The Love and Hate of Starting a New Hobby

Have you ever fallen in love?

There’s a gentle fullness in your heart and every thought seems to melodically drift toward that special person. The tasks you previously stressed over seem almost to accomplish themselves. You find yourself being more gentle with people. The world doesn’t get on your nerves quite as much. You can’t wait to finish all the things you have to do so you can go see your loved one.

This has recently happened to me again. No, I’m not stepping out on my partner. My new love is creating 3D avatars.

If you’ve been following along, you already know I’ve recently discovered virtual reality (VR). As a result, I decided I wanted to learn to create a 3D avatar- and it’s become something of an obsession. I have completely immersed myself in YouTube videos, websites, and other VR related content. I’ve become so engaged that time is warping itself around me, wreaking havoc on the progression of hours in the day. To my dismay, I have found myself falling behind on important tasks like writing blog posts. I’ve been struggling to think of good topics, all my mental energy is being used to organize all the new information I’ve been taking in on avatar-building. My mind is regaining its voracious appetite for learning, hungrily monopolizing my attention and energy.

I’ve been here before and it’s a phase I refer to affectionately as the novice’s puppy love stage. It’s during this stage that any small detail can send you into a whirlwind of emotion. Yesterday, I encountered a hiccup in my learning process that completely halted my progression.

I was trying to create a highly optimized 3D avatar—meaning that all players using any equipment would be able to see and interact with my avatar in the game. Pretty straightforward, right? That’s what I thought …

I downloaded three applications to build my avatar: VRoid Studio 1.7, Blender 2.39.9, and Unity Hub with Unity 2019.4.31f1. I was using each program in succession to design, fix, optimize, and add features for the 3D avatar. Each program has its uses and limitations. Some programs’ features do not play well with others. Each program requires add-ons or separate packages to be installed, each with its own library of new and older versions (hint: This will be important later).

Everything was going great, until I found myself stuck at a specific step, and it wouldn’t work no matter what I did. I was using all the add-ons and packages that each video linked. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Every step of avatar creation is almost an exact science. Any deviations from the steps, result in these irritating ruts. My heart filled with hate and rage every time I had to start the entire process from step 1. I just did all this crap, I repeated over and over in my head. But I persevered because I knew I was paying my dues.

After 17 hours of intensive troubleshooting and trial and error (yes, 17—see my comment above about time warping), I had a realization. If you’re watching a video from more than six months ago, that is the equivalent of six years in software time and many iterations have most likely come out since then. I checked the date each tutorial video was released, and then went back to the versions of each application that were available at that time. Voila! Everything worked exactly as it did in the videos. I was so relieved that I spent some time responding to all the commenters who had complained that they were experiencing the same issue. The video creator pinned my tip at the top of the comments to let other avatar creators know what worked for me. This is an example of showing love for the community of like-minded individuals. It’s simply good karma.

It’s this cycle between love and hate that makes a new hobby so fascinating. With each trial you overcome, you become closer to being a master. I want so badly to create worlds for people to enjoy. I’m not there yet, but I know the path forward leads through a succession of small victories like this. Sometimes we forget that our vision for something grand is often a long and difficult journey. The path is littered with people who have quit.

Every little thing you do counts. Every post I share. Every video I watch. Every person I reply to. I know they will take me somewhere amazing that I cannot necessarily see right now. I just have faith and remain grateful to all the kind souls that have struggled down this path. Despite this anguish, they still take the time to make a video explaining their struggles. That’s what I love about this space. Despite all our differences, they still possess a heart kind enough to not want others to suffer as they did. That’s a lot to love about this hobby.

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