Hi needle team!
I noticed that if I am animating rect-transform objects with text (Text UI Element), the animation for all text animations is being ignored. (I checked exported animations with needle viewer - the keyframes for RectTransforms are just missing)
https://recttransformnotmoving-1chvlr1ppwuk-1ppwuk.needle.run/
I have build this wonderfull simple scene with 3 stations, showcasing the problem:
”Test 1” - Animation without RectTransform, everything is working
”Test 2” - I am animating a parent object, that has “Transform” (up and down). Its childer are a cube and a text with RectTransform. Expectation: both children should move. Result: only the cube moves.
”Test 3” - Similar to Test 2, but the parent has also a RectTransform, shuld also go up an down, but it does not move at all!
You will find the whole scene in the bugreport from 23.09.2025.
In case you dont have time to look into that, could you let me know? The project I am working on should be finischen in 2 weeks, so I need some time to come up with a workaround. (The option to transfrom all Canvas-Texts” into 3d Objects with Textures, would not really work in this particular project)
Cheers and thank you!
Hi Katja, thanks for the detailed report. From what you describe—and given that the exported animation data for RectTransform components (used on UI Text elements) ends up without keyframes—it looks like we’re hitting an issue in the export logic. In your tests, Test 1 (using standard transforms) works fine. However, when a RectTransform is involved (either on the text itself or its parent), the animation curves aren’t recorded, which is why the text never moves.
This is a known type of issue where UI elements using RectTransform behave differently than standard 3D objects. Our export process handles certain Transform properties separately to account for UI anchoring and scaling, and it seems that in these cases the keyframes for the RectTransform are not being picked up.
A couple of suggestions and workarounds while we investigate a permanent fix:
• If possible, try animating an intermediary parent GameObject that has only a plain Transform (no RectTransform) and then have the UI Text as a child. Although you noted that converting all texts to 3D objects isn’t ideal for your project, isolating the animation on a standard Transform might let both the cube and text follow the same movement.
• Alternatively, you could write a small component that manually updates the UI Text’s RectTransform based on an animation curve or by reading the animated standard Transform from a dummy object.
• It would also be very helpful if you could provide the project details (using Unity’s “Copy Project Info Into Clipboard” menu) so that we can narrow down configuration issues.
We’re aware of similar issues from past reports and are actively working on them. If you’re on a tight deadline (two weeks as mentioned), please let us know if a workaround like the dummy parent approach might work temporarily. Otherwise, I’d recommend contacting the Needle team directly with your project info and bugreport details so they can help prioritize a fix.
Thanks again for the clear reproduction and your patience while we sort this out!
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That it what I tried in “Test 2”. So this workaround is not working. But thank you, Botty, for the suggestion anyway.
Hello Katja,
the issue is caused by the animation in Unity only animating one property (e.g. x) of the Text RectTransform. There’s a log in the Unity Console: <b>Can not export animation, please animate all channels for "anchoredPosition"</b>, expected channel count is 2 but got only 1
When animating both X and Y (even if they only have one keyframe) the animation is being exported.
This is an issue in UnityGLTF. I see if there’s a fix we can apply here to improve this. But for now by just making sure X and Y have at least one keyframe it should work in your scene already
Here’s a quick demo: https://katja-text-animation-demo-z23hmxb2hzxpo-z2byxgk.needle.run/
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