Overview

The FBX Importer loads animations, skeletons skins and static geometry meshes. The currently supported input formats are .fbx, .dxf, .dae, .obj, and .3ds (however, .fbx is the preferred interchange format). In addition, the FBX Importer provides a graphical interface to change properties before they are imported to a CRYENGINE format.

The different importers can be found under Tools → FBX Import.

Basic Workflow of All Tools

The FBX Importer tools are typically used as follows:

1. Open a source .fbx (or other compatible) file. This can be done in one of three ways:
   - Going to File → Import
   - Clicking the Import file button in the toolbar
   - Dragging & dropping a compatible file from the Windows Explorer onto the viewport of the tool you want to use
2. Inspect the source scene and decide which meshes or nodes you want to export to the the output .cgf file.
3. When you're satisfied, click on File → Save as (or click the Save as button in the toolbar) and save the file to the game folder.
4. You will then be able to place it in your level by opening the Create Object tool and adding it in the way that you want, like for example a Brush or a Geom Entity, depending on what kind of asset you've made.

Animation

This will import the animations attached to the .fbx file.

1. Menu

The Menu can be accessed via the icon on the top-right corner of the tool. When clicked, it reveals the following sub-menus:

File

Toolbars

Help

Opens the documentation page for this tool.

2. Toolbar

The toolbar has the following buttons:

3. Clips/Root Motion Panel

Clips

Here you can decide which animations to import or even add animations.

By clicking the button next to Animation clips, you can add new animations or remove all of the existing ones.

Removing a single animation clip is done by right-clicking on the number of the animation on the left and choosing Remove.

By clicking Preview this, you'll see the animation played out in the viewport.

Root Motion

By clicking Root motion, a node view appears. In this view you can optionally select a single node. if a node is selected, it acts as the ,"locomotion locator". See Setting up Locomotion Locator in 3ds Max.

4. Viewport

Here you'll see the graphical representation of the animation you're importing. There's one dropdown menu in the top-left corner of this panel:

5. Display Options

In the top-right corner of the viewport is the Display Options button. Pressing this will open the Display Options menu.

This menu contains the following options:

View

Debug

Camera

Movement Smoothing

Grid

Lighting

Background

Skeleton

This will import the skeleton attached to the .fbx file.

1. Menu

For more information about the Menu options, please see here.

2. Toolbar

For more information about the Toolbar buttons and their functionalities, please see here.

3. Node List

In the Node List you can select which subtree or single node you want to import.

It also has a search bar at the top to quickly search for a specific node in case the asset has so many of them that it's hard to keep a good overview.

4. Viewport

Here you'll see the graphical representation of the skeleton you're importing. There's one dropdown menu in the top-left corner of this panel:

5. Display Options

See here for more information about the Display Options.

6. Properties

For more information, please refer to the Properties section on this page.

Mesh

This part of the importer lets you import meshes and skins. The currently supported input formats are .fbx, .dxf, .dae, .obj, and .3ds (however, .fbx is the preferred format). In addition, the FBX Importer provides a graphical interface to change properties of the geometry that are specific to CRYENGINE, such as level of detail settings (LOD) and User-Defined Properties (UDP).

1. Menu

For more information about the Menu options, please see here.

2. Toolbar

The Toolbar options provide a shortcut to the File options. For more information, please see here.

In the Settings view, you'll find general settings and settings related to the conversion of your scene.

3. Settings View

General Settings

Static Mesh Settings

Conversion Settings

The conversion settings control the scale and orientation of the CGF mesh. Use these settings for example if the coordinate system of the DCC tool used to create the source file is different from CRYENGINE's coordinate system (in Maya, Y = up instead of Z).

Output Settings

4. Source/Target View

This panel can be changed between two different views, the Source view and the Target view, by clicking the buttons at the top.

Source View

The Source view shows the node hierarchy, a list of materials in the source scene and a list of textures used. Essentially, it reflects the scene setup in the source file. Selecting any item displays its properties in the Properties panel (7).

Below the Search bar, this panel has two columns, Name and Type:

Right-Click Menus

When right-clicking on the column headers (Name, LOD), you can choose to show or hide either of these columns.

When right-clicking on a node, you get the following options:

Including and Excluding Nodes

By default, every node in the hierarchy is also included in the .cgf file, indicated by the ticked box next to its name. You can exclude a node in the properties panel, or by right-clicking it in the node list. Conversely, if you untick a node, then its mesh will not appear in the .cgf file.

Excluding a node excludes all of its children (so its entire subtree).

Example: consider a hierarchy A → B → C, where A is the root and a parent of B, and B is a parent of C. When you exclude B, then C is also excluded.

Importing Skin

Through the Import Mesh tool you can also import skins for your assets. However, it is a case of either/or: you either import the mesh or you import the skin.

The skins can be found in the Source tab:

Simply tick the box in front of the skin you want to import and click the Save button (or File -> Save) to import this skin.

Target View

The Target view shows the node hierarchy of the output .cgf file. Here you see the effect of the Merge all nodes option.

5. Viewport

Here you'll see the graphical representation of the animation you're importing. There's one dropdown menu in the top-left corner of this panel:

6. Display Options

View

For a description of the rest of the Display Options, click here.

7. Properties/Material Panel

This panel can either show the properties of the node selected in the Source view.

Properties Panel

Depending on whether the whole scene, a sub-tree or a single node is selected in the Node List, the following options appear:

Physical Options

Custom Properties

Node information

Both node and mesh information are mainly for debugging. They show transformations read from the .fbx file.

Node transformations are typically the transformations set in the DCC tool and might be different from 0,0,0.

Mesh Information

Meshes might have their own transformations, which is an offset from their node, but this is usually 0,0,0. Otherwise, same as "node information".

Material Panel

The Material panel shows all the materials present in the source file. Each source material has a Sub-material ID, Physicalization setting and Color.

Settings

Option	Description
Material	Shows the material used in the scene. Each CGF has a reference to a single material. With this material picker you set the material of the output CGF.
	Opens the Material Editor (only works if a material has been assigned)
	Assigns a material to the scene.

Material List

The top half of the Material panel shows the materials used in the source scene.

Right-Click Menus

When right-clicking on the column headers (Material name, Sub-material, Physicalization, Color), you can choose to show or hide these columns.

When right-clicking on a material, you get the following options:

Generate Material

Click on Generate material on the right hand side if you want to generate a material from the FBX. Alternatively, you can browse for an already created material.

Texture List

The Texture List underneath the Material List shows all the textures used in the source object. This panel has four columns: Filename, Exists, TIF exists and RC Defaults.

Adding Auto Proxies

In the Mesh Importer, you can add proxy meshes to static meshes with only a few clicks. The shapes for the proxy meshes are automatically generated.

This is done in the Source tab in the bottom left corner. Simply right click on the Scene node or any of the sub-nodes and choose Add Auto Proxies.

When you've added these Auto Proxies, you'll see the render mesh that will be used to generate proxies from. If it has several components, you can select which ones you want to use by clicking on them (a component - also called an "island" - is a part of the mesh that's not connected to the rest; for scene proxies each node will be a separate component, but it's also possible for nodes to have sub-components based on mesh connectivity). If you remove some components from an auto-proxies node, you can add them to a new auto-proxies node by going to the parent's menu again and selecting "Add remaining proxies".

The proxies are generated by voxelizing the render mesh, locating parts of it that can be reasonably approximated by primitives, and building simplified meshes from the remaining voxels.

When selecting the Auto Proxies parent node in the Source tab, you'll see several buttons and tick boxes in the Properties panel:

The final proxy of your asset will be based on the Proxy Mesh and the Primitives mentioned above. The Source Mesh only serves as a way to see if the proxy is similar to the object and the Voxels are only the base on which the rest is built, as well as helping you to edit the proxy shape (see above).

Deselecting Components

Before you Generate your auto proxies, you can deselect any components you don't want to include in the proxy. To do this, you simply click on them in the viewport. They will then appear transparent, meaning that they will not be generated:

Properties

When selecting the automatically generated proxies in the Source tab, you can get a variety of properties in the Properties panel. These are different depending on what kind of proxy you have selected.

Auto Proxies (parent, all sources)

If you select a generated proxy in the Source tab, you can set the submaterial index assigned to it and its Crytek proxy type (Solid/Obstruct/NoCollide). For primitives dimensions and orientation can be manually edited, and for meshes it's possible to click on individual voxels to trigger them being a proxy mesh vertex (initially only a small fraction of voxels are selected as vertices, based mainly on the "mesh smoothing passes" setting). Note that the latter doesn't require the corresponding mesh proxy to be selected.

Setting up FBX Skeleton Proxies and Ragdoll Limits

This feature enables the creation of physicalized characters through the FBX pipeline, which requires the specification of bone proxy geometries and bone ragdoll limits.

Setting Skeleton Proxies

From CRYENGINE 5.3, bones can be assigned in mesh nodes as proxies. This means that the FBX must already contain all the proxy geometries. The mesh nodes that are used as proxies are not required to conform to any hierarchy.

Setting Ragdoll Limits

The ragdoll limit's properties contains a matrix with 6 entries: each of the three axes X,Y, and Z; there can be a minimum and maximum constraint. The constraint values are relative to a bone's bind pose rotation (They are added to a bone's local transformation when written to .chr file).

The matrix contains four controls for each constraint. Besides a spinbox for the actual value, there are two buttons and a checkbox. The checkbox can be used to disable or enable a constraint. The left and right buttons are used to copy the constraint from and to the current pose, respectively.

A bone can be posed with the controls above the IK limits. This pose is mostly used for previewing only. The typical workflow for setting IK constraints is by posing a bone in an extreme position and then copying that pose to a constraint.

3. Settings View

In the Settings view, you'll find general settings and settings related to the conversion of your scene.

General settings

Static Mesh Settings

Conversion Settings

The conversion settings control the scale and orientation of the CGF mesh. Use these settings for example if the coordinate system of the DCC tool used to create the source file is different from CRYENGINE's coordinate system (in Maya, Y = up instead of Z).

Output Settings