[Solved] Unable to Import Blender Models & Textures

[instig]

Update:
If you have the problems I have listed below, the issue is with Blender 2.8. If you uninstall Blender 2.8, and download Blender 2.79, the problem will be solved.

Original Post:

I’ve been trying for hours to get this working, but I have had no success.
I’ve downloaded Blender 2.8, and the latest Unity version (2019.2)

Beginning with Chapter 1, I imported BobbleMarine-Head.fbx, BobbleMarine-Body.fbx, and Bobble Wars Marine texture.psd into models. So far so good, the textures shows up, great.

Then, I get to the next part: importing the BobbleheadWars.unitypackage into Unity. It loads up, and everything is divided into several folders. Now here’s where the problems occur:

1. BobbleArena appears completely untextured, it is grey when dragged to the scene from models.

2. BobbleEnemy-Body is completely messed up; I’ve attached an image below. When I open it up in Blender, it opens up normal - as a little alien. When I open it up in Unity, it is completely messed up, and untextured.
   
   (This is a picture of BobbleEnemy-Body, that is completely messed up. Shows up fine in Blender, just not in Unity)

3. The BobbleArena also has this circle floating above the platform. Why is this? The screenshots in the document show this arena textured, and the circle at the same level as the platform.
   
   (This is a picture of a platform untextured, and a circle floating above)

4. This really confused me: why are the y-axis dimensions recommended by the book completely off to the platform’s ground floor? The book recommends a y-axis of 13.622 for the BobbleArena, and 12.54 for the y-axis for everything else. So I set the BobbleArena’s y-axis to 13.622 and the scale to 2.0 for the x, y, and z, add that in and then set SpaceMarine y-axis to 12.54, and now he is floating above the platform (the same place where the circle is floating above);

Note: I only set the BobbleArena to scale 2.0 for the x, y, and z axis. I am not sure whether I should have scaled anything else.

5. The book recommends 12.54 for the y-axis spawn points and the aliens. When I add those points, the aliens and spawn points are floating above the platform; and, it recommends 12.54 for the columns. However, the columns are massively in the air, compared to the platform.

I have been reading this word for word, for a few hours now, and I still don’t get it. I am not sure if I am stupid, or if a recent update with Blender/Unity has been causing these issues.

I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could help me solve these issues!

Thank you for reading

[bdmoakley]

Hey there, sorry to hear about your troubles. That sounds really frustrating. We’re in the process of updating book to current version of Unity, but for now, you’ll have to use Unity 2018.1. When you first start Unity, you’ll launch the Unity hub. You can install past versions of the engine. Make sure to use 2018.1 instead of 2019.2.

Then start over from the very beginning. While there have been some important updates since 2018.1 - you’ll learn the foundations of how to use the engine. Then, its just a matter of learning about the various updated systems.

If you bought the digital version, you will be able to download the updated book once it goes live.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Cheers!
Brian

[instig]

Unity 2018.1 with Blender 2.79 is now working (Blender 2.80 does not work with it).

Now that it is working with an older version of Unity, my questions are:

1. How long until we can expect the new version to release? Can we expect it this year? By Halloween? etc
2. If one finished with Unity 2018.1, will they be disadvantaged if they transferred to Unity 2019? I’m just worried that there will be something drastically different, or, the thing that was written in the book, is no longer a viable approach. Essentially, will there be anything in 2019 that cannot be applied from learning Unity 2018?
3. The third question isn’t directly related, but I’m curious about this one: one of my biggest issues between Unity versions is compatibility. Already, I have seen problems importing the assets from the book in a later version. If I used the Asset Store, will I also have those issues? Will I be plagued with compatibility issues when using assets in the future?
4. Is there something I can do/read to fix the problem with BobbleEnemy-Body being messed up the way it is? Once that issue is fixed, the other problems can be easily adjusted.

Assuming that I take what I’ve learned and apply it, my biggest concern going forward is taking another tutorial, or assets from a store, and then those assets not being compatible or usable - just like this scenario. Are these Unity compatibility issues common, and, what can be done to prevent / solve these issues? Going forward, this has made me somewhat sceptical of the Unity engine, since these compatibility issues is a pillar I do not know how to solve, and, not knowing how to fix something for a project, is a concern I have using the Unity engine in the future.

Ideally, I would prefer if you made a Unity tutorial on how to fix incompatible issues (like the ones presented here), and what you need to do to fix these problems. That way, less people would need to rely on waiting for an updated version, and would give the opportunity to fix these issues themselves to continue progressing on Unity 2019 - though I understand that this is not always feasible. Moreover, I think understanding how to fix compatibility issues could be great for those who have these issues in the future.

Thank you for reading - and sorry about the long text!

[instig]

UPDATE:

The problem was Blender 2.8.

After installing Blender 2.79, and using Unity 2019, everything is now working - everything is fully textured, the models work, and is operational.

[bdmoakley]

Hey there, I left a few comments. Hopefully, you’ll find them helpful.

@instig

1. How long until we can expect the new version to release? Can we expect it this year? By Halloween?

We aim to get the new version out by the end of the year. I don’t have any more information about a timeline.

@instig

2. If one finished with Unity 2018.1, will they be disadvantaged if they transferred to Unity 2019? I’m just worried that there will be something drastically different, or, the thing that was written in the book, is no longer a viable approach. Essentially, will there be anything in 2019 that cannot be applied from learning Unity 2018?

Unity changes tend to be incremental but breaking changes can happen. Probably the biggest change since we wrote the book is the new prefab system. It’s much better, but a little harder to learn. Once you finish the book, you should read this free tutorial to get you up to speed.

https://www.raywenderlich.com/9330-how-to-use-the-new-unity-prefab-workflow

Unity is an evolving platform but the book doesn’t so much focus on version features as much as it teaches you how to think in Unity. While the editor and workflow may change, the big concepts will not.

@instig

3. The third question isn’t directly related, but I’m curious about this one: one of my biggest issues between Unity versions is compatibility. Already, I have seen problems importing the assets from the book in a later version. If I used the Asset Store, will I also have those issues? Will I be plagued with compatibility issues when using assets in the future?

It depends. For the most part, when working on small projects, you don’t run into these issues. I’m willing to bet the issue resides in our models which we’ll have an artist address and remove the Blender requirement. But this isn’t a common occurrence. We originally wrote the book in 2015 and this is the first model issue that I’ve seen.

But yes - some assets go out of date. Unity may change an API which will break things. Typically, game developers will stick with one version of Unity through development versus updating to the latest version. So yes, you’ll run into issues occasionally, but this is true with all software development.

@instig

4. Is there something I can do/read to fix the problem with BobbleEnemy-Body being messed up the way it is? Once that issue is fixed, the other problems can be easily adjusted.

This sounds like it’s not a Unity issue but a modeling issue. It’s incredibly rare that Unity will distort a model like that. It generally comes down to how a model is structured.

As for compatibility- it’s a project by project basis. For instance, Unity may change how the lighting works so when you update to the latest version, your game may look different or perform differently. Or Unity may change an API which makes the API better, but now all your scripts don’t work.

This is why upgrading a big project can be a big deal. For a small game like the tutorials we put on the site - the updates are pretty painless whereas a monster game like 7 Days to Die, engine updates can cause months of delays.

This is why Unity Hub exists. A Unity developer will typically have multiple versions of Unity installed on their system to support a variety of projects.

In any case, I hope that helps! Cheers!

[jrb187]

This was an awesome, and very enlightening, reply. I really appreciate the time you took to write it. I am revisiting the same tutorial after a couple of years and I had some of the same questions, but learned way more than expected. Thank you for sharing the knowledge with the community.