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

Here are the ten most-liked new gimmicks and tools published on Booth in May 2026, looked at alongside the data. What stood out this month was that tools for finishing how an avatar looks and tools for protecting and packing away what you have already built rose together.

The top spot went to a shader that paints contact shadows into the gaps between overlapping hair and folded cloth (7,746 likes). Let's start there and work down through how each of these is built.

📊 About the data　Aggregated: 2026-07-24 / Scope: gimmicks and tools published on Booth between 2026-05-01 and 2026-05-31 with 300 or more likes (90 items)

Top 10 Gimmicks & Tools

Ranked by like count at the time of aggregation (July 2026), here is how each of these works and where it fits.

#1: lilSSRT / MeltzzZ

A shader that paints the "missing" shadows back into overlapping hair and folded cloth, lifting an avatar's whole sense of depth. VRChat avatars are shaded by light direction, but the narrow gaps where two surfaces sit close — the nape under the hairline, the seam where a cuff meets the wrist, the space between a ribbon and the chest — never darken, so parts read as floating slightly off the body. lilSSRT reads the depth information already on screen, finds those contact gaps and darkens only them, and the same avatar suddenly looks carved and grounded. It gathered 7,746 likes for May's top spot.

A pseudo-indirect light ships alongside the occlusion: it picks up the colours around you and lays a camera-based bounce onto the avatar. Stand between a blue wall and a red one and each side of your body takes on a faint wash of that colour — the room you are standing in shows up on the model.

Shadow radius, sample count, thickness testing, how transparency is treated and field-of-view correction are all exposed as parameters, so you can dial it down for a light setup or push it for image quality. The body is ¥1,000; a version bundled with mask textures for 21 supported avatars is ¥1,300; masks on their own are ¥500. In the two months since it went on sale it has picked up fixes for mirror and VR rendering, per-distance shadow control and a five-step quality preset.

#2: Ashi Ugokashi / マサカ煮屋

A gimmick that lets you drive your feet with your hands, through a pair of virtual "puppet rods". On 3-point tracking — head and two hands — your feet are not yours to move, and expressions like crossing your legs, pointing a toe at someone or holding a crouch used to mean buying full-body tracking hardware. Ashi Ugokashi ties the far end of each rod to an ankle instead, so move an arm and the foot follows. 7,350 likes for second place, ¥500.

The menu carries rod length and visibility, radial sliders for ankle angle on all three axes, and a lock for each foot independently. Pin one foot in mid-air and pose the other, and you can build a seated cross-legged shape or a hugged-knees pose on the spot and shoot it straight away.

Setup is a single button from the Unity menu with your avatar selected. Because ankle axes are defined differently from model to model, there are two install modes — a standard one clamped to natural ranges and a free version that swings a full ±180 degrees — and you can uninstall and re-add if the first choice does not fit. Milltina, Ichigo, Shinano, Kipfel, Misaki and Kaguya are among the confirmed avatars, and it generally works on any Humanoid rig.

#3: Scale Editor / ASCEND

An editor extension that reshapes an avatar's body with nothing but part buttons and sliders. Done by hand, the same job means selecting armature bones one at a time, rewriting scale values and then repeating the whole pass on the outfit so the clothes keep up. Here you drop the avatar root into a window, pick the part and move the slider — and with outfit sync on, the clothes follow the body automatically, so the round trip disappears. 3,627 likes for third place, ¥500.

The axes are grouped into overall size, head, torso, arms and legs, with the head alone splitting into size, width and depth. Ear length and thickness and tail length and thickness get their own panel, which says a lot about who this was built for, and an experimental shoulder-width section sits alongside. Presets cover a toddler build, a model build and a reset to the original, so it does something useful the moment it is installed.

Finishing means adjusting the floor contact and viewpoint height, then confirming. Presets you build can be sold or given away, paid or free, so the body you spent an evening dialling in can itself become something you distribute. Modular Avatar and Floor Adjuster are required.

#4: Chu♡Hi / もちもちショップ

A staging gimmick that plays out passing a drink mouth-to-mouth as one continuous sequence — the sound, the thread between lips, the breath afterwards, the colour left in the cheeks. Bring the can to your mouth and you are holding the drink; lean in and the pass begins. 2,539 likes for fourth place.

Both sides of the exchange are implemented: if your partner has the gimmick too, you can swap roles, and each of the three beats — holding, passing, the moment after — takes a blend shape of your choosing. Sound and particles work without any expression setup, so you can install first and refine later.

The menu holds four entries: on/off, drink from your partner's can, show or hide the drink, and a public mode. Public mode reads the other person's head collider, which trades exact distance control for working without any fine alignment.

Installation is one prefab-generation command from the Unity menu, which places everything on the avatar and aligns the mouth point, hand position and can for you. The bundled chu-hi can swaps to an energy drink can, and substituting your own model — a sake cup, a glass, a plastic bottle — is explicitly allowed. ¥500 for the standard version, ¥800 for a support version with identical contents.

#5: Anti-Ripping / 紫陽花広場Works

A free protection tool that leaves extracted avatar data in a state that is expensive to reconstruct. 2,523 likes for fifth place.

The background is a problem that comes up again and again under the name "avatar ripping." When you upload an avatar to VRChat, its data is also delivered to the PCs of the people around you so it can be rendered — which means extraction tools can pull the model and textures out, and there is currently no way to fully stop the act of extraction itself. A purchased or hand-made avatar can be carried off without permission, and it is a sore point for creators and users alike.

Anti-Ripping's countermeasure is to make sure whatever does get pulled out does not come back together easily.

Protection splits three ways. One layer locks the visible asset behind a key, so without it the mesh collapses into shards and textures open as noise. The second is leak tracing: creator information embedded into the assets, a tracking object placed in the hierarchy, and a build report written out. The third renames things — GameObjects, blend shapes and animator controllers become 16-digit hex strings, so the structure is far harder to read.

The key itself is eight bytes, paired with eight addresses randomised per build, and a resident client app watches for avatar switches in VRChat and hands the key over. Restoring textures needs a custom shader, though, so turning that layer on means anyone whose shaders are disabled — which is common outside your friends list — sees a mosaic. That is the trade between strength and appearance, and a configuration for zero visual impact with internal obfuscation only is documented alongside it. Presets come in light, recommended and strong.

#6: Beat Hologram Shader / yossy222

A hologram-style shader that flashes in time with a tempo you type in as a plain BPM value. Your silhouette turns into a field of glowing points, pulsing and running with scanlines at the beat you set. 2,383 likes for sixth place, free.

Open the material and, after the colour, you get BPM, the darker and brighter ends of the pulse, and how quickly the light falls away. Scanline density and speed and glitch frequency and offset are all numeric too, so the same shader covers everything from a faint breathing glow to heavy scanline tearing.

The thoughtful part is what happens up close: it fades out once someone comes within a set distance. The creator's stated reason is that it is dazzling otherwise — a nod to using it in clubs and venues where people end up shoulder to shoulder. Alongside the BPM version there is an AudioLink variant that reacts to whatever is playing. It ships under the MIT licence, free, with a ¥500 support version carrying identical contents.

#7: SataPop! / さたにあしょっぴんぐ

A fizzy drink gimmick you can genuinely drink — hold the straw to your mouth and the level goes down. Carbonation rises through a clear cup with cloud-shaped cream or nemophila blossoms floating on top. A new release from さたにあしょっぴんぐ — the creator behind the popular Satania-Style Cigarette Gimmick — it took seventh place with 2,364 likes.

Drinking alone would be staging. What spread this one is that you can offer it to people who do not own the asset. As long as they allow contact, they can drink from the straw you hold out. Leftovers reset after 20 seconds and an empty cup after seven, so you can keep offering it.

Six drinks are included, each with its own toppings and colour scheme. On top of that: three straws, cups, lids and glasses, six straw charms, and a run of customisation parts — cream, cherries, lemon, ice, flowers, a rabbit. Colour masks and modding prefabs are in there too, so you can assemble an original drink in your own palette. Separate lidded and open prefabs let you choose how the drinking end reads.

Avatar and world versions both exist, and the world build can also be triggered from an interaction. The full set with both is ¥1,000, the avatar gimmick alone ¥600, the world gimmick ¥500, and a model-only version without the liquid simulation ¥400. Selling or distributing your own textures is permitted as long as SataPop!'s own files are not included.

#8: VRC World Build Optimizer / kuzuki-shop

A Unity extension that scans every asset in a world project and cuts build size in one click. Done by hand, the same trimming means opening import settings one asset at a time across hundreds of them; here it runs as a single pass. The product images show a build dropping from 164.7MB to 91.7MB, and it took eighth place with 1,803 likes.

The pass covers texture resolution caps (1024×1024 by default), Crunch compression, mipmap streaming and read/write flags; audio compression format, load type and quality; plus mesh compression levels, reflection probe resolution and font atlas compression — the main reasons a world build balloons, handled in one analysis.

Since compression trades against visual quality, the automatic backup taken before anything is applied is what makes it usable. It stores more than settings: fonts and reflection probes, which cannot be restored from settings alone, are backed up as assets. Analysis results, projected savings and a list of problem assets can be exported as text.

It is currently a free beta under the MIT licence, with a stated intent to switch to paid sales once the full version ships, and anyone who buys the ¥300 support version keeps access to the full version. The page notes that price is set below what the full version will cost — a properly designed early-buyer slot that doubles as testing.

#9: VRC Project Compressor / S&N

An archiving tool that packs Unity projects you will not open for a while into a dedicated format, cutting them by about 90% on average — losslessly. Every round of avatar work leaves another project behind, any of which can run to tens of gigabytes, and zipping barely helps because Unity's data formats suit general-purpose compression poorly. This tool compresses each data type by a method suited to it and bundles the result into a single .vpc file, with textures and the rest coming back unchanged. 1,639 likes for ninth place, ¥500.

Product images show a 222GB set of projects coming down to 19GB (noted as an arithmetic mean of test results rather than a guaranteed ratio).

For projects in active use, the page points at the shop's other tool — a lossy slimmer that works by optimising textures and deleting unused data, a genuinely different job from this archival one.

It runs on Windows only and leans on CPU and memory. In the two months after publication it has picked up faster and more stable compression and decompression plus additional language support.

#10: Rainbow Afterimage Gimmick / みやしろ

A particle gimmick that leaves a rainbow trail behind you as you move — built for dance and photography where you want the motion itself to read. 1,539 likes for tenth place, distributed free.

You choose which parts leave a trail. Separate particles are prepared for head, body, hair, outfit and accessories, and you only configure the ones you want. Configuring means pointing the particle's shape setting at the matching mesh on your avatar; the names do not have to line up, as long as each one is assigned to the right part.

Simulation speed ships at 9× by default, which is what makes the trails dense. The page says plainly that you can lower it if performance suffers. lilToon, Modular Avatar and a menu-generation tool are required. Trailing rainbow light from the hair only, or lighting up just the hem of a skirt, is something you can try here for nothing.

May 2026 Trends

Beyond the ranking, here is what the full set of 90 gimmicks and tools published on Booth in May 2026 shows.

Metric	Value
Items in scope	90
Average likes	939
Median likes	598
Average price	¥751
Median price	¥500
Share free	29% (26 / 90)
Share under ¥1,000	71% (64 / 90)
"MA compatible" items	51% (46 / 90)
Top 10 installable for free	4 (#5, #6, #8, #10)

Average likes came to 939 against a median of 598. The two leaders both cleared 7,000, which pulled the average up, and the gap between first and second is only about 400 likes — a month with two items running abreast at the front.

Features: MA as the baseline, shaders tripling in three months

The feature tally reads MA compatible 46, shader 20, particle 17, lilToon compatible 15, shape key 15, world gimmick 9, world-fixed 9, Udon 8, blend shape 8, PhysBone compatible 5. Building on top of Modular Avatar covers half the field, unchanged from previous months.

The clear movement is in shaders: 6 in March, 12 in April, 20 in May — more than tripling in three months and climbing to second on the feature chart. With lilSSRT at #1 and Beat Hologram Shader at #6, tools that build the look itself are taking up more of the category.

On keywords, gimmick 32, for photography 30, editor extension 25, staging effect 22 and free 22 lead. "For photography" rose again from April's 23.

On the world side, this one caught my eye.

virtual-boys' "Under Sea Shader" sinks a whole world underwater by being applied to the skybox. Developed by 3NEN works, the team of momoma and Kokuriko, it renders a rippling surface, sunlight coming through it and caustics shifting across the sand. Applied to an ordinary mesh, it can also make that section read as open space. Nine ready-made materials are included, ¥460.

On the particle side, a piece that goes all in on being a joke did well.

金曜雑貨's "The Gimmick That Made You 'Know' Everything" opens a galaxy and a swarm of equations around your avatar when you form a hand sign, so that you appear to have arrived at the fundamental truth of the universe. Twenty different equations fly out. Because the size and origin point of the galaxy are adjustable from the menu, you can keep the equations orbiting your head or let the cosmos pour out of your whole body. The page also suggests pinning the expanded universe in place and having a friend stand in it instead. Sound effects are swappable, ¥500.

Supported models: Milltina and Misaki tie for the lead

Supported models line up as Milltina 7, Misaki 7, Shinano 4, Manuka 4, Kipfel 3, Milfy 3, Mayo 2, Eku 2, Rurune 2, Kanata 2. Alongside the long-standing Milltina, Misaki — an avatar that was itself only published on Booth in May — is tied at the top, and it took first place in the same month's avatar report.

Seven compatibility items arriving for a brand-new base within the same month is a good measure of how fast this category reacts to a new avatar. The clearest example:

エカシリコン's "MochiFitter Data for Misaki" is a profile for the MochiFitter outfit-conversion tool. The point is that it converts in both directions — other avatars' outfits onto Misaki, and Misaki's outfits onto other avatars. Alongside shape keys for figure and silhouette, it includes fit-adjustment keys that loosen or tighten the garment overall, which gives you somewhere to go when clipping shows up. ¥600.

Working in the same direction as the foot-control gimmick at #2, a piece built around a tight list of supported avatars also did well.

しぅのなでアトリエ's Shiu-style "Foot Petting Gimmick" lets you handle your feet like hands without full-body tracking. Planned and produced by Shiu with gimmick development by morurabo, it leans hard on feel: fine ankle angle control plus vertical and forward-back positioning. With a note asking users to be considerate, since petting means different things to different people, it ships compatibility data for 13 avatars including Shinano, Manuka and Milltina. Individual avatar versions are ¥1,000 each and the full set ¥2,000, while the Rinasciita version was made permanently free after the response it got.

Price: median back to ¥500, six items in the ¥3,000s

The price spread is free 26, ¥1-499 12, ¥500-999 26, ¥1,000-1,999 17, ¥2,000-2,999 3, ¥3,000-4,999 6, ¥5,000+ 0. Free and ¥500-999 tie at 26 each and together account for close to 70% of the field. The median is ¥500, back up from April's ¥300.

The upper band is where the change shows: six items in the ¥3,000-4,999 bracket, double April's three. The share under ¥1,000 fell to 71% after two months at 79% and 80%. The habit of handing small tools out widely is still there, but a layer of creators is now pricing carefully built tools accordingly.

From the 26 free items, one that goes into a world:

だまこや's "Free Position Mirror" is a world gimmick where you carry a controller around and summon a mirror wherever you want it. Pressing the button cycles through mirror with background, mirror with the background cut, and off; rotation between portrait and landscape, 90-degree snapping and a size slider are all on the same handset. It switches off automatically once you leave a defined area, and returns to its home position after five minutes with nobody using it — the kind of cleanup you want from something left in a shared space. Both you and other people appear in it, and three prefabs with and without a docking stand are included, free.

May trends from a creator's point of view

Four axes worth watching from the Top 10 and the wider May field, with March and April stacked alongside so the movement is visible.

Metric	March 2026	April 2026	May 2026
Items in scope	113	83	90
Median price	¥500	¥300	¥500
Median likes	598	632	598
Share free	33%	33%	29%
Share under ¥1,000	79%	80%	71%
Feature tag "shader"	6	12	20
Items ¥3,000 and above	6	3	6
Top 10 picks with a PV	6	5	4

Notes for gimmick creators:

Summary

May 2026 in gimmicks and tools was a month where tools that finish an avatar and tools that protect and pack away finished data shared the same ranking. What lilSSRT filled at the top was a gap in how things read: overlapping hair and folded cloth that never darken where they meet. Behind it, the obfuscation tool at #5, the world size reducer at #8 and the project compressor at #9 took three slots for work that happens on either side of building — keeping data safe, keeping it stored. Tools aimed squarely at the unglamorous part of the job landed together at the top.

Ashi Ugokashi at #2 solved its problem the same way. Expression that used to need extra hardware became reachable by adding one mapping: rods from your hands to your ankles. The spread of the free-body-plus-support-tier pattern to three separate entries comes from the same instinct — start by getting it tried. Find one small thing somebody bumps into every day and solve exactly that; stacked up, that is what May's ranking turned out to be.

Other Categories from May 2026

New releases published on Booth in May 2026 are covered by category in these monthly reports.

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

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About the data

• Aggregated: 2026-07-24
• Scope: gimmicks and tools published on Booth between 2026-05-01 and 2026-05-31 (90 items)
• Ranking basis: like_count at the time of aggregation, descending
• Inclusion: the VRCFinder database only collects items with 300 or more likes, so items below that threshold at aggregation time are not included
• Note: figures and rankings are a snapshot from the aggregation date and may differ from current values. "Published" refers to when the Booth product page went live, which can differ from when sales actually began
• Supported models, specs and prices come from the Booth product pages as of writing. Sale prices and updates can change, so please check the Booth page before buying