FBX Exporting Toolset¶

On this page we’ll walk through exporting a Hive Rig as an FBX ready to import into a Game Engine.

At this current time the FBX exporter needs to support a wide array of use cases and mostly designed for individual users. As a studio TD you can use the Hive API to automate the exports through your own tools you can even use our fbx exporter plugin but have your own UI. See here for details on exporter plugins.

Limitations¶

When exporting animation it’s best to turn off skinning as it’s normally not required since the bind pose FBX will contain this. If however this is left on it will result in a slower export due to the exporter needing to import references to correctly align the hierarchy to the bind pose before exporting and the current scene will need to be reopened.
At this time all geometry within the geometry layer will be exported, we believe this is only a temporary solution until we build some tagging tools .

WalkThrough¶

Now first things first load the FBX toolset either through the Hive Artist UI or via the Shelf.

alternate text — Clicking the Human Arrow icon will open the Exporting toolset.¶

Once Loaded we need to choose the Rig we want to export, If the Hive UI is already open then the toolset will sync itself to the UI.

The Next step is to set the Export Path for the Fbx.

We’re going to export just the bind pose here so we’ll turn off animation. All other default settings here should suffice for an engine export.

Select the preset to use. The default is compatible with Unreal Engine excluding the World Up Axis so just remember to convert the skeleton to Z up on UE import.

Once you’ve ready to export just click Export.

The below shows that the FBX we exported contains just the skeleton and geometry layer parented to the world.