Building your CloneX

Overview

This will be an overarching collection of all CloneX related materials I produce. There will be hundreds of use cases for CloneX 3D avatar models, and hopefully this can help guid you through some of them.

Downloading your CloneX Files

Head to the CloneX inventory page and connect your wallet.

Select the CloneX you want to access the files for. Request access to files and download ALL files. Each file associated with each clone will contain files for separate traits of the CloneX. For example, there will be a set of unique files for hair, clothes, skin etc. Each of these files will be a zipped. To make things easy for you, move all these files into a separate folder and unzip all files to that directory. Delete the initial zipped files if you want to save space.

Compiling your CloneX in Blender

Download the latest version of Blender. At this point, there has been no support issues with this process, but this may change for future versions. I will be using Blender 3.2.0 for these tutorials. If this is your first time installing Blender, when you open it, simply select 'Save New Settings'.

Now open your base character file .blend file. Then name of this file is 'm_character_neutral_neutral'.

To make things easier to locate in the next steps, rename your rig and armature to something easily recognizable. In this case, I've labeled the armature component 'BaseAvatar' and the rig component 'BaseAvatarRig'. To make things easier to visualize use the 'Material Preview' method for viewport shading. Now that we have our base avatar created, we want to start adding our additional components. Let's start with the hair. Select 'Append' from the file menu.

Each component will be named differently depending on your CloneX, so you'll need to do some navigating.

Head back to your folder where you extracted all your zip files. Select the folder that is labeled 'Hair'. Navigate through the folders

Once the collection is imported, your hair will now be visible in the viewport. To keep things simple to navigate, rename your newly imported collection according to the trait.

Everything is looking good thus far, but you'll notice that the collection imported another armature on top of the BaseAvatar. You don't need to replicate this step, but you can see that if we try pose the model, the hair doesn't stay on the head like we'd expect.

Given this, we will need to associate the hair to the BaseAvatar.

Again, you don't need to repeat this step, but you can see that the hair now stays with the head like we'd expect.

Repeat this process of appending for all traits (tops, bottoms, jewelry etc.).

Note that there will be instances where traits will be assigned to multiple bones. I have seen this in the eyes, shirts and pants, for example. In these cases you will need to take a few extra steps.

When you import these traits, after associating the armature with the BaseAvatar, select the armature that was part of the imported collection.

Finally, while in the viewport, press 'A' to select all items in your scene collection. Right click in the viewport and select 'Clear and Keep Transformation' under the Parent selection within the Object Context Menu.

Finally, delete the unused armature.

Retexturing your CloneX in Blender

The last step of the process is retexturing the base character. Each 'DNA' of a CloneX will have a set of texture files. In my case, my CloneX has a 'Robot' DNA. To adjust the textures of the face, select the 'CloneX_HeadGeo' mesh and go to the materials tab. Select the 'Head' material and open your 'Shader Editor'.

Although you may need to move the nodes around slightly, you'll see that there is a Principled BSDF shader with Base, Roughness and Normal nodes connected. Add a fourth 'Texture Sample' node. Connect all nodes to the Principled BSDF, deleted the current textures by pressing 'x' and replace all the texture files accordingly. There should be 4 texture files for each DNA prefixed with D, M, R, or N.

• D: Diffuse (Base Color)
• M: Metallic (Metallic)
• R: Roughness (Roughness)
• N: Normal

Your end result will look something similar to this, depending on your CloneX's DNA.

You now have a fully rigged, skinned and functioning CloneX. The world is your oyster. Next time, we'll start bringing our CloneX's into various platforms for use in cross-platform virtual worlds.

Meta Mike is the co-founder of VERSED, t0xic and leads Partner Success at GigLabs. He has a passion for contributing to the education and enablement of the open metaverse.

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