🩻Auto-Rig

Tips and best practices for using the new HEAT Auto-Rigger

PREPARING YOUR CHARACTER MESH

• The HEAT Auto-Rigger accepts .FBX .GLB and .GLTF file formats. If your character is in a different format, perhaps .OBJ, we recommend pulling your character into a 3D program of your choice and exporting as one of our compatible file types.

If using an FBX file of your character make sure to embed your textures when exporting the file!

• We recommend having your character in a T-pose for auto-rigging. While HEAT will automatically put an A-pose character into T-pose using inverse kinematics, your auto-rigged character will have a better weight painting, and in turn animation result, if it starts in T-pose

T-pose Character

• Because the HEAT Auto-Rigger is fully automating the bone application and weight painting it is helpful to have separation between certain key elements of your mesh:

  • Fingers will have much better results if there is space between each finger.

  

  Ideal distance between fingers of character

  • Space between thighs will result in better animating between legs.

  

  Good distance between thighs of character
• We also recommend having your character mesh be symmetrical as you will have a much easier time working with it down the road once it is rigged.

ROTATE AND POSITION

• The first step of the auto-rigging process is to make sure that the character is facing the correct orientation within 3D space. If your character is not facing you, please use the rotation buttons to reorient the character properly.

IMPROPERLY oriented character

• The buttons will rotate the character 90 degrees along the X, Y, or Z axis. We have included visual representations of these rotations () to make it easier to orient the character.

PROPERLY oriented character

• Your character also must be fully within the bounds of the 3D viewport in order for rigging to work properly. If your character is not fully in the scene please resize your browser window until the entire character is visible.

SETTING KEY POINTS

• In this phase you will adjust and set the key point locations for the auto-rigger to build a custom skeleton for your model.

• On initial loading of this page HEAT will automatically try to detect the pose of your character and place the key points. If they are not in the correct place you can adjust them yourself to put them in the correct location by clicking and holding the points and moving them.

  • The help button () on the key points page will show you a reference image of where the key points should fall on your character.
• If your character is NOT symmetrical you can also turn off key point symmetry by unchecking the symmetry box ().
• If you need to reset the points and start over you can hit the 'Reset' button ().
• If you want to force HEAT to try and automatically detect the point locations again you can hit the 'Auto-Place' button ().
• Here you can also select how many fingers your character has with the finger amount drop-down menu (). At this point we only support 5 fingers and 0 fingers, but will be rolling out 1-4 very soon.

If your character mesh does not have good seperation between fingers and you are getting poor hand results you can change the finger amount to 0 to animate only the hand bone and skip the fingers altogether.

Proper key point locations

ADJUSTING BONES

• In this phase the HEAT Auto-Rigger has set each bone in the character and you are given the opportunity to fine tune each bone coordinate to better match your mesh.

you can navigate this 3D scene easily with your mouse using LEFT CLICK to ROTATE, RIGHT CLICK to ZOOM, and SHIFT + LEFT CLICK to PAN the scene.

• Click on any bone node and you will see an XYZ gizmo appear to adjust the location of that bone.

Selected bone with XYZ gizmo

Note that ThreeJS uses a Y up, Z forward orientation

• Bones are automatically symmetrized across the X axis of the character when moved.

• It can be much easier to get the bones in the proper location by viewing the scene in an orthographic view. You can do this by selecting either X, Y, or Z on the viewport gizmo in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

Viewport gizmo in perspective mode

Viewport gizmo in orthographic view focused on X axis

• In the upper right hand corner you can also see which bone you currently have selected.

Selected bone display

• It is best practice to check the orthographic view on all three axis to make sure that the bone points are right where you want them to be within your mesh!

Bones properly aligned along the Z axis

Bones properly aligned along the X axis

Bones properly aligned along the Y axis

TEST ANIMATION

• In the next screen you will see our test animation. Review your characters movements and if everything looks suitable for you hit the NEXT button to save your character to your profile. If something looks off you can always hit the BACK button to return to adjusting your bone locations!

Test animation viewport

CHARACTER SAVING

• Clicking the NEXT button will pop up the Character Saving modal. The name of the character will default to the original uploaded file name, so feel free to give your character a name and description here.

• Once your character is saved you can either immediately download a GLTF file of this T-posed character by clicking the DOWNLOAD button.

• Now that your character has been saved to your profile you can view any HEAT animation on this character. While viewing any animation simply click the 'Select Model' button () below the animation viewport and choose the model you would like to see animated.

Character selection window

• Once you have an animation that you like on a character of your choice you can click the 'Download' button () to download a GLTF file of the animation on that character!

CHARACTER MAINTENANCE

• You can navigate to your DASHBOARD by clicking on your profile picture in the upper right hand corner and choosing 'Dashboard'. Here you will see all of your uploaded models in a grid.

Character models in dashboard view

• Click the hamburger menu on any of your characters to re-download your character, edit (change name and description of character) your character, or delete your character.

Next we will go over using our text-to-model generator to create a model from your imagination that you can rig and animate!