Bonelab Custom Avatar Import Guide

This quick step-by-step tutorial will take you from a fresh MarrowSDK project to importing a custom Avatar into Bonelab.

Find detailed Avatar documentation and other modding guides on the Official MarrowSDK Wiki:

A more in-depth tutorial explaining some of the deeper aspects of Avatar creation is coming soon.

00:00 - Intro
00:05 - 3D Model Preview
00:23 - Adding a Pallet
00:42 - Adding a rigged mechanim model (.fbx) to the Unity project
00:54 - Adding the model to the Scene and resetting position
01:04 - Extracting the Materials and verifying the rigged bones
02:19 - Creating a Prefab of the FBX model and Resetting to 0,0,0
02:31 - Add the Avatar Script
02:56 - Avatar Script automated defaults
03:22 - Adding an EyeCenterOverride GameObject if the model lacks eye bones
03:40 - Avatar Gizmos - Editing the Body guides so they fit snugly to the mesh
04:18 - Adding an Avatar Crate to the Pallet and referencing the Prefab
04:38 - Generating Packed Assets for a simple 3D Preview
04:44 - Packing the Pallet into a mod
04:55 - Copy mod files into the Bonelab Mods directory
05:06 - Testing the Custom Avatar in Bonelab!

[lunarvisz]

props to stlz, a game studio mentioning mods AND showing tutorials for them. i've never seen that ever happen.

[MinibattleLop]

GREASEDSCOTSSMAN!! Love your modded boneworks map, cant wait to see what you do with bonelab

[assassinproduction]

Thank you so much for making this, it’s straightforward to follow even for someone with no modding experience.

[cia]

I just finished it and it's absolutely fucking FANOMINAL i could play this game vanilla for ever and still not be tired of it and I played it on the quest 2 stand alone. It is the best VR game ever made and changed my entire perspective on VR forever.

[Hypnobong]

If you don’t want to model and have 7 bucks to spare, use heroforge to create a character (don’t go crazy with wings, tails, equipment, get rid of the miniature base) and import it to mixamo to auto rig it.

You can create an insane amount of characters or play as your ttrpg character

Derrick Black and Faith Barnett have good tutorials for prepping your heroforge model and putting it into Bonelab respectively. Use those vids in tandem with this one and you’re golden 👌

[antonberkbigler]

The usage of the crate and pallet terms ties the sdk directly to Bonelab’s lore, as both are fully diegetic terms relating to in universe data, asset, and item storage/management within MythOS. It really gets my gears spinning on worldbuilding stuff about how people do this in universe. I’ve been wondering how assets get imported and spawned into Myth on Monogon’s end ever since I realized that the spawn guns are made by Gammon and therefore are not eminently ‘native’ to MythOS. That completely upends how we think of anything related to anything collectible, in both Bone games.

The differences in how the reclamation bins are said to handle item data and how they actually handle items in practice makes sense from a lore perspective, as while a Monogon (or adjacent) employee or the eventual end-user / regular consumer of MythOS headsets once it hits stores would be concerned with individual items and whatnot, a Gammon corporate spy would be more interested in the asset data itself and would maliciously retrofit that system for scalping the information for unlimited replication elsewhere. Couple that with the fact that while each level in Boneworks is separated by a diegetic instance warp (or most at least), I can think of really only one place that would have a diegetic instance warp (ordinarily instance warps move players, not held items).

Makes me think the whole setting/stuff wheel you can bring up isn’t native Monogon data. From a lore standpoint of course.

[aaronb]

To save people a few seconds, if you drag and drop your mesh into the hierachy, it'll be at 0, 0, 0 automatically.

[auroradynia]

when i put my avatar in game i can see it on the list of avatars but when i select it it doesnt show the stats and when i try to use it nothing happens, i added it to my favourites and i can see the hologram of my model in the arm selector but when i release to use it nothing happens, how do i fix this?

[knatspray]

Bonelab is a beautiful sequel, thank you

[connortaco]

Thank you so much! This was so much easier than other tutorials that had me going in circles trying to figure out what to do

[precipire]

Wow this looks like it came out just as I needed it. Thanks!

[lukenite]

To everyone having trouble seeing and switching to their model, and can only see the name in game, I found something that worked for me.

If you are on quest, swap the build in file>build settings to android.

When packing the mod, make sure in the asset warehouse, in the drop down that says PC, hit Q2.

Now this bit is for both PC and Quest 2. If you're having trouble seeing the model, and can see the name, what worked for me is completely redoing your pallet.

Head to your marrow assets file in your project and completely delete the pallets file. Redo the Pallet from square one, it doesn't take long, but make sure to select your platform. At least that worked for me. Also make sure to delete the not working mod.

[whosthisrandom]

to everyone having problems on quest 2:
make sure that in the asset manager, it says "Q2" and not "PC". if it says pc then click it and switch it to q2 before packing the pallet into a mod

[orange-zduj]

This game is amazing you and the team have outdone your selfs

[CharlieO]

2:48 I get an error with a list of required bones, even though the model has them?

[ND]

The video was great and everything was fine but, when I download the mod, the avatar only shows the preview but nothing happens when I confirm to play as it. And when I'm on the vending machine thingy, if I click confirm on my avatar and nothing happens, the preview of my avatar will show up fused with the other avatars, but not where it should be. Can someone please explain what i'm doing wrong?

[xSPLOOMPHx]

Yo, I got a strange bug. I made a custom avatar and It is recognized by the game and appears in the Body-Mall.
I can select through all the default avatars and everything is fine by when I select mine the preview is invisible and It cannot be applied.
After that, if I select a different avatar my avatar and the avatar I selected will show up clipped inside one another. Applying while this is happening will apply the default avatar.

Any idea how to fix it? This does not happen with other custom avatars I imported.

[ondrejeder]

thanks for simple and short clear tutorial, gonna give my own custom avatar a try for sure

[SanlakiPlaysVR]

My avatar mod is showing up on the menu but when I select it, it doesn't show a preview and the stats don't update. I'm unable to select my avatar :(

[MortalChamp]

Mine doesn’t show any stats, it is also not selectable, how can I fix this?