What do these options mean? "FBX" vs "Selected"

[Mr00756]

This is about the Blender > Roblox pipeline - When working with custom armatures. I’ve learnt the pipeline pretty extensively for the last few weeks.

I discovered from this video that the intended way of importing animations with custom armatures is through the Animation Editor. Since the bulk FBX importer hardly provides support for animations beyond some small stuff - And my animations would get mangled and completely destroyed by it, which I will get to.

My question is - What does this Animation Editor option mean?

“Selected” is the one that works perfectly for me. Why?

I know what the UI is saying - My mesh is supposedly inconsistent with the one I’m importing the animation onto, but What does “Selected” literally do? Roblox’s documentation has seemingly no reference of this. Why is the “FBX” option “recommended”?

As an example, I have a static-pose animation of a pistol, in Blender:

This is what the animation looks like in Roblox when I click on “FBX”:

This is what the animation looks like in Roblox when I click on “Selected”:

(It isn’t broken)

So I’d just like to know what this “Selected” option actually does. And is there maybe another way of importing animations with the same results? I understand that the FBX option just recreates the effects of the FBX importer. So why is it recommended? I assume I’m doing something wrong for the FBX imports to not work well for me, they always end up mangled.

I thought this was no big deal, I’ll just use “Selected” and roll with it - until earlier today, when I tried to import animations using this method and the menu didn’t appear.

I’ve never intentionally went out of my way to change the meshes or the armatures for that menu to appear - I just usually animate on a different project on Blender. How can I ensure it appears every time? Isn’t it strange that an optional, specific-scenario menu is what I need just to import animations without them breaking?

Hoping to get some clarity on this, thanks for reading.

[Reditect]

I think it’s related to the ‘selected objects’ setting in Blender when exporting, but I could be wrong:

Like a specific animation selected in Blender somehow (I don’t animate in Blender) versus a list of them or just the armature or initial pose or something.

[Mr00756]

I initially thought this wasn’t the issue, but then I noticed you mentioned “initial pose” and remembered something. “Initial Poses” is a folder of CFrame values automatically created when you import an armature from an FBX into Roblox - it’s completely unrelated to Blender export settings, so I don’t know if you were referring to this intentionally or not:

But surprisingly it’s actually the culprit. This could be a coincidence for all I know. I’ll explain further if anyone else is curious about this in the future:

The “Initial Poses” folder is what prompts Roblox’s animation importer to show the “FBX” vs “Selected” menu. I’m guessing those CFrame values are used to offset bones/keyframes correctly when the “Selected” option is chosen. I was not expecting that folder to have this much unexplained importance.

So, if you’re importing animations from Blender for your custom rig, keep the “Initial Poses” folder in your rig model, use the Animation Editor importer > “Selected” option - or the animations won’t behave as expected. It’s strange that there’s no documentation about this or the “Selected” menu at all.

Thank you for the help!