Oh I see he did not specify that. My confusion there.
However, although that is one way to do it. I think is not the best way in my opinion. It is better to leave Blender at the default and simply scale it up on export.
When you scale in Blender like this it just makes your workflow convoluted. You are setting it to .01 and that in effect is actually scaling up everything by x100. There is no reason to do that and mess with your scene in Blender. Just keep it to default.
Then use the scale parameter in the FBX setting. Change it from 1 to 100. This works perfectly for me.
At any rate the only reason I commented was because he did not specify where he was scaling. And it sounded backwards if you are exporting etc.
I forgot about the other way because I never do that. And I don’t really recommend it. Just me.
I tried your way (blender units, scene scale 1, FBX scale 100) and ended up with a huge mesh. A default 1.969 unit Suzanne turned into a 196 meter mesh. Which makes sense. Scene scale 1 with FBX scale 1 ended up with a normal 1.969 meter mesh but with broken armature rotation which is the reason I switched in the first place.
I use 1 BU = 1 m in Blender. The FBX export has a button that will scale the mesh for you automatically. See the image. With this setting, a 2 BU cube in Blender -> FBX -> UE4 produces a 2 m cube in UE. (If the button is not enabled, the cube is 100x too big.)
Yes, I use that too with 0.01 scale. However you can’t use blender units with armatures. I made a short video to show the difference between 1 scale and 0.01 scale.
@Cyaoeu. Thanks for the video. Would you please explain your workflow and settings in detail? Also, if I already have a skeletal mesh modeled in Blender at 1BU = 1 m can it be imported without starting over?
With the changes in the FBX exporter and a plethora of obsolete information, the process is confusing to me.
You know you can scale skeletal meshes inside UE4 without any harm?
I did that when I was testing Blender 2 UE4 export settings and my test scene was in Blender units. So I simply scaled mesh in UE4 after setting up actor (I guess I scaled actor, not skeletal mesh per se).
Sure, it’s pretty easy. Change from blender units to metric units with 0.01 unit scale in the scene data tab. Your mesh will become really small. After that select the armature and scale it by 100 times so it returns to its old size. Then apply scale for the armature and then the mesh. You should have a 1.000 scale 1m mesh that then can be exported and the persona controls (rotation and so on) will work. You can then save the 0.01 unit scale scene as your startup blend file if you want.
One thing to consider is that the location transforms in animations will kind of break because of the size change. You can either retarget in UE4 (probably) or just scale the location channels by 100 times again. You may need to manually adjust the animations a bit after that.
Edit: 4.12.1 is out, fixing a bunch of crashes. There will also be a 4.12.2 according to github. Remember to submit any bugs you find to https://answers.unrealengine.com
Unreal is great and it can serve as good replacement for Cycles for animation real time, wont give as good results but at least is physical based like cycles. Also another advantage is that you wont have to pay anything to Epic even for commercial work since its excluded from the terms under which Epic requires you to pay a 5% of your profit when you make more than 3000 dollars per quarter.
The blueprint system alone is good enough reason to use Unreal and gets better every version.
I’ve been using Unreal Engine 4.11.2 to work on a mobile game, in Blender all I’ve done is to use what I always use, Metric and a unit scale of 1.000
Then export an FBX leaving all settings as they where, scale 1.000 with that toggle option checked next to the scale value (looks like a 3d mouse) which converts everything for you.
A 2m character in Blender exported that way, imported as 2m character in Unreal Engine.
Just downloaded 4.12.5 gonna give it a try tonight.
The only thing I would want to have now, is a Blender Material Importer
Like this one for MODO
And in Blender we could use a shader group similar to this one
so we get, as close to the in game look when doing preview offline renders or viewport renders. But most important that exports from blender outputs a xml file which the Unreal plugin can parse and reproduce the material in Unreal.
That could be achieved today, the next step would be to wait for the viewport overhaul, and when that is done make a realtime opengl ue4 material in blender. so you don’t have to offline render or use cycles preview.
but it’s a pretty big project, and probably even needs a developer or a team well connected with both blender institute and epic.
just to get a pbr material that looks as close to identical in blender & UE4. Then the whole export xml, and import material plugin for Unreal Engine. To maintain and write that stuff.
But it would be totally sweet, and it looks amazing and pretty easy in MODO already. And after the viewport overhaul I don’t see why Blender couldn’t get that great support for UE4.
You need to make sure the scale of the mesh and rig are at 1.000 (apply transforms) and the units need to be correct, your mesh should display 1-2m in the z axis.
the scale is applied and shows 1.000, units are set to metrics 0.01
the mesh displays ~2cm but if I scale it up with armature and apply tranformation - in UE4 physics goes crazy
You need to scale it up 100 times (do it on the rig) then reapply transforms. The physics going crazy with a default physics asset is normal, you need to create a ragdoll by yourself and remove bones that aren’t needed, scale other bones and so on.
