Getting Started

Welcome to Flare! Using this tool, you can create toggles, menus, and rules to control effects on your avatar.

Create Your First Menu

Under your avatar hierarchy, create a new GameObject and add a FlareMenu component. Any controls that are a child of the menu will be put in a sub menu! You can nest menus together too.

Create Your First Control

Let's create your first control. To give a quick showcase, we are going to create a simple control that toggles the hairpin on this avatar on and off.

The steps shown in the video are as followed:

1. Create a new FlareControl within your avatar's GameObject (ideally within a FlareMenu).
2. Assign the default toggle value to True.
   1. We want set this to true because we want the hairpin to be on the avatar by default (whenever we load into the avatar, or reset the avatar).
3. Create a new Object Toggle slot.
4. Add the hairpin's GameObject to the Object Toggle.

Object toggles are presented using the pattern "This Target should be Enabled / Disabled when this menu item is Enabled / Disabled". If you don't understand how this works, try saying the condition out loud!

Here is what the control looks like when emulated with GestureManager.

tip

Try setting the default value before adding toggles. It will try to predict the toggle settings you'll most likely want.

Create Your First Radial

Now let's create a pretty useful control: Minimum Brightness. Often in worlds the lighting may make your avatar too dark, and you'd like to fix that. Flare can cover that use case.

For this video I changed the scene lighting to better reflect the brightness slider.

Creating a minimum brightness slider seems like a couple steps, but let's break it down.

1. Create a new FlareControl.
2. Set the menu type to Radial.
3. Create a new Property Group.
   1. Property Groups allow you to control individual properties on the avatar. This is primarily used for setting blendshape and material values.
4. Set the Property Group Selection Mode to Avatar.
   1. Normal only searches the GameObject provided in the Target Objects array, and will only animate the specific property you select.
   2. Avatar will animate any property on the entire avatar with the name of the property you select, except for objects provided to the Objects To Exclude array.
5. Create a new Property.
6. Select the minimum brightness shader property for all the material(s) on the avatar.
7. Set the Target Value to 1

warning

For some shaders like Poiyomi, you may need to allow the property to be animated for the property to animate after the shader locks.

Combining Toggles and Properties

Avatars will often have shrink blendshapes that are used to hide parts of the model while clothing is active. Flare can make creating these kinds of toggles a breeze.

In the following example, the legs on the model are shrunk using blendshapes by default. When we want to toggle the stockings off, we want to remove the leg shrinking while also disabling the stockings.

1. Create a new FlareControl.
2. Set the Default Toggle Value to True.
   1. We do this because the default state for the stockings should be on. It's up to you how you handle this.
3. Create a new Object Toggle.
4. Assign the stockings GameObject/Mesh to the toggle slot.
5. Create a new Property Group.
6. Add the body mesh to the Target Objects array, so Flare knows which object(s) to animate.
7. Create a new Property.
8. Select the shrink blendshape for the stockings.
9. Set the default value to 0, as we want the legs to be visible When Inactive.

And it's as simple as that! After a small amount of practice, you can make your own complex toggles, radials, and buttons with swiftness and ease, hopefully dramatically reducing the time it takes for avatar iteration.

To go more in-depth on Flare's features, check the sidebar or go to the Next Page.