Heyo developers and GFX artists! Here’s a tutorial on how to use the Robloxian 2.0 rig as shown in the video below (the download links and all that are in the video’s description.) I’m using Blender 2.83!
MattRBX makes some great rigs for you to use, you should totally check out his other videos and rigs! I’ll be mainly focusing on his Robloxian 2.0 rig though, it is one of the more simpler rigs he has to offer. If you are a GFX artist who uses only the PaintRigV3 (blocky rig), this process might seem odd at first as there are more things you have to change and fix on this rig. Let’s start!
Upon downloading the rig file as shown in the description of the video shown above (don’t worry, it’s completely safe!) Open the folder that should have been newly downloaded, named .
Inside the RobloxRig_RBX2.0 folder, there should be 2 folders and one text file (the read me file isn’t that important in this case). Open the folder named “Rig”.
Inside the Rig folder, there should be two Blender files. The first one should be named “Default”, and the other, “Faceless”.
For the Default file, the rig has a face (which you mostly will not need at any time.) The Faceless rig, has no face (pretty self explanatory ). You will probably use the Faceless rig more often (if not all the time), you can either delete the Default rig (if you think you will never use that rig), or keep it. Both rigs are essentially the same, just the Default one has a face.
Now let’s open up the file named ‘Faceless’! It’s time to mess around with the rig and I’ll tell you how to import textures for it, and pose it, and I’ll tell you some basic tips on miscellaneous things about the rig. We’ll be using our rig in Cycles
P.S.: This tutorial is under the context of you already knowing how to use PaintRigV3, or at least have some basic Blender and GFX knowledge. If you do not know, please check out the video here to learn how to use it!
Preparations:
Upon opening, you might be overwhelmed by all those black lines, but don’t worry, they are all for posing, and you might not even use some.
First, let’s set our view to the viewport shading view, go down to the bottom right of the screen and select the third circle:
Now, you’ll be able to see any textures we put on in the future!
Now, if you check on the top-most bar:
Or anywhere else, you’ll notice there is no Shading tab for you to add on the textures of the rig. So, we’ll have to add one! You can either:
-
Click the plus icon on the farthest right on the top bar I mentioned earlier:
Hover your mouse over “General”, and select Shading from the dropdown menu.
Then, you should have a new Shading tab! You’ll have to switch over to there every time we need it. -
Or, you can add in a node editor on your screen (sort of a split-screen view) without having to switch over to another tab. Over in the very top left corner of the screen, click the area which I circled, on my screen it would be the lightest purple area.
Your cursor should turn into a cross-shaped shape. Drag your cursor out to the right, and there should be two views of the screen!
Go over to the left side of the screen, go over to the bottom and find the icon that looks like a grid with a ball on top of it:
Click that, and a menu should open up! Select “Shader Editor”, in the General section.
And now, you’ll be able to mess around with the textures and materials of what we are going to work with!
Adding Textures:
Now, we’ll be adding our textures to the rig! First, select the rig’s head, then on the right, select this ball icon:
This is the Material editor tab. Going over to there (by clicking it), go over to the Surface tab and select the small circle on the right.
After clicking the small circle, from this list, select ‘Principled BDSF’. (Items are in alphabetical order!)
After selecting Principled BDSF, go over to the base color, and click the small circle again!
From the new menu, select Image Texture.
Go over to Base Color again, click Open underneath it!
Now import your avatar textures! (You should have exported like you did with the PaintRigV3 (blocky rig), exporting accessories and the body separately.)
I’ll be using my avatar as an example! Select the texture that has your avatar’s texture on it (mine is just my username to keep it simple):
And our avatar’s texture should be on the rig! (But without the hair and accessories, which we will add!)
Next, let’s get our accessories. Import them by clicking File on the top bar, then Import > Wavefront (.obj). And let’s import our hats! Make sure to import the .obj, not the .mtl.
Upon importing, our accessories might be put on backwards! Just rotate them around so they are correctly placed.
(The rotate tool is on the left side of the screen)
Much better!
Use this tutorial if your accessories are transparent in the render,
and you don’t know how to fix it:
Now, it’s time to learn posing!
Posing:
Posing the rig is quite simple, select the rig and it should already be in pose mode! AKA, if you try and select any of those black lines, they turn blue/red/green.
If it doesn’t, and selects the whole group of black lines (and they are all orange/yellow), then you’re in Object Mode! Set it to pose mode by going down to object mode and selecting Pose Mode.
I’ll now tell you what each important bone group does!
Upper Arm:
This bone is able to rotate the arm, and you can move it in all directions. By using the rotate tool we can see that.
Lower Arm:
This joint bends the arm! Pretty self-explanatory.
Hand:
This one is used when the rig is holding a tool or something! Rotate it to bend it.
Torso:
Remember, the torso is the part where if you select it, it selects two circles, not one! This bends the torso around, also pretty self-explanatory.
The rig keeps the head straight while bending the torso, so all you have to do is move the accessories onto the head, so it looks normal again!
For the legs, always do this before moving them!
Select the Roblox guy on the left of the rig, and select Pose Mode by going down to Object Mode and selecting it.
Click the small square on the leg, with the move tool drag it down,
Make sure nothing else is dragged down! If it is, just do Ctrl+Z to undo!
Do the same with the left square:
And it should look like that shown above!
Foot:
This is the only joint you will use for the legs. To use it, just move it up and down to bend it up and down, and you can also rotate the feet to make them point outwards, etc. It’s very simple!
And that’s all for posing! It’s very simple, you only need to move a few joints shown.
Bonus tips:
Using the Node Editor to save time!
You can use that node editor we opened earlier to quickly get rid of the Alpha nodes to make the accessories opaque!
My render is not coming out transparent, even though I set it to that?
When rendering with the Robloxian 2.0 rig, with the film transparent, when exporting you’ll notice your render will NOT come out transparent:
So, you’ll have to do this when saving the image! (Every time! Make sure to check!)
After clicking Image > Save As (like you would always do it) Go over to the right:
Set the file format to PNG, the color RGBA, and don’t touch the rest! Then you should be all good to go!
Much better!
How do I duplicate the rig?
I’m sure there is a better way to do this than what I’m doing, as my way requires some deleting and it’s sort of tedious.
Go up to the very top, select File, then Append in the drop down menu.
Find the folder with the rig:
Find the Faceless rig, click it:
Select “Object”:
Select all the parts starting with “Char”:
(Click Char1 first, hold shift and click Char6. That selects all of them.)
Then click Append!
Now, it should spawn in a whole mess, but all you have to do is delete the gray boxes, not the black lines (they don’t show up in the render!)
For example, there should be a small plane on the bottom of this newly duplicated rig:
Click X on your keyboard and delete it.
Then in this clump, there should be about 4-5 unneeded gray shapes, delete those also by clicking ‘x’ then deleting them.
And that should be it! And don’t worry about those extra black lines, they don’t show up. The rig is also exactly the same!
Conclusion:
Anyways, I hope this tutorial helped you to figure out how to use the Robloxian 2.0 rig, it should also help you support more avatars (if you create profile pictures etc.)! I hope this tutorial also answered some of your questions if you weren’t able to use it in the past. If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to ask me!