How to make a basic prop using Blender3D

This tutorial will describe how to export and import a basic prop for Facerig with Blender3D.
REQUIRES BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF BLENDER3D.
ONLY COVERS DIFFUSE TEXTURE

IMPORTANT INFO BEFORE CONTINUING

Due to the current nature of Facerig, you are required to have NO spaces in your file path in order for textures to work. So find your Facerig path and make sure there are NO spaces. Also look for the Tools folder and Phidias, as you'll be using this later to "compile" your model.

Naming your material

For the purpose of this tutorial I just created a very simple tennisball(I know it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥, don't judge me x: ), that I UV Mapped and created a texture for. So make sure you have your prop UV mapped and textured before continuing!

Now this step is VERY important. This is where you name the material in order for it to work with Facerig.

Now there are many choices for how to name your material, for that look in at the Textures and Shaders guideline file, which can be found in the Doc folder in the Tools folder you found earlier. For this tutorial I will be using "sht_furnormals".

The way you name it is "Avatar_SHADER_UNIQUENAME", and since I created a tennis ball that I want to make for Fluffo I named my material "Fluffo_sht_furnormal_tennis". I'm using furnormals because I could use that in order to create fur on my tennisball for the "fuzzyness" with the help of a furmask(which I do not cover in this tutorial, once again, there is basic info in the Textures and Shaders guideline file)

Naming your texture TARGA

Now here is another important thing to think about, your texture needs to be saved as a TARGA(.tga), and have the following name convention:
avatar_UNIQUENAME_TYPE

I named mine fluffo_tennis_d.tga. The d stands for "diffuse". There are other types such as m for furmask, etc. Once again, these are all in the Textures and Shaders guideline file.

Exporting your model to the proper format

Currently Facerig only supports the COLLADA format. Blender does have an importer and exporter built in, but it is unfortunately not supported as it's a different version. More specifically, Facerig wants FCOLLADA. For this step you will be required to download Autodesk's free FBX Converter[usa.autodesk.com].

Now that you have the program, it's time to continue!
Save your model as an .FBX file:
In the lower left corner of the screen you can tick a checkbox saying "Selected only", this will make sure it only exports the selected object. But this is really only necessary if you still got a camera, lamp or any other object in the scene.
Now this step is also very important, while exporting name your .fbx file the following way:
Avatar_prop_[UNIQUEPROPNAME]Geometry.fbx
As you can see mine is Fluffo_prop_tennisballGeometry.fbx

Good now that should be done! Next step is converting it to .dae AKA FCOLLADA.
Open up Autodesk FBX Converter, add your .fbx file by either dragging and dropping it into the window, or clicking the Add... button. Then change the destination format to DAE Collada and press Convert.
That's it for now, go on to the next step!

Importing the prop into Facerig

Now you should have all your files, a .dae file, and .tga file. The .fbm folder is completely unnecessary and can be deleted, aswell as the .fbx file. So your folder structure should look something like this for the prop:

Now remember the Phidias Tool folder? It's finally time to use the Phidias tool!
Now this step is optional, but in case it doesn't work for you it is suggested as you'll it will show you in text what went wrong (in case you don't know how to fix it you could copy the error and post in the comments).

This step is to open a command prompt by pressing Win+R and typing in cmd then press run.
Once your command prompt is open, you need to go to the right directory, you do this with the cd (change directory) command. So type in "cd X:/Path/to/facerig/bin/tools/phidias" replacing it with your path of course.

NOTE: If you keep facerig on a different drive than C: after changing directory type the drive letter like in the picture.

Now comes the time to actually compile it! If you used the CMD method type in communityDataProcessing and press enter, if you decided to go the other way just launch the communityDataProcessing.bat file in your Phidias folder.


It will ask you and require you to choose a folder to continue. The folder it wants is the folder containing your model and texture files that we created earlier.

The moment of truth...

Now comes the moment of truth, time to see if it worked!
Fire up Facerig, choose the avatar you decided to make a prop for, open the tools panel and see if you find your prop and attach it!


TADA! It's working!
Happy modding everyone!

Files used in tutorial[dan-l.net]

[Ningaro]

too old, doesn't work...

[klash]

DarkTwister 愛 Hello. Do you make props on order for money? :)

[S4cG0r]

Thanks for this great turorial.
Didn't work the first time and i had to remove the tennisball-folder in "D:\Steam\steamapps\common\FaceRig\Mod\VP\pc_dx11_datacache\facerig\dx11_target_dx11\objects\accesories\" before facerig accepts the next try.
I spend the whole day to figure it out but now i'm happy as hell. Thanks a lot!

[IMR1fley: Lux Volans]

@ThatFuckingCat That solved it! Thanks a lot!

[ⓉhatⒻuckingⒸat]

Ok I think I figured it out. Make sure the avatar name is in lowercase everywhere.

[ⓉhatⒻuckingⒸat]

I'm getting the same issue as IMR1fley and I'm using the same workflow as before when I successfully made a hat.

[IMR1fley: Lux Volans]

I can't get it to attach to the model. I've done everything you said in the model, and when I launch facerig, I see the prop I made, and can select it. The problem is that it's not actually visible in the model. This happens with every prop until I click "Attach." Then they become visible. That's not what happens to me though. Any help please?

[thelrion]

Thanks for this tutorial. It got me most of the way, but I'm getting tripped up at the end.

The models import correctly, but they have placeholder textures on them. This is true for both the files in your tutorial, as well as any that I attempt to make.

[Carmen the Human Minion]

The newest current and nextversion branch should fix the custom props export issue.

[Carmen the Human Minion]

@OnionTotte - We found an issue at the export script. The folder name it exports is not generated correctly. For this example, the script generates \\FaceRigInstallFolder\Mod\VP\PC_CustomData\Objects\avatarfluffo_accesories\tennisball\ and it should be \\FaceRigInstallFolder\Mod\VP\PC_CustomData\Objects\avatar01_accesories\tennisball\. We will fix this in the next updates. Sorry for the late response.