[SOLVED] Imported FBX Rig not following Bone Structure

[CytonMain (Cyton)]

Hello all,

Sorry for the long post, there’s a lot of images here.

I’m having an issue with the Avatar Importer, specifically with Custom FBX rigs. As far as I know, I followed the official Custom Character Tutorial to the letter, yet I continue to experience problems with my custom rig.

Here is the rig with it’s bone assignments and hierarchy:

Here is the export parameters for the rig:

This is the rig with it’s in-Studio hierarchy and animatable elements(none of which appear to be the bones):

Here are a couple instances where the MeshParts are manipulated in the animation editor.

This element manipulates both the housing and the cart piece(dolly) for some reason.

I’m not sure what I screwed up here, to be honest. However, interestingly enough, I imported this basic Book rig I made for something completely different, following none of the instructions on the tutorial page, and it works perfectly. Somehow.

The bones appear and work perfectly.

I guess the solution is simply to keep it simple(?) Please feel free to give me any advice or pointers one what I might’ve messed up.

Best Regards,

• Cyton

[CytonMain (Cyton)]

I’ve been poking around with different combinations since I posted this. I’ve also combed some posts detailing how to import custom FBX rigs, though all of them are single-object meshes.

My guess, is that it has to be a single mesh to work properly. This was not adequately covered on the tutorial page.

I’m not going to mark this as a solution, because I have no explanation for why this would have to be the case for custom rig sets(as it does not apply for standard R15 rigs). Please reply if you have any better insights, I would greatly appreciate it.

• Cyton

[CytonMain (Cyton)]

The situation deepens.

It so happens that the Tutorial Page explicitly states that:

Custom rigs which don’t need to be starter characters nor compatible with R15 animations can have any amount of meshes/joints and no naming or hierarchy convention needs to be followed.

Yet, their example does not detail how this is done. Nor do any examples online, nor do any youtube tutorials.

I submitted a support ticket through Roblox and the best they could give me was an automated robot referring me to the DevEx info page, which, unsurprisingly, has absolutely nothing to do with my issue here. The only option is to continue trying. This has been immensely frustrating. I have spent many hours trying different combinations, in both Blender and Studio, yielding only vague clues and no results.

If I do find a solution to this, I will be sure to reply to this topic, mark it as solved, and provide a youtube video properly detailing what the Developer Hub and Roblox Support has clearly failed to do.

[ShutzCh (Shutz)]

The reference you’re using doesn’t refer to mesh deformation, it’s for the same logic used on default rigs.

Bones and multiple meshes are in no way related when it comes to Blender—>Roblox imports, pretty sure.

[CytonMain (Cyton)]

Hi Shutz, it’s nice to have a real pair of eyes looking my way.
(Edit: I’ve added an image below the description in this reply)

Would you mind elaborating? With regard to meshes and bones, the R15 section of the tutorial page simply requires that every mesh is parented to it’s respective bone. This example from the Tutorial Page has different sets of meshes parented to each joint.

I imagine this would’ve been the same for Custom rigs, minus name-sensitivity and hierarchy order. Should each of my meshes instead be attached with Ctrl + J and Vertex Groups(like the book in the OP)?

Specifically, what should I be adjusting about the way I set up and export these FBX models?

[ulzig (calvin)]

I am not sure if the issue I am having is the same issue you are having but I have rigged a UFO in a blender and animated it imported as a custom character with the avatar importer plugin and then used animation editor to import the animation but it only takes like 2 of the keyframes and doesn’t actually animate it.

[CytonMain (Cyton)]

Okay folks, here is the solution.

After much pain and woe, trying various things and giving up, only to return and submit to the struggle, the solutions are as follows:

1. All of the meshes in your project must be parented individually to the ENTIRE armature. Not to single bones.
   

   

2. For each individual mesh, you must go through all of your Armature’s bones, and set the proper weight paint values (1 or 0 for all vertices if there are no intended mesh deformations, such as in the robot above) for each bone. Simply speaking, every single mesh must have an assigned Vertex Group and Weight Paint for the armature.
   

   

3. Every mesh under the Armature must be parallel in the Outliner hierarchy.
   

This will yield the following result in Studio:

Which works beautifully!

I’ll be editing this reply with a video at some point, detailing how to properly import custom, non-human FBX Rigs for the Animation Editor. I hope that what is here as of now is enough to help other people struggling with this issue. Thank you for those of you that replied in an attempt to help.

Final note:

I feel that I cannot write this reply without pointing a finger at the appalling Support system that Roblox currently harbors. The best knowledge on a program and it’s mechanisms will always come from the official developer team that built it(Roblox itself), and the current support ticket system is borderline useless for smaller, aspiring developers and animators. This must change if people want to get quick solutions to complex problems.

With that said, you should still refer to the Tutorial Page for basic information on what your imports should look like, even if the information provided is incomplete.

I hope this clarifies everything.

• Cyton