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Question by Makaber · Jan 11, 2011 at 08:29 PM · importblenderparentempty

Blender exported to Unity, Empty loses its parent

On a model I added an empty and set a bone as parent. When I export the FBX and Import it to Unity, the empty is only parented to the armature, but not on the bone.

Is there some bug, or do I simply miss something?

I'm using Blender 2.5

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Answer by Jessy · Jan 11, 2011 at 09:48 PM

You can't actually parent to a bone in Blender. When you tell Blender to parent a mesh to a bone, what actually happens is that all the mesh's vertices are weighted 100% to the bone. (This is what carries over via FBX, I have no idea how Blender handles this internally). Because armature parenting relationships do not export, objects without vertices lose any bone parenting relationships that existed in Blender.

What you can do, to take better control of parenting, and avoid a skinned mesh being created (in the case of an actual mesh), is to use the Child-Of constraint, in Blender. Then, you either need to modify the FBX exporter yourself, or reparent to bones, in Unity. There is no "it just works" for this yet.

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avatar image Makaber · Jan 12, 2011 at 07:17 PM 0
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I downloaded the FBX for Quicktime viewer. Even in that thing the empty is transformed correctly. So maybe it's unity which doesn't handle it right?

avatar image Jessy · Jan 12, 2011 at 07:45 PM 0
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How did you see an empty moving in Quicktime? (I have no experience with this). Did you parent other things to the Empty?

avatar image Makaber · Jan 12, 2011 at 09:00 PM 0
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On the Autodesk website is a plugin-in for quicktime to view FBX Files. It can be downloaded here http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775855 Almost at the end of the website. I checked the model with and without empty. With empty there is an additional axis (at the position I put the empty). When I hit the play button it plays the animations and the empty moves properly like I want it to.

avatar image Makaber · Jan 12, 2011 at 09:02 PM 0
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Oh almost forgot. All I did was to set the empty at the wanted location and set a bone as parent.

avatar image Jessy · Jan 13, 2011 at 12:01 AM 0
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Okay, I checked it out in Quicktime and in $$anonymous$$aya. I can attest to the fact that the empty is animated, but not because is not parented to a bone. Ins$$anonymous$$d, its bone-based animation is baked into object level IPOs, so you can delete everything but the empty, and have the same animated result. It is also a child of the armature object, in $$anonymous$$aya.

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