Exporting to Unity¶
Click on the Export to Unity button to export all Character Meshes, Animations, and Prop Meshes into a sub-folder named Export_Unity_FBX
The export process can take a few minutes. Enable the System Console (Window > Toggle System Console) to see progress of the export process.
Once finished, in the Export_Unity_FBX folder you should have these sub-folders:
- /Animations/ - this folder contains one FBX file for EACH animation.
- /Meshes/ - this folder contains one FBX file for EACH character, and one file for all props combined.
The Unity Export process also combines all characters without animations as a bundle into an FBX file named TLC_UNI_CHR_Characters-Meshes.fbx and with animations into an FBX file named TLC_UNI_CHR_Characters.fbx
Technical Details¶
Unreal Engine uses different units and coordinate systems compared to Blender. Unreal Engine uses centimeter units (instead of Blender's meter units) and Unreal Engine uses X as forward and Z up whereas Blender uses -Y forward and Z up.
Units¶
During the export process, the addon first:
- Temporarily changes the units in Blender to CM
- Scales up the armature and all characters by x100 times
- Scales up bone locations in animations for all animations by x100 (rotation's are fine and don't require any adjustments)
Then the addon:
- Exports all characters meshes, animations, and prop meshes.
Finally the addon:
- Reverts all the scale changes and restores the previous unit settings (meters by default)
Because of this process, the above export process can be destructive, especially if there is an error during the export process, so the export process saves an incremental version of the .blend file, and then asks you to restore the most recently saved file after export.
Answer Yes and restore that saved copy after the export process finishes to avoid potential problems that the export process can cause.
Orientation¶
Even though Unreal Engine uses X as forward, characters in Unreal Engine, even the Mannequin created by Epic, BREAK this rule. This means that Characters are generally facing in the Y direction and then the character is rotated in the Unreal Engine blueprint to face in the X direction. Stupid. I know. Hopefully they'll fix this in Unreal Engine at some point so forward is always forward =)