tutorial Posing a character for a render using their YOBJ *New updated tutorial

[hovathagod32]

In my Revenge 2K thread, I posted a preview of my Sting Render:

I figured out a much easier way to do this without having to manually rig a anything. Depending on the pose you choose, you might still want to know something about weight painting to clean up certain things. The videos for that are still at the bottom of the post.

 

1. Texture your character in 3ds Max/Blender. I'm not 100% sure if Xoliul Shader will allow you to extract with textures attached. Particularly the normal maps. I added normals afterwards in Cinema 4D. 

 

2. Export your character as .FBX or .OBJ. For .FBX, make sure that Embed Media is selected in any program you use so that textures will export with your file. If you use .OBJ, you have to zip your .OBJ, .MTL and all of your texture files. Both files need to be extracted with Y-Up, -Z Forward orientation. You can fix it later, but it seems that if something messed up, that'll be one of the reasons. Try to also center your character in the viewport. That'll help too.

 

3. Now that you got your files, sign up at https://www.mixamo.com/

It's free to sign up. You just need an Adobe login. That's free as well and you'll also be able to download Adobe Fuse CC for free (for now).

 

4. When you get signed up, go to upload and drag and drop your .FBX or .ZIP file. You'll get something like this:

If your file isn't front facing, you can use the keys on the bottom left to fix it.

 

5. "Rig": This is all that you have to do now.

Doesn't have to be PERFECT, but this is pretty fail proof.

 

6. When you hit next, it'll start the rig process. May or may not take awhile. If your character shows up like this:

You're set.

 

7. From there you can animate. If it didn't send you straight to animations from the victory screen, go to My Assets and select your character. Then hit "Find Animations"

From here you'll get the screen with all the animations. There's about 50 or so pages. Pick whatever you want. You can edit them on the right hand side. You're not making a video game or a video (unless you want to) so you really only need one good frame.

When you finish, click Add to My Assets > My Animations then Queue Download when you're done.

From there you're finished. Open the new .FBX file in whatever program you want to render an image, and you're all set.

 

 

*The manual way to rig a YOBJ character

 

Going to kind of show you how this was done. You can do this using Blender, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D or whatever you like to use to 3d edit. I'm most comfortable in Cinema 4D, and the videos I'll share will be for Cinema 4D, but they work the same in Blender as well.. Just do a search of the title and swap Cinema 4D with Blender or 3ds Max. From how I learned this, you will need 3ds Max to start the process... Whatever program you're most comfortable with using afterwards is all up to you.

Things you will need: 3ds Max with BrienJ's script or Tekken's Maxscript (I used tekken's script. Search the forums.) 

 

1. What you're going to want to do first is extract the wrestler's 0000.yobj file from their PACH/SHDC (I'm not going to tell you how to do this. Going to assume you're a modder).

2. Open the YOBJ in 3ds Max using Tekken's maxscripts or BrienJ's script and you'll normally get this:

 

3. Now you're going to delete every file that's not an object file or part of the skeleton. You can remove every m______ file as well as the Hair bones:

 

4. When you delete those, you'll be left with just your Object files and the skeleton. Use the selector tool, highlight everything in the viewport and export as a .FBX file. Export settings should be fine as is.

 

* I'm going to do this tutorial using C4D from here on out. Scroll down to see tutorial videos for Blender and 3ds Max

5. Open the FBX file in Cinema 4D. You might want to texture your mod before start. I don't think Cinema 4D works with DDS files well the way that Blender & 3ds Max does. Use .PNG or .TGA files.

Color and Normal are going to be the only things you have to worry about for the most part. Select your image in the texture box. If you have something with an alpha like hair, create the alpha image separately and add that (select the pixels from the alpha and create a layer that's identical to what you see in the alpha layer). If you try using the ones  from the regular DDS, you'll get transparent files.

 

6. Select all of these highlighted files, and delete them.

 

7. Select all your objects (EXCLUDE hair & certain shirts, like this sleeveless shirt. If you have a jacket, exclude the arm objs.) Go up top to Mesh > Conversion > Connect + Delete. This will group all of your objects into one mesh.

 

8. Select your newly grouped OBJ and your bones (J_Hips) and go up top to Character > Commands > Bind

This will bind the bones to your OBJ. From here you can rotate different parts of the body as you please.

BUT if you notice, when you rotate an arm you'll get distortion on another body part like this:

This has to do with the weight system of a body part affecting another part. To fix that you'll go to Character > Weight Tool. Set the mode to Erase (Bottom right hand corner), and remove some of the areas that warp when you rotate a joint. Some things are natural. But if your left shoulder effects your right leg, you have to fix that lol.

When you fix that, you shall be able to pose it however you like. Facial expressions are foreign to me. I don't plan on going that in depth for any of my renders.

 

Here's a copy of this file for you to experiment with. I have the lighting and render settings set up. That's key to getting a realistic looking render:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3c6udyx8vd7jn8v/RigTemp.c4d

 

These are the tutorials for Cinema 4D, Blender and 3ds Max that I used to help. If the pics don't show you how to do certain things like binding the bones, and weight painting, these will help for the program that you wish to use.

 

Cinema 4D:

 

 

Blender: 

 

 

3ds Max:

 

*This is a multi video.

Edited May 23, 2017 by hovathagod32

[eri619]

Awesome tutorial, ill try this out for sure. Thanks for sharing!

[Robbie686]

Decent!! is there anyway someone can start up a post for just the created renders please? 

[hovathagod32]

I'm going to be looking at some of these auto rigging programs. In the meantime if someone can help me locate the posing animations from CAW, that'd probably make it easier to pose for the ones where weight painting doesn't quite do it justice.

[Robbie686]

13 hours ago, hovathagod32 said:

I'm going to be looking at some of these auto rigging programs. In the meantime if someone can help me locate the posing animations from CAW, that'd probably make it easier to pose for the ones where weight painting doesn't quite do it justice.

If you feel like you want to do a tester do you fancy doing renders for CM punk?! im having a play with all in one full Superstar swap inc renders, PAC files, GFX, Commentary etc...

Edited May 19, 2017 by robbie686

[hovathagod32]

5 hours ago, robbie686 said:

If you feel like you want to do a tester do you fancy doing renders for CM punk?! im having a play with all in one full Superstar swap inc renders, PAC files, GFX, Commentary etc...

I'm kinda busy working on some other game related things right now. When I come back to experimenting with these I'll likely be doing Hogan or finishing that Wolfpac Lex Luger. 

[hovathagod32]

Updated the tutorial. It's a lot easier. The website will rig everything for you. You just have to texture your mod

Edited May 23, 2017 by hovathagod32

[eri619]

Thanks for the new tutorial!

[Tarnathos]

On 23.5.2017 at 2:54 PM, hovathagod32 said:

Updated the tutorial. It's a lot easier. The website will rig everything for you. You just have to texture your mod

Just saw that tutorial. Thank you for that. Which software do you use then to convert the .fbx file to .png?