Importing FBX files into Blender with full armatures/weights

Update, Sept 11th, 2019

There is a new version for Blender 2.80 here:

https://www.deviantart.com/amyaimei/art/Bos-FBX-Importer-Exporter-for-Blender-2-80-Win64-761828284

Update, Dec 23rd, 2016

Someone released a new version for Blender 2.77+ here:

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Bos-FBX-Importer-Exporter-for-Blender-2-77-Win64-621287370

Updated June 22nd, 2014

I discovered a bug that would make the FBX importer crash if the meshes in the FBX did not have materials assigned. The importer now handles this more gracefully, adding a blank material in Blender to any meshes that do not have one. The blank material will be named “Generatedxxx” where xxx is a number starting from zero. This number will increment as more missing materials are encountered. Overwrite any old version with the newer version to update.

Updated for Blender 2.70, April 2014
While Blender has with rudimentary FBX support, it’s incomplete and doesn’t transfer armatures or weights into blender. However, 3rd parties have created a more full-featured plugin.

To start you need to have Blender 2.70+ installed. The latest is always available here.

After installing blender, you need to download two files for the FBX Import:

• http://umconv.render.jp/home/umconv20130303.zip
• http://home.comcast.net/~volfin/io_scene_bos_fbx.zip (note that this plugin is tweaked for Blender 2.70/Second Life; original can be found here: http://blenderfbx.render.jp/home/ )

Installing the Converters

First, unzip the umconv20130303.zip file into your blender directory. This directory will usually be:

C:\Program Files\Blender (for 64 bit blender) or C:\Program Files (x86)\Blender (for 32 bit blender)

Make sure you unzip with create directories so the files inside are placed in a folder called ‘umconv’  Basically you want the structure to be:

C:\Program Files\Blender\umconv\

or

C:\Program Files (x86)\Blender\umconv\

with the executables in that directory.

Installing the Plugin

Now, Locate the  io_scene_bos_fbx.zip that you downloaded and note it’s location, you’ll need to find it for the next step.

Open Blender, and go to User preferences:

On the Prefs panel, go to the Addons tab, and choose “Install from File” at the bottom:

Navigate to the location of the io_scene_bos_fbx.zip you noted earlier, select it, and Press “Install from File…”

The pane will then change to show the new plugin highlighted, but disabled. Click the checkbox on the right to enable the new plugin. Then press “Save User Settings” to save the changes. (Very important!)

You can then close the settings pane.

Importing the FBX

Wish a fresh, clean, blender scene, go to File->Import and choose the BOS FBX importer.

Navigate to the FBX file you want to import, select it, and click to begin the import.

The model and armature will be imported. However, they have an incorrect rotation for use in SL. This rotation must be kept though, so all Transform matrices work correctly. The model will be correctly rotated by the exporter when the “Export for OpenSim” option is selected on the export settings pane.

If the skeleton doesn’t appear as shown in this pic, a few more clicks are needed to clean up appearance.

Hit  ‘a’ to deselect everything. Then Right click on the armature bones only.  On the right hand Editors pane, you can then go to the Armature section, and display, and change the bone type to “Stick”.

The model is now ready to use. It has the full skeleton and full weighting groups as defined in the FBX file. It can be saved as a .blend file or exported to any other supported formats.