Creating CloneX files for Virtual Worlds

Overview

In this tutorial, In this tutorial, we will learn how to create both a VRM and FBX File, and finally bring our avatar into Webaverse.

Exporting as FBX

There are various ways to bring your CloneX into different platforms. In this example, we're going to produce and FBX file of a CloneX, bring it into Unity, produce a VRM file, and bring it into Webaverse.

It's very important to note that we are dealing with a heavy file that has complex meshes in its current state. We can optimize this model by retopologizing, decimating our mesh and compressing our textures. We will not, however, be doing this in this tutorial. Feel free to read my previous tutorial that ran through some of these concepts.

Firstly, we'll want to pose our model into a T-Pose shape. The T-Pose is a standard pose among riggers and animators, and all we need to to is move our arms and legs so our avatar looks like it's standing as a T.

To do this, under your armature, select your lShldrBend bone, change your viewport mode to Pose Mode, and press R to rotate your shoulder. Bring your shoulder up to where it is horizontal, like in the image below. Repeat this step for the rShldrBend bone.

Great. Our model is ready to be exported. To export your model as an FBX file, go to File -> Export -> FBX.

Ensure you set the Path Mode to Copy and click the Embed Textures button before exporting.

Unity

Now that we have our FBX file, we can bring it into Unity. In Unity, we're going to be using a plugin called UniVRM. UniVRM will allow us to export our FBX file as a VRM for use in Webaverse. To ensure you don't run into build errors, head to the download page for UniVRM and check what version of Unity UniVRM is currently compatible with.

Download the version of Unity from the Unity Download Archive or Unity Hub that corresponds to the latest UniVRM update - in this case it's Unity-2019.4.LTS or later. I will be using Unity-2019.4.31f1 as this is compatible with VRChat which I'll be testing in a later tutorial.

Create a new Unity project using the correct version of Unity and import the UniVRM package by dragging it into your assets folder.

Add your FBX avatar to your assets folder. Select your avatar. Select Rig in the inspector and select Animation Type -> Human then apply.

Select Materials in the inspector and select Use External Materials (Legacy) then apply.

Drag your avatar into the scene.

Change your Armature AND Hips objec to have a Transform Position of (0,0,0) in the inspector.

Select your Avatar object, open the VRM0 menu tab and click Export to VRM 0.x.

Ensure you click Make T-Pose and fill out all requested metadata.

Press Export.

Webaverse

Once exported, go to Webaverse, scroll down to change your view to 3rd person, drag and drop the VRM file into the world and press Equip.

There you have it - now you can walk around your Loot Pod with your CloneX!

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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