Skinned mesh renderer for modular characters workflow in blender

Unity Engine
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I’ve been having a heck of a time with this but I think I finally got to a point where it will work. I just wanted to post the workflow to see if this is the correct way how it’s done or see how you all manage to do it.

First off, the reason I’m doing it this way is because there is no way (afaik) to instantiate a skinned mesh renderer with unity. You have to include the bones with the prefab or it will just be invisible. Also, I was never able to get blender animations to work with humanoid rigs so I’m using generic rig.

  1. I created the armature in blender and added 20 cubes and weighted them to the bones.

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  1. I then exported it to unity with these settings.

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  1. In unity I create a prefab from the FBX. Now when I need to spawn a “humanoid” character I just set the mesh of each skinned mesh renderer S1,2,3,etc that I need and delete the others. This should let me create characters with swappable body parts, clothing, weapons, etc.

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This guy is my go-to for animating stuff in Blender, getting it to play nice in Unity3D:

Skip all the stuff you already need… you can look in the comments for the crazy breakdown of ALL the parts you need and his various commentary / suggestions:

209,553 views May 10, 2023 / imphenzia - TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:13 Install Blender 3.5
00:01:33 Starting Blender
00:01:57 Creating Material for Low Poly Colorization
00:02:07 Download and Import Imphenzia Palette Textures
00:03:25 Configure UV Editing Viewport and Show Texture
00:04:10 Navigate Viewport and configure Backface Culling
00:04:50 Modeling Introduction
00:04:54 Vertex- Edge- Face Selection
00:05:25 UV Colorization Method
00:06:43 Viewport Hotkeys & Numpad Emulation
00:07:25 Blender XYZ Axes - which orientation to model characters in
00:08:15 Installing Auto Mirror and Loop Tools addons (built-in & free!)

** MODELING & COLORIZATION **
00:08:47 Auto Mirror
00:09:51 Modeling - Pelvis
00:11:47 Modeling - Legs
00:12:56 Character Origin
00:13:40 Modeling - Torso
00:13:54 Modeling - Arms
00:14:29 Modeling - Hands
00:18:09 Modeling - Head
00:21:40 Modeling - Tweak the body shape
00:24:55 Colorize Character
00:26:45 Adding a Belt
00:28:34 Adding Eyes
00:30:50 Quick Change Clothes
00:31:58 Why is my color a gradient across the character?
00:32:45 Changing top to a T-Shirt
00:33:50 Adding muscles
00:35:05 Quickly turning characters into new stylized characters
00:35:35 Skinny legs
00:35:50 V-Neck T-Shirt and Belly Top!!
00:36:50 Shortening arms
00:38:00 Making a Hat - Detached Object Method
00:42:25 Making a Hat - Integrated into the Character Method
00:43:15 Adding Hair
00:45:12 Removing an integrated hat (or repairing the mesh)
00:46:05 Non-symmetrical characters

** ARMATURE **
00:47:44 Creating the Armature (skeleton)
00:48:30 Armature - Pelvis - Spine - Head
00:48:48 Armature - Shoulder - Arm
00:49:22 Armature - Hand alternatives (fingers or not?)
00:50:15 Armature - Leg -Foot
00:51:19 Armature - Naming Bones
00:52:28 Armature - Leg Inverse Kinematics (IK) Bones
00:53:50 Armature - Align Bones (important!)
00:54:20 Armature - Configure Leg IK
00:57:53 Armature - Symmetrize

** SKINNING **
00:58:35 Parent & Deform Character to Armature Automatically
01:00:30 Fixing Eye Weights (or any other detached objects)
01:02:10 Fixing Bum / Hip Deformation
01:02:27 Weight Painting

** LONG CLOTHES **
01:05:10 Long Clothes - Modeling
01:07:08 Hide Faces Temporarily (for modeling & weight painting)
01:07:55 Long Clothes - Weight Painting

** ANIMATION **
01:10:34 Animation Introduction
01:11:30 Action Editor
01:11:35 Create New _TPose Action / Animation
01:12:38 Idle Action / Animation
01:15:30 “Make Cyclic” for Looping Animation
01:17:02 Walk Cycle Action / Animation
01:19:55 Copy & Paste Mirror Pose
01:22:30 Tweaking the Walk Cycle
01:23:10 How would you do a Run Cycle Action / Animation?

** CLONING CHARACTERS - CREATE NEW VERSIONS **
01:23:45 Creating a Template
01:24:35 Creating a Female version
01:28:18 Female Face
01:28:32 Female Longer Hair
01:29:45 Weight Paint Fix by Skirt
01:30:28 Weight Paint Fix by Long Hair
01:31:40 Hide Geometry to make Weight Paint Simple
01:33:45 Weight Paint Fix by Skirt - Really | Proper | Final =)
01:35:24 Creating a Warrior
01:37:23 Upper Body Armor
01:38:37 Bare Upper Body & Muscles
01:39:33 Helmet
01:39:57 Arm Armor
01:40:25 No Weightpainting Needed for Clone

** UNITY EXPORT **
01:41:27 Unity: Create Project
01:42:07 Blender: Export Character as FBX
01:43:05 Unity: Import Character into scene
01:43:20 Unity: Create Material & Import Textures
01:44:19 Unity: Bake Axis Conversion (fixes wrong Axis)
01:45:00 Blender: Orphaned Actions - Removing Unused Actions
01:47:50 Blender: Best Way to Export Animations to Unity
01:48:55 Blender: Export Specific Animations
01:51:40 Unity: Very Important - Get the Correct Axis!
01:52:25 Unity: Looping Animations
01:53:08 Unity: Animator Component - Idle Animation
01:54:30 Blender: Export Additional Animations
01:55:10 Unity: Import Additional Animations
01:55:40 Unity: Preview Walk Animation
01:56:45 Unity: Switching Between Characters

** MIXAMO EXPORT **
01:57:15 Export Character to Mixamo
01:57:35 Get Material and Texture to work in Mixamo
01:58:05 Upload Character to Mixamo
01:58:17 Character Pose is Borken - How to Fix
01:59:00 Preview a Mixamo Animation

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Hey thx for reply Kurt. So you kinda do it the same way? You keep a prefab with a few generic SMR’s and then when you need to add a jacket or gloves to the model just change the mesh of one of the generic SMR’s?

I noticed that when importing into unity if you hit the “bake rotations” checkbox and apply it still gives unwanted rotations on the mesh gameobject no matter how I orientate it in blender.

I tried this out, GitHub - EdyJ/blender-to-unity-fbx-exporter: FBX exporter addon for Blender compatible with Unity's coordinate and scaling system., and as long as I face the characters Y- forward in blender they get exported perfectly into unity. The scaling isn’t perfect, it still shows meshes with 0.01 scale but w/e, as long as it works. It’s also nice just having a one button click workflow instead of 3-4 buttons.