Why is a rigged .fbx character not showing up in the import 'Animations' tab?

Questions & Answers
1

Built character in Blender, exported as .fbx, character appears in the Model tab (I change the import scale to 1, as I build in Blender with 1 unit = 1 meter), I’m able to build a character rig and then the character does not appear in the Animations tab.

If I switch the preview model to ‘Unity Model’, I’m able to see a character - standing about three character heights off the ground.

As far as I can see, I’ve removed any keys that might be affecting the character’s vertical positioning in Blender.

I’m under a very tight deadline, this character is important and I’m afraid I’m losing my mind. Does anybody know what in hell is going on?

(Pictured below - the position of my character before pressing play, and the position the character immediately jumps to on pressing play. Again, I can’t see that there’s anything in the animation/rig setup that could be causing this) alt text

2

This appears to have been caused by unused Actions attached to non-exported items in the .Blend file.

Select the non-exported items in Blender, select the action in question in the Action Editor and shift-click the X button. Repeat this action for as many additional items and unwanted actions as you have in the .blend. Save the file, quit Blender and reload - the actions will be gone and you may export your .fbx without any scale or location issues on unrelated actions messing up the import process in Unity.

And then swear to never, ever, EVER have multiple characters or additional items in a .blend that you intend to export a character .fbx from.

And then get a snack and lie down and swear vociferously.