How To Add Further Details to Your Project Zomboid Character in Blender

hey everyone this is part two for my blender tutorial if you want to see part 1 the link will be down in the description so in part one we looked at how to set up a character model as for part two I'll explain how to change your character's face expressions properly apply some textures to clothing as well as name all the clothing that is texture only explain how to get the walls floors furniture and so on from the game to blender and go over minor issues that may appear I'd like to inform you that I'd still consider myself a beginner when it comes to blender so if I make any mistakes or if you have any questions feel free to comment them down below other than that let's get started let's start off with the face expressions we could add bones to the model's face but I believe that it is easier to make a texture for each face expression this is easier than it sounds to do this you can use whatever image editing software you like but for this video I'll use mainly because it's free the download Pages link will be down in the description first you have to open the texture you want to edit on the top left press file open find your texture and open it now zoom in on the face by holding Ctrl and scrolling up in you'll only have to work with the eyes and eyebrows so let's say I want my character to have his eyebrows raised I'd select the rectangle select tool select this area cut it then paste it move it up by one pixel then anchor that new layer by pressing this green button then I do the same for the other side next I'd fill in the missing pixels by selecting the pencil tool pick the nearby pixels color by holding Ctrl and left clicking and simply drawing in the pixels basically you want the nearby pixels to be nearly or somewhat similar color to the one you're drawing once you're done export the texture by going to file on the top left export as choose where you want to export it and make sure to turn on interlacing now go back to blender and remember to apply texture go to the material properties on the bottom right here and open the texture to see what it looks like looks pretty good if you want to animate your character going through multiple face expressions you can do so in the Shader editor but first you'll have to enable an add-on go to edit on the top left preferences add-ons search node and enable node Wrangler select this three line option and save preferences then close that window to make this easy we'll open another window move your mouse to the top left here until you see your cursor change to this plus then click and drag to the right then on the top left here change the 3D viewport to Shader editor in the Shader editor press F3 search for mixed Shader add it and put it in between the material output and principled bsdf nodes connection then copy these two nodes paste them and move them aside open the second texture you want to use to either node after that take the bsdf of the bottom principled bsdf and drag it to the Shader of the mix Shader now in the material properties tab there is a slider with which you can change which texture you want to use if you want to keyframe the value click the circle to the right of the slider and by the way this is how the nodes would look like if you'd use three textures and four textures now to close the window on the left move your mouse to the top left of the right window till the cursor changes click and drag to the left until you see your cursor change to an arrow pointing to the left and the window on the right is highlighted then let go of your mouse and now for the mouth if you're going to animate it you'll have to use shape keys if you don't plan on animating you don't have to use shape keys and you can skip to this time go to the object data properties on the bottom right and under shape Keys add four shape Keys you can name the last three to whatever you like but I name them A E and O because the name will correspond to the sound that the character will be making you can leave the basis shape key alone to edit the shape select whichever one I'll select the A1 and go to edit mode by pressing tab to make the jaw move first select these vertices [Music] then switch to orthographic side view by pressing 3 on your numpad then press R and X to rotate the jaw along the x-axis and move your mouse up a little next press G then Z to move the jaw along the Z axis then just move it down a little of course you can adjust the jaw however you like I'm just showing how I do it after that I take these two vertices and move them down a little now once you go back to object mode by pressing tab again you'll notice the jaw moved back but on the right here if you move this slider you can see that you can now control the jaw using this shape key for the other two shape Keys you've named you'll have to move the jaw and lips to correspond to the sound your character will make and on the right of the slider is a circle and just like with the textures it places a keyframe on the timeline you aren't limited to making shape Keys just for the mouth you can make shape keys to move the eyes and eyebrows as well just like with the mouth make as many shape Keys as you need I'll make one so I could slightly erase the eyebrows go to edit mode and select the vertices in this case I'll lift them up and then return to object mode oh and don't forget to move the teeth once you move the jaw to do this you can make shape keys if you'd like or you can just simply keyframe its location instead by pressing I with the teeth selected then choosing location now for proper texture application as you can see there are these dark areas on my hoodie these dark areas can appear on any clothing you're putting on your character to fix this open a window just like we did before and this time go to the UV editor select your clothing press tab to go to edit mode then press a to select all the vertices and as you can see these vertices are going way past the texture all we gotta do is move them up a little press C to quickly select the vertices you can adjust the size with the scroll wheel select the vertices then press G then y to move them up and down then move them up and as you can see there are no more dark areas so I feel like showing another example using the UV editor with this hair the hair that I've put on looks a little messed up maybe because I have the wrong model not sure just like with the clothing select the hair go into edit mode and select all the vertices now I'm not sure where these vertices are supposed to be but we can always use the game as a reference select all the vertices in the UV editor gailed them down then move them and make some more adjustments if necessary and there we go I nearly forgot one more thing to me these lips look like they're placed too high I'll just have to move it down in the UV editor on the right I'll select these vertices then in the UV editor I'll move all these vertices slightly up next up let's talk about all the surroundings of your character here I am in game and not sure if you've noticed but everything around right now isn't 3D and okay look I've searched through the game's files and couldn't find the textures for the walls and floors and ground and so on probably because I'm just dumb but anyway I found another way to get your surroundings from the game to blender let's say I want this wall I'd first remove the walls around it take a screenshot of it then save it now back at blender we'll have to make the shape of the wall ourselves hold shift and a and then mesh select Cube to get the shape of that wall we'll have to scale it down then scale it more by the X Y and Z axes if necessary you can also go into edit mode and check this option and select the faces of this Cube then with the G move it along the X Y and Z axes but the shape you're going for should look like this it doesn't have to look exactly like mine just make sure it looks like the Walling game then apply the texture in the material properties I tend to go for a principled bsdf surface and change it from linear to closest to fix the texture we'll have to go to the UV editor again select the model go into edit mode and select the face you want to edit then in the UV editor move the vertices to the corners of the Wall's texture if the texture on the wall is sideways like this just rotate the vertices in the UV editor then place the vertices in the corners again to make the wall longer go to the modifier properties here and add an array modifier the count is how many times the model will repeat and the X Y and Z factors control the direction and distance once you're done click this down arrow and press apply let's move on to floors go back to the game and find whichever floor you want one way you can separate it from the nearby floors is just removing them with a mod like cheat menu or whatever way you'd like just like with the wall take a screenshot go back to blender but this time instead of adding a cube take the wall you've made copy and paste it move it aside I prefer going to edit mode selecting the top face then moving it down now to make sure the floor is a perfect square drag this Arrow out and in item make sure the X and Y values are the same in this case I'll copy the x value and paste it to the Y value now to make sure the floor is right next to the wall we'll use snapping first we have to set the floor's origin to to do so select the floor go to edit mode select one of the upper vertices press shift and S choose cursor to selected go back to object mode now go to object on the top here set origin and select origin to 3D cursor next enable snapping by pressing this magnet icon on top you'll know it's on when it's blue and change it from increment to vertex and change snap width to active now once you move the floor the origin will snap to whatever vertices of the wall you hover it over texturing and extending the floor is just like texturing and extending the wall with the UV editor and arrays now for furniture sadly you'll have to model the furniture yourself I've linked a video that explains the modeling process since the explanation in that video is far better than what I can come up with as for the texture some furniture is easy to texture just by using one side side of the furniture like tables and counters and others not so much like the sink next up trees and plants so the thing is with this is that I've taken a screenshot of a tree or plant in drawn over the pixels that aren't of the tree or plant with a bright color like white then remove them with the fuzzy select tool then I just add it into blender as an image but to do so you need to enable an add-on called import images as planes then just press shift and a and an image select images as planes and open the PNG of that tree or plant and changing it from linear to closest can be done in the Shader editor however this took way too long so if anybody knows where I could find the textures for the trees and plants in the games files please please please tell me but for now this is the best thing that I could come up with and finally items every items model can be found by going into the game's files going to media and models X and the textures can be found in media and textures however you might have noticed that these files are X-Files not fbx so you'll have to download an X-Files importer the link will be down in the description just click the green code button and download zip then in blender go to edit preferences add-ons install and open the zip folder you've downloaded then search DirectX and enable the DirectX importer if it isn't already enabled then go here and save preferences and close that window to import a model go to file import and select DirectX which will be at the bottom locate the items file and import it now it's time for texture only clothing texture only clothing is basically the clothing that has no model and is applied to the character's texture the following pieces of clothing are all texture only all these shoes all these socks all the gloves except for the boxing gloves all the t-shirts shirts and long sleeve shirts including crop tops all the corsets and bras paints and not like every type of paints just paints all the boxers briefs Trunks and Underpants and all these stockings and tights are all texture only before this video ends I'd like to point out two minor issues and how to fix them so you don't have to go Google it and search for a solution for nearly an hour so the first one if any models you've imported look like this go to the material properties scroll down to settings and make sure blend mode and Shadow mode are both opaque the next one is when you try to move one object the others move alongside it to turn this off make sure proportional editing on the top here is turned off and that seems to be it if you still have any questions or issues feel free to comment them down below and I'll try my best to reply but other than that good luck and have a wonderful day thank you

Channel: SQz

Views: 4,573

Keywords: #ProjectZomboid, #Blender

Id: b5aqvZpMe7o

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 02 2023