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Using IMVU Studio Toolkit for Blender

Contents

This is a sub-article of IMVU Studio Toolkit.

Creating a Room

  1. Open the Room Tool.
  2. Adjust the initial size of the room with the X Y Z Sliders.
    • This can be adjusted at any point!
  3. Click ‘Create Room‘.
    • Note: The meshes generated are for reference and will not be exported
  4. Select which type of furniture seat you would like to add.
  5. Click ‘+ Furniture‘.
    • If you want to quickly make a grid of furniture nodes, use the direction arrows below ‘+ Furniture‘.
    • Set the distance with the number in the middle.
  6. Add any seat of your choosing.
    • The Custom seat is used to trigger animations of the same name.
    • If you would like to add or remove either Catcher/Pitcher nodes or Handle nodes, Use the Add Link Catcher or Break Link Catcher and Add Link Handle or Break Link Handle buttons to do so.
  7. If you would like to have a see through mesh, click ‘Create See Through Node‘.
    • Move the cone such that the point aims in the direction the mesh will be seen from. Whenever the camera moves behind the cone, the linked meshes will disappear.
    • To link an object, select the SeeThroughArmature Cone, along with any meshes you would like to link to it.
    • Click ‘Link To SeeThrough‘.
    • To unlink a SeeThrough node, select the mesh or meshes, and click Unlink SeeThrough.
  8. Export.

In IMVU Studio derive ‘Example 3D Scene‘ and import your FBX. file

IMPORTANT

Be sure any meshes you add to the room are inside the “ROOM_EXPORT” Collection or it will not be exported! They should also be children of “Skeleton.Room“. This can be done in the outliner by dragging your mesh over the collection named “ROOM_EXPORT”, Then holding SHIFT and dragging your mesh over the same collection.

Creating Furniture

  1. Click ‘Create Furniture‘.
    • This will give you all of the nodes you need and a reference block for a sitting position.
    • Note: The meshes generated are for reference and will not be exported
  2. Add any seat of your choosing.
    • The Custom seat is used to trigger animations of the same name.
    • If you would like to add or remove either Catcher/Pitcher nodes or Handle nodes, Use the Add Link Catcher or Break Link Catcher and Add Link Handle or Break Link Handle buttons to do so.
  3. If you would like to have a see through mesh, click ‘Create See Through Node‘.
    • Move the cone such that the point aims in the direction the mesh will be seen from. Whenever the camera moves behind the cone, the linked meshes will disappear.
    • To link an object, select the SeeThroughArmature Cone, along with any meshes you would like to link to it.
    • Click ‘Link To SeeThrough‘.
    • To unlink a SeeThrough node, select the mesh or meshes, and click Unlink SeeThrough.
  4. [NEW] Add Camera Zone Nodes to your furniture product to set the focus area for IMVU product image generator in Studio. More info on this feature can be found in Camera Zone Nodes.
  5. Export.

In IMVU Studio derive ‘Empty Furniture‘ and import your FBX .file

IMPORTANT

Be sure any meshes you add to the furniture are inside the “FURNITURE_EXPORT” Collection or it will not be exported! They should also be children of “Root“. This can be done in the outliner by dragging your mesh over the collection named “FURNITURE_EXPORT”, Then holding SHIFT and dragging your mesh over the same collection.

Creating an Avatar Attachment

  1. Click ‘Create Attachment‘.
    • This sets up your scene with a base avatar for you to work from.
    • Make sure you only append from a fresh blender scene.
  2. Use the Gender to change the avatar reference mesh.
  3. Create or import your accessory mesh.
    • Make sure it is positioned at 0,0,0 world space.
  4. Select the bone you want to parent it to with the eyedropper tool.
  5. Select your accessory mesh (mesh only).
  6. Click ‘Setup Attachment‘.
    • This will move your mesh into the export folder and hook it up to the AttachmentNode bone for you.
  7. Position your accessory mesh where you would like it to go on the avatar.
  8. Export.

Also note that you can export your own armature with an animated skeleton and export it using Toolkit. Just make sure of the following:

  • Your armature and all meshes are in the “ATTACHMENT_EXPORT” Collection.
  • Use only one armature.
    • You can place more than one armature in Export collection but you will only be able to import one at a time into Studio
  • All meshes must be weighted to an armature or they will not be imported.
  • Meshes can be parented to the armature or in the root of the export collection.
  • Putting an armature as a child of an empty is fraught with disaster!

IMPORTANT

Be sure all meshes you wish to export are inside the “ATTACHMENT_EXPORT” Collection or it will not be exported! Step 6 ‘Setup Attachment‘ should have done this, but it is a good idea to double check.

In IMVU Studio

  • Derive ‘Empty Female Accessory‘ or ‘Empty Male Accessory‘
  • Import your FBX file
  • Click ‘Preview‘

Creating Avatar Clothing and Animation

Avatar Clothing

The Clothing Tool is also used to make avatar body parts.

  1. Click ‘Create Avatar Asset‘ (or switch the tool to Clothing mode if you have already created an avatar).
    • This sets up your scene with a base avatar for you to work from.
    • Make sure you only append from a fresh blender scene.
  2. Use the Gender dropdown to change the reference mesh.
    • Male 1.5 and Female 1.5 are newer body meshes, made by IMVU to be a bit more realistic, while still working with all of the products that work with the original male and female models.
  3. Create or import your clothing object.
    • If you want to use part of the body mesh, for example, the arms from the Male 1.5 mesh when making a T-Shirt. Simply select it, and click ‘Bind Clothing’.
  4. Position it where you would like it to go.
  5. Click ‘Bind Clothing‘.
    • This will automatically weight the piece of clothing to nearby bones and move it to the ‘CLOTHING_EXPORT’ Collection.
  6. Enter weight paint mode by clicking ‘Paint Weights‘.
  7. Switch the Avatar Tool to Animation mode.
    • In Animation mode you can test the weighting by manipulating the animation control rig.
  8. If you need to you can reset the Avatar’s pose by clicking ‘Zero Pose’.
  9. Use the ‘Limit Bones‘ button to limit the number of bones weighted to every vertex to 6.
    • We recommend you do this periodically as you work and test your weighting.
    • This is essential to do before exporting, as IMVU studio does not accept more than 6 bones weighted per vertex and will adjust it in Studio if needed.
  10. Export.
Checking MCG when making Body Parts

If you are making your own body mesh, use the ‘Show MCG Reference’ toggle to make sure your MCG area is within our guidelines.

Use the ‘MCG Reference Size’ Slider to see how we adjust the MCG area based on avatar size.

IMPORTANT

Be sure your clothing mesh is inside the “AVATAR_EXPORT” Collection or it will not be exported! This can be done in the outliner by Holding SHIFT and dragging your mesh over the collection named “AVATAR_EXPORT”.

In IMVU Studio derive from the appropriate ‘Empty Female‘ or ‘Empty Male‘ clothing or body part based on what you are making and import your FBX file.

Avatar Animation

    1. Click ‘Create Avatar Asset‘ (or switch the tool to Animation mode if you have already created an avatar).
      • This sets up your scene with a base avatar for you to work from.
    2. Use the Gender dropdown to change the reference mesh.
      • Male 1.5 and Female 1.5 are newer body meshes, made by IMVU to be a bit more realistic, while still working with all of the products that work with the original male and female models.
    3. Enable ‘Make Single Pose’ To quicky export one frame to be used as a static pose.
      • Using either the IK or FK controls pose your avatar and you are ready to export.
      • NOTE:  No Blender ‘action’ is created and Studio Toolkit handles the keyframing upon export to get your pose into IMVU Studio.
    4. Enable ‘Export All Bones’ To export every bone, regardless of whether or not it has keyframes applied to it.
      • You might uncheck this if you want your animation to play only on bones which are animated. In this case the avatar idle animation will play at the same time as your animation. An example of this is when you trigger the action “wave”. The “wave” animation does not interrupt the avatar idle.
    5. Enable ‘Morph Controls’ To see the facial morph controls, as well as Export Facial Morphs.
      • NOTE: Morph Controls are only available while the Female (not the Female 1.5) avatar is visible.
    6. [NEW] Optimization can be set to control how much the resulting animation files (Cal3d XAF) are optimized.
      • The levels are from 0 = No optimization (there will be a key set on every frame) to 3 = Aggressive optimization (but still produces good results).
    7. Inverse and Forward Kinematics (IK/FK) and Rotation Isolation are explained in detail below.
    8. [NEW] ‘Add Pose’ creates a Blender ‘action’ and adds it to a ‘track’ named imvu_poses the Blender Non-Linear Animation (NLA) editor.
    • You can add multiple poses and export them all at once as separate Cal3d XAF files ready for immediate import into IMVU Studio.
    • See ‘Advanced Animating‘ below for more information.
  2. Set keyframes by clicking the ‘Set Key‘ button.
    • Alternatively, activate the ‘Auto Key‘ button and a keyframe will be added every time you adjust any IK or FK control.
  3. At any point you can click ‘Zero Pose’ To reset every bone to its original position or click ‘Zero Bone(s)’ To reset every selected bone to its original position.
  4. Export.

IMPORTANT

Exporting an avatar animation does not export any meshes unless you have manually added them to the ‘AVATAR_EXPORT‘ layer. Otherwise the only things exported are the skeleton and the animation data.

NOTE: If you have meshes such as clothing in the ‘AVATAR_EXPORT’ or have Export Facial Morphs enabled they will be exported as FBX.

Advanced Animating


[NEW] The Blender Toolkit supports the Non-Linear Animation (NLA) editor! Here is what you need to know about how Toolkit works with it.

First off, ALL skeletal animations are now exported as Cal3D XAFs and are ready for import into IMVU Studio without needing the FBX importer.

Multiple Poses

The ‘Add Pose’ tool allows you to “sequence” multiple poses in a singe Blender track and export them all at once.

When you click ‘Add Pose’:

  • A new Blender action is created using the name in the field next to Add Pose button.
  • The new action is pushed down to the NLA and added to a specially named track, ‘imvu_poses‘ under ‘Control_Armature‘.
    • If the ‘imvu_poses‘ track does not exist, it is created.
  • A strip is created on the ‘imvu_poses‘ track and the action is added to the strip.
    • The strip gets named the same as the action.
  • Each new Pose strip is added to the ‘imvu_poses‘ track after the last one.

When you are ready, save your file and export and you will get one XAF animation file for each Pose!

This is quick way to make assets for pose packs!

Multiple Animations

Using the NLA Editor you can put multiple animations strips in a single track.

You just need to make sure there is only one track enabled (not muted) and it is under ‘Control_Armature‘.

When you export you will get one XAF animation file for each animation!

This allows you to create many animations in a single Blender file (instead of separate Blender files) and export them all at once!

NLA Editor

Now that the NLA Editor is opened up you have the full range of capabilities provided by that tool such as:

  • Blending multiple actions
  • Changing the action length without editing keys

You just need to make sure there are multiple valid tracks (see Invalid NLA tracks below) under ‘Control_Armature‘.

Action Editor

If you do not wish to use the NLA Editor, do not use the Add Pose feature and do all of your animation editing in the Action Editor.

The name of the action will be used when naming the exported XAF.

IMPORTANT EXPORT INFO

  • The exporter will create a key on every frame and then perform key reduction based on the Optimization setting.
    • The levels are from 0 = No optimization (there will be a key set on every frame) to 3 = Aggressive optimization (but still produces good results).
  • Invalid NLA tracks: 1) contain no strips (empty), 2) are named ‘[Action Stash]’, or are uncheck (muted) and will be ignored.
  • All NLA valid strips must start on frame 1 or higher.
  • The priority of the animation exporter is:
    • Make Single Pose: If this is checked then only a single XAF is exported named ‘Pose_<the_blender_filename>.xaf’
    • NLA Editor Poses: If a valid track named ‘imvu_poses‘ is found, a single frame XAF for each strip in the track will be exported.
      • Each strip length must be at least 3 frames to capture each pose.
      • Each exported XAF will be named ‘<strip_name>_<the_blender_filename>.xaf’
    • NLA Editor Sequence: If a track named ‘imvu_poses’ is not found (or is muted) and there is only one valid track with one or more strips (see Invalid NLA tracks above), then an XAF for each strip in the track will be exported.
      • Each strip animation will be exported from its starting frame to its end frame.
      • The starting frame for each XAF will be frame 1
      • Each exported XAF will be named ‘<strip_name>_<the_blender_filename>.xaf’
    • NLA Editor: If there are multiple valid tracks then the entire NLA is exported as a single animation using whatever animation is crafted in the NLA Editor.
      • The start and end frames will be the starting frame of the first strip encountered and the end the last strip encountered.
      • Each exported XAF will be named ‘Anim_<the_blender_filename>.xaf’
    • Action Editor: If no valid tracks are found in the NLA Editor then the exporter will look for an active action in the Action Editor and export that animation.
      • The start and end frames will be frame 0 the frame of the last key encountered.
      • The exported XAF will be named ‘<the_action_name>_<the_blender_filename>.xaf’

In IMVU Studio

  • Derive from ‘Female Avatar‘ (PID 80), ‘Male Avatar‘ (PID 191), ‘Empty Female Clothing‘ (PID 2191901), or ‘Empty Male Clothing‘ (PID 9911131)
  • Import your XAF files.
  • Select the ‘Component‘ ‘Action‘ panel and add an Action
  • In the ‘Inspector‘ panel, add an Ensemble
  • Select your animation from the ‘Skeletal Animation‘ ‘Asset‘ dropdown.
  • Set the ‘Duration‘ to the the start and and end frames of your animation
  • Click ‘Apply‘
  • Click ‘Preview‘
  • Click the ‘Play‘ button in the ‘Inspector‘ panel to see your animation play.

Pro Tip: If you export your XAF files directly into your IMVU Studio project folder Studio will prompt you to auto update! Alternatively, you can drag an drop them to your project folder.

IK/FK Controls

IK/FK

Use either Inverse or Forward Kinematics (IK/FK) while animating. Note that switching between IK and FK mid animation is not recommended, since changing the position of one control does not change the position of the other.

    • Checked = IK
    • Unchecked = FK

ANIMATION HANDLE TYPES

Click on any of the images below to see an animation

IK Arm

  • Move the “U” Shaped control to move the position of the hand
  • Move the pyramid to change where the elbow points when bent

FK Arm

  • Rotate each control to bend the joints of the arm

IK Leg / Foot

  • Move the Foot shaped control to move the position of the foot
  • Rotate the Quarter Circle shaped control to lift the foot from the tip of the toe
  • Rotate the Oval shaped control to wiggle the toe
  • Rotate the control near the heel to
  • Lift the foot from the back of the heel
  • Lift the foot from the ball of the foot
  • Bank left or right on the edge of the foot
  • Move the pyramid to change where the knee points when bent

FK Leg

  • Rotate each control to bend the joints of the leg

Torso / Head / Hands

  • All of these handles are FK handles, so rotate them to bend each joint

Shoulder / Hip Adjust

  • These circular arrow controls are used to help reduce squashing of limbs when bending to extreme angles

Clavicle

  • This control can be useful to help reduce stretching when the arm is raised

Rotation Isolation

Note: Rotation Isolation can be used on the arms and legs that have IK unchecked.

  • It allows the body part to hold its position while the rest of the body is rotating.
  • In the video below, the avatars left arm (Right side of screen) has rotation isolation turned on, while their right arm has it off

 

Head Morph Animation

  1. Switch the Avatar Tool to Animation mode.
    • Make sure that the Female (not the Female 1.5) avatar is visible.
  2. Enable facial Morph Controls and Export Facial Morphs.
    • Animate the face in the same manner as the body by setting keys with Set Key or Auto Key, but using the facial controls rig.
  3. Export!
IMPORTANT

When you import your FBX into studio a mesh and 4 materials show up. Uncheck these because you will not want to import these assets.

In IMVU Studio

  1. Derive from an empty male or female clothing/accessory product
  2. Import your FBX file
    • Uncheck the “Morph” mesh file and all 4 material files
  3. Select the ‘Component‘ ‘Action‘ panel and add an Action
  4. In the ‘Inspector‘ panel, add an Ensemble
  5. Select your animation from the ‘Morph Animation‘ ‘Asset‘ dropdown.
  6. Set the ‘Duration‘ to the the start and and end frames of your animation
  7. Click ‘Apply‘
  8. Click ‘Preview‘
  9. Click the ‘Play‘ button in the ‘Inspector‘ panel to see your animation play.

MORPH HANDLE TYPES

  • A Light Green line represents the control
  • A White line represents where a control can move
  • A Black line represents how much a control can scale
  • A Dark Green line represents how a control can rotate

Eye Controls

Pupil Controls

Eyelid Controls

Eyebrow Controls

Nose Controls

Tongue Controls

Mouth Controls

 

Creating a Prop Animation

  1. Open both the furniture tool and the animation tool
  2. Click Create furniture, then click append animation file
    • You should now have a reference box and a rigged avatar
  3. Build up your furniture with everything it needs, while you can always go back and make changes, it is good to start with as complete of a furniture that you can
    • It may be helpful to hide the “Animation_Scene” collection while you work on the furniture
    • Remember to put all your meshes under Attachment.Root!
  4. Add a custom seat to your furniture, this will trigger the animation based on what you name it
  5. Attach an armature to any furniture products you would like to animate
  6. Position the avatar where you would like it, and animate it like you would with the normal animation tool
    • Note: The animation tool Add Key and Auto Key buttons will work while animating the furniture too
  7. Animate the furniture object to line up with the avatars animation
    • Make sure all animations are exactly the same length or they will not line up. Note the avatar starts at frame 0 always
    • Remember to name your animations so they are easy to find in studio!
  8. Export!

In IMVU Studio

  1. You should have gotten 2 files exported from blender, one with the prefix “Anim_” and one with “Furn_”. Import both of these files
  2. Go to the action tab, and make 2 new actions
    • Name the furniture’s animation “stance.[seatName]-seat[##]”
      • ex) stance.liftWeight.seat01
    • Name the avatars “stance.[seatName]”
    • Optionally you can have a 3rd animation for the furniture’s idle state named “stance.Idle”
  3. Populate these actions with the correct animations
  4. Under the skeleton tab, change the asset dropdown to RootNode_Attachment.Root

Creating an Avatar Head

  1. Open the head tool and click Create Head
  2. Create a head mesh, using the reference neck as where the neck vertices should be placed
    • IMPORTANT: Double check that the head is exactly how you want it, there is no modifying the mesh after the next step (UVs can be changed at any time)
  3. Select your head mesh, and click the Create Grid Button
    • This populates a grid of heads above your mesh, go head to head, using edit mode to modify the necessary vertices to match the head in the same box. The name of the box should also help to know what needs to be changed
    • Left and Right is relative to the avatar, not the user. So the left eye is on the creators right side
    • Be sure to weight your avatar to the skeleton correctly
      • Every vertex other than the neck edge should be 100% bound to the Head Bone
      • The vertices on the very edge of the neck should be 100% bound to Neck03 for male, or Neck04 for female
  4. Export!

 

In IMVU Studio derive from ‘Female Head (59087)‘ or ‘Male Head (59087)‘ and import your FBX file.

 

Exporting

Open the Export tool

    • Make sure your scene is saved, it will use the same name as your scene for saving.
    • The FBX file will also be saved to the same location as your scene.
IMPORTANT

  • The Export Button is universal and will export whichever type of product you created. Each scene can only be used for creation of one type of product (ex: Room, Furniture, Accessory)
  • Make sure you save your file first. The tool will complain if you have never saved when starting from a new file.
  • The FBX saved will be in the same location as the source file and named the same but with an FBX extension.

Open Export Directory

Click the Open Export Directory Button to automatically open the file explorer to the location of your .Blend file

Help

Click the Help Button to return to this page at any time!

Updating

If an update is available, click ! UPDATE AVAILABLE under the Export Tool Tab and download the latest version from this page.

 

Questions?
If you have questions about using the IMVU Studio toolkit, feel free to ask in our Creator Community Discussions HERE.

Updated on March 11, 2026

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