Paint 3D is a program bundled with Windows 10 which can be used to model and paint on 3D objects. The interface is so user-friendly that you do not need any experience in 3D modeling to make your one-of-a-kind tree/dog/house/whatever in minutes. Heck, even a child could whip up a nice model of a flower!
(Not taken by me, obtained from the Internet)
However, much like how Paint is limited for painting digital art, Paint 3D is still limited for modeling 3D models. There’s no way to bend, twist, and remove individual faces/vertexes, UV map, and any sort of cool 3D modeling technique like in Blender. It would take you humongous skill, much more than Blender, to model something realistic like this in Paint 3D, much like to paint something realistic in Paint. Because of that, Paint 3D is recommended if you both want a cartoony video game and don’t want to bother with complex 3D modeling. Otherwise, if you want to learn decent modeling, go the Blender route.
This tutorial will teach the method of modifying your meshes created with Paint 3D and importing it into Roblox properly. I’ll be using it for my future game (if you’ve seen my Mobitsy Sonic model topic, I’ve mentioned it was created with this method), and thought it would nice to teach y’all, especially novice game builders with Windows 10.
So, to start, here’s a nice lemonade-themed rabbit I’ve stirred up in Paint 3D.
Step #1: Export your Paint 3D model
Go to Menu > Save as > 3D model. I’d prefer to save it as an FBX file, since that’s one of the 3D file types Roblox supports, and is the file type we’ll be dealing with the rest of the tutorial, so go ahead with FBX. GLB is about similar to FBX, while 3MF is suited for 3D printing.
Step #2: Blender time!
Why Blender when we’re using Paint 3D? Like I said, it has advanced 3D features which will help us modify the meshes to be friendly with Roblox. Why? You’ll see later. (I am using version 2.81.16.)
Go to File > Import > FBX (.fbx).
Find your model and hit “Import FBX” (not yet, look at the next step).
Step #3: Fix scaling and positioning problems
Compared to the Robloxian noob model I’ve exported from Studio as OBJ, our rabbit model is very tiny, plus her feet and eyelashes are displaced.
To save the painful fixing of manually scaling the model and putting the displaced objects back where they are, go the import settings on the right pane, set the Scale to a big number which will make your model bigger and more visible (such as 500.00), and uncheck “Animation” (the reason certain objects are displaced).
Our rabbit should look normal now.
(To make the textures appear on the model, go to the Viewport Shading globes on the top right corner and select “Material Preview”, the third globe. You can go further and select “Render Preview”, the fourth globe.)
Step #4: Lower the poly count
(Blender uses “faces”, Roblox uses “triangles”, I’m gonna use “polygon” or “poly” for short because that’s what they’re officially called)
To start, select your mesh, go to the Modifiers tab in the Properties pane, click “Add Modifier”, and select “Decimate”.
Now here’s the reason why you need Blender, and Roblox only supports up to 10,000 polygons per mesh! Customly-drawn parts in Paint 3D are very high in polygons to probably look slicker.
To lower the polygon count, set the ratio to somewhat low as “0.1”. You can set the ratio to anything as long as the resulted poly count is below 10,000. I chose to have it around 3,000 polygons because that’s more reasonable in my opinion. (Don’t go too low or else your mesh will look unrecognizable.) But the problem is…
…the resulting low-poly mesh will look crumpled.
To smooth the mesh out, select the crumpled mesh, go to “Edit mode” (top left corner), and select Mesh > Normals > Set from Faces.
The mesh should look normal now.
You shouldn’t worry about the spheres (one of the most commonly-used 3D parts) because they’re already under Roblox’s polygon limit.
And why worry about the cubes/rectangular prisms?
Step #5: (OPTIONAL) Join meshes
Now I’ve lowered the polygons of the custom-drawn parts (as those seem to be the only parts with high poly in this model, and I thought I did for all of those parts, as you’ll see later on), it’s time to save the count of meshes in the model (so you don’t have much individual pieces to mess with in Roblox, and Roblox doesn’t support mesh unions).
It is recommended that you only join the meshes of the same solid color, as they’ll be imported without textures in Roblox, and UV mapping and texturing individual meshes is a whole another level.
To join meshes, select multiple meshes through Shift + Click and then simply press Ctrl + J.
Step #6: Export your now “Blended” model
We are going to export the model as FBX, which is again one of the 3D file types Roblox supports. Go to File > Export > FBX (.fbx).
Before you hit “Export FBX”, be sure to set the Path mode to “Copy” and mark the box icon next to the setting, or else your model will be exported without textures.
Here’s what your model should look like “blended” and exported. Do not worry about the strange lighting in 3D Viewer, it will not affect the textures.
Step #7: Import the model into Roblox Studio through the “Bulk Import” feature
You’ll need to open up a game published online on the Roblox website to do this. Open up Game Explorer in the View tab, right-click “Add Assets”, and click “Apply All” when you see the Mesh Splitting box pop up. (Don’t ever try importing your creation as a single mesh.)
The Bulk Import feature will split your model into individual meshes to use in your game. To place your model into your game, open the “Meshes” folder in Game Explorer, select all the meshes under your model name, right-click, and select “Insert with location”.
It’s so big in Roblox, strangely. And I forgot the lower the poly count of the left ear (now I’ve realized, you shouldn’t have to ask about that in the replies)! I was probably either too focused in screenshotting for the tutorial, or just tired.
Okay, here is the model with the left ear now fixed (anddon’taskmeabouthowiaccidentallyimportedthesamewrongmodelandnowhaveameshinventorytocleanupiamaperfectionistandwantthemodeltobeexactasitisinthefile). It’s still big even though I set the export Scale to 0.2.
Step #8: Finish your model in Roblox Studio
Okay, here’s the model now resized to be smaller than the Robloxian noob, by grouping the meshes into a model and resizing the model with DaMrNelson’s Model Resize Plugin.
Some meshes don’t have textures imported with them, though fortunately are of solid color. To fix this, obtain the hex code of the color of the mesh in Paint 3D…
With the Explorer and Properties windows open, select the textureless mesh, click the box in the Color property, and input the hex code in the HTML box. Click “OK”. Because I don’t like how rough the Plastic material look, I set the material to SmoothPlastic. It makes the mesh more shiny than the other meshes, but at least it doesn’t look rough as stone. (Or you can try uploading the decal with that color to Roblox and inputting the ID in the TextureID property.)
So here it is, a nice cartoon fantasy rabbit all made in Paint 3D, modified with Blender and Roblox Studio, and ready to be your new favorite pet in a Roblox game (and maybe drinkable)! To make your model stay together like glue in-game, either anchor it or weld them with WeldConstraints or rig with Motor6Ds with your favorite rigging plugin. I don’t know if it will be in a future game of mine, but I’ll definitely rig it and release it as a free model in the Roblox library.
I hope this tutorial will help novice game builders/designers who want an easy way to model endless creations without usage of unions and all that building stuff in Roblox Studio, and without suffering the complexity of Blender, as well with proof that mistakes do happen. This tutorial was influenced by this YouTube video showing how to modify a Paint 3D model in Blender for game creation. If you want to create better models in Paint 3D, Windows has several official video guides and tutorials on Paint 3D, and you can analyze Paint 3D “speedmodels” like this and this.
If you have any suggestions for this tutorial, please reply!
P.S.
When I opened my game with the Lemonade Rabbit model the next morning, I noticed Roblox rejected the texture of the snout for an unspecified reason. Now after fixing, it’s mouthless, all pink, and shiny. Hopefully the lack of a mouth won’t bother us.
