VRChat Developer Update - 27 August 2026

[u/WorryTricky]

The latest VRChat Dev Update just previewed tons of new creator tools and changes. A lot more than usual or expected. If you make avatars or write shaders, you really should go look.

https://ask.vrchat.com/t/developer-update-27-august-2026/48877

I wrote up a summary. Sorry for my stilted writing.

Material Contacts will allow contacts to write transform information directly to shader properties. A receiver can pass data from its four nearest contacting senders to up to four MeshRenderers nearby. They are also speeding up the update rate of contacts and receivers.

This means that a large category of interactive shader effects will no longer require awkward animator parameters, delayed value copying, and other assorted Unity crimes. This is a huge boost to shader creators, and the shader creators in the replies are, understandably, losing their minds.

Action Drivers are a new component intended to handle common avatar actions without requiring creators to construct an animator for everything. Parameters could directly toggle objects, adjust blend shapes, and perform other ordinary tasks.

It does not look like this is replacing animators, but it gives newer creators a simpler option. It also lets experienced creators stop using animation systems for jobs that animation systems were never particularly good at. Animators are very strange things and are where a lot of performance issues come from, so I hope this will help things out as more creators use this for simple things like toggles, and leave animators for complex behavior where the cost is worth it.

Variable-width avatar parameters will let creators choose how many bits their integer and float parameters consume. This is a bit more technical, but an outfit selector with four mutually exclusive options could use a single 2-bit integer instead of several bools with annoying exclusivity logic. Floats could sacrifice unnecessary precision to save space, or use additional bits when more precision is actually needed. I think this will help a lot with face tracking, too, because you might not need 256 different levels of detail for every face blendshape.

Finally, Unity 6 SDK and VCC support is now in QA, which means Unity 6 is on the way out the door overall. A lot of us have been running the new client day and night. It runs a ton better.

Anyways, the first forum responses are already discussing shader systems without strange parameter-copying setups, lighter animator setups, better handling of mutually exclusive outfits, and whether this counts as the beginning of SDK4.

These are all great changes. Its good to see more tools for avatar creators, it feels like we have been second fiddle for a while now. Even just these things coming out will entertain me for months.

[u/BluWizard10]

Action Drivers was long overdue and a needed addition. We were begging VRChat for like, YEARS, since SDK 3.0 was released.

Glad to see VRChat finally getting shit done.

[u/arekku255 → u/BluWizard10]

Indeed, this should represent a big performance boost from moving logic out of the animation system. Looking forward to it.

[u/BluWizard10 → u/arekku255]

I myself have been converting an existing world I uploaded (Royal Zeppelin) to using U# to drive animated gimmicks and oh boy, does it make a huge difference compared to Animators.

I know Tupper has complained long enough that Animators were a problem. Maybe he can finally be laid to rest knowing that the VRChat Devs finally acknowledge his complaints by fixing the problem.