Animation plays facing 180 for .fbx exported from Blender

Unity Engine
1

Good morning, team! I’m trying to figure out why my animations are reversed 180 degrees from the orientation in the editor. If my model is facing away from the camera in the editor, he reverses to face the camera during gameplay, as if somehow my animations are imported “backwards”, if that makes any sense?

I’m exporting from Blender into .fbx, with -Z Forward and Y Up.

Any ideas on what might be causing this?

2

Hey Chainsawpenguin,

I haven’t had this issue before but here are a few things to check when exporting/importing your model.

  • Make sure both mesh and armature are facing Front.
  • Apply position, rotation and scale for both objects in Blender. ( Hotkey: ctrl+a )
    This will reset all transform information to 0. ( Careful, if it is not on 0 already, it might modify the animations. Set the armature to Rest Position before applying)
  • Check both of your objects in the Action Editor and see that only the Armature has animation information.
  • Check the animation of course, look at all root bones so that they do not transition into °180 angles.
  • -Z Forward and Y Up should work as default when exporting.
  • In unity, check the type of Rig and Scale.

What method are you using to play the animations, which rig type?
In a New Scene, place the model alone and leave the “Play automatically” checkbox on. Play it without any scripts and see if it still reverses.

1 Like
3
  • What is “Front”? They’re facing towards the camera in the Front Ortho view.
    I’m using Mecanim animation, with a Humanoid rig. Scale is fine.

Hmm… I’ll keep mucking about with it. You seem to indicate that this is not expected behavior. I’ll see if simply flipping the guy around to face away from the camera in the Front Ortho view fixes it.

Thanks for the advice!

  • chainsaw -
4

This post is old as hell but I’ll post my answer because this just caused me an evening of headache. Hoping this can help a future person.

BLENDER TO UNITY EXPORT GUIDELINES, FOR RIGGED & ANIMATED MESHES (that work for me)

  • First, in blender, make sure your mesh & armature both have applied transforms. Unless you have to rescale, I think it’s ok to do it after animations, but you should remember to do it before.
  • Your mesh & armature must look towards -Y (easy way to know is if you press numpad 1, you’ll get the front ortho camera, and your mesh should be facing you), and everything should be at scale 1. Again, remember to apply transforms.
    To export :
    8667960--1167420--upload_2022-12-16_20-57-37.png

Reproduce these exact settings.
The forward and up axis must be set as those of Blender. I have no idea why, but it just works like that.
UNTICK “Use Space Transform”. This is what fucks up your anims and flips them 180 in unity.
Click export, and lastly, let’s check the import settings in Unity.

8667960--1167423--upload_2022-12-16_21-0-4.png

Latsly, check out your model in your scene, and make sure all of it is in scale 1,1,1, and rotation 0,0,0. It should be facing the Z axis (blue arrow), and be scaled properly.