How to rig/animate a model in Blender for export to Studio?

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#1

Hi, so I’ve been searching around quite a while and haven’t had any luck trying to find out how to rig a model in Blender to either animate it there, or import back into Studio to use default animations.

My big requirement is that I am not using any plugins, because I want to understand how this stuff actually works myself.

I have no problems with making the models and importing them into Studio, but I just can’t figure out how to get the rigging working correctly. I’ve used some guides on general rigging in Blender, but when it didn’t import correctly I did more digging and found this tutorial from Roblox as well as another post on the dev forum about exporting the rigging and the specific hierarchical structure needed for R15 models at least, and especially how Roblox does not follow the ‘industry standard’ on rigging (which explains why my other attempt didn’t work).

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Since then I’ve tried playing around with things but still haven’t gotten decent results. If I export the fbx from Blender with the correct structure, but without being parented to the armature I get a model that appears to be acceptable for animation with animation editor, but the mesh parts are not connected to each other.

If I parent the meshes to the armature, I get the bone structure in Studio, but they’re not connected to the meshes.

I’ve tried different ways of parenting the model to the armature, with no better results.

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I’ve searched for other tutorials or info, but everything’s either about using rig files that already exist, or using plugins to do the rigging. I just want to understand how this all works.

Can ANYONE help me out here?

1 Like
#2

I’m pretty sure that it’s not possible to export a rig from blender to studio. How blender uses rigs is quite different from Studio and it would be near impossible for you to do it.

#3

I don’t model but maybe try saving it to a file and then inserting the file into roblox studio? I don’t know, I don’t do this type of stuff.

#4

There’s various ways to get it into Studio, I’ve shown that in my post, but I haven’t figured out a way to get it in with the correct armature structure needed for it to generate Motor6Ds. I know there’s a way to do it, because the only way I’ve seen in other videos is to use a downloaded rig file in blender, paste your own assets in, and then export it. What I want to do is figure out how that rig file is made.

#5

I found out early on that Roblox’s animations are far different than the industry standard. However, it IS possible, I just need to figure out how.