FBX From Wings 3D Issues

First I'm new to Unity so there is a good possibility that there is something I'm doing wrong. There is also a possibility that it could be a Wings (ver 0.98.32a) issue. Second let me say that Unity is simply amazing too, a great product with a great design.

Anyway I've been dealing with the following issues for two days and they are getting worse so I'm asking for help now.

Here's what happened:

1) I have a scene with a few simple models created in Wings and exported as FBX files. A few low poly shapes with UV mapped textures. Just some shapes to play around with and get to know the workflow in Unity.
2) Everything was working great until I decided to update one of the objects, a simple column shape, and re-export from wings. I modified the UV mapping because there was a bit of tearing in a few areas.
3) When I switched back to Unity it started to update the asset and promptly died.
4) After a restart it did successfully update the asset but that's when things started getting weird, the column object showed up with two materials: the first an empty one called column_aux-default and the correct column_aux with the UV mapping.
5) The materials section for this object is greyed out and I cannot make any modifications to it, also if I add the object to any scene, it isn't effected by the lights in the scene... it's like it isn't even there. It mostly renders as a black void in the shape of the column.

Now the same thing happens with any object that I bring into Unity from Wings. And an other issue is happening, no matter what scale I set the object to in Wings when I export, it comes into Unity SMALL, like .01 meters small.

I've tried starting new projects in both programs but the issue persists and Unity has started crashing about 50% of the time on asset import.

I didn't make any modifications to the setting of either Unity or Wings from when thing were working correctly to now. The only difference was the initial crash. Any ideas on what I might have done to cause such issues?

And now a question for the OTEE guys: I have a feeling that something has gotten seriuosly messed up in Unity's prefs. If I wanted to do a clean install, what files beside to obvious App ones would I need to remove? Example: from library, prefs, etc. ?

 

Joe,

Thanks for the quick reply. After rereading myself I don't think I was 100% clear.. let me try again:

Where I'm setting at now is basically ANY change to ANY FBX or texture file is causing my copy of Unity to crash on asset update. I think somethings gone badly wrong with my copy of Unity on my computer. I didn't want to post a bug report until I asked around on here and make sure it wasn't something I'd done. No need to have y'all (I've been in Texas too long ) have to filter out a bogus bug issue.

I'm going to try a clean install.

 

Ah, thanks for the info. Let me see if I can find a copy of the original FBX that started this all off... I've deleted and rebuilt the object so many times now I'm not sure if I still have a copy.

In the future, if this happens again, I'll send of the offending FBX in a detailed bug report.

 

I've had similar issues w/ Wings. I can't remember what I did to correct it (move/trash stuff in the project's Library...maybe) but here's what I found to work best to avoid it...

Always export your models to the same place, with a different name (just not in your Unity project). So as you refine your models you get something like; model1.fbx, model2.fbx, etc. Import these new models (and delete the old) from within Unity.

Not only do you get a nice backup of your models (mine; ~/desktop/models/) but you avoid confusing Unity since you're always importing new assets instead of trying to update them.

HTH

 

IamBob,

Thanks so much for the input, glad to know that it wasn't just me, well at least not 100%

I'll do you you suggest in the future... however I can see where that could suck if you had more than a few copies of the objects in a few different scenes (in areas where you cannot use a prebuilt).

Kev

 

As an update to this issue:

1) Blowing away the Pref file that Joe pointed out and reinstalling Unity fixed everything.

2) I think I now understand what I did in Wings that caused such an issue in Unity. The top and bottom of my column were not visible in the final Unity scene. When I was doing the UV mapping in Wings, I instructed it to ignore those surfaces. That was causing Unity to create the material array on the column during asset update.

Again, thanks to everybody for the quick help on this issue.