New Animation Importing for the Unified Smart Mesh Importer Beta

Updates Announcements
#1

Hi Developers,

We are excited to share that the new unified, smart mesh importer now supports animation importing. Previously, if you wanted to edit an animation in the Animation Clip Editor (ACE) in Roblox Studio, you first had to import the respective avatar through the Avatar Importer, select that avatar in the ACE, and then import the respective animation through the ACE. Now you can import avatars and animations together through the unified importer.

Please note that for this first release we cannot support skinned mesh animations, but plan to add support for them in the near future.

How to Use

In order to use this feature, turn on the mesh importer beta feature. This can be found on the beta menu.

When you import an FBX that contains an animation, the animation will show up in the preview window as a separate node. The animations will be default named “rigName”_”name of animation in FBX”_Animation

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You can then edit the name of the animation node, which will change the animation name.

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On import, the animation is uploaded to the Toolbox.

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Additional Features

Besides making the process of importing an avatar with animation a simple, one-step process, this feature also makes the importer more powerful.

You can now import animations without having to add an avatar to the workspace by unchecking every node in the hierarchy except the animation.

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You can also import multiple animations in the same FBX, as long as they’re each stored in a different animation stack.

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Future plans

  • Skinning support
  • Animations playing in the preview window
  • Animations added to the Asset Manager on import

We hope you all try out importing animations with the new mesh importer. We’ll continue to work on making the animation import process better. Please share feedback on issues and ideas to improve the flow and capabilities of the importer.

We’d like to thank those that made this feature a reality! @sonlytheonetime1 @HaloArbiter_101 @BloxSoMeta

136 Likes
#2

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#3

no more crappy 3rd party plugins that hardly work! :smiley: big props to roblox

7 Likes
#4

Thanks Roblox! This would be much easier to import non-Roblox characters to the experiences. :smiley:

2 Likes
#5

This is nice, but we need the ability to provide better animation permissions, similarly to how Audios have new permissions now.

Don’t get me wrong, the ability to import animations quickly like this is very nice and a big Quality of Life improvement, but unfortunately its potential is very hindered by the lack of support for animation permissions, as we still find ourselves requiring to reupload the same animation for each different group that needs it.

17 Likes
#6

We need a good update for that, but if it’s as bad as how they handle the audio update, no thanks roblox.

7 Likes
#7

Very useful Update, saves me from having to export an FBX multiple times to get an animation from Blender. It would be nice if the User was able to toggle whether the imported animations are either inserted into the Workspace or uploaded to your profile (or group of choice), as I had imported a Set of animations multiple times before realising they were inside my toolbox. This change would also save me from Having to save my local studio Files to Roblox in order to use the Asset Manager in the future.

6 Likes
#9

This looks like a useful Update.

2 Likes
#10

damn Roblox making some big moves this year. custom foliage perhaps soon :wink: :wink: :wink:

1 Like
#11

Could this be used to import R15 animations from blender? Or does this only support custom characters and rigs?

#12

Is there any way to send in a crash log? When I import a single .fbx with multiple meshes at 60 FPS it just crashes studio. Any way to fix this?

#13

The importer will support fbxs that contain R15 rigs and animations as well. You can check the avatar type the animations and rig will be imported as by clicking the top level node and looking at the Avatar General settings that show up in the right panel.

3 Likes
#14

I DMed you! You can share the crash log there.

1 Like
#15

Will this make it easier to import animations from Blender into Roblox?
I’d like to know how I can import my R6/R15 animations to Roblox without the use of plugins.

#16

Great update, congratulations Roblox you have impressed the community once more!

Also im looking forward for the future plans:

1 Like
#17

Pretty cool stuff,i can see this helping a lot of devs,thanks!

#18

That’s might be cool feature. Thanks Roblox.

1 Like
#19

You can import animations from Blender into Roblox by saving the R15 animation and rig as an FBX in Blender and then importing that same FBX through the new importer outlined in this post.

Let me know if you have any issues with this flow.

1 Like
#20

Thank you!
I assume I could do the same thing with R6 or any other rig as well then?

#21

We need to be able to make animations public, however, I absolutely do not want the limitations of the Roblox audio permissions system on animations, though.

I especially don’t want to risk the collateral that could come from that, it would mean editing thousands of animations on my end.