Comprehensive Guide to Rip & Rig Your ESO Character for Use in Videos/VRChat

First things first, I will not be going into much detail into how to use Unity or Blender in this tutorial. Also, don't be a dick. Don't attempt to sell models or claim them as your own, or you'll ruin it for everyone.

You'll want the following software:

1. Ninjaripper - http://cgig.ru/ninjaripper/
2. Blender
3. Blender .rip Import Plugin: https://github.com/Dummiesman/RipImport
4. Unity 5.6.3p1
5. GIMP/Paint.net/Photoshop

Ready? Lets begin

1. First, put Ninjaripper anywhere on your computer, then open the x64 folder and run it. You'll get something that looks like this: https://imgur.com/XKNqBPB
2. Now, set the executable to that of eso. https://imgur.com/olmPAm7 - Make sure to select the x64 version! (Nobody uses a 32bit only computer anymore, so it's fine.)
3. Under the Run button, change Intruder Inject to D3D11 - this puts a d3dx11.dll in the eso path, which you'll need to delete once done ripping models.
4. Click Run.
5. Now when it loads, close it again and launch in steam.
6. Log in as usual, and pick the character you want to rip.
7. Press F12. If you did it right, it should lag for a few seconds then return to normal. This is Ninjaripper dumping every model in the scene.

This is the setup, if you made it here, good job, I hope you're ready for some tediousness!

1. In the output directory, you'll find some folders that look like these: https://imgur.com/E4AaKGm (depending on where you pressed F12)
2. Open the latest one an- whoa! It's full of junk! There are 4 files you're after in here: Mesh, 'Specular' Texture, Colour Texture and Normal Map.
3. The mesh is usually the largest .rip file in there - import it into blender like so: https://imgur.com/1AVE8Q3 and double check. If it's right, it'll look awful like this: https://imgur.com/exP5pXj
4. As for textures, ohohoho, have fun searching. They usually go in a sequential order, so they'll end in a _0, _1 and _2 respectively, but just persevere until you find them all.
5. They'll look like this: https://imgur.com/hQEuqGb https://imgur.com/sglQBmL https://imgur.com/DwTGayx - depending on your model of course. Specular will be mostly transparent, the normal will be a green soup, and the texture will be the one left.
6. Found them? Congrats! Now, time to get this baby rigged and ready for motion. I rigged the one I showed earlier by hand as a learning experience, but I wouldn't really recommend it for most. (It was tedious and boring as hell!) Fortunately, Mixamo is a thing - an online service that lets you upload models and it'll automatically rig them for you! (The more humanoid, the better. No large skirts or funny gloves or it might break.)
7. To use Mixamo, you'll need to export the model as an Obj, like this: https://imgur.com/jGVqGDD
8. Now, hop on over to https://www.mixamo.com/ and lets get cracking!

Time for a lovely nice and easy bit after that awful searching.

1. Make an account. No need for more detail here.
2. Upload model - again, .
3. If you did it right, you'll get something exported that looks like this, except with your own character on it: https://imgur.com/3P0agJe
4. Next it'll ask you to place markers. Note, in the picture, I put the wrist markers on the wrong location! Place them at the very position the hand connects to the forearm or you'll have a bad day. https://imgur.com/AhIHTaK - and to see what it did to the model when I tested it: https://imgur.com/hlrKctD
5. It'll work some techno-magic and you should get a preview of your rigged model.
6. Download it, and it's time to see how well it worked.

For this bit you'll need to know the basics of blender. I don't have time to write a tutorial on how to do this, I'm afraid, but it's maybe 30 minutes of learning curve I'd say until you'll be able to continue.

1. Import the FBX from mixamo, and lets see what it did.
2. Looks good, right? Skeleton in place, pretty awesome job! There's two things wrong with this model though: https://imgur.com/I4lpRv3
3. These issues are: Spine is too straight considering the arched back of the model: https://imgur.com/LNQXBOs , this'll cause issues with the chest leaning forwards oddly. I fixed this by moving the bones to a more natural S-shape: https://imgur.com/KS56tTQ
4. The bones for the feet don't correspond with the actual base of the feet! https://imgur.com/S8ggPAg This is an easy fix, though, just move the bones until they sit where they would properly, like so: https://imgur.com/1oGKgui
5. Basically keep looking for bone placements that seem a bit wrong, and position them correctly. Now the bones are sorted, lets see the integrity of the mesh.
6. Why? Sometimes you get polygons that are flipped, meaning that they'll be drawn inside out, giving a weird one-way mirror sort of effect. You can identify them as they'll be darker than the rest of the mesh, like so: https://imgur.com/O9wPzCt
7. To fix these areas, you need to select the vertices, and recalculate the normals, using this tool: https://imgur.com/GM5gEjI
8. Sometimes you'll select a vertex, and it won't select properly, giving an effect like you only selected half, like this: https://imgur.com/1KrTuI9 - This is a nice double vertex, so you'll want to use the auto function to clean it up. This sometimes fixes the normals themselves! https://imgur.com/4wIoy4I
9. Clean the dark areas until the model is a nice consistent grey colour. https://imgur.com/6bYCCsvhttps://imgur.com/lQfbsio - The eyelashes are rendered on both sides I believe, so you're fine to just ignore them.
10. When satisfied, export as an FBX ready for importing into Unity.
11. Now the model is finished, we can start texturing it and getting it ready for play.
12. First, drag the model into the bottom bar of Unity, so you can load it in the scenario. https://imgur.com/lmlzHBu
13. Now it's time to texture it. I've been informed of a better way to do the shading. So, drag and drop the 3 materials into Unity, like so: https://i.imgur.com/dbPFNMU.png
14. Click on them in Unity, and set their import settings (it'll be on the right) to look exactly like this: https://i.imgur.com/sDKWcDr.png
15. A final tweak is needed first. For the Normal Map and the Specular (green soup and almost transparent), uncheck the "Alpha Is Transparent" box. Otherwise your model will be like a giant chrome-plated shineblob.
16. Now, you'll want to make a new Material. (Right click->Create->Material)
17. At the top of the Material options, there is a shader selection. Set it to "Standard (Specular Setup)"
18. Now, copy the Colour Texture to the Albedo slot, the Normal to the Normal slot, the mostly transparent specular image to the Specular slot AND the Occlusion slot. https://i.imgur.com/yDCNdrw.png
19. Due to VRChat worlds having fake lighting, occlusion will make your characters go almost black. Don't set it unless you're sure you have a properly lit world! Set the smoothness to a low value to compensate!
20. Note, in the image above, the normal map has a value of -1, and the rendering mode is set to cutout. You must do this or it'll look really weird. Trust me.
21. Play around with the specular smoothness value to remove the robotic sheen.
22. Apply the texture to your character and lets see: https://imgur.com/7HqKwAg (Ignore the black square on the front, picture was taken with Rendering Mode of opaque. I can't be bothered to reopen unity, it's 2:35AM as of writing.)

Here is the picture of the same model/textures using the specular system: https://i.imgur.com/OpL2BpA.png

Look at how much better that is? The next points about upscaling textures still apply, just remember to upscale all 3 texture files.

Sorry about the haphazard nature of the addition, but it mimics the eso ingame lighting almost perfectly as opposed to the way I was doing it before.

1. Lovely! But, the texture quality in eso is fine for the camera ingame, but for VR? Ain't going to cut it, lets see: https://imgur.com/dZAsZwB
2. Looks kinda crappy, right? I like to use Waifu2x, an awesome magic program that is basically a virtual brain that manually redraws what you give it to be larger and cleaner. It's fricken awesome. http://waifu2x.udp.jp/
3. This is the result after passing the colour texture through waifu2x at x2 resolution increase twice: https://imgur.com/AOy8JJN - No visible pixels but keeps the tone and design of the original. Now you see why I shill this thing? :D
4. Time to set it up for VRChat. There are other tutorials for this that are dedicated entirely to making avatars, so I won't go into detail. But for her, these are my settings: https://imgur.com/ttkjVAj
5. Always good to double check the animations BEFORE you go ingame and look like a dummy: https://imgur.com/UtJmyJR , if you didn't fix the bones or the spine, this would look reeeeaaally funny.
6. Now upload!

Launch up VRChat aaaaaaaand:

https://imgur.com/CqKzFsn

You can finally be the hot massive-breasted elf you've always wanted to be! Or cat, or lizard - actually, I wouldn't advise beast races unless you're confident with blender. (I apologise for the degredation in quality, it's pretty late!)