Answered

Blend Shapes into FBX animation

Gabriel Serrano 2 months ago updated by Peter - Soxware Developer 2 months ago 3

Hello UMotion team,
We are trying to animate blendshapes but are running into an issue when exporting the clip from UMotion into an FBX. We get the warning: "Ignoring component property (BlendShapeNameHere) component properties are not supported by the *.fbx".

This works fine if we export directly to an *.anim.

We export to an FBX so that our team can easily crop animations and add events to the clips directly in Unity's inspector. Also, the overall file size of the FBX + animation clip is less than the animation clip on its own.

In Blender, we're able to create an animation that animates the rig and the blendshapes. When we import this into Unity, the animation data contains the path to the blendshapes within the mesh. So long as this path is the same in other FBXs, we're able to animate their blendshapes.

Is it possible to achieve this with UMotion and if not, is it possible to add this feature? Our workaround within Blender would create a tremendous level of new workload hours on our team and bring about its own complications. This feature would be an enormous time saver and fit with the team's existing workflow within UMotion. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I will attach reference images below.

Thank you.

Here is a reference of the working file from Blender.
An empty mesh with Facial blend shape data, A rig, and One animation clip with test animation and blendshapes in one.

Image 1425



Error message with BlendShapes on the animation

Image 1426

UMotion Version:
1.29p02
Unity Version:
2022.3.17f1

Answer

Answer
Answered

Hi Gabriel,
thank you very much for your support request.

As you correctly notices, exporting animation curves that reference Unity specific components (like blend shapes that reference the SkinnedMeshRenderer component) is currently not possible using the UMotion FBX export feature. Do you have an FBX file that contains blend shape animation curves that you could provide so that I can look at how they are usually stored in FBX and check if it would be possible to do that using UMotion? Please note that I can't promise anything yet, though.

Thank you very much.

Best regards,
Peter

Answer
Answered

Hi Gabriel,
thank you very much for your support request.

As you correctly notices, exporting animation curves that reference Unity specific components (like blend shapes that reference the SkinnedMeshRenderer component) is currently not possible using the UMotion FBX export feature. Do you have an FBX file that contains blend shape animation curves that you could provide so that I can look at how they are usually stored in FBX and check if it would be possible to do that using UMotion? Please note that I can't promise anything yet, though.

Thank you very much.

Best regards,
Peter

Peter,
Thank you for your response. I am providing below a Unity package that contains a prefab set up so when you drag the character into a scene you can see the animation and blendshape play with one animation clip embedded into the .fbx.
I have also provided two fbx files within the package. Both contain the combined animation clip. One has a mesh which will be the character for the prefab, and the other one has a mesh with no geometry and the prefab uses the animation clip under that .fbx.
I also provided the blender file I set these up in just in case.
I really appreciate you taking the time to look into this and I understand that it can be a complicated request.

Thank you,
Gabriel
BlendshapeAndAnimationFBX.unitypackage
GenericCharacterWithBlendShapes.blend

Hi Gabriel,
thank you so much for providing the detailed package. I've already checked it and it's exactly what I was asking for, thanks a lot. I can't promise anything right now as we are currently very restricted in development resources, but this makes it much easier for us to get us going.

I'll let you know in case we update the FBX exporter with this feature.

Best regards,
Peter