I’ve seen games like forsaken pull this off with some of their models, though I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes to make something like this happen with clothing & other stuff on an r6 rig
I’ve looked for solutions thus far but all i’ve been able to find are outdated guides on importing rigs that still have bones in them, nothing like this so i’ve just been completely stumped
Hello! This is a very common point of confusion when looking at advanced rigs in Roblox. The short answer is: There are definitely still bones, they are just “hiding” somewhere else in the hierarchy.
In Roblox, a Skinned MeshPart does not need to have the Bone instances parented directly underneath it in the Explorer for deformation to work.
Here is what is actually happening behind the scenes:
1. Centralized Bones (The Rig Illusion)
The bones for that robe are likely parented somewhere else in that character model, usually all grouped inside the HumanoidRootPart or a central torso part.
2. Automatic Binding
When you import a skinned mesh from Blender, the vertex weight data is baked into the MeshPart itself. As long as a Bone with the exact corresponding name exists anywhere within the same parent Model, the MeshPart will automatically find it and deform to it. So if you open the HumanoidRootPart of that Noli M4 rig, you will almost certainly find a huge list of bones!
Alternative: Layered Clothing (WrapTargets/WrapLayers)
If this is not a custom rig but rather an accessory/clothing, they might be using Roblox’s Layered Clothing system. By using a WrapLayer on the robe and a WrapTarget on the base character, the mesh will automatically cage-deform to the character’s existing joints without needing traditional bone objects inside the clothing part itself.
Hope this solves the mystery for you! You can still follow standard Blender-to-Roblox skinned mesh tutorials, just keep in mind you can organize the bone hierarchy differently once inside Studio.
You don’t need bones, you just need to weight paint your mesh’s objects (in your 3D software of choice).
Bones are also used with skinned meshes. The key difference is that bones allow a single mesh to deform, but aren’t needed for multiple parts to deform.
This tutorial goes over skinning an R15 rig. When importing the final result, it doesn’t add any bones to the rig in Studio.
from what i understand, just weightpaint the model (ditch the armature), export as FBX, then import it into studio?
anything special i need to do with import settings at all??
also i checked the entirety of this M4 noli rig
not a single bone in sight for this guy
Here’s how to achieve skinned mesh rigs with Motor6Ds:
If done correctly your rig should be “boneless” and have Motor6Ds instead of bones, directly parented under the MeshPart of the same name.
After actually testing it, it seems like both objects need to be parented to an armature for them to be weight painted & deform.
You will have to set up a bit of a rig for it to work. sorry
tried this out, and while the rig IS now boneless, it doesn’t deform
here’s what it looks like in blender btw:
What does the bone structure look like?
Here is a skinned default cube I made in Blender using the same method I described:
skinned cube.rbxm (8.9 KB)
Something important to note is that the parent bone (Lower in this case) will move the entire rig when its position/rotation is changed. To actually bend/deform you need to adjust the other motor(s) that is/are created from the child bone(s).
(Also I think some of your face normals might be inverted).
The Upper and Lower bones are kinda just hanging out, neither of them are the parent/child of the other
should i like, add a third bone they’re both parented to? kind of need both bones to be their own isolated parts
You could try that. This method is a little jank as it relies on Roblox setting things up automatically on import, but that should work. You could also just keep using 2 bones and move the main bone and then offset the child back to its original position.
so uh
they sorta work alright when the model is on its own
but another problem cropped up, it just does this whenever i weld both parts to separate limbs
keep in mind i am still trying to recreate m4 noli’s robe-thingy, just uh
yikes
Oh, the robe thing itself might just be a layered clothing mesh thing. Thats a whole other can of worm, but essentially it involves creating a wrap modifier in Roblox using an inner and outer cage of a rig in Blender.
i don’t think it is?
there’s nothing that indicates that within the model anyways, the robe is just attached to the r6 rig with a couple welds
if you want you could try and see for yourself, im p sure its one of the top search results for milestone noli in the toolbox
It looks like its using the same method I described above utilizing importing w/o bones. They probably just have specialized animations for movement. If you wanted to test it with the R15 noob rig like in the video above I would recommend converting the entire rig to this format as to avoid the weirdly placed rootparts or delete them entirely.
