Welcome to the Mar-Apr recap for all things related to 3D asset import! This time around, we’ve made some small improvements to our tools and fixed some critical bugs. We are also continuing to work on some big exciting projects, which we hope to share more about in the future. Let’s take a look!
New Features
glTF Support in Cloud Import
Open Cloud APIs for importing 3D asset files now support glTF/glb as a file format. External tooling using these APIs can now use all the same formats as the Studio 3D Importer! To read more about our cloud import APIs, see: Assets API | Documentation as well as our Usage Guide for Assets.
Improved Dragging in Importer and Other Tools
We’ve improved the dragging behavior in our viewport components so that content more accurately moves in relation to your mouse. This change not only affects the 3D Importer preview, but also previews in some other Studio tools as well, such as the Toolbox. We hope this improves the preview experience!
Before:
After:
Fixed Bugs
Fixed a bug where importing and inserting a model as a package (using the “Import as Package” setting) would cause the importer to crash.
Fixed a bug where the output would show errors when clicking the 3D Import button in the ribbon bar multiple times while an import preview is loading.
Our text moderation algorithm for asset names has been improved. Some users may now experience less false moderation positives for their asset names.
Fixed a bug where opening a different file from an active import preview would cause the incorrect settings preset to show.
Fixed how attachments for accessories are imported from glTF files.
Other News
@iridiumegg is working to deprecate our legacy Avatar Importer. More details to follow!
@tasavix and @iridiumegg are working on big performance improvements to the importer, so that changing settings such as Import Name happen smoothly.
@tasavix is investigating a Lua facing Import API. As always, feel free to suggest ideas for how you would use such an API!
@iridiumegg is working on allowing bulk import through the 3D Importer.
Thanks for reading! If you’ve made it this far, comment the weirdest model you tried importing into Roblox. Did it work as expected? Was it broken? We’d love to see you push our tools to the limit!
Absolutely love the communication on this product, your team is knocking it out of the park and I’ve started using the 3D importer because I have more confidence that it’ll be maintained with how frequent bugs are being fixed with it.
I found a fair use world map SVG file on Wikipedia that I brought into Blender and modified, then imported it into Roblox without any problems. It totalled to 254 individual objects and 391,561 tris total. The game will be focused around the world map and players running from one side to another to locate the country displayed on their screen so it was really important that I got a fairly accurate representation of the country’s generally agreed upon border/shape.
This was from a previous bug that was fixed a while ago; and I’d say it was the “weirdest” encounter, not really the “weirdest model”. It didn’t work as expected, but it’s all good now:
I want to import a non-avatar based Model with a Skeleton made in Blender. But I think ImportFbxRig does something. It does import it. But it creates a Root Part on its own, that is larger than the actual visible Model and all the Motor6D’s are connected to that Root Part. Meaning that I can’t import animations from Blender if I remove the oversized invisible Root Part, because then the offsets of Motor6D’s C0 and C1 are wrong.
Are there any plans to expand 3D importing (packages) to allow a better workflow of updating meshes with pre-existing materials and colors? A current workflow using the Roblox Integration for Blender add-on allows for seamless updating of meshes, but comes at the cost of losing any applied materials, colors, or textures in studio.
Unfortunately we haven’t been able to investigate that root part issue yet, this may be an issue with animations incoming as a whole as opposed to just the actively maintained 3D Importer. I’ll make a ticket with this feedback though and feel free to DM me the FBX file to repro the issue!
One thing is that ImportFbxRig is actually an older Lua API that uses different (and no longer maintained) FBX import code than the 3D Import tool. I recommend switching over to the 3D Importer if you can, and letting us know if you have a feature request or feedback for that tool.
I’m not too well-versed in animations to be able to address all these questions, apologies
I’ll try to forward these thoughts to the relevant people, but some thoughts that might help in the meantime:
If using the 3D Importer to import your FBX, the animation should appear as a node in the import hierarchy. Once imported, you don’t need to import this animation through FBX again. Instead, in the Animation Clip Editor, choose the “Import from Roblox” option, and choose the animation from your inventory (it’s uploaded their as part of the 3D Import process)
A new change i would love to see is a major overhaul to the error messages. This gives literally zero feedback on what went wrong as there is no info on the error codes for the mesh importer, you can’t even play the guessing game. Its a major annoyance
Adding a list on what each error means, or just changing the messages to be much more explanatory would be an excellent update
Are you importing the model with it?
I import a lot of FBX animations, and you need the model in the animation.
You can’t (at least from the times I’ve attempted) import just an animation.
It should be the animation and the model in the same FBX.
I can’t make bug reports, but I import a LOT of animations. What they are asking about is the import in the animation editor, which is what I prefer to use since it works properly.
The animation import on the avatar quite often reverses the animations from the rig, so when you play the animation, it flips the model facing backward before playing it. It’s pretty much always been this way for me since the feature was added and I’ve imported dozens of animated rigs and had this problem with every one of them. All custom rigs, no R15 or anything like that.
So for me, the avatar importer for importing animations has been largely useless. I import the avatar, but then I have to take each of the animations and import them with the animation editor.
I’ve tried importing the model both backward and normal, then using the animations that would technically be correct, but that doesn’t work, I’m pretty sure all the movements are backward that way.
Not sure if it matters, but they’re animated in Maya 2023. I don’t really use Blender.
Is there a function or a way where, instead of it all Uploading the Animations. I can get all the KeyframeSequences and put them in the Workspace instead, or something?
ImportFbxRig function doesn’t seem to do that, and I think it’s outdated, maybe should get deprecated.
