Ok so I spent a few hours really working through the Blender to UE4 pipeline and had a pretty frustrating time of it. That said, I have now got a set of ‘rules’ that work really well.
- This has only been tested on Blender 2.73a and 2.74 (2nd Test Build) on OS X
- This assumes you are using Blender standard -Y as your ‘Forward’
In terms of UE4, there are 3 types of assets that I have tested, Static Meshes (no joints/skinning etc.), Skeletal Meshes (using Armatures, no animations, for example a character in T-Pose), Skeletal Animation (Animation assets - basically just the Armature(s) exported to play on the Skeletal Mesh previously exported).
Unfortunately there seems to be a new 180˚ flip on one of these assets in Blender 2.74 so the import settings into UE4 are slightly different.
Blender Scene Setup
So set the scene up as most people have already agreed as Metric and the scale at 0.01 this means we are working in cm’s.
Example of the test mesh and its size
You can see that Blender will show you the units in meters so something that is 250cm will be shown as 2.5m
2.73a and 2.74 (Test Build 2) Export Settings
Static Meshes
Skeletal Meshes
Skeletal Animations
Note Selected Objects tick box, you need to select the Armature(s)
Importing into UE4 from Blender 2.73a
Static Meshes
Note Yaw is +90˚, Scale is 0.01
Skeletal Meshes
Note Yaw is +90˚, Scale is 0.01
Skeletal Animations
Note Yaw is -90˚, Scale is 1
Importing into UE4 from Blender 2.74 (Test Build 2)
Static Meshes
Note Yaw is -90˚, Scale is 1
Skeletal Meshes
Note Yaw is -90˚, Scale is 0.01
Skeletal Animations
Note Yaw is -90˚, Scale is 1
So the good news is in 2.74 the rotations are now unified. The Scale still is not that is why you cannot export/import a skeletal mesh with it’s animations. When looking at the nodes of the FBX’s in C4D, the Armature (which is basically the Root in UE4) has scale set on it, that screws things up. This only happens when you export Armature + Mesh.
Anyway, I’ll report my findings on Blenders bug tracker too and hope this is useful for everyone.