Hi Guys. My friend and I are trying to make the next epic 3d game using Unity, but we are unable to load BASIC basic cube reliably into the engine and get it working. I’ll be the first to admit: i have no clue what I’m doing here.
I’ve exported the cube a number of different ways in the past; this time we are focusing on using a .fbx export. The cube itself contains 3 joints, is smooth bound ( if that matters) and uses orient constraints on the joints in the form of NURBS circles.
I’m incredibly frustrated at this point, as we’ve tried almost 40 different permutations of export options, and nothing seems to help. Sometimes, the cube will come in with animations on his machine, but not mine. sometimes the cube will not animate on either of our machines.
I am able to re-import the cube.fbx into maya with no problems, except for when I try to make a god ring. I add a god ring in maya so I can translate the object in space without massive deformations, ( via parenting pretty much everything beneath the ring) but for whatever reason the .fbx exporter does not like the God ring. i’m assuming Unity does not as well. Is this just a simple set up error? Should I not use a God Ring?
so I think I have 2 questions here: Why does .fbx not like my god ring? ( may be too program specific, I dunno)
what is the proper .fbx setting I want to use to get things to just work in Unity? it baffles me that it has been 5 days of importing and we’ve yet to get a cube to operate as expected. sorry for the rant.
Hey faustie,
If you have not already done so, I would suggest reading this section of the help documentation. It covers the basics surrounding the importation of models and offers some program specific help as well at the top of the page.
Are you receiving any errors in the Unity console when importing your models?
Hi Shawn, thanks for taking the time to respond. I’m faustie’s buddy, I do the programming on the project. Thanks for the link! Let me assure you I’ve read and reread every page I can find in the Unity documentation on importing assets and we’re still coming up empty handed. Here’s what we know so far:
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A model with joints and no orient constraints imports fine, with animation. In this case, in Maya the key frames have been set directly on the joints.
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A model with joints and orient constraints imports without animation. In this case, in Maya the key frames have been set on the orient constraints which control the joints. No key frames are set directly on the joints.
Now, as I understand it, baking the animation, either in Maya or during the export process from Maya should result in keyframes being set on the joints.
From here things get very strange. I’ve got a model that when imported from a certain spot on my HDD works fine, with animations even though the model uses orient constraints. I can import that model into a new Unity project and it animates fine. However, if I move the model or rename (in Windows Explorer, not Unity) the model and try to import it into a new Unity project, it no longer works. This particular model, the one that works comes in showing the orient constraint, the mesh (surface) and the joints. The one that doesn’t appears to have no joints after import. I’ve diffed the two files, they are identical except for a) the file name and b) the file location.
I’m inclined to think that at some point I did what I was supposed to do and Unity is somehow caching the asset between projects (not scenes). When I move or rename the model I break whatever was cached and it no longer works. The question is, what did I do that made that model work the first time? I’ve compared the import settings for both and as far as user editable options go, they are identical. The only difference is under the Animation portion of the import settings, one has a check box checked that the other does not. I’m at work right now and can’t remember what the box was, but it was greyed out for both models. It was something like “Play automatically” which leads me to believe that it wouldn’t affect whether or not the joints were imported.
So, that’s what I know. Again, I really appreciate your help. Can you think of something obvious we’re doing wrong?
JayJ,
I had one of our artists take a look at your post and he said he never had any issues with this. I do not have too much experience working directly with the assets so I cannot offer much help on the subject. Hopefully one of the other members of the community can shed a little light on your issues!