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Maniphest T55193

Custom properties from blender fail to appear in unity when exported as an FBX
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Description

System Information
Operating system and graphics card
windows 10,
nvidia 960m

Blender Version
2.79

Short description of error
When exporting FBX from blender, custom properties do not appear in unity. these do appear properly when exporting from maya on my computer, and do appear when reimporting the fbx into a new blender scene.

Exact steps for others to reproduce the error
create new blender scene, add an object, give it a custom property, name the property and object, keyframe the object as well as the property, export to FBX, click on custom property checkbox in blender, import FBX to Unity, enable custom animated paramter checkbox in unity, bring FBX into unity scene, add animator controller, add motion, open animation window, observe that the custom property does not appear as it would with an FBX from maya

Event Timeline

Nolan Grant (nolangrant) created this task.May 25 2018, 8:42 AM
Philipp Oeser (lichtwerk) claimed this task.May 25 2018, 12:22 PM
Philipp Oeser (lichtwerk) lowered the priority of this task from 90 to Normal.
Philipp Oeser (lichtwerk) added a subscriber: Philipp Oeser (lichtwerk).

Havent checked code yet (nor Unity), but it appears that custom props animations don't come over (even from Blender <> Blender).
Will have a look shortly...

Nolan Grant (nolangrant) added a comment.May 25 2018, 4:43 PM

Thanks for looking into this philipp

it appears that custom props animations don't come over (even from Blender <> Blender)

I'm not sure whether it is relevant to mention this as you probably already know, but I believe that the majority of these custom props won't be able to drive animations in Unity as they would in Blender without setting up new constraints in unity as the contstraints / drivers do not seem to be embedded in FBXs (maya or blender) unless the prop is driving something that is independently recorded to animation like a bones rotation. Not sure whether this behaviour is also intended for blender or whether I am correct about everything in this comment.

best of luck to you!

Nolan Grant (nolangrant) added a comment.May 25 2018, 4:57 PM

I've also noticed (and again not sure if this is useful) that when importing the FBX into Maya the custom property does appear, but as you noticed with Blender<>Blender, the values animations are lost (in contrast to the variable seeming to not appear at all in Unity)

Andrew Griffin (goodgriffin) added a subscriber: Andrew Griffin (goodgriffin).Dec 24 2018, 3:40 PM
Bastien Montagne (mont29) changed the task status from Unknown Status to Unknown Status.Mar 14 2019, 3:25 PM
Bastien Montagne (mont29) added a subscriber: Bastien Montagne (mont29).

Animation is only supported for a few basic things in Blender FBX IO (mostly basic transformations, plus a few extras like shapekeys…). Thanks for the report, but this is not a bug, we can only support that proprietary Autodesk format to some limited level.

Mat Brady (matbrady) added a subscriber: Mat Brady (matbrady).Jul 15 2022, 8:54 AM

@Bastien Montagne (mont29) - You state that Blender can only support to a limited level the Autodesk FBX format. Why is this? Is it because the code is locked off from us (I.e. proprietary)?

If so, we have Unity as a patron member of the Blender Foundation. Are they not able to convince Autodesk to allow even some basic custom properties to be included for support with Blender's FBX exports?

Unity coders can script a custom property to be visibility, or a colour change, or whatever, but there needs to at least be one custom property that can be exported. Do you have any work around for this, or know of any way to include a custom property with Blender's current FBX exporter?

blender.community/c/rightclickselect/1G7j