3D Import Recap [Apr - May 2023]

[itsFrank17]

This? Versioning Models with 3D Importer

[itsFrank17]

This makes a lot of sense, it’s not the easiest thing to support, but we will consider this issue as we work on improving the UX over the next few months. We are reworking a lot of systems behind the scenes, and resuming a failed import might be something we can support down the line.

[tasavix]

Are you talking about something like a read-only MeshPart property that just shows you the triangle count? It’s an interesting idea; it wouldn’t really be owned by the teams working on import, but we can certainly surface it to the relevant people.

[MrChickenRocket]

Exactly! Yes please.
Some use cases:

• Showing how many triangles are in your current selection
• Displaying scene budgets for devs! (You are using 500k of 1m tris)
• Heat maps

Many things

[zoox12345559 (zoox)]

Being able to do a heat map would be fantastic for optimization-focused developers

[Lockefair]

Perhaps that’s what I saw then, does this update the actual model or does it add a new model to your inventory and update the package?

[itsFrank17]

The model and the package are the same thing. Updates to a package update the model itself.

For example, if you import 3 times, updating the package with each import, you will only have 1 model in your inventory, not 3

[AbuMuA]

Will there ever be a way to combat these “Unable to import” problems? For example, a retry button?

[sanjay2003 (Sanjay)]

@itsFrank17

We have seen this happening, but not consistently, if you have a file that consistently causes this issue would you mind DMing it to me?

I have tried multiple blank, fresh new places (~5) and it’s always the same repro as:

@sanjay2003

If you open up a fresh place, never save it and then, try to import an fbx without putting it in your inventory, nothing happens. It says it’s successful but, there’s no model in workspace, and no mesh in the game window.

It appears to only work if I upload my place file to my profile. It will not work if I don’t (local place file).

@itsFrank17

For renaming, you should be able to edit the name of the node in the settings page, that will rename the generated MeshPart? Is this not working?

I went to rename a mesh that I have and it just uploaded “NAME (1)” instead of “NAME”. If I use the old importer, it does the same. I thought this was just feature parity.

@itsFrank17

Finally for reusing duplicate meshes, this is a very important feature that we are looking into, however it needs collaboration between a bunch of teams at Roblox to solve properly and probably won’t happen immediately. But it is something we are interested in solving.

Appreciate it and thank you for the responses. I understand these things take time. At-least there’s some form of consideration.

[sanjay2003 (Sanjay)]

Piggy-backing off of this: Descriptive errors would better benefit the user experience.

[TQNY2]

They’re awesome !!
If I may ask, what was the software used ?
And did you do the animation inside Roblox too ?
I need to make them for my game … so very interested.

[Lockefair]

Thanks for explaining, I’ll have a play with it, I wasn’t aware that’s how it worked, so the models in my inventory are packages that have been created by the importer.

[tasavix]

Hmm, it’s difficult to know what the cause of the error is through the Bulk Import UI. Try using the 3D Importer in the ribbon bar of the Home Tab. The errors there can usually be accompanied by more descriptive errors to let you know what went wrong!

[TheHollowHeart (Neutrality)]

Simplify has this lil problem.

[santafatso28 (TheOlive)]

Very happy to see this set of words from Roblox.

@tasavix

However, we will not act on this until we have incorporated the majority of your feedback, and do our best to ensure your workflow will be unaffected or even improved.

[Reditect]

Hi @tasavix,

I’ve run into an issue when importing custom characters to Roblox via the ‘Import 3D’ importer under the Avatar tab. It seems to be the same issue I helped someone else solve a while ago. (The Humanoid HipHeight is fine, the character isn’t touching the floor. There are no Custom Properties enabled.)

After importing the character model from Blender into Roblox studio, as a model, I rig the character using RigLite. I re-name meshparts and whatnot, but I don’t think that’s the issue.

---

Here’s a video of the custom character sliding around:

I’ve been able to fix the issue by taking all the contents of the ‘model’ and putting it inside a new ‘model’. (naming the new ‘model’ to be ‘StarterCharacter’ and put back under the ‘StarterCharacter’ ‘Folder’.) However, it is something I feel should be fixed.

It seems the issue is specifically with importing ‘only as a model’ from the setting inside the importer.

---

I could provide blender files and whatnot via a private message if that helps.

Thanks,
Reditect

[tasavix]

Thanks for the report! Yes, feel free to DM me the files as well as any other context. I have some questions I’d like to ask too, such as if this is also happening when imported through the Legacy Avatar Importer or what happens when the “Only as a Model” setting is toggled off.
FWIW, looking at the old thread too, it doesn’t seem like an import bug, but rather something potentially deeper.

[formules_avantgarde (formules)]

I found this post that shows a new bug with the 3D importer.

I am facing the same issue, working with Maya. Seems like something has changed because not more than a month ago the import worked great with much more meshes and tris.

Can someone explain this please?

I find it also weird that everytime you flag and import condition, the import re-renders the preview

Unified Smart Mesh Importer has a new, unknown, error with multiple meshes with PBR materials

Hello there, we used to work pretty smoothly with the Unified Smart Mesh Importer and PBR materials, but in the last week we are encountering the following issue. We need to import the following FBX with related PBR materials, which is a very simple geometry accounting for 5k triangles in total, splitted into single meshes of 150 triangles each (total 48 meshes). Drawers_Test_03.fbm.zip (330.8 KB) Whenever we try to import the model as it is, anchoring the parts and getting the scene positio…