[April 2026] VRChat Gimmick Trends & Ranking | Booth Trend Analysis

I'm looking back at the gimmicks and tools published on Booth in April 2026, along with the data, focusing on the 10 that gathered the most Likes. In April, there were 83 items in scope, and looking at the top, two distinct currents grew at the same time: shaders that lift an avatar's look, and VRC Raycast gimmicks that let you "touch" the world with your jiggle physics or body. VRC Raycast in particular is a feature freshly added to VRChat in April's SDK update, and several gimmicks that turned it into install tools so quickly landed near the top. No. 1 was "Soft Shadow Shader" (6,880 Likes), which softly blurs shadows by distance. The median price was ¥300 and free items made up 33%, so the cheapest price terrain of any category compared to outfits or hairstyles held firm again.

📊 About the data　Aggregation date: 2026-06-18 / Scope: Gimmicks & Tools published on Booth between 2026-04-01 and 2026-04-30 with 300 or more Likes (83 items)

Top 10 Featured Gimmicks & Tools

Ranked by Like count as of the aggregation point (June 2026), I'll go through the specs and craft of each one.

No. 1: Soft Shadow Shader / フカさんのなんでも屋

A lilToon extension shader that blurs cast shadows by distance, adding an indirect-light atmosphere to your avatar. Normally VRChat shadows have hard edges, so even distant shadows land sharply and the whole image can look flat. This shader draws near shadows crisp and far shadows softly blurred, so you get a depth like a photo's bokeh, and indoor light shafts or sunset scenes turn much softer. The 6,880 Likes made it the clear No. 1 among April's gimmicks and tools, pulling far ahead of second place.

What's nice is that it isn't just a shader—a dedicated install tool comes with it, applying the shader automatically once you pick the target avatar. It inherits your lilToon settings as-is, so you can add "just the atmosphere" without breaking the colors or texture of your current customization. There's also an on/off toggle for when you want to keep the load down, so you can use it only during photo shoots. It supports lilToon 1.7.0 or later and Modular Avatar, priced at ¥2,000 for the standard version (a ¥1,500 version is offered to VRChat+ subscribers).

No. 2: CapFitter／HoodieFitter / rimerime

A free plugin that fixes, with one button, the "hair clipping" that happens when you put a hat or hood on your avatar. When you put a cap, beanie, or hood on during customization, the hair mesh pokes through the hat and sticks out—this is the "everyone-knows-it" headache it solves. Instead of manually trimming or reshaping the hair, it automatically deforms the hair mesh to follow the inner shape of the hat and tucks it in neatly. It gathered 3,904 Likes, becoming the first free release to appear in the Top 10.

What works here is that it runs as non-destructive customization on the same ndmf (NDMF) foundation as ModularAvatar and lilycalInventory. Since it follows the shape rather than shaving the hair itself, the hair returns to normal once you take the hat off, and it works across caps, beanies, and hoods without being picky about the headwear. The environment is Modular Avatar 1.10.0+ and ndmf 1.6.0+, working on many avatars including Arue, Komano, Chocola, Nakuyo, and Manuka. It's a highly practical tool that shoulders the most tedious cleanup of headwear customization, for free.

No. 3: Realistic Nadesawa Shader / おさかなてんごく

A new release from おさかなてんごく—the creator behind the popular touch-expression shader "Real Nade Shader Ver.3.0"—a lilToon extension shader that crafts a plump, squishy skin texture. 3,445 Likes, ¥600.

This shader's core is making skin that "looks soft" during touch-based contact. Where skin tends to crush to an unnatural black when you enter a dark world, it keeps a natural skin tone even in the dark, and the skin's texture shifts depending on viewing distance. On top of that, this single package packs in a bulk setup tool, a gimmick for quickly generating AO maps, tattoos, and rim light, so the number of bundled functions is striking for the ¥600 price. It's positioned as the latest in a series—following the earlier "Uzumore Shader"—that lifts how skin reads, and those who tip get an added under-bust SSAO function. It supports lilToon 1.7.0+ and Modular Avatar, in both Japanese and English.

No. 4: ColliderDropDX / OrendCreations

A tool that lets you place colliders anywhere in the world and bump your avatar's hair and clothing jiggle physics into them. Normally an avatar's PhysBones (jiggle physics like hair and skirts) react to your own body but pass right through the world's floors, walls, and furniture. With ColliderDropDX, you drag a collider onto the spot you want in the scene and apply it to your avatar's PhysBones in bulk with one button, so hair and clothes get pushed aside by that collider or spread along its surface. 3,052 Likes, ¥450.

What this lets you do, for example, is hair spreading along the ground when you lie down, or following a wall when you lean on it—contact shots that used to require manual tweaking can now be set up easily every time you shoot. You can choose sphere, capsule, or plane colliders, and it supports Poiyomi Squish, which dents skin and soft parts. Install assumes Modular Avatar and NDMF. April had several of these "bump jiggle physics into the world" gimmicks lined up near the top, and this was one that fired the opening shot.

No. 5: RayCollider / うみの港

A non-destructive VRC Raycast install tool that makes jiggle physics—chest, hips, tail, skirt—react by hitting world floors and walls. Where No. 4's ColliderDropDX took the "place colliders on the world side" approach, this one builds the VRC Raycast and PB colliders into the avatar side. VRC Raycast is a relatively new mechanism that takes effort to set up individually, but RayCollider finishes the install by placing the Prefab under the avatar's root and pointing it at the target PhysBone, with an auto-setup option handling the positioning. 2,851 Likes.

It's also notable that the ¥300 price sits on the approachable side among the Top 10's jiggle-collision tools. It answers the "I just want to make my jiggle physics react to the world" entry point with the lightest steps and price, and being non-destructive, it reverts cleanly if it doesn't suit you. As a package for trying a new mechanism without difficult setup, it propped up April's Raycast current.

No. 6: World Tsuku~ru / はむ屋

A world-creation support tool that lets you assemble a VRChat world with the feeling of arranging furniture, even without Unity knowledge. World creation normally runs through several steps where beginners stumble: placing furniture in Unity, baking lighting, and handling errors at upload. World Tsuku~ru lets you pick furniture and objects from a catalog and place them with one click, and set up gimmicks like chairs and mirrors with a single button, lowering this entry hurdle all at once. 2,767 Likes, ¥3,500 for the full version.

What works especially well is that it includes automated light baking and a pre-upload diagnostic—the very points beginners always get stuck on. Beyond just "placing furniture," it looks after the hard parts of "baking the light" and "checking that it uploads cleanly," so your own room world takes shape without learning modeling or settings from scratch. You can make Quest-compatible worlds too, with an environment of Unity 2022.3.22f1 and VCC support. On the distribution side, there's a free trial that lets you test the catalog placement first before adding the full version—a kind entry design. Among a category full of avatar gimmicks, it's a different-flavored entry that supports the very first step of world creation.

No. 7: Super Cub C125 Avatar Gimmick / Honda Motanion

A gimmick that finely recreates Honda's real "Super Cub C125" motorcycle so you can ride it on your avatar. From Honda Motanion's official avatar shop (Virtual Mobility Series), the faithfully modeled bike packs in a full set of real-bike operations: engine start/stop, left and right turn signals, headlight and high beam, raising and lowering the stand, and a built-in meter display. In VR it even reproduces the motion of turning the key to start the engine, with sound effects like the engine and turn-signal sounds—a thorough piece of work. 2,445 Likes; at ¥3,000 it was the highest-priced item in the Top 10.

The highlight is, above all, the accumulation of fine gimmick details. It's not just rideable—you twist the key to start it, and revving the throttle changes the sound smoothly by angle—and that one-by-one capture of a real bike's gestures fills most of the product images. Because fidelity comes first, the polygon and texture load is on the heavy side, so the product recommends use in smaller instances. It also supports world-fixing, so you can park it in place to admire it or hop off to shoot. It supports 14 avatars including Shinano, Kipfel, Milltina, Rurune, and Eku. It's a vehicle-gimmick craft piece that makes street-riding and photo roleplay much more concrete.

No. 8: Melt Dissolve Shader / 田舎の文房具屋

A free, lilToon-compatible shader that lets your avatar melt away like a liquid and vanish. It's useful as an entrance or exit effect, or as a damage expression, and the showpiece is that you can make the melting edges glow. Since the glow color is freely set in HDR, you can craft anything from a hot, magma-like melt to a blue or purple electronic fade-out, all with the same mechanism. 2,279 Likes.

What's clever is that it's designed so you keep the normal lilToon functions (shadows, MatCap, and so on) while adding only the melt effect. You just swap the shader on the material, so you can add the staging without breaking your current customization's look. The melt progress can be controlled from an Animator (the _MeltAmount parameter), so you can fold it into "vanish, then reappear" staging timed to gestures or actions. It's distributed free. From the free side, it symbolizes an April where look-lifting shaders lined up several deep at the top.

No. 9: NanoFish / つめきり屋

A fish-shaped digital pet that swims through space, with precise machinery packed inside a transparent shell. It swims around your avatar and follows you, and if you switch to world-fixed mode you can keep it swimming in place. At ¥1,500, it's also nice that it bundles multiple variations differing in color and design. It gathered 2,086 Likes.

This pet's appeal is the crafted interactions that go beyond a mere following object. There are plenty of touch-and-play elements as you carry it: you can perch it on your fingertip, feed it, and it shows a delighted reaction when you pet its face. The design as a mechanical lifeform—inner mechanisms visible through the transparent shell—is well crafted too, and in dark worlds the core glows blue and stands out. Since the variants differ not just in color but in body design, the cost angle stands up as well, making it a companion to bring into SF or cyber-leaning spaces.

No. 10: Squishy Breasts / AZAKA

A free novelty asset for "just touching to experience" the slightly difficult VRC Raycast mechanism. Once installed, pressing your chest against a world collider (a wall, a desk, and so on) makes it squish and dent. It's built around the entry point of "I don't really get VRC Raycast—just let me make the chest squishy," getting you to feel it by moving it first. It gathered 1,962 Likes.

Install is a three-step process of dropping in the Prefab and adjusting the position, so you can feel out Raycast's behavior before reading through the difficult theory. Since its purpose is experience and learning the mechanism, it intentionally doesn't apply the license used in the shop and is distributed free for easy trying—an interesting stance. It's most enjoyable when you actually press against a collider in VR, and as the most casual "novelty-as-tutorial," it supported the same VRC Raycast current as No. 4 ColliderDropDX and No. 5 RayCollider from the entry-level side.

April 2026 Trends

Let me look at the whole of April's gimmicks and tools through the aggregate numbers and the per-axis rankings.

Metric	Value
Items in scope	83
Average Likes	1,004
Median Likes	632
Average price	¥617
Median price	¥300
Share of free items	33% (27 / 83)
Share under ¥1,000	80% (66 / 83)
"MA support" keyword appearances	55% (46 / 83)
Shaders in the Top 10	3 (#1 / #3 / #8)
VRC Raycast / collider-collision in the Top 10	3 (#4 / #5 / #10)

The price terrain of a ¥300 median and 33% free leans heavily toward the cheapest side of any category compared to outfit or hairstyle reports. The Top 10's priciest are #6 World Tsuku~ru (full version ¥3,500) and #7 Super Cub C125 (¥3,000), while free and sub-¥1,000 small tools fill most of the top. The category's character—where "small tools distributed widely" hold real strength—shows up in the numbers again. Meanwhile, looking at the top faces, two currents of different character grew at once: look-lifting shaders, and Raycast gimmicks that touch the world.

Features & Functions: MA support as the base, with Raycast collision and photography standing out

In the function-axis tally, MA support leads by a clear head at 46 items (about 55%), followed by lilToon support 19 / particles 16 / shader 12 / PhysBone support 10 / Poiyomi support 6 / shape key 6 / world gimmick 6 / world-fixed 6 / Udon 5. A build that runs on Modular Avatar being the category's foundation is unchanged from previous months.

Tallying the frequent keywords, free comes at 29, editor extension at 25, and for-photography at 23, with Raycast at 9 and non-destructive at 9 lined up just below—very much this month's flavor. VRC Raycast is a component freshly added in VRChat SDK 3.10.3, released April 16, 2026—a mechanism that fires "rays" from the avatar into the scene to hit colliders on the world or other players. The moment it landed, gimmicks that turned it into install tools within the same April lined up several deep, starting with the Top 10's ColliderDropDX, RayCollider, and Squishy Breasts. As one that builds Raycast and a collider into the chest PhysBones non-destructively and automates the install, here's this.

Alameda's "EasyRaycast" is a gimmick that auto-detects the left and right chest PhysBones and installs the VRC Raycast and Collider settings non-destructively in bulk with a single Prefab. You can finish in one go what you'd otherwise repeat per avatar, and react by pressing the chest against walls or desks. At ¥300, supporting both standard chest PBs and Marshmallow PB, it's one of the grassroots pieces that supported April's spread of Raycast.

Around photography, a quiet but effective tool also appeared—one that suppresses the shadow that falls on your face when you enter a world.

のちゃすとあ's "AOB-Ambient Occlusion Block" is a gimmick that blocks, at its source, the phenomenon where some worlds drop an unnatural shadow (Ambient Occlusion) onto your face. Usable on any avatar, it keeps your face looking clean in photos. With a set of Prefabs, materials, and a dedicated menu included from ¥800, it's a piece made for photos—fitting a category where "for-photography" sits high among the frequent keywords.

Supported Models: gimmicks based on Shinano and Rurune

In the supported-model-axis tally, the distribution is Shinano 5 / Rurune 5 / Kipfel 4 / Milltina 4 / Chocola 3 / Manuka 3 / Hikikuma no Kumari 2 / Mayo 2 / Arue 2 / Eku 2. The popularity of the avatar bodies themselves is reflected directly in the depth of gimmick and data support, showing it was a month with many gimmicks tested against Shinano and Rurune as a baseline.

Among Rurune-compatible pieces, one that caught the eye recreates a card gamer's hand habit.

matsusen_shop's "Shakapachi Gimmick" recreates the "shakapachi" habit that trading-card (TCG) players often do—riffling the cards in your hand with a "shaka-shaka" sound, then snapping them with a sharp "pachin." You take out a card from the expression menu, and as you grab it with both hands and move them closer and apart, you riffle the cards with realistic motion and sound. You can set any image on the cards and sleeves, and at 210 polygons it's lightweight. Tested on Rurune, Mafuyu, and Kipfel, this ¥300 piece is a hand-play item that lets you show character through your hands.

Price Range: 33% free, small tools gathered in the cheapest terrain

The price distribution is free 27 / ¥1–499 at 18 / ¥500–999 at 21, which is 66 items (= 80%) up to here. ¥1,000–1,999 is 11, ¥2,000–2,999 is 3, ¥3,000–4,999 is 3, and ¥5,000+ is 0. The volume zone is concentrated in free–¥999, and the fact that gimmicks and tools are a category with a "distribute widely and embed into the customization workflow" character shows up directly in this distribution again this month.

One step above the most common bucket, from the ¥500–999 band (21 items), here's a handy tool that quietly helps with placement work.

みみハウス's "Surface Snap Tool" is a Unity editor extension that places an object by snapping it onto another 3D object's surface like a magnet. The key point is that it can snap even onto mesh surfaces and skinned meshes that have no collider—something Unity's standard handling struggles with—making it much easier to stick stickers, decals, and small items neatly onto curved surfaces. At ¥500, it was a month where customization-support tools backing texture work and small-item placement lined up firmly in this price band.

Creator's-eye view of April trends

Since readers of the gimmicks-and-tools category are a mix of tool makers, gimmick makers, and customizers, let me pull together the metrics likely to resonate with creators, from the Top 10 and April's overall numbers.

Metric	April's number
Fully free in the Top 10	3 (#2 CapFitter / #8 Melt Dissolve / #10 Squishy Breasts)
Shaders in the Top 10	3 (#1 Soft Shadow / #3 Nadesawa / #8 Melt Dissolve)
VRC Raycast / collider-collision in the Top 10	3 (#4 ColliderDropDX / #5 RayCollider / #10 Squishy Breasts)
Drop-in / non-destructive install claimed in the Top 10	5 (#1 / #2 / #4 / #5 / #10)
¥3,000+ high-price assets in the Top 10	2 (#6 World Tsuku~ru ¥3,500 / #7 Super Cub C125 ¥3,000)

Notes for gimmick makers:

Summary

April 2026's gimmicks and tools were a month where two currents of different character grew at the same time: look-lifting shaders, and VRC Raycast gimmicks that touch the world. Led by No. 1's distance-blurring Soft Shadow Shader, tools that lift how customization "reads"—the skin-crafting Nadesawa shader, the melt-away Melt Dissolve shader—lined up thick at the top. Meanwhile, ColliderDropDX and RayCollider, where hair and skirts bump into the world, and Squishy Breasts, which presses the chest into a collider, showed several gimmicks that—within the same month—put VRC Raycast, freshly added to VRChat in the April 16 SDK update, into a form anyone can install.

Prices stayed leaning to the cheapest side of any category, at 33% free and a ¥300 median, and it was very April that small tools solving one customization headache—like CapFitter, which fixes hat clipping, or the melting shader—reached widely for free. When a new feature appears, translating it into a drop-in install tool and delivering it—that "shoulder someone's extra step" way of making things ran through the top in both shaders and Raycast. From high-price assets people settle in to craft, to small tools that solve one headache with a single shot, it was a month where the ingenuity of those who keep their hands moving showed up directly in the rankings.

---

About the data

• Aggregation date: 2026-06-18
• Scope: Gimmicks & Tools published on Booth between 2026-04-01 and 2026-04-30 (83 items)
• Ranking basis: like_count (Like count) in descending order, as of the aggregation point
• Inclusion condition: VRCFinder's DB only collects products with 300 or more Likes, so products that hadn't reached 300 Likes at the aggregation point are not included
• Note: The figures and rankings in this article are a snapshot as of the aggregation date. They don't reflect later changes, so they may differ from current values