How To Set Up a Character from Project Zomboid in Blender for Animation

after so many requests from you amazing people asking how I make my animations in blender I've decided to make a not so quick video to explain how it's done if I miss any important or Minor Details feel free to comment them down below so jumping right into this the first thing we want to do is get the character models to find them we first have to join the official project Zomboy Discord server I've put the link in the description but in case that doesn't work simply go to their website and press this very tiny Discord icon once you're there go to the modeling text Channel and go to the pinned messages what we're looking for is two fbx files male body 10 redo and female body 3 redo it will take a little bit of scrolling but once you've found them download them and remember where you've saved them now let's move on to blender so here we are in blender to start off I recommend altering a pretty basic but useful setting blender has a limit to the amount of times you can undo your actions by default this number is too low so let's increase it to find it go to edit on the top left here then preferences system and under memory and limits change undo steps to a bigger number like 256 for example press this three line option and save preferences and another thing if you're lost on which keys I pressed to do a certain action you can look on the bottom left which will display what keys I press now to import the models go to file on the top left import fbx find where you downloaded those models import it and there you go however it looks like nothing happened but trust me the model is there it's just really small and you can see it if you just zoom in with your scroll wheel we just gotta make them bigger before you make them bigger just delete these three things you won't be needing them to increase the size make sure you have your model and the Armature selected the Armature is basically the skeleton of your model head to this orange Square looking option and under transform and scale let's change it to 100 and instead of typing it in one by one you can choose all three of these options by pressing and holding the first one then dragging your mouse to the other two then just type the number go great now your model should have increased in size if it's still too small just keep increasing it under the same option the next step is tidying up the model and its Armature first things first we won't be needing this dress looking thing so let's remove it to do so select the model and press tab to enter edit mode or you could just select the mode on the top left here once in edit mode you should be able to see the vertices edges and faces of the model you'll have to select the vertices these dots to remove that dress if you do not see the dots make sure this option is checked on the top left of blender now to remove that dress simply select one of the vertices of the dress press L to select all the vertices of the address and press P then choose selection to separate it from the model do the same for the other side return to object mode with tab then simply just delete them now this Armature provided has many things to fix to the point where we might as well just make our own Armature but don't worry it's easier than it sounds so select the Armature in object mode and just delete it but once we delete the Armature the character will fall down let's say to bring him back up press R then X since rotating by the x-axis which is red and then type 90. now to add our own Armature we first have to enable an add-on to do so go to edit on the top left then preferences go to add-ons search rigify then enable it press this three line option and save preferences now you can close this window next press shift n a go to Armature and press human meta rig then you'll see this pretty creepy looking Army trip here as we can see it's a bit too big so we'll have to scale it down first of all let's make sure that we can fully see the Armature select the Armature and go to this option that looks like a green person and under viewport display and show check in front next press 1 on your numpad to switch to orthographic front view turn off this option up top select the Armature press s to scale and move your mouse until the Armature fits then press 3 on your numpad to go to orthographic side view and adjust the Armature now let's move these other bones so they fit go to edit mode with tab press C so you can quickly select the bones then select these bones before you move anything select this option on the top right press R to rotate and press y so we rotate by the y-axis if something didn't go right you can cancel it by pressing escape so we rotate as much as we need then press G to move the bones and put them in a way that fits in the model keep editing the Armature by rotating it and moving it until the upper arm fits and don't worry you won't have to do the same for the other side because as you see you enable the option to mirror any changes to the other side as well once the upper arm fits deselect it can be done while holding shift and keep rotating and moving the bones until they're in place now if you press 7 on your numpad you'll switch to orthographic top view as you can see the bones aren't in the right places so let's move them one more time once you're at the fingers remove these bones just keep the thumb and middle finger bones and adjust them so they fit now moving on to lengths it's way easier when compared to Arms just move the bones around until they fit just like we did with the arms and make sure they fit when you look at them through two different views preferably with orthographic front view which can be toggled by pressing one on your numpad and orthographic side view which can be toggled by pressing 3 on your numpad now let's look at the face we won't need it so just delete the face bones and leave the head bone perfect and now it's time to texture the character choose this option here so you can see your model with textures however we can see that our model has a solid color this is because we haven't assigned a texture for our model yet to do so we first gotta find those textures for this you'll have to go to your steam library and head to project zomboid press this Cog icon properties installed files and browse then go to media and textures here is all the textures from the game that you'll need but for now go to the body folder now just take whatever textures you need and put them somewhere where you can quickly access them like in the desktop or something like that back at Blender make sure to select your model and on the right click on the red and black circle icon if this is what you see click new and preferably make sure the surface is principled bsdf click this circle next to base color and choose image texture then open find where you put that texture and open image and there you go if you'd like the texture to not be blurry per se under base color change linear to closest foreign the Armature which will let us animate our character I highly recommend watching this tutorial by techda I've put the video link in the description he explains the process way better than I can so go watch the video and then come back to this one and once you're done rigging the Armature we'll have to parent it to our character so that our character moves alongside the bones select the model and the Armature and make sure you selected the Armature second if the armature's outline is yellow then you've done it correctly if not just keep selecting the Armature or just try again now to parent it either right click and hover over parent or just press Ctrl and P and select with automatic weights now if you move the Armature the model should move alongside with it if you try to move the model the model will move by itself so make sure to use the Armature to move it around and once that's done we can move on to the female model now for our female model the process is going to be a little shorter you can just take the Armature for the male model and copy and paste it and resize it to fit just make sure to unparent the Armature from the model before copying which can be done by selecting the model and Armature pressing alt and P and clear parent so now you have these two character models ready to go but we're still missing something clothing and hair to get the models of the clothes and hair we're gonna have to go back to the project Zomboy Discord server in these same modeling text Channel head to the pin messages and look for project zomboidhairs.blend and clothing assets dot zip before you can use the models in what you've downloaded you have to prepare them starting off with the hair open project zomboid hairs.blend we'll first start off with the female hair models on the right scroll down until you see the beginning of the male hair model collection and hide it by pressing this eye scroll up and once you see the beginning of the female hair model collection uncheck and check this checkbox now you'll see a bunch of hair models appear in each other so what I like to do is select the hair one by one and separate them like this pretty much just organizing it in a way once you're done separating them move them all aside a little then unhide the male hair mount collection by pressing this I again and just like with the other collection uncheck and check this checkbox and pretty much separate them the same way you did with the other models and we're done so whenever you'll need a hair model for your character come back to this blender file copy one of the models paste it into the other blender file and you're nearly done what's left is to apply one of these hair models to the character let's say I want this model I'll copy it go back to the other blender file and paste it if nothing pastes and you get this error make sure to go back to object mode now let's move the hair model so it fits on the character go to orthographic front view select the hair press G and adjust it so it looks like it's in place then switch to orthographic side view and adjust it again make some more small adjustments and here you go however we can still see some of the character models head sticking out but I've got an easy fix for that select the character model and go to edit mode select the vertices that are sticking out and just move them by pressing G and move it down with your mouse once you're done go back to object mode next up is attaching the hair to the model select the hair then select the Armature switch to pose mode select this bone make sure you start from this bone basically bottom to top press Ctrl n p to parent and choose bone then do the same for these two other bones now once you move these bones in pose mode the hair should move alongside with them and finally it's time for clothing locate the clothing acid zip folder you downloaded right click it and press extract here in that clothing fbx folder you will find an abundance of clothing now at first you might not find every piece of clothing you are looking for this is because different pieces of clothing use the same model but different texture and some clothing is just a texture I'll explain how it works in a bit so since these pieces of clothing are fbx files we'll have to import them just like we did with our character so remember go to file on the top left import fbx find the clothing you want and import it you'll have to scale up the clothing just like you did with the character so go to this orange Square option and under transform and scale scale It Up by 100 as we can see it has an Armature but we don't need it so just delete it rotate the clothing back in place by pressing R then X then typing 90. Before The Next Step let me explain a little if we were to attach the clothing now and move our character our character's model would clip through the clothing I believe there are multiple ways to fix this but I'll show you how I do it first remember the areas that the clothing is covering then move the clothing by selecting it pressing G then Y and moving it behind your character select your character and enter edit mode what we'll do is delete the vertices that are covered by the clothing instead of selecting the vertices one by one you can select somewhere towards the middle here hold Ctrl and plus this way you select more and more vertices easier if you've selected too much keep holding Ctrl and just press minus once you're satisfied delete the vertices if there are some vertices left just select them and delete them now bring back the clothing delete some more vertices if needed and you're done now let's attach it to our character select the clothing then Armature press Ctrl and P to parent then choose with automatic weights then once you move the Armature in pose mode or object mode the clothing should move with it applying a texture for the clothes is just like applying a texture for the character select this icon click new but this time change principled bsdf to diffuse bsdf click the circle next to color and choose image texture then open and select the texture oh and remember where we got the textures for the characters we'll go back to that file location either look for the clothing Textures in the textures folder or the clothes folder which is in the textures folder save the textures somewhere where you can quickly access them great but we still have the texture only clothing to talk about let me explain here we have the character in game if they wear a long sleeve shirt it looks like it's tightly put on this is because the texture just gets put on the character's texture for you to do this you'll have to use another program that will let you edit these textures I use [ __ ] mainly because it's free I put the link for the download in the description you don't have to use [ __ ] if you have and prefer something else like Photoshop then be my guest and use that program but once we have [ __ ] open first open your character's texture file by clicking file on the top left here and open and then open the clothings texture select the whole clothing texture by pressing select on the top left here and all copy it and paste it onto our character's texture and press this green option to paste that texture as another layer save it and you'll be able to use this texture for your character make sure to export the texture with file export as and don't forget to turn on interlacing up here if there are issues such as colors and areas of which they don't belong go back to [ __ ] and move that clothing layer where you think it belongs save it and apply the texture again and repeat until it fits and that seems to be it but since I love you guys I'll do a bonus round and show you how I make the mouth move so first we have to open the mouth select the character model go to edit mode zoom on the mouth a little to get a clearer view select these vertices and press V then Z to move it up only a little bit now the mouth is open a bit too much let's fix it select these vertices press M then select Center do this same for these two vertices Perfect The Next Step isn't necessary but I believe it makes the mouth look a bit more realistic press K and add points in the same places that I'm adding if you feel like you can make it look better feel free to add points wherever you like but once we add these new vertices the light doesn't properly reflect right here select all the vertices by pressing a press alt and then select set from faces now for the teeth here my inexperience with blender will really show but trust me on this so the teeth are just three objects to make them add a cube remember shift n a mesh Cube press s to scale it down keep scaling by the X Y and Z axes scale it some more until you get this shape then go into edit mode turn on face selection here select these faces extrude them with e then press s then X drag out these new shapes but not to the point where they'd be longer than the middle one then move them a little back by the y-axis copy the object and paste it twice move one of the pasted objects under the first one and a little back and put the third one in between and behind them like this the top and bottom ones can have a white principled bsdf texture and the middle one has to be a very dark color like black principled bsdf as well move the objects so they're behind the character's mouth put them in a way that the top teeth are a bit under the upper lip then parent it just like you would with the hair select all three objects then the Armature switch to pose mode with controlling tab select the spawn Ctrl n p then select bone and do the same for these two other bones hopefully I've covered everything you've wanted to know and again if I've missed any important or Minor Details or if you have any questions feel free to comment them down below other than that have a wonderful day [Music] foreign

Channel: SQz

Views: 17,568

Keywords: #ProjectZomboid, #Blender

Id: 31H54TpJjSA

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023