Animations missing from SkinnedMesh after Export

🌵 Needle Engine
1

Hi Everyone :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m trying to export SkinnedMeshes for my Game project (react-three-fiber), but the Animations are missing.
I can see the Animation Clips inside Unity (see Screenshots) but they’re missing after I export them (I checked in Blender as well as gltf-viewer).

My workflow has been:

  1. Create minimal Needle Scene
  2. Drag a Prefab from an assets package into the Scene
  3. Export via Needle Tools → Selected Object as glb

I’ve tried to follow the needle docs but I’m probably missing something. It also doesn’t help that I have terribly little knowledge of Unity itself :D, I’m mainly using it to get assets and export them for the web (which needle is a blessing for <3)

I’d appreciate any help :slightly_smiling_face:
Best Regards,
Brian

needle_2.png
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needle_1.png
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Original Post on Discord

by user 776506054711836722

2

Hey Brian, did you assign the animation to the object somewhere? E.g. via Animation component, Animator + AnimatorController or another component of your own holding a reference to the clip?

3

Animations will only be exported if they are used somewhere

4

Ah sorry just see the Animator - does the assigned controller have a clip reference / states using that clip?

5

Additonally: can you check the Unity console for warnings / errors?

6

Hey Marcel,

No problem - thanks for the fast reply!
I’m not 100% sure but when I click on the Controller the window in the first screenshot opens up (which displays the clips)

by user 776506054711836722

7

Console looks clear (is the bottom message the latest?)

by user 776506054711836722

8

Thats the project view - it highlights the asset in your project hwen you single click. Can you double click this asset (thats the animator controller)
image.png

9

needle3.png
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by user 776506054711836722

10

The console is closed / hidden in both screenshots (the message at the bottom in the first screenshot is just the asset path if you mean that?)

That’s the console:
image.png

11

Yeah I had the console open I just didn’t see the timestamps in the messages mb :sweat_smile: - no errors in the console

by user 776506054711836722

12

And no warnings either? Related to animations

13

that looks fine (assuming the states all have the clips assigned, you can double check by selecting them, the inspector (top right) should show a clip reference each)

14

Correction, there are errors/warnings but I think they’re from earlier. 16:49 I created a new needle scene

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by user 776506054711836722

15

So I assumed that everything from the fresh scene came after “Setup Scene complete”

by user 776506054711836722

16

Ah yes that’s fine.

Could you check in the browser that they’re really missing by adding ?printGltf to the url and then checking the browser console (opens in F12) messages - it prints the glbs being loaded with the array of animations they contain
image.png

17

I think they do
Each one shows something linked under motion

needle5.png
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by user 776506054711836722

18

You mean using the needle local hosting setup?
I’ve only been using it for exports so far and haven’t set it up yet :confused:

Its missing in https://gltf-viewer.donmccurdy.com/ though

by user 776506054711836722

19

Hey @Brian Breiholz , so you’re using that in an external react-three-fiber project or inside a Needle Runtime project?

20

So I’m pretty sure they’re really missing (sometimes tricky to tell in Blender if Actions have no User etc.)

by user 776506054711836722