Rather than bash something that isn’t directly related to FBX export, would you inspect your real problem first? I’ve had no problem with Blender FBX export and UDK. There’s a thread recently that discuss about Blender and UDK.
the mesh is 90 degrees out of alignment
It happens because you object parented your mesh to armature object.
bone weights are messed up
Maybe you should check your armature modifier setting, as far as I know, Blender won’t export bone envelope. It checked by default in several older blender version.
I don’t understand the “workaround” you linked to in the epic forums. It states “check the box for the “XNA rotate animation hack” in the fbx export settings as well as using the commented lines for the armature”. There is no such check box in fbx export. If the previous version of Blender had that checkbox then the developers gratuitously removed it as it is not there in the latest Blender. There is a setting on export for controlling what axis is up and what is forward and these settings do not work. No matter what you set there, the model is laying in the plane upon import into UDK.
Ah. Brilliant. Remove functionality for “stable” release. Kinda like gratuitously changing the API again and again so many useful plugins break and never get updated so more functionality and interoperability is lost.
Several people have now recommended you to check your parenting and to apply rotations, how about you try that?
The FBX exporter hasn’t been changed between 2.67 and 2.68, so the options are missing for some other reason. It might be a bug.
EDIT:
I found these requirements for exporting to FBX to various engines. It’s not very specific regarding UDK, but you can tell that it is the target engines that are very picky, so this is not a Blender problem, but rather a UDK problem.
Just checked r58189 from the buildbot and the xna options are there.
No idea why they were not in 2.67b (especially considering they were present in 2.66a) , very likely some mistake.
The mesh is correct. It is an import of a psk export from a game. The weights, bones, etc, are correct top-to-bottom (because the skeletal mesh works in the UE3 engine). I haven’t done anything at all to the parenting because I didn’t need to. It is what it is supposed to be. The problems are thus: open up weight paint mode and check the bone weights. They’re perfect. Edit the mesh a little, a lot, or NOT AT ALL. Export as psk. Boom. ALL the weights are wrecked without the user even having to do anything. Suddenly, weights are assigned to the wrong locations, bones that have NO weights associated and shouldn’t have weights get weights associated, all the previous shades of green, orange, red become solid, deep red. That’s problem 1 with psk non-functionality.
Problem 2: with NO alterations to settings or program or system in any way on my part, 2.67b and now 2.68RC have absolutely no xna switches associated with fbx export. People keep saying they’re there. They are not. Again, the parenting is correct because I have’t altered them from the game-required/engine-required settings that are part of the mesh upon import. I have done absolutely nothing but double-click the installer as it arrives on my computer. It isn’t a problem on my end, it is no blender’s end.
I go to the link provided for fbx requirements for different engines. There’s a “link” for download…and I’m thinking, “Great! A new/different script than the broken default! I’ll download it.” Except the “download” link doesn’t produce a download at all and simply links to another page with documentation on the script…just no script. The file description is blank and the filename is a question mark.
As for attitude…I apologize but I’ve got weeks of work here that is useless because it cannot be re-used in the game. Better still, if I import them into 3ds to try and pass it through the psk exporter (that does it right) or try to work with an fbx from Blender…I’m stuck with weeks of work repairing the damage. If I skip 3ds and put the character into the game again, it is totally borked and resembles nothing at all, just a bizarre shape that moves around. All thanks to either the broken weighting that is being assigned on export, in spite of the hours I spent correcting the broken weights manually, or because somewhere in the switch to fbx to import into UDK and then import back into the game is broken, option boxes that I DO have available don’t actually do anything, etc. A lot of work going nowhere and a lot of people hoping for the edits now hung out to dry. It is infinitely frustrating…especially when I get no such issues at all, not with psk, not with fbx, if I do the stuff in 3ds Max. How about copying their plugins and scripts, adapting them to Blender, instead of starting from zero to reinvent the wheel?
Having run into this problem before with Blender’s export problems, I guess I’ll chime in. Currently Blender’s FBX export is not including Tangents and Bi-Normals. The work around I would suggest is export out as .obj into the free Autodesk FBX Converter, and export that out as FBX. Not sure about your specific problem , but it worked for me. Also Jibberish and ideasman42 are working on a solution, I think. And Jibberish may be close to coming up with a standalone converter.
Thank you but…isn’t obj format boneless? That is, mesh only?
As per previous comment, however…the workflow is, out of desperation and trying ANYTHING and EVERYTHING to get SOMETHING working right:
Export psk from game. 2. Import psk into Blender. 3. Check…99% OK with the bones twisted to odd angles but all weights are pristine and correct. 4. Edit (or not) psk in Blender and export as psk. Now…try and re-import your own psk. Trainwreck. IF the entire skeleton isn’t jacked 45 degrees off of proper location it is guaranteed that the bone weights will be 100% wrong. Bones that don’t have any weights associated WILL have weights (root, God), other bones will have their weights moved to incorrect locations. In all cases, the weights are binary: full-on red or full-on dark blue (ie, no weight). No gradations.
So…now re-do the weights to re-create their original beauty and correctness with gradations, locations all correct. Try saving as psk again. Boom. All that work for naught because they will be precisely the way they were when you imported your own Blender psk again: wrong locations and full on binary red only or dark blue only. 1 or 0. So…NOW try to import the psk, edit or not, export as fbx. Select “X axis forward” and “Z axis up” and hit XNA workaround (I finally have those appearing). Now import the fbx created into UDK and…oops. X axis is NOT forward and Z axis is NOT up. Instead the model is, as usual, flat on the plane 90 degrees wrong inspite of any export settings you choose on fbx export. Ugh.
I know obj works for mesh and its orientation. I thought it didn’t do bones and weights though…
I also just found that the bos/fbx exports properly with regards to orientation but apparently doesn’t do smoothing groups. As for the export as obj and convert to fbx…as I suspected, no bones and the model is “no collision” and comes out laying prone on the plane rather than standing up even when setting “z up, x front”, etc. Is there a special setting combo that works to get the orientation right? Is there some way to keep the collision boxes?
