VNyan Pose Studio

A free VNyan plugin for building toggles, poses and looping dances for your VRM VTuber avatar, right inside VNyan. No Unity, no keyframe editor skills needed.

• Toggle poses, outfits and expressions with a click or a hotkey.
• Looping animations from a wave or a keyframe timeline, with 2-bone IK so feet stay planted.
• Import MMD .vmd, BVH and VRMA animations, and share pose sets with friends.
• Comes with a Hip Sway Dance that fits itself to your avatar.

PhysBones and Jiggle Physics have moved. They used to ship in this repo together with Pose Studio. From v2.5.0 they have their own home: VNyan-PhysBones-JigglePhysics. This repo is now just Pose Studio. Already have all three installed? Nothing changes for you: each installer only updates its own plugins.

New in v2.5.0: the bundled Hip Sway Dance, Fit to this model sliders, VRM expressions in the blendshape picker, blendshape weights from -1000% to +1000%, a Restore unsaved safety copy, folding window sections, and blendshapes that VNyan no longer paints over.

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Install: one click

The prebuilt files in dist/ load on VNyan's Unity 2022.3 runtime. You don't need Unity or a compiler.

1. Download the latest release zip (or clone this repository) and unzip it anywhere.
2. Fully close VNyan (check the system tray), then double-click install.bat.
3. The installer looks for VNyan by itself (a VNyan that's open, the log VNyan keeps from the last time it ran, your Steam libraries, and the itch app) and asks you to confirm what it found. If it can't find VNyan, or you say no, it asks you to open your VNyan folder: the one with VNyan.exe inside. VNyan has no installer of its own, so it can live anywhere, and the installer never assumes a location for you.
4. Admin rights are requested only if your VNyan folder is write-protected. A VNyan you unzipped yourself never sees a UAC prompt.
5. Updating from v1.x? The installer retires the old JayoPoseStudio files automatically so both versions can't load at once. Your settings carry over.
6. Launch VNyan and open the Plugins window. You should see Pose Studio.

Installing from a script? powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install.ps1 -Target "D:\Apps\VNyan" -Yes installs without prompting. It still asks Windows for admin rights if that folder is write-protected, and stops if VNyan is open. -ListFound just prints the VNyan folders the search finds.

If the Plugins panel is empty after installing

Two causes account for almost every case, in order of likelihood:

1. "Allow Third Party Plugins" is turned off. In VNyan go to Settings > Misc > Allow Third Party Plugins and make sure it's enabled. When it's off VNyan loads no plugins at all and logs nothing, so the panel is silently empty.

2. You have more than one VNyan and launched the other one. The plugin went into one folder but a different VNyan.exe is running. VNyan's log (%APPDATA%\..\LocalLow\Suvidriel\VNyan\Player.log) names the copy that launched in its first lines. Install into that copy and restart.

If neither applies, run TROUBLESHOOT.bat. It writes a VNyan_Diagnostics_Report.txt with file placement, Windows download-block status, Unity runtime versus bundle version, and the VNyan path in use. If it comes back clean and the panel is still empty, it's almost certainly cause 1.

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Pose Studio

Build toggles and looping animations from bone, mesh and blendshape offsets, entirely inside VNyan. Every entry is a named item (a set of transform offsets and blendshape targets). The two types differ only in how they're driven:

• Toggle: holds the pose on or off, easing in and out over Blend Time.
• Animation: loops the pose with a wave (sine, triangle or pulse) at Anim Speed cycles per second, or plays a keyframe timeline for multi-step motions (up to 240 keyframes, each with its own full pose).

Window walkthrough

Click a section heading to fold it open or shut.

1. + Toggle / + Animation create a new item. Remove deletes the selected one.
2. Name renames the selected item.
3. Hotkey: an optional key combo (e.g. F8, Ctrl+Shift+E) that works even when VNyan isn't the window in front.
4. Activate turns it on or off live. Animate on a loop switches between the two types.
5. Wave / Anim Speed / Blend Time: waveform, speed, and ease in/out time.
6. Keyframe timeline: tick Use keyframe timeline to swap the wave for your own sequence of poses. Add and remove keyframes; each has its own bone, mesh and blendshape offsets and a transition time.
7. Blendshape trigger: tick Drive strength from a blendshape and pick a source shape (e.g. face-tracked MouthOpen). The source's 0 to 100% drives the item's strength. Curve shapes the response (1 = linear, above 1 eases in, below 1 eases out). Strength % scales the result.
8. Add Bone / Add Mesh open the model tree; pick any bone or mesh object, tick Position / Rotation / Scale and dial the X/Y/Z sliders. Remove drops it.
9. Hide Mesh opens the mesh list with a tick box per mesh; ticked meshes are hidden while the item is on and come back when it turns off. Great for swapping clothes or accessories.
10. Add Blendshape opens the same browser in shape mode, including your avatar's VRM expressions (Joy, A, Blink and so on). Set Blend Wt anywhere from -1000% to +1000%, so you can exaggerate a shape or run it backwards. Remove drops it.
11. Fit to this model (keyframe animations): Arms Out, Arms Up, Arms Fwd, Feet Apart, Feet Fwd and Hips Up move where the animation puts the hands, feet and hips, so a dance made on another body fits yours without editing keyframes. Saved per animation.
12. IK goals: 2-bone IK goals (legs, arms) that pin hands or feet in place after the pose is applied. See IK below.
13. Import Animation... loads an animation from another tool and turns it into a keyframe item (see below).
14. Export Poses... / Import Poses... share toggles and animations (see below).
15. Open Timeline Editor opens a timeline for the selected keyframe item: draggable keys, a playhead you can scrub, zoom and pan, retiming by dragging, easing per segment, lanes per group (bones, meshes, blendshapes), capture-into-key with masking, and key copy/paste.
16. Idle animation (auto-play when tracking is lost): tick this on one item and it plays by itself once your head has been still for the Idle Wait (s) time (15 s by default, 5 to 120 s), then blends out the moment you move again.
17. Reload / Save / Close, and Restore unsaved (see below).

Restore unsaved

Pose Studio keeps a spare copy of changes you haven't saved yet: a minute after you stop editing, when you close its windows, before Reload, and when VNyan closes. It goes to a separate file, posestudio.unsaved.json, and never touches your real settings. If VNyan closed before you pressed Save, a Restore unsaved button shows up next to Save the next time; it also undoes an accidental Reload. Press Save afterwards to keep what you restored.

The bundled Hip Sway Dance

A 25 second dance ships with Pose Studio and appears in your list switched off until you try it. It measures your avatar when it binds and scales itself to your body, and the Fit to this model sliders fine-tune it. It's offered once: if you delete or rename it, it stays that way.

Importing animations

Import Animation... loads a motion file, maps its bones onto your avatar's humanoid rig, and creates a keyframe animation item (rotation channels, resampled to 30 fps). Supported:

• MMD .vmd: Japanese bone names (センター, 上半身, 左腕, fingers, legs and so on) map to VRM humanoid bones through a built-in table, and morphs map to blendshapes by name. Because MMD's axes vary, importing a .vmd opens a live adjustment dialog: the animation plays on your avatar while you try orientation presets (A to E), Mirror L/R, Face 180° and Lay flat (±90°) until it looks right, then Keep this or Cancel.
• BVH: Mixamo, Rokoko and Blender joints (handles mixamorig: prefixes and common aliases).
• VRMA / .glb / .gltf: reads the VRM animation humanoid map directly (close to 1:1).

Only bones your rig actually has are driven; the status line says how many bones and morphs mapped. Then Save, and Activate to play.

Sharing poses (export and import)

• Export Poses... opens a checklist of your items. Tick the ones to share, then export a .json (same layout as posestudio.json, just the chosen items).
• Import Poses... picks a shared .json. Items are added to yours. If a name already exists, you choose Overwrite same-named, Keep both (rename imported) or Skip same-named, so an import never quietly replaces your own work.

Physics and Pose Studio dances: Pose Studio applies its pose early in the frame, before physics, so spring and jiggle bones (VRM SpringBone, PhysBones and Jiggle Physics) react to a Pose Studio animation the same way they react to tracked motion.

Configuring (posestudio.json)

Saved to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Suvidriel\VNyan\posestudio.json, no admin needed. If the file changes on disk while VNyan runs, Pose Studio reloads it within a second.

Field (per item)	Meaning
name	Label in the dropdown
type	"toggle" or "animation"
active	On/off state
blendTime	Ease time in seconds
speed	Animation cycles per second
waveform	"sine", "triangle" or "pulse"
useKeyframes	true to use the keyframe timeline instead of a wave
keyframes[]	{ seconds, channels[] }: each keyframe has a duration and a pose per target. A transform channel may carry quat [x,y,z,w], which overrides its euler rotation (blended smoothly between keyframes). A channel id of ik:<GoalName> animates that IK goal's target as an offset per keyframe.
fit[]	Fit to this model offsets per body group (Hands, Feet, Hips)
useTrigger	true to drive strength from a blendshape
triggerMesh	Source mesh name (empty = any mesh)
triggerShape	Source blendshape name
triggerCurve	Response exponent (1 = linear)
triggerScale	Overall output strength %
hotkey	Key combo string, e.g. "F8" or "Ctrl+Shift+E" (empty = no hotkey)
bones[]	{ bone, usePosition, useRotation, useScale, position[3], rotation[3], scale[3] }
meshes[]	{ mesh, usePosition, useRotation, useScale, position[3], rotation[3], scale[3] }
blendshapes[]	{ mesh, shape, weight } (empty mesh searches every mesh)
hideMeshes[]	Mesh names to hide while the item is on; shown again when it turns off
ikGoals[]	2-bone IK goals; see IK
idleAnim	true = play this item by itself once head tracking goes still (only one item should have it)

Global settings: idleDelay (seconds of stillness before the idle item takes over, default 15, the Idle Wait (s) slider), idleMotionThreshold (degrees of head motion per frame that still count as "you're there", default 0.02) and bundledOffered (bundled animations already offered once).

Bone and mesh names accept Unity humanoid names (Head, LeftHand, ...) or the model's own names.

Inverse kinematics (IK)

Each animation item can carry 2-bone IK goals that run after the pose is applied. A goal pins a hand or foot to a target in a chosen space, so limbs stay planted even while the body sways or turns.

Adding an IK goal

In the Pose Studio window, open Inverse kinematics (IK) and click Add IK Goal. Fill in:

Field	Meaning
Upper / Lower / End	The three bones of the limb (e.g. LeftUpperLeg / LeftLowerLeg / LeftFoot)
Space	What the target is measured against: root (avatar root), world, or any bone name (e.g. Chest)
Capture	bind (rest pose) pins where the hand or foot is when the avatar loads (good for feet, centred under the body); play (first frame) pins wherever it lands once the pose has run (good for hands already in a pose)
Hold end rotation	Also lock the end bone's angle (sole stays flat, hand angle kept)
Weight	0 to 1 blend of the IK result over the plain pose
Enable	Turn this goal on or off without removing it

After editing goals, click Reload to capture and apply them again.

In posestudio.json

"ikGoals": [
  {
    "enabled": true,
    "name": "LeftLeg",
    "upper": "LeftUpperLeg",
    "lower": "LeftLowerLeg",
    "end": "LeftFoot",
    "space": "root",
    "captureMode": "bind",
    "holdRotation": true,
    "weight": 1.0,
    "capture": true,
    "position": [0, 0, 0],
    "rotation": [0, 0, 0]
  }
]

captureMode is "bind" or "play". Set capture: false and give an explicit position/rotation to pin to a fixed point instead.

Notes

• While on, a toggle holds the bones and meshes it uses at (rest + offset), which pauses the avatar's idle animation on those bones only. Pick just what you mean to move.
• Offsets are local; very large rotations on humanoid bones can look odd.
• Hotkeys work everywhere (even when VNyan isn't in front) through Windows' GetAsyncKeyState.
• Blendshapes are applied after VNyan's own face update, so VNyan doesn't paint over them and tracking still shows underneath.
• Runs alongside PhysBones, Jiggle Physics and VRM spring bones; they're independent.

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Rebuild from source

The prebuilt dist/ files should load on any VNyan with Unity 2022.3. If they don't (check VNyan's log for a bundle version error), you can rebuild against your own VNyan and Unity.

DLL only (no Unity needed)

Run this from the repo root (the .rsp file uses paths relative to it):

csc.exe -noconfig @build/build_posestudio.rsp

The .rsp takes its references from C:\Program Files\VNyan\VNyan_Data\Managed. If your VNyan lives somewhere else, change those paths in the .rsp. It uses the .NET Framework csc.exe that comes with Windows (C# 5). The DLL must stay named PoseStudio.dll: the bundle finds its scripts by assembly name.

.vnobj bundle (needs Unity 2022.3.x)

Unity.exe -batchmode -quit -nographics -projectPath "<repo>\_unitybuild" -executeMethod PoseStudioBuild.Build

Important: VNyan loads the autostart prefab by the addressable name vnyanitem. The build script sets it for you. If you rebuild by hand and the plugin button never shows up, check that the bundle's addressable name is vnyanitem (not the prefab's path).

After rebuilding, copy the new DLL and .vnobj into dist/PoseStudio/ before running the installer.

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Credits

Pose Studio was originally named JayoPoseStudio. It was renamed in v2.0.0 out of respect for Jayo's brand; the originals that inspired this project are his.

MIT licensed, see LICENSE.