousands of parts like hairstyles, eyes, clothing items and props. It also has social features to follow other users and see their avatar creations.
Genies
Genies uses AI Avatar technology to create a personalized avatar from a selfie. This creates a digital twin that looks just like you. You can customize your AI avatar’s outfits and export it for use in other apps.
Picrew
Picrew is a website with hundreds of anime-style avatar makers. Browse through the customizable templates to find one that matches your style. Once you make your Picrew avatar, you can download it as images to upload anywhere.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Advanced Creators
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
| Fully customize the look of your avatar | Can take more time to create |
| Make high quality and stylized avatars | Need artistic skill for best results |
| Exportable for use across platforms | Some advanced options cost money |
Advanced avatar creators give you full control over your avatar design. The available customization combinations are practically endless. However, these platforms can have a steeper learning curve and take longer to master than basic creators. But the time investment is worth it to have an original, multi-purpose avatar.
Converting Your Avatar for Use Across the Metaverse
Once you create a unique avatar, you’ll want to put it to use in the virtual world. Here are some tips for converting and optimizing your avatar for cross-platform metaverse compatibility:
Export formats
When using an advanced avatar editor, look for export options that can save your avatar as a reusable 3D or 2D file format. Common formats include:
– GLB/GLTF: Standard 3D model format that many metaverse platforms support.
– FBX: Another common 3D interchange format that maintains textures, animations and physics.
– PNG/JPEG: Basic image files for 2D avatars. For full customization features, look for layered PSD or SVG files.
– VRoid File (.vrm): For uploading your avatar to VRChat.
Geometry adjustments
Some metaverse platforms and game engines have restrictions on polygon counts, mesh sizes, textures and materials. You may need to:
– Reduce the geometry density of 3D model files so they render smoothly in real-time.
– Split larger objects like hair or clothing into smaller modular pieces.
– Adjust shaders and textures to meet optimization requirements.
File compression
To reduce file size, export your 3D avatar models with compression enabled. The common lossless compression formats are Draco and glTF.
This helps cut down on storage space and improves loading performance in metaverse experiences.
Facial rigging
For social metaverse apps, optimize your avatar’s face with blend shapes so their expressions animate when you use your webcam.
Common facial blend shape keys include mouth open/closed, blinks, lip puckering, frowns, smiles and more.
Animation retargeting
Many metaverse platforms use humanoid rigs with specific bone structures. To copy animations between different rigs:
1. Make sure both avatar rigs use the same bone naming convention.
2. Match bone rotations between rigs with animation retargeting software.
This allows your avatar to smoothly play animations, gestures and emotes made for other rigs.
With these techniques, you can convert your avatar into optimized 3D or 2D formats to use across the metaverse.
Top Metaverse Platforms to Use Your Custom Avatar
Once you’ve created and optimized your custom avatar, here are some top metaverse spaces to show it off:
VRChat
VRChat is a popular social VR platform where you can chat, explore and join events as your virtualized persona. Upload your avatar then transport yourself into this immersive universe.
Cryptovoxels
Cryptovoxels is a virtual world powered by blockchain technology. Customize your pixel-based avatar then buy parcels of virtual land to socialize and play games.
Microsoft Mesh
Microsoft Mesh lets you join collaborative AR/VR spaces as your custom avatar. Use it for work meetings or hanging out with friends in augmented reality.
Meta Horizon Worlds
Horizon Worlds is Meta’s social metaverse app. Build your Oculus avatar and venture into this growing virtual community.
Spatial
Spatial is a web-based metaverse platform. Import your 3D avatar and enter photorealistic virtual rooms to interact with others in augmented reality.
Avatar Chat Apps
Social apps like VRChat, ChilloutVR, Topia, and Mozilla Hubs support avatar-based chatting.
Show off your new persona when video calling friends or joining virtual gatherings.
Conclusion
Creating a custom avatar opens up a world of possibilities for expressing your identity online. With so many creation tools and metaverse platforms now available, you have endless options to craft your ideal digital persona.
For quick avatars, try social media apps and gaming editors with preset content. Or dive into advanced creators like Ready Player Me and VRoid Studio to make elaborately designed 3D avatars. Optimizing your model with compression, textures and animation tools enables full cross-platform use.
Now that you have the blueprint for making and customizing your very own avatar, it’s time to digitize your persona. Let your imagination run wild, then strut your stuff in the metaverse as the virtual you!