Project broken after moving it to a new pc

[Steven-1]

I have a finished game project made with Unity 2019.3 on window7 that I tried to move to my new laptop (with windows 11).
The copy seems to be correct, but when I open the project, all meshes are missing.
It seems it’s unable to open the blender (.blend) files.

I noticed that on my old computer I had blender 2.75, while on my new one 2.79. (Which actually shouldn’t be an issue, such a minor version difference, but you never know)
So I uninstalled blender on my laptop and installed the same version (2.75) as on my old pc.
But nothing happens, unity still fails to open the blend files.
I can create new blend files, and these get imported correctly by unity, but the existing ones it can’t open.

Anyone any idea what’s wrong and how to fix it?

I tried moving the library and obj folders at one point, but somehow that doesn’t change anything? As if Unity doesn’t even use these folders? (Cause UNity didn’t even remade these folders when opening the project)
Can anyone explain that?

[DevDunk]

1. Delete the temp, obj, and Library folder. These are caches and often system specifc. After you do that start the project and let it import everything

2. Might be worth updating to the latest 2019 version (if it’s a long term project to a newer lts as well, but latest 2019 should do).
   That version might be older than Windows 11, so maybe there are some issues there.

3 In general when something is final, it’s best to use an fbx instead of using blend files for everything

[Kurt-Dekker]

@Steven-1

I can create new blend files, and these get imported correctly by unity, but the existing ones it can’t open.

All Blender3D-to-Unity3D happens through a little Python script. It has limitations.

Not only that but the script substantially changed circa 2020 and broke (most) subsequent imports / exports, unless you avoided using Camera and / or Lamp (now called Light) in Blender. See below for more.

If you don’t want to concern yourself with these script pipeline limitations, always manually export FBX files from Blender3D and only use the FBX files.

Here’s more reading:

Costs of using Blender files directly vs exporting to FBX:

Any cons to keeping models as blend files?

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… U…

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-BlenderToF…

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

Check your recycled bin and see if anything is retrievable. I’m sorry you’ve had this issue. Please consider using source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work. Personally I use git because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up. Here’s how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt: Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering: Share/Sharing source code between projects: Setting up the right .gitig…

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 lazy and I do t…

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]

Updating Blender files without breaking your prefabs:

Is it Possible to Edit a Prefab in Blender

Yes ^ ^ ^ the above… but there are limitations. Generally you cannot ADD new items, only change existing items. Here’s why: Any arbitrary FBX model (including Blender files automatically imported as FBX files in Unity) is a collection of things: each object becomes a GameObject each might have a mesh each might generate / use materials there are parent/child relations between objects The collective bunch of things is imported and given Unity-side names (called GUIDs) based on their Blender …

When I work in Blender3D for Unity3D use, I follow these organizational rules:

• use Empty Blender Objects as folders: they come out as an extra GameObject

• ALWAYS parent everything to a single Empty, even a single object

• ALWAYS apply all Scales and Rotations on every Transform throughout your hierarchy.

• put as few objects in a given .blend file as possible, combining them in Unity into a prefab

• REMOVE unnecessary items (Light, Camera, etc.)

• use good names for your Blender3D objects and NEVER RENAME them after Unity sees them

• don’t even think about final Materials or Textures in Blender. Set the mesh to use N different materials, but always set up the materials within Unity and disregard what gets imported.

@Steven-1

As if Unity doesn’t even use these folders? (Cause UNity didn’t even remade these folders when opening the project)
Can anyone explain that?

Use source control to move projects, only source controlling what is necessary and more critically, to ignore what should be ignored.

It is equally important that you source control what you must AND ignore what you must.

PROPERLY CONFIGURING AND USING ENTERPRISE SOURCE CONTROL

I’m sorry you’ve had this issue. Please consider using proper industrial-grade enterprise-qualified source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work.

Personally I use git (completely outside of Unity) because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up as well as free places to host your repo (BitBucket, Github, Gitlab, etc.).

You can also push git repositories to other drives: thumb drives, USB drives, network drives, etc., effectively putting a complete copy of the repository there.

As far as configuring Unity to play nice with git, keep this in mind:

Prefab links keep getting dumped on Git pull

There really isn’t any fix because git works perfectly with Unity when configured properly. Best practices involve saving your work and closing Unity before using git. But if you understand how Unity does and does not flush changes to disk (or at least ALWAYS do a save-project), you can get away with leaving Unity open. The only thing linking EVERYTHING together in Unity is the GUID assigned to a script or asset. Name is irrelevant. Only the GUID connects it. This GUID is in the meta file. I…

I usually make a separate repository for each game, but I have some repositories with a bunch of smaller test games.

Here is how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt:

2 steps backwards

Yeah, what Praetor said is it… Debug.Log is your friend, and also since this is animation related, you can open up the Animator window when you expect the animations to go, and actually visually see where the state machine is, see which state it thinks it is in. You can combine this with Debug.Log() output at the locations where you set the animations to be what you think they should be, and that should lead you to some intel. I highly recommend setting up git source control. It really plays ni…

Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering:

When to make a separate object or class/script? Help me think like a programmer! (Example in text.)

This is a reasonable initial approach. The problem is you have listed the parts, but you haven’t really listed how they interact, and even if you did, it’s still sorta up to you how to organize it. Only YOU will know how to organize it, and the only way you can tell is to do the work. I recommend this: first, develop ALWAYS with source control (such as git), and every time you get even the slightest thing working, commit those changes with good commit messages. Then move to the next thing, c…

Share/Sharing source code between projects:

Your techniques to share code between projects?

I have found that bundling your own code into DLLs only serves to slow down your workflow. I base this on several years of experience dealing with other teams well-intentioned packaging mishaps. With games, it is almost always useful to reach into library code, make a temporary tweak to isolate a problem, and then revert it. With DLLs this is impossible, making workflow harder and more brittle. I prefer to share source code at the C# level. That way I can reach into libraries trivially and inje…

Setting up an appropriate .gitignore file for Unity3D:

Removing IL2CPP_cache from Project

Not sure what you are “auto generating” with… I usually start from one of my other projects, or a gitignore example online, and reason about all the parts inside it, and start from there. Like any other configuration change, after you make it, pay attention for a while to make sure it is what you want. You can always clone the repo somewhere else to verify that the correct files are being tracked. Doing so to a brand-new computer is the acid test to make sure you can still build the project. …

Generally the ONLY folders you should ever source control are:

Assets/
ProjectSettings/
Packages/

NEVER source control Library/ or Temp/ or Logs/
NEVER source control anything from Visual Studio (.vs, .csproj, none of that noise)

Setting git up with Unity (includes above .gitignore concepts):

How to Git with Unity

It is only simple economics that you must expend as much effort into backing it up as you feel the work is worth in the first place. Digital storage is so unbelievably cheap today that you can buy gigabytes of flash drive storage for about the price of a cup of coffee. It’s simply ridiculous not to back up.

If you plan on joining the software industry, you will be required and expected to know how to use source control.

Source control does require learning, but there are TONS of tutorials and courses and online reference.

You should strive to use source control as confidently as you use your file/folder system.

“Use source control or you will be really sad sooner or later.” - StarManta on the Unity3D forum boards