FBX to Unity : Will delete root node?

Unity Engine
1

Hello!

Actually working with a programmer using Unity he got some surprises importing my FBX file with animation.

Basically, importing a FBX file with a simple character, bones hierarchy and skin is working well.

But, When importing a FBX file with a bones hierarchy and an animation, Unity will delete the first node of the hierarchy.

Continuing tests with another friend working with Unity (yeah it’s shit I don’t have Unity -__- …), we finally understood I have to add a group parented to my bones hierarchy for exporting an animation…
…and once in Unity, it will delete the groupe and my hierarchy is safe back and alive…

Then what’s the hell :?:
Do I missed something :?:
Does that thing supposed to be a bug :?:

I add a last line for saying, all my FBX files was imported in Maya and working very good. I also imported them in another 3D engine for testing it and I don’t have the current Unity problem…

Thanks by advance! :slight_smile:

2

hop hop Sama go buy Unity :lol:

3

Are you saying that when you export an animation with a joint hierarchy and NO mesh it deletes the top level node of your hierarchy?

How does it sort the rest of the joints if the top node is missing? Is the hierarchy unparented/ungrouped?

4

Yeah exactly.
Once in unity the bone root desappears but the children hirarchy is alive :smile:
The direct bones of the bone roots are free!

But it’s ok, I add a group dynamically on the bone root when my script is exporting, it resolve the problem…

Did you already get the same problem in Unity or everything is fine?

5

Wow. I hope thats a bug and not a feature. Too bad you had to write something special to take care of a problem like that.

I haven’t exported animation without the mesh in Unity yet. All animation in what I’m working on is proprietary to a mesh. Soon, so thanks for the heads up.

6

Yeah same, an animation on a simple object works well.

7

It does! Not too simple though. :slight_smile: The last one I did had a skeleton with about 24 bones and a control rig with nearly 100 nodes in Maya. Several of the animation “clips” were 100+ frames in length. Having worked with several AAA engines my first impressions of Unity (minor bugs aside) are that it handles skeletal data very well. The export system is very similar to the integrated RadGameTools Granny system we were using at my last company.

8

Haha let me laugh! :lol:

Anyway I resolved the problem on my side…
A little 1k lines mel script for cleaning all the nods in maya, disconnecting rigging properly, and emptying the scene (emptying is english? O_o? ) and export the simple skeleton and the model ^_^.

Anyway, it’s work and they have a bug to correct in Unity :smile:

9

My experience is that the FBX exporter (or perhaps the unity importer?) clips that first transform off because it is the only transform at that level and it thinks that’s the scene root for some reason.

Try exporting just a locator with some keys from Maya to Unity. When I do that, the FBX I have won’t have my locator in the hierarchy, BUT the animation comes in - as root level animation on the FBX file itself. So in this test, no node named ‘locator1’ shows up.

Now, if I export TWO locators with animation on them, locator1 and locator2, now there are two nodes at the ‘root’ level, and the FBX exporter has to export them both as named nodes beneath the scene ‘root’. In this test, inside Unity, I get two named nodes with animation, locator1 and locator2.

So it is exporting your data in some sense - it’s just not in a way that works well with Unity. =\

I’ve written my own little exporter that, at export time, creates a dummy locator at the scene’s root and adds a few keys to it. It has a special name. Then, in Unity, I have a special ModelContentImporter that looks for that specially named node and removes it automatically.

SOOOOO GHETTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

~Alex Hogan