VR CANTINA

The build log

Rebuilding a real cantina, one photo at a time

The first version of VR Cantina was built by hand in 2025. The 2026 rebuild is made by directing a team of AI agents inside the Unity editor. Every object is held up against a photo of the real room before it counts as done. This page is how that works, then what happened when, taken from the project's own history.

The cantina at night from the car park: a long white stucco front, the lit VR Cantina sign over the gate, the red Immediate Seating awning to the right
The front of the building, rebuilt to match the real elevation: arches, grate well, sign and awning.

How the work runs

Five rules that keep it honest

  1. 1Photo first.Each job starts by reading the owner's photo of the real thing and writing down what it shows. If the spot can't be found with confidence, the job stops and asks.
  2. 2One builder on the scene at a time.A coordinator runs a job queue. Each job gets a fresh builder agent with a full brief; two agents never edit the Unity scene at once.
  3. 3Everything is re-runnable.Props, trim, signs and booths are made by builder scripts behind a menu item, so any piece can be rebuilt from scratch instead of hand-nudged.
  4. 4Side by side, or it isn't done.Results are judged as the photo on the left and the in-game frame on the right, from the same fixed camera, never from a flattering angle.
  5. 5Expert practice, no home-made tricks.Builders read a sourced Unity and VRChat best-practice guide first: real textures on every face, lightmap UVs on every mesh, metal that behaves like metal.

What happened when

Dated entries

Dates are month-day-year. Each entry is a summary of that day's commits.

  1. 2025: the first version

  2. A Unity project

    The project started with a Unity scene of the building's structure, built by a collaborator and auto-committed from the editor while the layout came together.

  3. Booths, tables and cacti

    Booths went into the cantina and every one could be sat in. Tables replaced, cacti added to the front window display, and the world uploaded to VRChat.

  4. TVs, logos, signs and doors

    TVs and logos, signs on the nacho stand, and doors that open.

  5. Fall 2026: the photo-match rebuild

  6. Night pass

    New ceiling, stucco and seating colours, and recessed can lights.

  7. Decor, then a diet

    Wall art, etched glass, front doors, bar lights and hanging props went in. Then an optimisation pass cut the scene from 1.59 million triangles to 626 thousand. The booth seat backs alone were about 97% wasted flat geometry; removing it left their shape unchanged.

  8. Weather TV

    A visual upgrade for the weather channel with a five-day forecast card, and a news badge that follows daylight saving time on its own.

  9. The front of the building

    The front facade was rebuilt to match the real elevation. The Bakery GPU lightmapper was installed, and the four TVs on the cantina wall got cords running down to the cable box.

  10. Doorways, a storefront and the lobby

    The two side arches were cut through as real doorways. The east storefront got its window and white brick. The entry lobby got furniture, maroon skirting, a green ceiling band and a half-round window.

  11. The bar hall

    An awards wall, swirl plaster on the maroon, two panelled bathroom doors, a recessed exit door with an EXIT sign, and the hall lengthened by 0.61 m where the old one dead-ended.

  12. Cantina Trivia

    A bar-trivia game for the TVs with pick-up tablets, then a game-show art pass. Every VRChat call it makes was checked against the real SDK: 65 of 65 allowed.

  13. Lighting matched to the photo

    42 can lights set into real holes in the ceiling, then the bake tuned in a builder-and-judge loop against a wide photo of the dining room. Round seven passed. Same day: fan lights that spin, glowing EXIT signs, and fence posts remodelled from 8,000 triangles to 468.

  14. The busiest day

    • The nacho bar modelled on the real counter, with steam table, lanterns and food that reads from the front.
    • The entrance chandelier modelled from a photo, a faceted beer mug, hanging pothos baskets, one long lobby bench.
    • A neon margarita sign beside the neon beer sign, and two ceiling fans over the riser and the bar.
    • The TVs moved to simple segment lists; the weather TV reads live data; memes after the news.
    • The Quest build cut from 466 MB to 151 MB by stripping the TV video reels from it.

  15. The bar, dressed

    All 18 stained-glass openings in the bar soffit filled, navy drapes and valances across the back of the bar, six beer mugs placed, the bar chandelier swapped for a copy of the lobby one, and a script that audits the scene for Quest.

  16. Clean lightmaps

    The facade no longer bakes in pieces, five props get proper light, and the sports reel went from 726 loose frames to 30 sheets. Bakes now survive a script reload instead of dying halfway.

  17. A 60-second commercial

    Real Unity footage, one camera move per shot. Every shot's start and end frame was approved as a still before anything was filmed, then cut on the beat of a track made for it. Same day: Quest textures capped to fit the 100 MB limit, and the name lettered on the lobby glass.

  18. Worth it, and three milestones

    The project went through the worth gate (use, value, setup, upkeep, risk) and scored 5.0: go, no kill date. Its work was split into three milestones: friends try it, it lands, and later.

The red Immediate Seating neon awning over the side entrance at night
The awning says where the door is, so the name is only on the building once.
The dining room from the owner's photo camera: the carpeted riser with rope railing, rattan chairs and a Cantina Classics tin sign
The dining room from the camera every bake is judged from.

Next

What is left before it opens

Friends walk through it start to end on their own and say what they think. Then the content gets to real quality with the feel and polish done. The milestones page tracks both, straight from the issue tracker.

See the milestonesBack home