Blender’s default fbx settings are not always ideal for using in a game engine like Unreal Engine, it will normally try to bake animations or use incompatible geometry, so this guide details the ideal settings for exporting your rigged skeletal meshes to use ingame. These settings mainly focus on the Blender fbx export settings for rigged items rather than static mesh items.
Assuming your model is rigged and parented: make your armature 100 times bigger and apply transform, then select the mesh and apply transform. Make sure they all have 1,1,1 for xyz in the Item Transform Tab.
Viewport things might disappear when panning/orbiting so adjust your camera clip view settings to accommodate for the large scale.
important Rename the Armature to root, so it will become your root bone on fbx export. If you keep it named Armature it will turn into a bone, but mess up the scale of the armature on export. (it’s caused by some weird problem with fbx exports and blender)
FBX manual export settings for skeletal meshes using Blender.
Scene Units: Metric
Scale .01
Below are my export settings for non-animated skeletal meshes. Unreal has default settings for import.
Only export the Object Types Armature and Mesh (hold shift to select multiple) so that you don’t include things like lighting. Most of the Transform settings are default, but we’ll need to look in the Geometry tab to make sure the Smoothing is set to Face, and we may not want to Apply Modifiers so make sure to use that on a per-project basis. In the Armature tab, make sure to check Only Deform Bones, and uncheck the option to Add Leaf Bones. Turn off “Bake Animation” for use in Unreal Engine. When you import to Unreal Engine, you will again just use default settings thanks to the steps you followed above.
Now you exported a skeletal mesh, use it in your games! This helps with live rigged characters and even set pieces with rigging, so you can assign animations to your models within Unreal Engine. If you’re interested in learning more about live capture technology for vtubers n more, check out this introduction tutorial. We have a Discord channel that’s a prime place to share your stuff and talk about Unreal and other creative topics, catch the link on Grif’s Twitch by typing !discord
We’re always working on new tutorials and resources, so join in on a stream or hop into the Discord to inspire new topics!
