Ulterior Motives: A VRChat Short Film

Niels kakelveld · July 31, 2023

I am part of the VRChat filmmakers group, and have been watching this huge project unfold over several months.

This short film was recorded entirely on the social VR game VRChat, which centres itself around user expression and creation.

All of the assets, avatars, environments, and visualizers you see are build by the community that create content for one purpose: To get people together.

It is really awesome to see the filmmaking scene taking off, so many strides have been taken this year for this very new medium. People can wear trackers on bodyparts such as feet, legs and elbows to have motions of the user translate to their avatar in VR. Up to 11 points of tracking can be ingested.

I think it is very interesting how Ariel intermixed the HUDs and various screens of the game with the footage taken with the vrchat camera, I haven't seen it done like that before. Also like the colour grading and FXs such as grain and QA added in post.

One big problem is that eyes of avatars look at the closest source of audio, so unless the actor has an (expensive) headset capable of eye and face tracking, it does unfortunately look off at times.

I feel like this short film also showcases some types of environments and people that I have seen in the game for real as well, and perhaps this imitates life...

"A young woman searches for connection across one night in the VRChat club scene."

Filmed over 6 months in real VRChat music venues during live events, and featuring a soundtrack of incredible songs and OST created entirely by VRChat users, Ulterior Motives is one of the most ambitious film projects created within VRChat, and was created with the assistance and passion of so many people in the scene.