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Baking Animations

The Bake Animations feature allows users to easily export animation data in the Alembic (.abc) file format for use in other 3D software.

Baking Animation Button

How To Export

  1. Select the object that contains the animation.
  2. In the Timeline, set the frame rate for the animation according to the looping or planned length of the animation.
  3. Go to the polygoniq n-panel. Select Bake Folder and Click on Export Animation. The export might take some time depending on the size and complexity of the asset and number of key frames.
  4. Exported .abc will be located in the folder you chose. The .abc file is always named the same as an object in blender.

When exporting data, the scale will always be multiplied by 100.

For alignment with common scale conventions used in other software such as Unreal Engine and Unity, the exported object is scaled up by a factor of 100.

Caution: Large file size!

Keep in mind that the exported Alembic file can become very large, especially when exporting high-resolution geometry or complex animation data

How To Import To Another Software

  1. Open the Content Drawer, click on the import button, and select your abc. file. This will open the Alembic Cache Import Options.
  2. It is important to select "import type as Geometry Cache." Make sure to set the start frame to 1 and ensure the end frame corresponds to the frame you chose in Blender.
  3. (Optional) Set rotation X to 90 degrees to convert from right-handed to Unreal's left-handed conventions. Unreal Engine Import Settings
  4. Drag and drop the asset into the scene.
  5. Play the animation.

Unreal only supports triangles and quads

Unreal Engine may show you:

Unable to import mesh due to a face consisting of 6 vertices, expecting triangles (3) or quads (4).

That happens when you attempt to import geometry which contains single edges or vertices. N-gons are triangulated automatically. One possible solution is to select the asset, go to edit mode, duplicate a single vertex, use "Shift + G" (Select Similar), choose "amount of collecting edges" and press Del.

  1. Enable Alembic package in package manager located in Window or use a third-party addon to import .abc Alembic Addon
  2. Import the .abc file, by right-clicking in the project folder, and choose import new asset
  3. Go to timeline, create a new playable, select timeline, and create Alembic Track Alembic shot and set length. Alembic Track
  4. Select Alembic shot, in inspector, and in Stream Player select object Alembic Inspector
  5. Optional: in Inspector go to Post-Extrapolate and select loop
  6. Play animation