Fbx exporter adds extra armature bone

I have a rig in unity with animation . I d like to edit the weight and mesh or even animation inside blender but the exporter keeps adding an extra bone (armature bone) and unity loses the animations. Anyone has solved this? I searched a way to hack the fbx python script and # 3 lines that add that bone but it still adds it.

Any help is really appreciated and needed.

I forgot to mention that i use mixamo and unity and i need to correct animations and mesh in blender without losing the unity setup.

There is a code edit that you can find on the UE4 forums to do this, but I think I select null under the armature tab with the fbx exporter to get around this issue.

Selecting null in binary is not removing the “armature” root.

Also i found this but it still doesnt work in as i double google searched.And yes i know its in ascii !!!

Please if someone can help me not use max :slight_smile:

I think this is what I did to fix my problem…I may have been up for 36 hours at that point and emptied a few bottles of whisky so…yeah good luck.

Can you provide the .py fbx exporter pls? Id be very greatfull.

I deleted the download link I sent you, as a working copy of the blender install I was using was not what you were asking for, my apologies.

Hi guys I couldn’t make this work, I tried the code change on the exporter on Kris site and didnt do it.
Is there a way to fix this?

Right now I’m “solving” it by simply not having a root bone and renaming the armature to hip bone (using mixamo rig setup) but this sucks because I can’t have skinning on the armature that ends up being exported as a bone.

How do you guys make it work?

This takes care of the root bone and correct bone sizes, too. Only tested it with Unreal 4, though.

Thank you helluvamesh
I tried it but It doesn’t do it for me:( that is what Im doing manually and want to avoid. It removes the root bone and turns the armature into a unskinned dummy:(
That is kind of the “hack” Im using right now but I already have the armature setup without the root bone and the armature working as the hip of the character (including animation) it works but kind of sucks :frowning:

I’m exporting for Unity btw .

Could you give me a test blend file?

Isn’t your root bone called “root”, it won’t work if not.
Are the meshes parented to the armature?

I tried it and worked as expected I believe. but it is not what I need :frowning:
I cant have the root bone named root (not using UE)
But that would be easy to fix, the thing is that I need that root bone to be an actual bone, skinned, I it is not doing that :frowning:

Can’t share the file but the beaviour is that.

Try this, though I can’t remember if it works with 2.79 too or only with 2.78.
This is the hacked “export_fbx_bin.py” of Blender’s fbx plugin.
export_fbx_bin-hacked.py (147.8 KB)
And keep in mind that there is at least one change to Blender’s fbx exporter a year, more likely in every release, so this won’t work forever.

Are you sure skinning the root bone is a good idea?

I did not ask you to post the blend with the actual asset, just to create a dummy asset that shows me the setup.

Thank you, I tried that but still exports a dummy plus the bone structure :frowning:

Here is what I need: Im using mixamo structure on mechanim (actually the developer is, the game is entirely working with dummy assets that I have to replace but respecting the exact structure, so I dont have much room to improvise here), this is not the usual humanoid in unity, this means that I have to recreate this entire structure without the armature dummy that blender creates when importing and exporting it.

Jumping.zip (1.5 MB)

If I import this fbx to max, there is the hip bone as the root of the structure, but in blender when importing it, it creates the armature at 0,0,0, and also when exporting it.

The hack I did, was similar to your first script, delete the actual first bone of the structure, and animate the armature as a bone, but this means this bone can not be skinned :frowning: it is working, but it isnt perfect.

I exported this using the hacked export_fbx_bin.py:
no_root_exp.fbx (2.6 MB)

Imported in Unreal, no extra bone added. (I’m not familiar with Unity.)

When I exported using the default export_fbx_bin.py and imported into Unreal, it added an extra bone on top of the hierarchy.

Thank you for taking the time to have a look at this, im strugling a bit so it is great to check If I’m not insane yet :wink:
The file you sent has the extra bone/dummy actually.
The rig at 0,0,0 as in the image. I need it to start at the “mixamorig:Hips”, as it happens when I import the fbx I sent you (which is just a download from the mixamo website and not exported from blender)

Hope this makes sense, I believe I read someplace that Unreal somehow gets rid of that root dummy that is a parent of everything, but Unity unfortunately is not doing that :frowning:

to compare, here is the mixamo download imported in max with no dummy at 000. starting the hierarchy at the hips.
Blender due to its structure always creates that dummy as an armature. but would be cool if it could export it without that dummy.

Looks like you’re options are:

  • Export from Max
  • Hack Blender’s fbx exporter yourself after every release
  • Try other exchange formats

Damn, that was my impression too.
I think I can manage with the hip bone being substituted by the armature, it simply cant be skinned, worksbut it is not perfect. I really want to animate in blender since the workflow is so much better!