Any cons to keeping models as blend files?

[Kurt-Dekker]

I can answer your question precisely. I freakin’ HATE fiddling and clicking with FBX export, etc.

Keeping files ONLY as Blender files is awesome, one of the most endearing simplifying things about Unity with Blender.

But as you intuit above, there are potential hidden costs. Here are the two major costs.

Cost #1: every place you wish to build this will REQUIRE Blender be installed. Your computer? Fine! Install it! Your friend’s computer? Eh, maybe you can entice him into installing it. Now… Unity’s cloud build? Not so much. In fact, you will never see Blender installed by anybody offering cloud build / SaaS type services for the simple reason that it falls outside of Blender’s licensing.

Cost #2: you become beholden to changes in: Blender export behaviour, or Unity export script. The former is relatively stable, but does change from time to time. The latter can also change, such as around about 2018 or so Unity changed their python export script to suddenly include Camera and Light models by default. This broke all previous imported models, which ignored Camera / Light. If you failed to remove the Light/Camera from your scene, now your hierarchy moves around, you have an extra Camera and Light, and if you made prefabs from the mesh, those are broken now.

I have elected to keep using Blender, but I have introduced a wart into my development process: every time I install a new version of Unity3D I go into the Python export script that it installs and I hack it to NOT import Camera/Light, since there will NEVER be a time that I want a Blender Camera in my scene.

That change Unity made in the import script to make it start importing Camera and Light was really in my opinion completely useless to 99.9% of simple model-and-import workflows. The only possible place for such a feature might be for importing a huge complete scene with lights and cameras, and even that is useless since everything will need to be tweaked in Unity anyway!

Here’s some more of my mad high scribblings about this:

Unity imports Blender3D objects as FBX via a little Python script:

From Blender to Unity problem

Often distortions can come as a result of modifiers and/or scales existing through your transform hierarchy. In Object mode in Blender, always have your rotations set as (0,0,0) and your scales set as (1,1,1) otherwise you will have issues. You can apply those transforms in Blender. Unity runs this script to import your Blender files via transient FBX export: ./Hub/Editor/2020.1.5f1/Unity.app/Contents/Tools/Unity-BlenderToFBX.py ./Hub/Editor/2020.2.1f1/Unity.app/Contents/Tools/Unity-BlenderT…

The Python script that Unity uses (substitute your Unity version number or search) to import:

./Hub/Editor/2020.2.1f1/Unity.app/Contents/Tools/Unity-BlenderToFBX.py

More on fixing it:

All my mesh folder content is gone

There are no “mesh files” from a standard Blender import. Unity imports a Blender file as a series of different assets depending on what you put into it in the first place: GameObject, MeshRenderers, Meshes, Materials, etc. All Unity does when it imports a blender file is call the Unity-BlenderToFBX.py script (located in your installation of Unity) and imports stuff. If you recently upgraded Unity, around Unity2019 or so, they changed what they imported, so it will reshape EVERYTHING in your i…

Blender3D objects used as trees / detail in Unity3D terrain (See the second half of this response)

Terrain Editor Adds The Trees in Wrong Rotation (Custom Trees Made With Blender)

This might be because your scene includes the default camera and lights. Unity started importing those with its default Blender import script starting sometime in Unity2019 and it will break a lot of prefabs. You can either a) remove the Camera and Light and everything except the LOD group objects (properly named), or you can modify the Blender import script embedded in Unity. This means you would need to re-modify it every time you switched to a new version of Unity, but I was …

All components lost when changing parent in Blender

NEVER rename items in Blender after you have imported into Unity, because then Unity imports them as though they were new GameObjects. That’s how the mapping works if you look in the .meta file associated with your Blender file. It is done by name. I would also NEVER reparent them because of the root (-90,0,0) rotation issue when going from Blender’s right-hand system to Unity’s left-hand system. Reparenting potentially moves an object in or out of the guard area for this rotation. The best w…

Probuilder and Probuilderize and Blender:

ProBuilder vs Blender

This is what you need, but it’s not a free-back-and-forth-all-day-long process. You want to be very intentional and parsimonious about how many times you go back and forth because there’s a LOT of room for error. When you drop a Blender file in, Unity has Blender run a Python export script, then imports the resulting temporary FBX file, which you don’t ever see in the filesystem. When you drop that (or any model file) into your scene, it makes a GameObject, gives it a MeshFilter and MeshRend…

Some more potentially-useful info:

Orientation problem

what are you using for your fbx, export settings in blender, and what are you using for import in unity? This is what i use in blender, you want to set your Up axis and Forward not to what Unity uses for those, but to how your axis are being used in blender. Also make sure Apply Transform is enabled. [8037734--1036694--upload_2022-4-11_9-51-35.png] in Unity i have this. [8037734--1036700--upload_2022-4-11_9-54-11.png]