Running VTS on Linux

The following are instructions on making VTube Studio run with OpenSeeFace face tracking on Linux (specifically Arch Linux). This will require some technical knowledge about Linux and is not recommended for beginners, but if you're reading this I'm sure you're already aware of that.

Thanks to Ruyi#0110 for making this guide.

Guide: Running VTube Studio using OpenSeeFace webcam tracking on Linux

Used distro: Arch Linux. The dollar sign represents the start of the command line, don't include that.

Install python39

$ sudo pacman -Sy python39

Note that pacman cannot run without sudo. pacman is the package manager on the used Arch install, yours might be different.

-Sy is the argument for pacman that tells it to update the mirrors and install the package.

python39 is the package name itself (I think on Ubuntu it might be called python3.9).

Install the requirements

$ sudo pacman -Sy python-pip python-virtualenv git

python-pip is the thing we will use to install stuff in our virtual environment.

python-virtualenv is the virtual environment itself.

git will help us download OpenSeeFace. Again, the package names might be different. Some packages you might already have installed.

Note: The equivalent commands for Ubuntu 24.04 to set up the python env are:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install python3.9-distutils
python3.9 -m pip install tomli
virtualenv -p python3.9 env

Download/Install OpenSeeFace

$ git clone https://github.com/emilianavt/OpenSeeFace

Then enter its folder:

$ cd OpenSeeFace

And create the virtual environment:

$ virtualenv -p python39 env

Then start the virtual environment:

$ source env/bin/activate

And install all the stuff the facetracker requires to run:

$ pip install onnxruntime opencv-python pillow numpy==1.26.1

The reason numpy is different is because we need an older version of numpy. This specific version is required.

Lastly, before starting the face tracker, we need to make sure VTube Studio can see it.

Right click on Vtube Studio in your Steam Library, click on Properties > Installed Files > Browse.

Go to Vtube Studio_Data > StreamingAssets and open ip.txt (or create it if its not there).

Inside, you need two things to be correct: ip=0.0.0.0 and port=11573

Make sure to save after you've edited/added them. Now, Vtube Studio will be listening to the right ip and ports for the facetracker.

Now, this is where the magic happens! Go back to your terminal and input:

$ python facetracker.py -W 1280 -H 720 --discard-after 0 --scan-every 0 --no-3d-adapt 1 --max-feature-updates 900 -c 0

Note that -c 0 represents your camera. It usually is 0 but if you have multiple cameras (like the camera from the Valve index) you may need to use a different number here (try 1, 2, ...)

Start VTube Studio

Now you should be able to open up VTube Studio, select VTubeStudioCam and enjoy (don't worry if the resolution says 4x4, all we need is the OpenSeeFace info from it).

Note that you need to start the virtual environment every time you want to use OpenSeeFace, using the following three commands:

• $ cd OpenSeeFace
• $ source env/bin/activate
• $ python facetracker.py -c 0 -W 1280 -H 720 --discard-after 0 --scan-every 0 --no-3d-adapt 1 --max-feature-updates 900

Note that -c 0 represents your camera. It usually is 0 but if you have multiple cameras (like the camera from the Valve index) you may need to use a different number here (try 1, 2, ...)