What This Post Includes:
INDEX
Prerequisite Knowledge
- Fundamentals Of Building Rigs in Blender
- Resources You Will Need to Make This Work
The Two Rigs To Make Your Game POP!
- Single-Mesh Rigs
- Hybrid Rigs
Connecting The Two Applications: Blender To Roblox
- Exporting Skinned Rigs from Blender To Roblox
- Importing Skinned Rigs In Roblox Studio
The OPEN SOURCE file you can get your hands on!
The YouTube Tutorial By Me for People Who Are Stuck
Prerequisite Knowledge
Fundamentals Of Rig-Building in Blender
Rig-Building in Blender is pretty easy, but crucial for making this tutorial work for you.
Rigs in Blender are made of 2 basic parts, Bone and Mesh. Both of which are one shortcut away.
BEFORE YOU READ: I am going to call some Terms before explaining them, as they might mean something else technically, and to make my tutorial clear.
Instance
In the following post, I’m going to use the term “Instance” for every iteration of an object in the hierarchy.
Example,
Here when I say Camera Instance, it means the camera Object in the hierarchy.
The reason this is important, is because 1 Bone Instance could comprise of multiple bones which individually could be extruded from to make more Bones under that Bone Instance. “Bones” here is a part of a Bone Instance, basically.
Armature
Armature here refers to a “Rig” In Blender which contains both Bones and Meshes. Not to be confused with bone Instances.
Let’s open up a Blender Project,
In Object Mode, press Shift + A to bring up a menu which conveniently includes both Meshes and Bones.
For this tutorial, we’ll be using Cubes. These cubes could be bodyParts of your custom character, The Magazine from the cool gun you spent 2 hours on. Just about anything that moves.
Let’s go ahead and add a cube to our workspace (if somehow you deleted the default cube :O)
Press Shift + A and move your cursor over “Mesh”, another box should popup with Cube written on it
Give it a nice click, and you should have a cube in your viewport.
(Also, to duplicate a cube you have in your viewport, just select that cube, and hit Shift + D)
Now similar to what we did above, Let’s add a bone Instance, This would give our mesh an idea about how it’s gotta change it’s position. It provides the mesh with an origin and an axis about which it can rotate (Scaling is not supported by Roblox Animation Importer as of yet, I’ll update this post when it is.)
The above would add a bone at the 3D Cursor (the red-white circle xD). To perform the art of Bone-Bending, click on the bone Instance, press Tab to get into Edit Mode. Now you can select the node (The ball at the top of the bone) and press E + (X,Y or Z) to extrude in a specific direction if you feel confident with armatures. If you don’t, well, just leave it at one bone.
(Also press Tab again to get back into Object Mode)
But wait, I tried to move the bone in Object Mode, and the cube didn’t move with it! That’s cuz you gotta parent the cube to the bone to make what’s called an Armature (What Rigs are called in Blender).
Now y’all gonna be like:
- “bruh how do I do that”
Select The Cube (our mesh), select the Bone (our… bone) and press CTRL + P! this will bring up yet another popup. You wanna read about the various types of Armature Parenting, I’ll drop a link.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/armatures/skinning/parenting.html
For this tutorial, I’m gonna be using Automatic Weights, (although I do suggest using Automatic Weights and then weight painting your Mesh after Parenting it)
To Parent your cube to the bone,
OMG you did it! Now you can go to the Pose Mode when you like, and move your bone around, which makes the cube follow it! You are one-step closer to that pog deform rig you wanted to make.
Resources You Will Need to Make This Work
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Avatar Importer Plugin (this should already be with you, but if it somehow isn’t): Introducing Avatar Importer to Studio
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Blender 2.8 Weight Painting Explained (In 3 Minutes!) - YouTube
The ones below are not super important, but you may need them if you are trying to convert your already-made Rigs to Deformation Rigs.
The Two Rigs To Make Your Game POP!
Now, let’s get out hands dirty and actually make some dope rigs.
Single-Mesh Rigs
Single-Mesh Rig Fundamental Example.fbx
Single-Mesh Rig Including One Bone-Instance Extruded once (2 Bones)
Single Mesh Rigs are super, super easy to make. Parent a bone/bones to any mesh (just one though, hence the name). To make this rig, simply add a bone, Extrude E + (X,Y or Z) or just E till you have the number of bones you need in the orientation that you need (written about this in the Fundamentals of Rig-Building).
Single-Mesh Rig Including Two Bone-Instances, both Extruded once (4 total Bones)
In the above video, I add two bone Instances (both in Object Mode). I select them both and hit CTRL+J. Now they both are treated as one bone Instance, which you can parent to your mesh as I did.
Note that Single-Mesh Rigs cannot be converted to Humanoids, which means you will have a tough time trying to make custom characters with these.
(TIP: You are completely free to add multiple bone Instances to your rig. One Bone Instance could be for the left arm, another for right arm, two more Instances for the legs, etc. However, you should ideally combine all your Bone Instances before parenting to your mesh. Select all your bone instances, hit CTRL+J to merge all your bone Instances to One Single Bone Instance which you can then parent your mesh with.)
btw what we made in the Fundamentals of Rig-Building Instance is basically a single-mesh rig.
This kind of mesh is used in more advanced game engines where they specifically adapt their code to Bones in the rig instead of “Parts” like Roblox does. However, we are Roblox developers, and we need a way to index each bodyPart, and still have deformation.
I wonder what we can do…
OH WELL-
Hybrid Rigs
Hybrid Rig Fundamental Example.fbx
Hybrid Rig Including One Bone Instance Extruded Twice (3 Bones)
Hybrid Rigs to the rescue! This type of rigs are very efficient and suitable for Roblox development. They deform and import into Roblox with separated bodyParts unlike Single-Mesh Rigs (how convenient 
now you can give each bodyPart it’s own Material, color and if you feel wacky, SurfaceAppearance!)
So, imagine R15, with deformation.
How to make it?
- Add two or more meshes (If your gun is made of different Mag, Body and Trigger Instances, perfect.)
- Add any number of Bone Instances (remember to combine them with CTRL+J after you are done positioning the bones though.)
- Select the Meshes FIRST ad THEN the Bone Instance, Hit CTRL+P and select the the Weight Paint method of your choice (I suggest Automatic Weights)
DAMN BOI you just made a Hybrid Rig! Get into Pose Mode and move those bones a little!
What? It makes your mesh deform in a weird way? No worries! I have a video above in the Resources section which will help you get started with weight painting! 
Now go make that dope anime rig with what you’ve learned. I bet the community will love your realistic PvP game!
Connecting The Two Applications: Blender To Roblox
Exporting Rigs from Blender to Roblox
Your rig is lookin’ rad! I can’t wait to see it in action! Let’s get it to Roblox Studio ASAP!
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Go to your hierarchy, and Select your Armature Instance.
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File > Export > .FBX (Rigs are to be exported from Blender to Roblox in FBX only.)
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Make sure to check the Selected Objects.
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Set the name of your rig file and then hit Export FBX!
Importing Skinned Rigs In Roblox Studio
Let’s receive your rig on Roblox’s side.
- On the topBar, select the Plugins tab, and activate the Avatar Importer
- Click On Custom, because we are dealing with Skinned Rigs.
- Navigate to your FBX File, and Import it to Roblox.
YAY! You did it! But there’s still small fixes I would like to address.
My Rig is Ginormous!
Do not worry! Scale it down to the size you want and continue animating. Your animations will not be affected even if you scaled it up after animating. It was not like this in the BETA phase of Skinned Rigs and gave us all a hard time, however this bug has been fixed and resizing your rigs after animating will not harm the animations. You are good to go!
My Rig has surpassed the Tris Limit!
I think the Tris limit for FBX rigs was increased from 10k to 24k (lmk if i’m wrong!), If I were you, I’d go back to blender, select my mesh, get into Edit Mode, and go Mesh > Clean Up > Limited Dissolve which tries to keep the shape of the rig, while decreasing the triangles. It should help!
After solving these problems which might arise, you are ready to get your Rig Active!
For Single-Mesh Skinned Rigs, you won’t be able to use Humanoids, as I have mentioned above.
- “Then why would I use these?”
Single-Mesh Rigs, in my opinion should be used for inactive, yet animate/moving objects like Trees, Wind, Water (Water Bending is possible
now that you have the knowledge!)
and just about any terrain-based moving Instances in your game.
For Hybrid Rigs, which can be converted to Humanoids, The following is the process.
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You will need to RE-Rig (yes, the second time) your FBX imported Rig, but this time with the usual Motor6D Joints (I have included the plugins that I use to make Motor6D Rigging easy in the Resources section). These will control how your bodyParts actually move in Roblox space, but the deformation will be based on all the VoOdOo magic you did in Blender a few minutes ago.
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Replace the AnimationController inside your character with a Humanoid.
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Make sure there are parts named “Head” and “HumanoidRootPart”. If either of these don’t exist in the rig, you won’t be able to animate it.
THERE! FINALLY! You have a cool deforming Custom Character! Now it’s all up to you! How you make use of this knowledge and make some groundbreaking, innovative, eye-pleasing games without the old r15 rigs (Yup, those are obsolete now.)
What I Am Going to Add To This Title In The Near Future
- I have a secret project regarding Skinned Terrains which I’m going to make Open Source after experimenting for some time. You guys will love it!
- I’m going to be adding “Welding to Bones” Section in this tutorial and update it soon. For now, this is all I got. Thanks for reading if you got this far
