Hello all.
Many people seem to be having this axis rotation problem when exporting animations from Lightwave to Unity with the FBX exporter. I haven’t seen much of a tutorial or walk through on this issue. I’m new to Unity and just trying to help by sharing some pitfalls and a final fix I found. My first ever tutorial so be kind.
I posted a 2 part tutorial on YouTube on what I found and a fix:
Part 1- Intro and pitfalls.
Part 2- Final fix.
- I make some good points so you should watch both parts to gain as mush as possible.
- Please let me know what you think of this tutorial and post any info to update others as well. Thanks for any feedback.
Good luck.
Hi Devon and welcome to the forums! The more LW users the merrier :lol:
Strangeness, I am using the built in FBX exporter for 9.6 (not 9.6.1 yet) on a Mac, and I get <0,0,0> rotations on the FBX root and the actual model inside it.
What FBX exporter are you using?
I made a video of my FBX results, and how I would go about fixing the issue (if I had one). Just remember that when you put the LightWave model inside an empty game object to compensate for the rotational issues, you dont rotate the new empty game object, that is added so you can rotate the previous root of the LightWave model that is now inside it. The new root (empty GameObject) is still <0,0,0> on its rotation while anything inside it can be <-24,129,34> and so on:
http://www.vimeo.com/10196359
Be sure to check out the Keystone solution (in development) for a more integrated LightWave to Unity experience.
http://www.vimeo.com/10034871
Hey Petter,
Thanks for the quick reply! The great community support is one of the reasons I love Unity. Someone from another country giving me advise… simply amazing.
I tried the GameObject approach in a number of ways, including what you posted. All of them resulted in the model falling on it’s original rotation from LW Modeler. Even stranger, if you built the bones in LW Layout, you can see that the bones are still animating on the Y-axis but the mesh is still on it’s side. I could even see that the bones were slightly deforming the mesh if it was was within the bone’s range of influence. VERY strange. All these issues prompted me to dig deeper and make this tutorial.
Now, as for the version of LW… I am using and older version with the downloaded FBX from the Unity site. What you are telling me about the built-in FBX exporter from LW 9.6 is EXACTLY what I wanted to hear. Hopefully my tutorial is already obsolete before too many people find a need for it.
Again, thanks for the quick response! I will continue to keep up with your Keystone package and everything else. Excellent work…
If its any consolation Max and Maya users have coordinate problems too. There’s a feedback page you can vote on getting it fixed currently in 36th place and I have been told that the Unity Devs will be looking into a solution in the coming weeks following GDC. Lets hope they come though 
A simple solution is to simply parent your object to a null in layout.
When you export the FBX, it’ll show up in unity with the following heirachy.
Gameobject->Null->PlayerMesh
or something like that. Change the rotation of the gameobject to 0,0,0 then adjust the Null to compensate.
Make sure you don’t provide any keyframes for this null object and everything will be fine.
I model normally and get everything working fine once it’s exported using this method.
Been struggling to get content from lw to unity for a few days. There should be the official sticky for lw>unity thread.
I watched the youtube link. Flipping the rig like that is not advisable imho.
I also downloaded the fbx exporter from the unity page and though it exports from layout fine and even textures and deformation are good, but there’s no way to fix the rotation in unity unless they do what’s in the youtube link. The null trick or game object trick or root trick, etc doesn’t work.
The fbx exporter in lw 9.6 is good and some things I discovered were that the characters have to face the negative z in layout. So just parent to a null and rotate 180. But it doesn’t export the textures so you manually have to link it.
The null trick works fine. It’s how i do it. If it’s not working for you then you’re probably doing something like keyframing the null object.
The null trick works fine for lw 9.6 exporter. I did say
“The fbx exporter in lw 9.6 is good and some things I discovered were that the characters have to face the negative z in layout. So just parent to a null and rotate 180. But it doesn’t export the textures so you manually have to link it.”
But for 3 days I was using the fbx exporter that’s on the unity tutorial page and that is completely useless fbx exporter and even the nulls trick won’t work. The youtube video will fix that for that fbx exporter but I wouldn’t recommend what he does in the video.
So in short the unity page needs to be updated to use the new fbx lw 9.6 exporter.
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1005246#post1005246
Well, i don’t like the 9.6 exporter. it has issues with normals. i use the older version of the exporter and have no issues with it.
Why do you say it’s useless? I thought i remember having issues if i export it and unchecked something such as lights/camera from the export list. I just export everything and if needed, delete the extra stuff once loaded up in unity.
I haven’t encountered the issue with normals. Thanks for the tip. What do you think is causing it?
The old fbx exporter always exports objects with a rotation number of 270,etc even if you parent it to a null in layout. Deleted the keys of the root as well. Don’t know, not successful with it. Maybe you can post a sample lws file with a simple box so people can dissect how to setup a scene for export with the old fbx exporter.
For the new fbx exporter the only thing to remember is object should face -z. 
Hi fellow wavers!
Sorry, but what is the currently best way now for 9.6? Parent to null and export? Which fbx version? Would be a treat if someone could put together some simple facts in one post
mike
It seems when i export some objects using the newer ones, and shine a light on them the light comes from 180 degrees in the wrong way.
The newer exporter does seem to export things with correct rotation though.
Ok will watch out for those in unity. So any chance you can post a scene that has a setup that exports correct for the old fbx?
StereoMike - the new fbx is the one that’s included in lw 9.6 in file>export fbx, there’s no option to exclude lights, camera, etc.
The old fbx exporter is in the unity tutorial page. It works very well for exporting to maya afaik but in unity I’m having probs. Maybe an easy workaround is to export to maya and make and use that since unity reads maya files natively.
keystone would probably make for a more streamlined workflow but no update as of yet. Hopefully before core is out. The sooner the better before core comes out :lol:
Alright. here’s a simple object. it’s an arrow pointing down the Z plane with an animation.
Export it with the older FBX plugin. when it’s in unity adjust the rotation of the null object to 270 90 0
Then adjust the object to 0 0 0.
287606–10290–$arrow_409.zip (2.95 KB)
Just tried it. Works without doing the youtube video for the old fbx exporter. This should be sticky for lw!
How does unity handle multiple uvs from lightwave?
In max the uv channel 1,2 are easy to import in unity for color and lightmap.
In lw how does one import a color and a lightmap?
From what i gather, the FBX exporter only exports one UV map. I can’t seem to get the collada one to do so either. Unless i’m not settting up a proper second UV the exporter understand.
There seems to be something called “Keystone” that has been in the works for long before i showed up on the unity forum. it’ll load up LWO files in unity with multiple UV maps. Time will tell.
So at this time its not possible to export a colormap and lightmap from layout fbx even if I make 2 uvsets for my object in lightwave?
I wonder how lw assigns the uvchannel like in max which has uv assignable channels.
I’m waiting for keystone to come out as well. I think they’re trying to make it fully functional with morphs before they release it.
Thanks you for your explanations to all of you, it will surely help me starting with unity
I’m not sure how you go about doing two UV sets the exporter understands. I’ve tried a uv map on the diffuse, and another on a few other channels, but when exported, i can’t find mention of them in the FBX file.
I could just be doing the wrong thing.
Ok will do my own tests. Have you tried using the other fbx exporters with different uv on diff,lumi,etc?
I think I’ll try to export fbx to 3dmax at the office to see if the fbx does have 2 uvs from lw.
