We are thrilled to announce the production release of the 3D Importer for importing a wide variety of 3D models, including avatars and animations. The 3D Importer has been in beta for almost a year now, and throughout this period we have received a lot of great feedback from the community and made significant improvements to the workflow to better match your needs.
The main highlights for the 3D Importer include the following:
Warnings and errors with meaningful tooltips to help you fix issues.
Improved mesh simplification algorithm to automatically reduce your models when they pass the 20k triangle limit.
Automatic Surface Appearance setup from your PBR textures when present.
Rigging, skinning, and caging support for avatars.
Option to import multiple animations from a single file.
Animation preview (Click on an animation to replay it on the avatar you are importing)
Video Tutorials
This release comes with a series of video tutorials created to give you a head start using the 3D Importer. This is the first new feature we’re launching with video documentation, which we hope to roll out more widely in the future. If you found these videos helpful or have feedback you’d like to share regarding this endeavor, please let us know!
We are still working on the importer, so expect to see timely updates and announcements with new features to make it work better with the several workflows you use to produce your Roblox experiences. Stay tuned!
Interesting, glad to see a full release! The 3D importer started as something too basic to use, and now it’s very functional.
However, this only works with models. What about animation? While we can import FBX animation, it’s very clunky and it’s just easier to use community plugins.
I think the next big level-up for the importer is to be able to import a large variety of file types, not just OBJ of FBX files.
Correct, but I’m specifically talking about uploading animations alone. At the moment, it’s a hassle to contract animators from outside the platform because I have to teach them how to use various community tools to import things such as character or ViewModel animations.
This is something we’re aware of! Nothing is set yet, but we really want to improve the export experience as well and will try to address it soon. Part of it is because we also want to look into better file formats for y’all (GLTF, for example), and that would be a feature added for both import and export. So stay tuned
That sounds AMAZING!! I’d love GLTF support, I’d love to also have terrain exporting support (material, pbr maps) it’s impossible to export terrain and retain materials.
The multiple animations from a single file is a huge lifesaver for me. Thank you for the hard work on this update. I’m really looking forward to exploring this tonight!
Though I have to admit, the meaningful errors might be the biggest part here because error 500 is the bane of my existence.
Please add a feature to remove vertex paint in some models too. You added the flip inside-out vertex, this other one should be very beneficial as well. There is also a bug when you upload a scene with many parts and using the flip inside-out feature keeps getting the HTTP error. I have to retry many times.
I’m still looking for an option to disable uploading as a model. It’s possible to block uploading by renaming the import to something that the filter thinks is inappropriate, but that isn’t a great workflow, and the potential for strikes on my account is worrisome.
Can we have a option to not upload textures. Or could Roblox check the image for a duplicate in our inventory. So we dont have duplicates when using a color palette texture. Once we upload one its just a matter of using that same id for every mesh that uses the same texture.
