Export Full Unity Scene to Maya (*edit) or .fbx

My wish for updates to unity is one to make the Artists life easier.

If you are working with a distributed team over the net - people send you assets at different times, other people work on the scene. More so when you start to add in programmers and QA - many hands string the pot.

The problem for is when I have a full scene assembled in Unity. A chunk of it comes from one Maya fbx file - but other parts - other members of the team add in, or use prefabs, they tweak models, move lights and so on.

It would be great to have a button to Export the scene to a 3d app (or save out as a FBX) - from terrain to models to lights and perhaps even camera locations. Then you can move around the models in the 3d App (like Maya) and re import the whole mess back in to Unity with changes intact.

This tool would allow functions like light mapping to go 100x easier - allow for more control in level building - and make for a happy 3d artist.

Thanks Unity Team.
Your product kicks ass and I hope it does so even more!

Cheers
T~

 

you already have the possibility to export your unity scene object to OBJ or FBX (using external light mapping tool)

look into unify wiki page all that script are there

http://www.unifycommunity.com/wiki/index.php?title=Scripts

 

I'd like to be able to build full scenes in 3dsmax and only do the finishing gameplay related touched in the Unity editor.

I think the biggest issue right now is that the engine doesn't support importing instances. Doing it all in a 3d app isn't very practical if you make repetitive use of the same objects over and over.

Nice idea though

 

@ giyomu - Thank you for the link. I have been trying this tool out for a day now (the External light mapping tool) and find that as Tysoe said instanced objects don't export, and some times other objects some times crashes the light map tool (not sure why yet but it hangs on the adding to export list).

This is why it would be great to export the full level (terrain - models - instances) to a .fbx file. Even if it was just a dump of the world assets that was a one way export (no way to re-import it to unity) this would let level artist have a better grasp of the feel of the level as well as have a easier time of adding more 3D props I feel. Also, light mapping would be a bit more easier (as you would just export the full .fbx after the second uv set is added) and re-import to unity (tho some relinking of scripts would need to be done i think).

Cheers
-T

 

I agree that this would be VERY useful. I'm designing pre-fab levels within Unity, but I want to export them so I can "merge" all the pieces into one (for one draw call.)

I'll ask this to the Unity team at Unite 2010 next week.

 

This would mean that the entire level would be drawn every frame, and you could no longer use occlusion culling. Probably not a big deal if the entire level is already visible at once, but otherwise that might be quite a bad idea.

It would be nice to have some kind of exporting built in, as I'm currently resorting to a hacked-up .obj exporter to export out chunks of a level to generate an optimised navmesh in a modeler.