Community:Furry culture in VRChat

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Furry culture is prevalent in the VRChat community. Furry avatars, or furries, are defined as animals or animal-like creatures with anthropomorphic (human-like) or humanoid traits such as speech, intelligence, and/or bipedal body structure. In addition to avatars, the term 'furry' is also used to refer to people who may identify with said avatars, in some way.

Overview

The furry fandom is inspired by several types of media from around the world involving anthropomorphic animals, such as written works, video games, and animation mediums such as anime. People often find themselves joining the furry community through shared interest in certain media.

A unique characteristic within furry subculture, is the creation and identification of original characters and avatars that may represent their creator, or likeness. These characters are typically referred to as a fursona (a portmanteau of furry and persona, often shortened to simply 'sona). However, not all furry characters are used as a personal fursona; some may simply be characters designed for original fictional works of their own right. They can each have potentially different personality traits or interests, depending on their purpose.

Furries are more likely to identify with LGBT, non-binary or genderqueer identities, or express their fursona with similar orientations. A fraction of the community, who refer to themselves as therians or otherkin among furries, may spiritually identify closer as non-human, choosing to instead identify as their desired species.

Furries and VRChat

VRChat by its very nature provides an environment where members of the furry community can create an avatar based on their ideal sense of self, and feel like themselves more so than in real life.

A furry avatar typically combines features of at least one animal species (e.g. dog, cat, etc.) with anthropomorphic traits. Less anthropomorphic (sometimes defined as feral) furry avatars also exist, which are more lifelike representations of animals (e.g. walking on 4 legs instead of 2), but due to full body tracking being optimized for avatars with human-like body structures, non-humanoid avatars are significantly harder to set up and use, and as such are less widespread.

Since most furries are not 3D modelers, texture artists or Unity developers, members of the community who have any combination of these skills (commonly referred to as artists or creators) have taken on the task of building readily available avatar bases. These are typically distributed on online stores such as Gumroad where these creators are able to distribute their work directly to users.

The bases typically come with source files necessary to customize the avatar, including the models, textures and ready-to-use Unity prefabs or scenes, where all the user has to do is log into the VRChat SDK and click upload to have a functioning avatar, which can then be further customized. These avatar bases provide an easy way for furries to create a VR representation of their characters more easily, lowering the barrier of entry.