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

Gimmicks & tools are the category where the modding toolchain itself becomes the product. Lining up January 2026's new Booth releases from the top, I found the split that defines this category on full display: editor extensions built by tool authors living side by side with runtime gimmicks built by gimmick makers.

First place went to a free optimization tool that auto-analyzes an avatar's textures and cuts their size by up to 90%+ (16,733 likes). Let's start there and work down the list.

📊 About the data　Compiled: 2026-07-13 / Scope: 104 gimmick & tool releases with 300+ likes published on Booth between 2026-01-01 and 2026-01-31

10 Notable Gimmicks & Tools

Sorted by like count as of July 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 16,733 likes as of compilation — roughly 6,000 clear of second place — and free, it reshaped the geography of the month on its own.

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"), 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 → 3.45 MB while looking essentially identical — the size-vs-quality tradeoff feels noticeably softer once you see it.

Setup is adding 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, 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 setup. The most-discussed mod-support tool of January, at 10,834 likes as of compilation — making this a rare month where two releases in the category cross 10,000. It also 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 Plum, Chocolat, Milltina, Shinano, Sio and more. ¥1,500, with an identical-content supporter tier at ¥1,800. Together with #6 HayaNuri!, #8 ExMenu Organizer, and #10 KoreSuki!, this makes four YuichaMart releases in the Top 10 in a single month — the defining creator-concentration story 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. 7,555 likes as of compilation. At ¥2,500 it's the most expensive Top 10 pick, but it earned the reach to hold third place.

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. 6,286 likes as of compilation.

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 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 the cheapest paid pick in the Top 10. Toron_ also released the multi-purpose modding tool "Essential" the same month — two January releases spanning one runtime gimmick and one editor extension.

#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. 6,223 likes as of compilation.

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 ¥500 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. 5,258 likes as of compilation.

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 — each release handling 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. 3,753 likes as of compilation.

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. 3,514 likes as of compilation.

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 experiment with 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 the rhythm of YuichaMart's 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. Published January 31, right at the month's close, and still at 3,411 likes as of compilation.

The free version ships the high-five itself plus bonus slap (head) and tsukkomi (body) effects, with EX menu toggles for each and individual on/off for sound and particles. The paid version (¥500) changes the particle and sound based on the hand shape, adding a fist bump and a "special handshake" fingertip-touch gesture.

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: KoreSuki! / YuichaMart

Pick just the parts you love from a Prefab in a tree view, and export them as a fresh Prefab. "I only want the shoes from this costume set," "I bought the accessory pack but only need the earrings" — this parts-extraction tool answers the modder's "I don't need all of this" head-on. 2,406 likes as of compilation.

The core is full automation of the hardest step: bone selection. When extracting a SkinnedMesh (clothing or moving parts), the tool automatically resolves just the related bones, avoiding the broken-rig accidents of manual disassembly and keeping the output lean. The original Prefab is never touched — a new one is generated non-destructively — and Unity Package export is built in, so it doubles as a way to organize your own assets or back up specific parts.

Unity 2019.4+ with no prerequisite assets — the same low setup barrier as the shop's other tools. ¥800, with an identical-content supporter tier at ¥1,000. Together with #2 Kami-Pita, #6 HayaNuri!, and #8 ExMenu Organizer, it closes out a month where all four of YuichaMart's releases landed in the Top 10 — a concentration pattern unique to this category.

January 2026 Trends

Beyond the ranking, here's what the full pool of 104 gimmick & tool releases published on Booth in January tells us.

Indicator	Value
Eligible releases	104
Mean likes	1,366
Median likes	726
Mean price	¥589
Median price	¥500
Free releases	~24% (25 / 104)
Releases under ¥1,000	~82% (85 / 104)
Top 10 — modding-support (editor extension) releases	7 (#1 / #2 / #6 / #7 / #8 / #10 + the hybrid #3)

Median price ¥500, mean ¥589 — the lowest price center across the monthly category reports (outfits sit at ¥1,200, hairstyles at ¥900 the same month). About a quarter free with most releases 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 feature tag is MA Compatible at 55 releases — over half the 104-item pool. Then lilToon Compatible 35 / Shape Key 17 / Particle 17 / Shader 14 / Facial Animation 10 / PhysBone 8 / World Fix 7.

The keyword tally puts Gimmick at 31 on top, followed by For Photography 25, Modding 25, Free 24, Editor Extension 21, ON/OFF Toggle 14 — the twin pillars of "editor extensions running on Modular Avatar" and "gimmicks serving photography and modding" define January's mainstream. In the Top 10, #1 LAC and #8 ExMenu Organizer fly the NDMF flag.

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 dedicated tentacle-shaped meshes deform instead of clothing). One of the more striking creator-side experiments of January in the staging-and-photography corner.

Representing the 55 MA-compatible releases on the runtime side, here's a piece built for VR-sleep culture:

よるねこキャット屋さん's "V-Sleep Support Face Mirror Gimmick" is a face mirror that auto-switches to a top-down view when you lie down, so you can check your own face while drifting off without opening a camera. A night mode dims the glare in bright worlds, and setup is placing one prefab under any humanoid avatar. It started as a free release and grew features on its way to a ¥500 paid version — a very tool-category way to raise a product.

Supported avatars: tools built around the Komado family

The supported-model breakdown lands at Plum 13 / Hikikumari's Kumari 8 / Shinano 7 / Kipfel 7 / Milltina 7 / Chocolat 6 / Manuka 6 / Rurune 5 / Mamehinata 4 / Chiffon 4. Plum, Chocolat, and Chiffon are all Amatousagi's "Komado family," 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 — a clear instance of a mature avatar-family ecosystem pulling tools into orbit around it.

The number-two model, "Hikikumari's Kumari," is a brand-new avatar released the same January. As an example of support data arriving right at launch, here's a conversion profile:

エカシリコン's "Kumari Mochi Fitter Profile" plugs the new avatar into the outfit-transfer tool Mochi Fitter, supporting both directions — dressing Kumari in other avatars' outfits (forward) and putting Kumari-native outfits on other avatars (reverse). It's tuned so outfits using chest-size and leg shape keys convert cleanly, at ¥600. The same creator also shipped a free Milltina profile the same month, showing how "conversion data" is maturing into a product genre of its own on the tool shelf.

Pricing: ~82% under ¥1,000, about a quarter free

The price distribution: Free 25 / ¥1–499: 20 / ¥500–999: 40, accounting for 85 releases (~82%). Then ¥1,000–1,999: 14, with only 5 releases above ¥2,000. 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 25 free releases shape the entire month's surface. Beyond #1 LAC and #9 High-Five in the Top 10, free tools also answer sharply specific problems:

シリアルのお店's "ManualAFK" adds a manual AFK ON/OFF toggle to the Expression Menu, built for headsets like the Bigscreen Beyond where automatic AFK never triggers. It brings no custom AFK animation of its own — it simply references the Action/FX layers already configured on your avatar, so nothing feels out of place. A free release that solves exactly one problem for exactly the people who have it.

From the thickest ¥500–999 band, a photography staple:

悪の組織's "Evil Pose System" lets you play pose and dance animations bought on Booth (or made yourself) directly inside VRChat for ¥800. Drop animation files into the menu folder, press the add button, and switch between four modes — position lock, free upper body, free hands, full lock. It takes pose packs that used to live only in Unity photoshoots and carries them into in-world photography.

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 2026
Eligible releases	104
Median price / median likes	¥500 / 726
Top 10 — modding-support (editor extension) releases	7
Top 10 — fully free releases	2 (#1 LAC / #9 High-Five)
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 versions within the month	3+ (#2 v1.0→v3.0 / #4 v2.0 beta→v2.1a / #5 v2.0 with kanji)
Multiple Top 10 placements by one creator	YuichaMart with 4 (#2 / #6 / #8 / #10); Toron_ with #4 plus one release outside the Top 10

Tool creator focus points:

Wrap-up

January 2026's gimmick & tool category was a month where modding-support (editor extension) releases filled seven of the Top 10. The modding-support side stacks neatly onto NDMF + Modular Avatar + lilToon as the standard form, with #1 LAC (¥0 + MIT + GitHub) and YuichaMart's four placements (Kami-Pita / HayaNuri! / ExMenu Organizer / KoreSuki!) shaping the entire surface. The runtime side — Fuwanugi and High-Five — is held up by single-purpose interactions that light up a room on contact.

The price distribution — ~82% under ¥1,000, about a quarter 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. Free + OSS distribution (LAC is MIT-licensed) stretching beyond Booth's normal frame, and multi-version updates landing within the month — the category's role as the foundation layer of VRChat's modding workflow comes through cleanly in the January Top 10.

Other categories from January 2026

New releases published on Booth in January 2026 are covered category by category in the monthly report series.

• [January 2026] VRChat Avatar Trends & Ranking | Booth Trend Analysis
• [January 2026] VRChat Outfit Trends & Ranking | Booth Trend Analysis
• [January 2026] VRChat Hairstyle Trends & Ranking | Booth Trend Analysis
• [January 2026] VRChat Accessory Trends & Ranking | Booth Trend Analysis
• [January 2026] VRChat Small Item Trends & Ranking | Booth Trend Analysis
• [January 2026] VRChat World Trends & Ranking | Booth Trend Analysis

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About the Data

• Compiled: 2026-07-13 (originally compiled 2026-05-05)
• Scope: Gimmicks & tools released on Booth between 2026-01-01 and 2026-01-31 (104 items)
• Ranking basis: like_count (Booth's "like" count) at the time of compilation, descending
• Brush-up: this article was restructured to the current format on 2026-07-13, with the ranking and statistics replaced by a same-day re-tally
• Inclusion criterion: VRCFinder's database only collects items with 300 or more likes, so any item below that threshold at compilation time is not included
• Note: All numbers and rankings here are a snapshot from the compilation date and may differ from the current values. "Published" refers to when the Booth product page went public, which may differ from the actual sales start date
• Supported models, specs, and prices are based on each Booth product page at the time of writing. Sale prices and updates may change, so please check the Booth page before purchasing