Using Blender to Optimize Your Character Mesh

Some tips to using Blender to clean up your mesh to work properly in the HEAT Auto-Rig tool

Sometimes when downloading a mesh or character from a source like sketchfab or turbosquid the character will come pre-rigged. If you want to remove the rig so you can auto-rig in HEAT and apply any of the 1000+ HEAT animations to your character then follow this guide:

JOINING ALL MESH OBJECTS

Import your character model into Blender.
It can be much easier to resize and alter the mesh of a downloaded character by starting with combining all mesh objects in the case that your character is not one solitary mesh.
Start on 'Object Mode' and click on your characters mesh. With the character mesh object selected press 'A' to select all. Now press 'CTRL + J' to join all selected meshs.

REMOVING THE SKELETON

If your downloaded character already has a skeleton attached to it the first step is to delete that skeleton.
Import your character into Blender and locate the Armature object within the 'Scene Collection'. Typically you will have to open up a few drop downs below the character object to find this. You can tell the Armature object by the logo that looks like a man in T-Pose ().

With this Armature object selected press the delete key.
Your character will most likely now change in size, or even possibly rotate at its root point. We will deal with that in the following steps.

REMOVING REMAINING UNECESSARY ELEMENTS

Downloaded models can have a lot of different artifacts from whatever rigging process and exporting/conversion processes they go through before they get to you. Deleting these objects so we can focus on just the character mesh will make rigging your character MUCH easier.
In your Blender Scene Collection locate anything that is NOT your character mesh. Mesh objects are denoted with the triangle icon (). All other objects should be deleted. For example: this model has a bunch of 'Empty Objects' denoted by the 3 prong icon () and are not needed for our purposes.

Select any object other than your Mesh Object and press the delete key.
Your Scene Collection should now only show the Mesh Object for your character.

REORIENTING YOUR CHARACTER MESH

Most likely when deleting the rig attached to your character the mesh will change in size and location. This is a simple way to get your character back to where it needs to be.
With your cursor in the 3D space press '1' on your 9 key numpad, or click the -Y axis button () on the 3D gizmo in the upper right hand corner, to have an orthographic view at the front of your character. From here you can assess how your character needs to be rotated to orient towards the camera.

In my example above you can see that the character needs to rotate 90 degrees forward (or along the X axis) to look at the camera again.
With your cursor in the 3D space press 'A' to select all in the scene. Press the '3' key on your numpad or click the X axis button () on the 3D gizmo.

With your cursor in the 3D viewport press the 'R' key to go into rotate mode. Rotate your character to be upright and in proper orientation. TIP: if you hold 'CTRL' while rotating your character will snap and make it easier to rotate to the proper orientation.

These examples cover the way this particular character was rotated. You may have to rotate your character on different axis to get it to be properly oriented, though all hotkeys and instructions are the same.

Now that our character is facing forwards we can resize it to be closer to what our auto-rigger will expect.

RESIZING YOUR CHARACTER MESH

Now that your character is without a skeleton and oriented towards the camera we can finish the tweaks by resizing it do be closer to what the HEAT Auto-Rig tool will expect.
Press '1' on the numkey pad or click the -Y 3D gizmo button to look straight at the character.
Press 'A' with the cursor in the 3D viewport to select all.
In the 'Item' menu along the right hand side of the 3D viewport (if you can't see this menu press the 'N' key with the cursor in the 3D viewport) adjust the 'Scale' values on all three axis to be '.01' instead of '1.0'.

Your character mesh should now be much closer to what HEAT will expect, which is about 6' tall.
You can double check your size by adding an armature to your scene either from the HEAT plugin or from Rigify, which comes standard in Blender. Simply click the 'Add' button along the top of the 3D viewport, navigate down to 'Armature' and select either a HEAT 'T69H Armature' if you have the HEAT Blender Plug-in installed, or a 'Human Rig' under Rigify.
You can now see how your character looks compared to the size of a standard rig. If you need to adjust more you can always select all again by pressing 'A' in the 3D viewport and then pressing the 'S' key to scale all. Adjust with your mouse until you are near the size of the armature.

Now that the mesh is the correct size it is best practice to apply all of the transforms we have made. Simply delete any reference armatures you have added to the scene, press 'A' to select the character mesh, press 'CTRL + A' to bring up the 'Apply' menu, and click on the option 'All Transforms'. Now all of your values in the Item menu will read 1 and everything we have altered about the mesh has been committed. Time to export!

EXPORTING YOUR CHARACTER MESH

Select your character mesh by pressing 'A' in the 3D viewport.
Navigate to 'File > Export > glTF 2.0 (.glb/.gltf)

You can also export your character as a .FBX but we have found that textures and materials are much better preserved on .glb and .gltf file formats. They are also easier to export with less options.

Under the 'include' drop down menu tick the 'Selected Objects' box.
Name your file and hit export!
Your character mesh is now ready for HEAT!

Next we will go over how to upload your own animations to HEAT and what you can do with them once they are uploaded.

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Last updated 29 days ago