I was messing around with welding and creating joints and accidentally learned how to animate objects. I just thought I should share how to do it here so people are able to learn how to do it.
Before we start, install these two plugins:
RigEditLite: RigEdit Lite - Roblox by @Arch_Mage
BlenderAnimations: https://www.roblox.com/library/716953901/Blender-rig-exporter-animation-importer by @Den_S
Roblox Animation Editor should come directly into the studio itself. That’s what I’ve heard. If that’s not right, please tell me and I’ll find it.
Animating can both be done in Blender and Roblox Studio itself. I will show both ways and try my best to get as detailed as possible in both. Keep in mind that I don’t use Roblox Studio Animator Plugin as much as I do with Blender.
Anyways, so firstly, you’d need your model obviously. For my example, I will be using this Elephant I modeled myself via Blender. I made sure to separate parts that will be animated so that I can animate them. I also joined parts together that will need zero animating to help reduce some blocks.
Elephant Model
Inside this model, I have both a HumanoidRootPart and a Humanoid. I also renamed them according to what they are.
Names and Main Parts
INSERTING HUMANOIDROOTPART AND HUMANOID
HumanoidRootPart and Humanoid
To make a PrimaryPart:
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Duplicate the Torso Part
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Rename that part to "HumanoidRootPart"
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Select the entire model and locate "PrimaryPart"
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Click it and select the “HumanoidRootPart” within the model.
To insert a Humanoid:
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Right click and press “Insert Object” or press Ctrl + I on the model
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Type in "Humanoid"
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Press it or press enter to insert it into the model.
BASIC UNDERSTANDING
There are main things that needs animating, such as:
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Legs ( All 4 )
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Ears
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Head
And so on.
Before we start though, lets get some understanding on the difference between Joints and Welds.
Joints are the bones, basically what you will use to animate your characters.
Welds are connecting, or gluing two or more things together.
Joints would look like this:
Joints (Basically a circle)
Welds would look like this:
Welds (Basically a square)
CREATING JOINTS
Continuing on, we should ALWAYS start with creating Joints so that we know where each limbs are.
So I’m going to start off with creating Joints for the head, torso, and the legs.
Creating Joints for the main parts.
Making the Joints:
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Select the model
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Go up into Plugins and select the RigEditLite Plugin
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Go into the model and select the Torso part first.
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While holding down Ctrl, select the legs and head.
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Go into the plugin UI and press “Create Joints.” Make sure you’re selecting the correct one.
Next up, we have to move these joints to an appropriate area so that it moves easily when you animate it. The joints are basically where your animation will rotate or move from. Just mess around with the positioning to understand it a bit more.
Moving Joints
Moving Joints:
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Select the joints while the plugin is still activated.
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Select the joints. ( You can select multiple by holding down shift. )
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Slide it down with the circles provided.
You can change its increment with the “Steps:” in the UI.
Remember: The joints are where the rotations and movement will go.
Any extra joints creations:
Since I am using an elephant, it has both a trunk and a tail. I will have to create Joints for those too.
Creating Joints for Trunks and Tails
TAILS
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Firstly, I did the tail. Select the Torso FIRST.
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While holding down Ctrl, select the first tail part.
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Press Create joints.
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After that, we need to connect the 2nd tail to the first one. Select the first tail. ( Tail1 ).
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While holding down Ctrl, select the 2nd tail part. ( Tail2 ).
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Press Create joints.
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Now we need to connect the 3rd tail to the 2nd one. Select the second tail. ( Tail2 ).
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While holding down Ctrl, select the 3rd tail part. ( Tail3 ).
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Press Create joints.
TRUNKS
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Select the Torso FIRST since that is what the trunks are connected to.
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While holding down Ctrl, select the first trunk part.
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Press Create joints.
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After that, we need to connect the 2nd trunk to the first one. Select the first trunk. ( Trunk1 ).
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While holding down Ctrl, select the 2nd trunk part. ( Trunk2 ).
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Press Create joints.
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Now we need to connect the 3rd trunk to the 2nd one. Select the second trunk. ( Trunk2 ).
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While holding down Ctrl, select the 3rd trunk part. ( Trunk3 ).
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Press Create joints.
Now, we will have to move them to the correct areas. Currently, they are placed directly in the middle of the part but we need it to be on the spot where it could rotate correctly.
Moving Joints
Moving Joints:
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Select the joints while the plugin is still activated.
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Select the joints. ( You can select multiple by holding down shift. )
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Slide it down with the circles provided.
^ I also have ears that I will make joints for but it’s basically the same steps as the things above. ^
Now, we need to also be able to rotate the torso area.
Joint for Torso
Creating joints for Torso:
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Select the HumanoidRootPart
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While holding down Ctrl, press the Torso Part
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Press “Create Joint”
Now a dot should appear in the middle of the torso.
WELDING PARTS
So for welding, we need to connect the eyes to the head, horns to the head, etc.
Welding
Creating welds:
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Select the thing you’re trying to weld first, in this case, it was the eye.
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Select the thing you want it to be glued to, aka the head.
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Press “Create Weld” on the UI.
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Repeat 1-3 to anything that you have to weld.
Remember: Weld it to what it’s connected to. If the thing has a saddle or something, connect it to the Torso since that is what it’s connected to.
When you weld something, the squares should appear in the middle of that object, in this case, it’s in the middle of the head part.
So, you may notice that this thing pops up: 
How it works is: EyeBack [ CONNECTED TO ] Head
ROBLOX ANIMATION EDITOR TUTORIAL
OPEN ME FOR ROBLOX ANIMATION EDITOR TUTORIAL
So if you already know how to animate in the Roblox Animation Editor, feel free to skip this. I will try my best to go into detail but I’m not all that familiar with this plugin.
So, to start off, we need to open the animating UI.
Opening the UI
Opening the UI:
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Go up into your Plugins section.
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Locate and click "Animation Editor"
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If another UI comes up with it asking you to name it, name it whatever you want.
So now that we have this open, you can finally start animating. Keep in mind that the increments are based off of your studio increments. Increments which is how much something moves or rotates. If you click on the “Model” tab, you will be able to see your increments.
Increments
For animating, I suggest putting both the Rotate and Move to 0 so it rotates and moves smoothly.
The differences:
Rotation: 15 / Move: .1
(It skips studs.)
Rotation: 0 / Move: 0
(It goes smoothly.)
Now, moving on. When you animate, you may want to move something. When you first look at this Animation Editor, it doesn’t tell you how. Well, if you press R, it would rotate from the Move tool to the Rotate tool. Just spam “R” and you’ll know what I mean.
When moving an object, a keyframe will appear.
Keyframe ( Tiny Diamonds. )
Example
You can move these keyframes around by clicking the one on top, it will automatically select the ones underneath it.
Moving keyframes
Moving them individually is just pressing any keyframes underneath the top one. Roblox Animation Editor also has a click and drag feature. Lets say you’d want to move multiple keyframes at once, you simply just click and drag and a box will appear and you just put whatever you want to move in it.
Selecting multiple keyframes
When you are animating and want to preview something, simply press your spacebar.
Preview
...Or this button
By default, the duration is only 1:00 seconds. To increase this, simply change these values in the UI:
Duration change
Oh by the way, this: 
, all it does is loop your animation. It’s next to the play button.
Once you are done animation, you would want to save it right? That is a simple task.
Saving
Saving:
- Press the 3 dots next to the Play button
- Select Export
- Change the title to whatever you want
- Change the Creator
- Press submit!
That’s really it for the Roblox Animation Editor. If you have anymore questions on that part, just let me know and I will try my best to answer it.
BLENDER ANIMATIONS
OPEN ME FOR BLENDER ANIMATION TUTORIAL
Yay, something I can actually go into detail in!
Before we start:
The first thing we must do is get a blender add-on that will allow us to move this rig into blender. Head over to @Den_S’s DevForums post: Blender rig exporter/animation importer
Go into it and find the paste bin for the script. He provided 2 versions, blender 2.8 and blender 2.79. I recommend using blender 2.8 for this. Anyways, go into the paste-bin and save that entire thing as a .py file. (Addon.py)
Head into blender and select:
Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > Install > Wherever your file is located > Install Add-on and make sure it’s turned on. It’s called "Animation: Rbx Animations"
Installing it.
Anyways lets start.
Make sure your HumanoidRootPart is ANCHORED.
So firstly, you would want to put this model into blender itself. If you follow everything above correctly, this should be easy and not problematic.
To make it easier on this to locate it later in blender, move the model HumanoidRootPart to (0,0,0) so it’s located in the middle of the world.
Changing it's position
Now we will need to import it into blender.
Putting it into blender
To import it into blender:
- Go into ROBLOX Studio
- Open up the Plugin tab and select “Blender rig ex’ / animation imp’”.
- Once you press it, it should ask you to select a rig. Select the rig we just made.
- Select the entire model and press "Export Rig"
- Save it wherever you want so you can easily find it.
- Press “Clean Meta Parts” to clear the extra parts the plugin added.
- Head into blender and do the following:
File > Import > Rbx Animation | Rig Import > Find where you saved your rig > Import Rig Data - It should appear right in the center of blender. If not, you probably didn’t change its position.
So now, you might realize that you can’t do much or move anything. That is because we haven’t loaded in the joints yet.
Putting the joints in
- Go to the right side and open up the side bar.
- Locate “Rbx Animations” and press it.
- Press on "Rebuild Rig"
- Open the drop down menu and press "Node Only"
- Press "OK"
So now we have the bones. It should all work if you go into pose mode.
Pose Mode
To go into pose mode:
- Go to the top right and locate something that says "Object Mode"
- Make sure you’re selecting the bones.
"Bone"
- Press on the drop down menu and select "Pose Mode"
Once you are in this mode, you will be able to start rotating and moving your bones.
In order to actually add keyframes, you must turn on auto keyframe and pull up the timeline UI.
Here is my animating set-up, obviously you can make it however you want.
To make more tabs, all you have to do is go on the corner and drag it out the way you want. The reason why I have 2 “Timeline” tab is because one is used for changing the duration and one is for keyframes.
To turn on auto keyframe, just go on your timeline panel and click the circle.
Auto keyframing
So to change duration, all you have to do is change the end number. You can either click and change the number or just click and drag.
Changing the duration
To add keyframes, all you have to do is move a bone.
Adding keyframes
So automatically in blender, it will only show the keyframes for THAT bone. In order to see other bone’s keyframes, you have to select them along with the one that you are animating.
Multiple keyframes
You can move these keyframes by clicking it and moving it. You can also click and drag to select multiple keyframes.
Moving keyframes
So, I also have a graph editor panel but I don’t really know how to explain that. It’s basically just so you can manipulate the keyframes and make them do things, I don’t know. Just mess around with it.
So now that you have your animation, you would want to import it into roblox to preview it and save it right? To do that, do the following:
Importing into Roblox and saving
If you want me to animate anything for you, here’s the link to my portfolio.
: [ PERMANENTLY CLOSED ] Aekume
Please look at the name to see if it’s open or not.
That should be it for this tutorial actually, if you have further questions, feel free to ask me about it and I will try my best to help out.
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Until then, yours truly,
- aekume
