[January 2026] VRChat Gimmick & Tool Trend Report on Booth

Here are the top 10 VRChat gimmick and tool releases from Booth in January 2026, sorted by likes and reviewed alongside the month's aggregate data. What makes the gimmick & tool category unique is that avatar-modification editor extensions and runtime gimmicks live in the same category — and January 2026 reflected that mix: an avatar compressor, a hair-fitting helper, a gimmick generator, an undressing system, a VR Japanese keyboard, a mask texture creator, a gradient baker, an ExMenu organizer, a high-five gimmick, and a VR-sleep face mirror. The median price was ¥500, the median like count was 771, and about 82% of the 56 releases priced under ¥1,000 — a category packed with tools that quietly raise the floor of the entire modding workflow. Every single Top 10 pick requires Modular Avatar, 27% of the month's releases are free, and one creator (YuichaMart) shipped three of the Top 10 — the gimmick & tool category's signature concentration of creator output, OSS culture, and free-distribution strategy on full display.

📊 About the data　Aggregated on: 2026-05-05 / Scope: 56 gimmick & tool releases on Booth between 2026-01-01 and 2026-01-31 with 300 or more likes

10 Notable Gimmicks & Tools

Sorted by like count as of May 2026, with a closer look at what each release actually does and how it's built.

#1: LAC: Avatar Compressor (Beta) / Lydia

An NDMF utility that analyzes your avatar's textures and auto-compresses them to optimal sizes at build time. The Booth cover image leads with "200MB → 10MB" and "up to 90%+ reduction," with worked examples in the listing like Original 364.96 MB → After 3.27 MB (99% reduction) to back it up. At 13,257 likes, this is the only gimmick & tool release that broke into five-digit territory in January, and it's free. That alone reshaped the geography of the month.

The core of the design is six compression presets — High Quality / Quality / Balanced (default) / Aggressive / Maximum / Custom — picked from a single dropdown, with per-type filters for Main / Normal / Emission / Other textures. The tool visualizes a complexity percentage per texture and auto-resizes each to the optimal size (e.g. "Chiffon_Body 23% → 2048×2048 to 256×256," "Chiffon_Costume 32% → 2048×2048 to 512×512"), so you know up front what's being shrunk and what's being preserved. There's also a Freeze toggle for individually protecting textures you don't want compressed, giving an automatic + manual hybrid that lets you fine-tune quality.

A worked before/after example shows the same pink-coat avatar dropping from download size 32.78 MB → 8.88 MB and texture memory 192.36 MB (red) → 3.45 MB (green) while looking essentially identical — the size-vs-quality tradeoff feels noticeably softer once you see it.

Setup is add a single component, "LAC Texture Compressor," to your avatar. Because everything runs through NDMF (Non-Destructive Modular Framework), changes are applied only at build time — your original FBX and texture files are never rewritten. If something doesn't sit right, just remove the component and you're back to the original. Fully non-destructive, and it plays nicely alongside Modular Avatar and Avatar Optimizer.

On the distribution side, the tool is MIT-licensed and published on GitHub (github.com/Limitex/avatar-compressor), with bug reports and feature requests handled through Issues. ALCOM / VCC users can add it as a one-click vpm repository via the official docs site (lac.limitex.dev), and the Booth UnityPackage itself is an auto-installer built with anatawa12's VPAI — a distribution flow lifted straight out of the OSS playbook and dropped onto Booth. The combination of free + MIT + maintained docs at Beta status is what's amplifying its influence across the modding workflow.

#2: Kami-Pita / YuichaMart

A hair-fitting helper that solves "I want to use that avatar's hairstyle but the alignment is a pain" in a single workflow. Adjust position, rotation, and scale via sliders → click "Done" and it auto-completes the Modular Avatar bone-proxy setup. The most-discussed mod-support tool of January, and it went from v1.0 (Jan 10) to v3.0 in roughly three weeks.

The feature surface goes well past a simple alignment tool. v3.1 added a mesh deformer with brush-based vertex editing — move/rotate/scale modes, X/Y/Z symmetric editing, undo/redo — getting close to a Unity-native mesh editor. The texture-matching feature (Hair Chimera) is lilToon-specific and bulk-copies shadow / rim light / gloss settings between hair pieces, directly addressing the modder's "the front and back hair don't match" problem.

A subtle but important design choice: preset files (.json) are explicitly cleared for redistribution and resale, with metadata for "source avatar → target avatar" baked in. That lets the community circulate alignment data as a tradeable layer. Manuka is the reference avatar, with bundled presets for Airi, Plum, Chocolat, Eku/Milfy, Milltina, Shiratsume, Shinano, and Sio (8 avatars). ¥1,500 (full version ¥2,000). With #6 HayaNuri! and #8 ExMenu Organizer also from YuichaMart, this is one creator placing three releases in the Top 10 in a single month — the most striking creator-concentration pattern of January.

#3: Gimmick Tsukuru / Hamuya

"A gimmick to create gimmicks" — a build-support tool that lets you generate avatar gimmicks from a preset library, while also letting you drop your own 3D models or audio data into the workflow to make custom gimmicks. At ¥2,500 it's the second-most-expensive Top 10 pick, but it earned the reach to break into the top three.

The preset library is genuinely broad: heartbeat / kiss sound / hand-holding / food chomping / head-pat / music player / flashlight / pet / spinning halo / item scaling / material color shift / material swap / item attach-detach / blendshape slider / avatar pen / pose creator / vehicle / gesture creator / teleport / world-fix / AFK / collider jump — 22 presets in total, each with explicit Quest-compatibility notes.

The most interesting structural piece is the "preset author mode," which explicitly permits other shops to ship external presets that plug into Gimmick Tsukuru and sell them on Booth. Generated data is also commercial-use-OK and resellable, with built-in Prefab packaging, UnityPackage export, and Readme template generation — making this a starter kit for gimmick creators who want to commercialize their own assets. The credits list seven testers and tech supporters, showing a small community is already orbiting the tool.

#4: Fuwanugi VRC Undressing Gimmick / Toron_

Fist your chest, and your outfit drops to the ground. A direct-take undressing gimmick with VR (hand-sign) and Desktop (menu) operation paths, aimed at the photo-pose-and-staging segment of runtime gimmicks.

The interesting architectural move is the non-cloning costume system in v2.0 (beta). The v1.x line had a known issue where outfits were duplicated, eating avatar capacity, and the avatar fell into a T-pose at the moment of removal. v2.0 rebuilds the system to let the costume drop in place while preserving its natural shape. v2.1a then added Fuwanugi Link, a companion tool that switches blendshape values and toggles secondary outfit pieces (e.g., underwear) ON/OFF in sync with the undressing trigger.

Setup is three steps: drop the prefab onto the avatar, run AutoSetup from the Toron_ menu, and slot the outfit. ¥300 makes it among the cheapest Top 10 picks. Toron_ also released the multi-purpose modding tool "Essential" (¥200–¥500) the same month — outside the Top 10 but worth a callout — shipping two releases (one runtime gimmick and one editor extension) within January.

#5: Zerukana Board / zelLab

A SteamVR overlay keyboard for typing Japanese without removing your HMD. Kanji input works for VRChat text fields, world search, status messages, and invite replies — and it's the only Top 10 pick that isn't a Booth Unity asset, but a standalone external app.

The design is structurally distinct from the Booth tool ecosystem: it ships as a SteamVR overlay app, so it doesn't depend on Unity or VRChat SDK at all. Verified on Windows 11 / Quest 3 / PICO 4 Ultra / Index Controller, and registering it as a SteamVR startup overlay lets it autostart with SteamVR. Show/hide is bound to the left thumbstick button, the keyboard can be grabbed with the cursor on it to move, and right-stick up/down resizes — all the in-VR window-handling fundamentals are well-considered.

Pricing is a two-tier setup with kanji input + world search + status messaging available in the free version, while ¥1,000 unlocks direct chat sending and an arm-mounted flick keyboard. A textbook "give modders the workflow hook for free, and sell the deeper integration to the heavy users" ladder. The v2.0 release (kanji input rollout) was likely what pushed it into Top 10 reach.

#6: HayaNuri! / YuichaMart

A Unity editor extension that lets you build lilToon mask textures by clicking inside Unity, no external paint software required. Targeting the modder's "I want to recolor the eyebrows but I don't want to open Photoshop" workflow.

The core technical move is "hover over the avatar in the Scene view and the tool shows you where that part lives in the texture" — solving the eternal "where in the UV is this 3D part?" confusion visually. Single-click selection auto-detects parts (eyebrows, eyes, lashes) with anti-bleed protection, and you paint by tracing the preview. Everything stays inside Unity.

Unity 2019.4+ and no required prerequisite assets, so the setup barrier is low. Together with #2 Kami-Pita (avatar-body modding) and #8 ExMenu Organizer (menu organization), HayaNuri! covers the texture-modding layer — meaning YuichaMart's three Top 10 releases each handle a different phase of the modding workflow, which is a striking pattern. ¥1,500 (full version ¥1,800).

#7: Gradation Baker / dennokoworks

A Unity editor extension that bakes gradient textures using 3D-space coordinates instead of UVs — meaning multi-mesh objects like hair and outfits get evenly aligned gradients across all the meshes. The texture-baking workflow approached spatially.

The UI centers on a scene-view box you drag to position, rotate, and resize the gradient — direction and width adjusted intuitively. X/Y/Z mirror, box-or-sphere shapes (added in v1.2.0), 128–4096 resolution, and transparent / white / black backgrounds. v2.0.0 (April) replaced the preview system with four blend modes (replace, add, screen, multiply), so the current version has evolved past the January launch state.

This tool is also published on GitHub (github.com/dennoko/GradationTextureGenerator) and explicitly states that textures generated with the tool are commercial-use OK with no attribution required — an unusually open license. There's a "tech-book support edition" (¥2,000) with a note that the price difference goes toward buying technical books, an example of a creator-support model layered into pricing. ¥500 base for repeatable, parameter-driven gradient generation — clearly aimed at the hair/outfit modding crowd.

#8: NDMF ExMenu Organizer / YuichaMart

A Unity editor extension to organize a cluttered Expressions Menu via drag and drop. NDMF-based on top of Modular Avatar, with non-destructive editing as the headline feature.

ExMenu organization normally means manually creating sub-menu assets, wiring them to a parent menu, and so on. ExMenu Organizer makes that a single drag-and-drop list with reorder + sub-menu assignment, an "Import" button to load the current menu in one click, and a clean rollback path — just remove the component to revert — which makes it safe to try menu structures.

The neat technical detail is automatic parameter cleanup at build time, removing unused parameters to save avatar memory. ¥500 (full version ¥700), and YuichaMart's third Top 10 release of the month — the rhythm of consecutive releases is what drove the creator-concentration pattern visible in the month's chart.

#9: High-Five Gimmick / RururiLab

Particle animations and audio trigger when your hand meets another player's hand. The second free release in the Top 10 — an MA-compatible drop-in interaction gimmick that works on most avatars.

The feature scope is broader than the title implies: "high-five, fist bump, buddy gesture, slap, and tsukkomi (anime-style retort) effect" as a set, with EX menu toggles for slap-on-body / slap-on-head, individual on/off for sound and particles. The paid version (¥500) changes the particle and sound based on the hand shape, adding another layer on top of the free experience.

The "free tier to lower the trial barrier, paid version for deeper play" freemium structure mirrors what #5 Zerukana Board does on the tool side, applied here to a runtime gimmick.

#10: VR-Sleep Face Mirror Gimmick / YoruNeko Cat Shop

A face mirror that auto-switches to a top-down view when you lie down — built for VRChat's VR-sleep (V-sui) culture, so you can check your own face while drifting off without pulling up a separate camera.

The smart addition is the night mode (added in v1.1.8) that dims the brightness so bright worlds don't keep you awake. v1.1.9 (January 13) smoothed out the position-adjustment workflow and auto-switches the adjustment menu between VR and Desktop modes, polishing the rough edges.

Setup runs in three steps: add Modular Avatar to the project, import the UnityPackage, drop the V-sui Face Mirror prefab directly under the avatar. PC-only — Quest and Mobile are explicitly not supported — and ¥500 for a release laser-focused on V-sleep culture.

January 2026 Trends

A look at the aggregate numbers and the per-axis rankings for the month.

Indicator	Value
Eligible releases	56
Mean likes	1,691
Median likes	771
Mean price	¥582
Median price	¥500
Free releases	27% (15 / 56)
Releases under ¥1,000	82% (46 / 56)
"Modular Avatar Compatible" keyword frequency	38% (21 / 56)
Top 10 — modding-support (editor extension) releases	6 (#1 / #2 / #6 / #7 / #8 + partially #3)
Top 10 — runtime gimmick releases	4 (#3 / #4 / #9 / #10, with #3 hybrid)

Median price ¥500, mean ¥582 — that's the lowest price center across the monthly category reports (compared to outfits at ¥1,200 and hairstyles at ¥800). 27% free with most releases sitting around ¥500 reflects a creator strategy of distributing tools widely to embed them into the modding workflow, rather than charging premium prices.

Features: MA support and editor extensions, side by side

The dominant signal is "MA Compatible" at 20 releases (~36%), well ahead of the field. Then Shader 7 / lilToon Compatible 4 / Shape Key 3 / Blend Shape 3 / Synced 3 / PhysBone 2 / Udon 2 / Gesture Linked 2 / Hand Sign Linked 2.

When you tally the most-frequent keywords across all releases, Editor Extension is the top entry at 24, followed by Modular Avatar Compatible 21, Tool 21, Gimmick 20, Free 12. "Editor extensions running on top of Modular Avatar" is clearly January's mainstream form. NDMF appears 4 times, with #1 LAC and #8 ExMenu Organizer flying that flag in the Top 10.

For the shader cohort, one release outside the Top 10 stood out:

"Crawl Gimmick Shader [Custom lilToon]" uses a depth-camera feed to deform clothing meshes in real time based on what the camera sees — your hand, another avatar's hand, world objects all register. There's even a tentacle mode (a shape variant where instead of clothing, dedicated tentacle-shaped meshes are deformed). One of the more striking creator-side experiments of January in the staging-and-photography corner.

For blendshape tooling, a free release rounds out the picture:

"ShapeSnap" lets you snapshot SkinnedMeshRenderer BlendShape values into presets, with Scene-view captures for visual previews. Released free in March 2026 in tandem with an app-version plan, it turns body-shape iteration into a saved-state workflow that you can revisit later.

Supported avatars: tools built around the Komado family

The supported-model breakdown lands at Plum 4 / Kumari 3 / Chiffon 3 / Chocolat 3 / Manuka 3 / Milltina 3 / Lurune 3 / Ichigo 2 / Eku 2 / Milfy 2. Plum, Chiffon, and Chocolat are all Amatousagi's "Komado family" (which extends to legacy bodies like Karin / Rusk via older avatars), so January was a month where both tools and avatars cluster around the Komado ecosystem.

A representative pick from outside the Top 10 that captures this most directly:

"Komado Adjuster" is a costume scale-adjustment tool for the Komado avatar family by Amatousagi, automatically grouping new bodies (Plum / Chocolat / Chiffon / Lime) and legacy bodies (Karin / Rusk / Milk Re / Mint / Ramune / Amanatsu) for safer scale conversion. Right-click → infer settings from avatar/costume names → click once and the scale is applied. Free. The Kumari Mochifitter conversion data (another release outside the Top 10 worth flagging) lives in the same "modding support around the Komado family" cluster — a clear instance of a mature avatar-family ecosystem pulling tools into orbit around it.

On the gimmick side, avatar-specific vehicle / wear / attach gimmicks also showed up around the Top 10:

"Norinori! Monaka" is a riding gimmick that piggybacks on Yokaze Shop's "Carry-with-you Tube-Inside Monaka", the actual product owned by another creator. Both hands Thumbs Up + touch the Monaka to mount, both hands Point to dismount — a hand-sign-driven control scheme. Boarding/dismount sound effects, motion sound, a collider-jump on/off toggle, color changers (Monaka / Berry / Wheat-Maron / Bitter-Pon), and AFK motion support across 11 avatars on the Action layer. ¥400, and a perfect example of secondary gimmicks built on top of someone else's product — a distribution pattern unique to the gimmick & tool category.

Pricing: ~82% under ¥1,000, 27% free

The price distribution: Free 15 / ¥1–499: 9 / ¥500–999: 22, accounting for 46 releases (82%). Then ¥1,000–1,999: 8 / ¥2,000–2,999: 1 / ¥5,000+: 1. The most expensive Top 10 pick is #3 Gimmick Tsukuru at ¥2,500; everything else stays at or below ¥1,500. The ¥5,000+ "heavyweight single piece" that dominates outfit and avatar reports basically doesn't exist here.

The 15 free releases shape the entire month's surface. #1 LAC and #9 High-Five lead from inside the Top 10, and outside the Top 10, a free general-purpose shader pack also landed:

"[Free] VRC Water Shader Pack — 3 Shaders + 24 Materials with NormalMaps" bundles three shader variants (PC high-quality / PCVR-tuned / Quest-lightweight) with 8 normal maps, 24 materials, and 1 cubemap. Built-in RP only, with commercial use and bundling permitted, an unusually open license. The creator's note explains it directly: "The aquarium-set product page can't keep up with shader explanation requests anymore, so this is split out as a documentation + free-distribution page," showing how operational decisions can produce free releases.

The ¥1–499 bucket (one bucket below the most-frequent one) acts as a trial price point for tools, including a multi-feature modding utility:

"Essential" packages four functions: Avatar Checker / Preview (performance rank + texture size confirmation, prefab inspect with separate window), Material Checker / Compare (material + texture listing), Storage (search/registration/handoff/package check). There's a Full Pack with all four, plus per-feature individual purchase options — a tiered-buy structure. Toron_ shipped this and #4 Fuwanugi within the same month, two releases in January.

Representing the ¥500–999 bucket (the most-frequent one), one more release from YuichaMart goes here:

"KoreSuki!" lets you extract just the parts you want from a Prefab — selected via a tree-view UI — with the related SkinnedMesh bones automatically resolved and exported as a fresh Prefab. For pulling just the shoes from a costume set, or just the earrings from an accessory pack — addressing the modder's "I don't need all of this." ¥800–¥1,000. With this fourth release counted, YuichaMart shipped four tools in a single month, three of them inside the Top 10.

Indicators that matter to gimmick & tool creators

The gimmick & tool category's readers include tool creators, gimmick creators, and modders in roughly equal measure, so here's a breakdown of the indicators most likely to land for the creator side of the audience.

Indicator	January value
Top 10 — share of modding-support (editor extension) releases	6/10 (#1 LAC, #2 Kami-Pita, #6 HayaNuri!, #7 Gradation Baker, #8 ExMenu Organizer + the hybrid #3 Gimmick Tsukuru)
Top 10 — fully free releases	2 (#1 LAC ¥0 / #9 High-Five ¥0)
Top 10 — Modular Avatar required	10/10 (universal in the Top 10)
Top 10 — using NDMF	2 (#1 LAC / #8 ExMenu Organizer)
Top 10 — published on GitHub	2 confirmed (#1 LAC (MIT) / #7 Gradation Baker)
Top 10 — multiple version releases within the month	5+ (#2 Kami-Pita v1.0→v3.0 inside January, #4 Fuwanugi V2.0 beta + V2.1a Link, #5 Zerukana Board v2.0 with kanji, #10 VR-Sleep v1.0.2→v1.1.9)
Creators with multiple notable releases in the same month	YuichaMart (#2 Kami-Pita / #6 HayaNuri! / #8 ExMenu Organizer + KoreSuki! outside Top 10) = 4 releases, Toron_ (#4 Fuwanugi + Essential outside Top 10) = 2 releases

Tool creator focus points:

Wrap-up

January 2026's gimmick & tool category split the Top 10 roughly evenly between modding-support (editor extension) releases and runtime gimmick releases. The modding-support side stacks neatly onto NDMF + Modular Avatar + lilToon as the standard form, with #1 LAC (¥0 + MIT + GitHub) and YuichaMart's three placements (Kami-Pita / HayaNuri! / ExMenu Organizer) shaping the entire surface. The runtime side — Fuwanugi, High-Five, VR-Sleep Face Mirror — is held up by single-purpose interactions that build a small world each.

The price distribution — ~82% under ¥1,000, 27% free — sits an order of magnitude below the outfit and avatar reports, reflecting a "spread tools widely, embed in the workflow" creator strategy rather than premium-pricing. All Top 10 picks require Modular Avatar, and we see free + OSS distribution (LAC is MIT-licensed) stretching beyond Booth's normal frame, alongside high-frequency multi-version updates within the month. The category's role as the foundation layer of VRChat's modding workflow lands cleanly in the January Top 10.

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About the Data

• Aggregated on: 2026-05-05
• Scope: Gimmicks & tools released on Booth between 2026-01-01 and 2026-01-31 (56 items)
• Ranking basis: like_count (Booth's "like" count) at the time of aggregation, descending
• Inclusion criterion: VRCFinder's database only collects items with 300 or more likes, so any item below that threshold at aggregation time is not included
• Note: All numbers and rankings here are a snapshot from the aggregation date and may differ from the current values