PROTOWLF

Blender Addon

Added 2024-10-26 01:59:22 +0000 UTC

As I've been working on an example avatar, I realized that I need to do additional work to make the Blender to Unreal process more accessible.

The Problem

I discovered additional bugs with Unreal's FBX importer, that are specifically related to unit-conversions. I thought that Unreal 5.4 (which kemorig uses) fixed these problems, but turns out it didn't fix everything. A model exported from Blender's default FBX exporter will mostly work, but there's some bad data in the model. And when you try to make a physics asset, Unreal's physics editor won't generate shapes correctly.

I don't have this problem with my avatars because I use the Blender addon "Auto Rig Pro", which has its own FBX exporter that handles the unit conversion during the export.

The Plan

I'm going to try making a simple free Blender addon that adds what you need to the FBX exporter. It'll be a tool you can use for making kemorig avatars, and also a tool for Unreal devs in general. I'm hoping it won't take that long to make, but I've never made a Blender addon before, so I have to wrap my head around it.

(If you're not aware, FBX bugs when using Blender for Unreal has been a problem forever. It's really frustrating, and I wish Epic would fix it already. But hopefully with this addon I can give everyone a simple free solution).

In addition, I have a couple other scripts I use when making characters in Blender. I'm going to bundle these in with it too.

This might delay the next kemorig update -- I'm still shooting for end of October but it might slip past. The whole point of the update is to give you Base-Kun, a crystal-clear example of how to make characters for Unreal. And it turns out I need to do this extra work to achieve that.