Stream Rig Manual

First find out which problem you have. In OBS: View → Docks → Stats. Leave that window open. Three numbers matter:

Dropped frames

Your internet. The connection to Twitch is struggling.

Skipped frames

The encoder is overloaded. Lower your bitrate or resolution.

Rendering lag

The graphics card is busy. Usually the game, not the stream.

Whichever number is climbing is your problem. If it is dropped frames, double-click “Monitor Connection” on the Desktop while it is happening, let it run a few minutes, then press Ctrl and C together. It tells you whether it is your wifi or your internet company.

If nothing is climbing and it still looks bad, it is probably your OBS settings. Ask Claude and mention which number you saw.

It is almost certainly just switched off. The servers cost money to run, so they only get turned on when someone is playing.

1. Ask in Discord for the server to be started.
2. Wait about a minute. It has to boot up.
3. Try again with the address from the Servers section below.

If it still will not connect after that, then something is actually wrong — run Collect Diagnostics and ask Claude.

1. Restart the PC. Genuinely. It fixes most of these and costs you two minutes.
2. In Steam: right-click the game → Properties → Installed Files → Verify integrity of game files.
3. Open NVIDIA App and check for a driver update.

If it is still broken, Collect Diagnostics picks up crash records from Windows. Claude can read those and usually name the cause.

Check these in order:

1. In OBS, look at the Audio Mixer panel. Bars should move when you talk. If a bar is flat, that source is muted or set to the wrong device.
2. Right-click the speaker icon by the clock → Sound settings → confirm the right microphone is selected.
3. Your mic should peak around -12 on the OBS meter. If it is slamming into the red, turn it down — that is what makes people sound crunchy.

Windows quietly lowering everything when you join a call has already been switched off on this machine, so that is not it.

Tracking is almost never the graphics card. It is nearly always one of these:

• Lighting. You need a light in front of your face and nothing bright behind you. A window behind you will break it every time.
• Camera framerate. Set the webcam to 60fps if it can do it.
• It drifted. Most trackers have a recentre hotkey. Set one up, then you can fix it mid-game without alt-tabbing.

If the avatar goes into a T-pose, tracking has dropped entirely — usually the camera got unplugged or another app grabbed it.

Open 1Password. Everything should be in there.

If it is not in there, add it once you have reset it. The whole point is that you only ever remember one password — the one that opens 1Password. Never reuse that one anywhere else.

1Password also holds your two-factor codes, so look there before you go hunting on your phone.

Games do this the first time you launch them. You get a box saying Windows Firewall blocked some features.

Tick “Private networks”. Do not tick “Public networks”.

Private means your home. Public means hotel wifi, a con hall, a coffee shop — anything you allow there is allowed for everyone else on that network too.

If you tick the wrong one it is not a disaster: Windows Security → Firewall & network protection → Allow an app. It is a checkbox.

Drawing the character and making it move are two different jobs. Plenty of artists only do the drawing. Ask outright: do you rig, and have you rigged a VTuber model before? Ask to see a video of a model moving, not just pictures.

Pay through somewhere with a dispute process. Not PayPal friends-and-family — that has no protection at all. Half up front, half on delivery is normal.

Tell them it is a small corner overlay for gaming streams, not a big talking head. Fine detail disappears at that size, and a good artist designs differently once they know.

Get the list of expressions, the file format, and what you are allowed to use it for in writing before you pay.

A commission takes weeks, sometimes months. Make a free throwaway avatar in VRoid Studio this week and use it to set everything else up — tracking, lighting, hotkeys, your OBS scenes, a test stream.

All of that work is identical for the real model, so when it arrives you just swap it in. Otherwise you wait two months and then start learning, on the expensive one.