
This is a big step up from the past system where every persistent animation could only be done through unlabeled hand gestures that the player had to hold. The Avatars 3.0 system comes with a variety of benefits, including the ability to do quick local testing of avatars without needing to upload it for every change, and a more powerful expressions menu, where in addition to having basic gesture buttons, you can add animation toggles and joystick-controlled animations.

As of the time of writing, the NKD Protogen avatar is only officially available as an Avatars 2.0 compatible project, which means that as-is, it's not compatible with Avatars 3.0 and its benefits unless you upgrade it yourself. This is a tutorial about upgrading a VRChat avatar from the Avatars 2.0 to the Avatars 3.0 system (VRCSDK3), specifically about upgrading the NKD Protogen avatar to Avatars 3.0, though some of this tutorial should be relevant to upgrading any avatar to Avatars 3.0. If you're working with the latest version of the model, then my notes page on the NKD Protogen has up-to-date information about setting it up and customizing it!

Update (): The latest version of the NKD Protogen model now contains 3.0 support out of the box, so this tutorial is no longer necessary when working with the latest version! This tutorial is now outdated but left as-is.
