Force FBX file to refresh/update its Animation Clips when new clips are added?

[dgoyette]

When an FBX file is initially added to a project, Unity will automatically set up the Animation Clips for that FBX.:

However, if more animations are added to the FBX, Unity will not automatically import them. (For example, if I export a new version of an FBX with new animations, overwriting the old version of the FBX.)

So far, the only way I’ve found to get the FBX to show the added animations is to click the “+” at the bottom of the FBX Clips window, then find the new clip in the dropdown. This is pretty slow, and error prone.

I was hoping there was some way to force the FBX file to automatically reconcile the clips. Reimporting the FBX doesn’t do this, and I don’t see a way to keep this from being a very manual process.

[dgoyette]

I found the answer to my question in this old thread:

Re-import / reset animation

Hi, I’m working on a project which uses lots of animations in binary fbx format. I’ve just received an updated file from the animator and the time range of the clip is different from the old one, so when I look at the fbx in Unity it shows a message “Clip range outside source take” I can manually change the start and end, but it would be nice to re-read the timings from the fbx to make sure I get the right values. I can’t find a way to get unity to completely re-import the animation though. I h…

You’ll need to create an editor script to do this, but the basic idea is to load the ModelImporter for the FBX, and assign the defaultClipAnimations to the clipAnimations property. Seems to work fine. Here’s a minimal approach:

var path = "Assets/Models/Characters/CC/Leo/LipSync/LeoLipSync.fbx";
var importer = AssetImporter.GetAtPath(path) as ModelImporter;
importer.clipAnimations = importer.defaultClipAnimations;
AssetDatabase.ImportAsset(path);
AssetDatabase.SaveAssets();

It would be nice if this were just an option available in the Inspector, or right-click context menu for FBX files…