Introduction
Hey there! In this short guide we will walk through the process of setting up and creating models to fit the R15 Block rig. This can be used for clothing articles, armors, suits, and everything in-between! This tutorial requires a base knowledge of navigating Blender.
(Note: This process can be applied to different rigs, though additional cleanup may be required. This workflow also works in 2.7x and below, but certain terms and steps may vary.)
1. Exporting a rig from studio
To start, open in any game in Roblox Studio and, using the built in Build Rig plugin, insert the R15 Block Rig.
Make sure to set the rigs Position to 0,3,0 and Orientation to 0,180,0 under the Properties → Data → Position.
(If you don’t have the properties tab, go to View → Properties.)
With your rig selected, export it through File → Advanced → Export as Obj, or Right clicking the rig in the explorer and clicking Export Selection…
2. Importing into Blender
Import your rig’s bodyparts by going under File → Import → Wavefront (.obj).
Select your rig under Geometry, select Split by Group. (Thanks @ilyannna!)
Press Import OBJ.
Your rig is now in blender. Look how happy they are!
3. Setting up for modeling
We’re almost there!
3.a. Mirroring limbs
Delete half of your limbs by either selecting them Shift+Left Mouse or Box Selecting with B. Press X and select Delete.
Apply a Mirror Modifier to one of the remaining limbs under Modifier Properties → Add Modifier → Generate: Mirror.
Deselect your mirrored object, and Shift+Left Click all other limbs (excluding the torso, waist, and head) and select the mirrored object last.
To copy our mirror modifier to the other limbs, press Ctrl+L and select Modifiers.
The rest of your joints should be mirrored.
3.b. Optimizing for modelling
Select the entire rig with Box Select (B).
To remove doubles in our mesh, open the command menu by pressing either F3 or Space and filtering for Merge by Distance. Select this option.
Convert Tris to Quads by pressing Alt+J
Open the command menu again and filter Clear Custom Split Normals Data (You may have to do this individually by selecting each limb in object mode and selecting the command).
Your rig should look like this
3.c.
With the entire rig still selected, duplicate it and press Esc to confirm. Then in this order, press G to move, Z to lock it to the Z-axis, then 6 to move it up 6 units.
G -> Z -> 6
Apply the modifiers on each limb on the bottom rig.
Select the entire rig and press Ctrl+J to make it one object.
To help us see what we’re working with, set the Viewport Shading color to Random.
Set the Transform Pivot Point to Individual Origins
With the entire rig on the top selected in edit mode with the scale each limb from the separated model by pressing S -> 1.025. You can scale with the number value, but going too high may cause issues appearance issues. Ideally all limbs are scaled to the same value, especially with the arms and legs.
Move the top rig back down by pressing G -> Z -> -6 with the rig selected.
4. Cleaning up artifacts
Some parts of the mesh have tris, or unneeded geometry that doesn’t fit our intents and purposes for modelling. Go through the model and clean these areas up. Here’s just a few examples of the artifacts you’ll find and how to approach fixing them.
On the torso and waist, the tops and bottoms have this vertex in the middle. To fix this, delete the vertex by pressing X and selecting Vertices. Alt+Left Click the edgeloop of the now empty face and press F to create a face.
Some corners have unneeded edgeloops. Alt+Left Click to select the edgeloop and by pressing X, delete the edgeloop.
These two principles will fix almost all of the artifacts you find on your rig. The foot has the stray vertex from before, and we can delete it by pressing X then selecting Vertices. you can also convert those tris to quads by deleting the edgeloop.
5. Closing
Your rig should now be set up to easily create 3D clothing, armors, and any other related use case in blender!
If you have any questions or suggestions on this tutorial, please let me know! I hope this tutorial helped you out and taught you something new - happy modelling!
! I can’t wait to see more modeling tutorials in the future from you!