Whats up with the blender and FBX?

[Commander_Shepard]

Few months ago I tried doing skeletal animations in blender and exporting them to UE4 as FBX, ended up with all kinds of twisted mutants and messed up axis orientations.

Then I found that If you use Blender’s 6.1 ASCII FBX exporter then animations are fine but it adds an extra bone before the root bone for no reason.
Example :if your model is skinned to a Armature object named “human” which has root bone “pelvis” then after exporting FBX the root bone will become “human” and the “pelivs” bone and the rest of the skeleton will be its child.

I do not understand why is that root bone added when it was obviously not in the skeleton nor is it skinned to anything? this prevents from doing root motion animation and designing vehicles whose weight is calculated from root bone influenced geometry

On the other hand, using any other exporter (i.e FBX Binary exporter) causes deformation of mesh into a mess and all the axes for bones get disoriented.

So what is the proper procedure to import an animation from blender to UE4 with original skeleton? is it even possible to use blender to make animation for UE4?

I heard epic donated a large amount of money to blender foundation , lets hope it improves.

[Martin_Bean]

@Commander Shepard;328900

I heard epic donated a large amount of money to blender foundation , lets hope it improves.

This was some time ago. The improvements are already in Blenders FBX exporter as far as I know. And to be honest, the FBS exporter has already been improved a lot!!

[Commander_Shepard]

@Martin Bean;328905

This was some time ago. The improvements are already in Blenders FBX exporter as far as I know. And to be honest, the FBS exporter has already been improved a lot!!

The question is: has it improved enough so that you can have atleast one animation at a time in UE4 from blender without the problems I mentioned?

Everything else was fine already, So I dont know what other improvements you are talking about

[Blue_man]

@Commander Shepard;328900

Few months ago I tried doing skeletal animations in blender and exporting them to UE4 as FBX, ended up with all kinds of twisted mutants and messed up axis orientations.

Then I found that If you use Blender’s 6.1 ASCII FBX exporter then animations are fine but it adds an extra bone before the root bone for no reason.
Example :if your model is skinned to a Armature object named “human” which has root bone “pelvis” then after exporting FBX the root bone will become “human” and the “pelivs” bone and the rest of the skeleton will be its child.

I do not understand why is that root bone added when it was obviously not in the skeleton nor is it skinned to anything? this prevents from doing root motion animation and designing vehicles whose weight is calculated from root bone influenced geometry

On the other hand, using any other exporter (i.e FBX Binary exporter) causes deformation of mesh into a mess and all the axes for bones get disoriented.

So what is the proper procedure to import an animation from blender to UE4 with original skeleton? is it even possible to use blender to make animation for UE4?

I heard epic donated a large amount of money to blender foundation , lets hope it improves.

Hi,I already replied to the similar question few days ago

https://answers.unrealengine/questions/247220/blender-to-unreal-fbx-ascii-vs-binary-problems-wit.html

If you want root motion all you need to do is move your armature in object mode not in the pose mode.

Edit: This is for ASCII.

• Blue

[anonymous_user_f70d3582]

@Commander Shepard;328900

Then I found that If you use Blender’s 6.1 ASCII FBX exporter then animations are fine but it adds an extra bone before the root bone for no reason.

you can open the exporter script in notepad and just comment out 3 lines which stops the extra bone from being added.

I do not understand why is that root bone added when it was obviously not in the skeleton nor is it skinned to anything?

I think it gets added just to make sure there is a root object that everything else is parented to.

So what is the proper procedure to import an animation from blender to UE4 with original skeleton?

you should check out youtube channel, his videos cover most blender to UE4 stuff.

is it even possible to use blender to make animation for UE4?

yes it is, you just need to figure out the proper workflow.

I heard epic donated a large amount of money to blender foundation , lets hope it improves.

its actually been improved quite a lot.

[kennyrosenyc]

There’s a line of code in Blender. You need to comment it out, if I get a chance I’ll search for it, but there’s a post here with instructions. The post is just VERY old so you have to search for it. You comment out that one line and you’ll never get the extra root bone.

[anonymous_user_923c79df]

@;330195

There’s a line of code in Blender. You need to comment it out, if I get a chance I’ll search for it, but there’s a post here with instructions. The post is just VERY old so you have to search for it. You comment out that one line and you’ll never get the extra root bone.

I think you mean this tutorial: https://krisredbeard.wordpress/tutorials/tutorial-blender-to-udk-player-model/