🚧Work in Progress🚧
Exporting Animations
Actions
This refers to a timeline containing keyframes of an animation. All animations can be in one action or separated into single actions (run, idle, shoot, …), both methods are fine, however separating every animation into a separate actions can make things easier.
File format
The only 2 file formats one can really use are .fbx and .abc (Alembic).
Prepping Mesh Before Export
- Make sure all scales are set to 1
Export options for FBX
- Selected Objects: Enable
- Forward & Up: Depends on destination software
- Apply Modifiers: In most cases good, allows working non-destructively
- Only Deform Bones: Only export bones that have deform toggled. This is often good because unnecessary helper bone are not exported
- Add Leaf Bones: Disable. Adds a bone to the end of every bone chain
- NLA Strips: Disable
- All Actions: Disable if all animations are in one action. Enable if every animation has a separate action
- Simplify: Set to 0.10. Makes exporting take a bit longer but avoid issues, especially in the face area
🚧Sort in
Rotation modes
XYZ Euler: The first axis has the highest priority and the last the lowest priority.
Quaternion (WXYZ): Fixes rotation problems, but has the drawback that it can’t rotate more than 180° because of looking for the fastest path. But this can be fixed by separating it into multiple keyframes that don’t rotate more than 180°.
Specific rotations can also be achieved with parenting the object to a empty and making both the parent and child rotate differently for both rotations to be mixed.
Other
Turn off IK stretch for arms legs and head