Question FBXExporter and Maya Integration

Does anyone here use the FBXExporter Package and Maya Integration workflow? I'm trying to understand what problem it solves as opposed to just...resaving an FBX file ontop of my old one.

It feels to me like all it does is create a prefab for me, so that I'm not "Accidentally working with the asset prefab" instead.



But if I just create my own normal prefab, doing normal Maya->Export FBX workflow feels identical to the Maya integrations FBXExporter can install to Maya.

If the answer is only "well, you can export Unity meshes that are not yet FBX files to Maya" (aka ProBuilder meshes or Unity primitives), then that is not a problem I was personally looking to a solution for.

Edit: Also, if the answer is "well, you can record animations in Unity and export those to Maya", then I also did not care about that.

I'm trying to understand if it solves other problems that I might not be aware of, otherwise it is just confusing to me.

 

Hi! the prefab creation part of the workflow is to be able to save prefab overrides easily.
Since the FBX model prefab is read-only, if you for example wanted to add colliders, you would only be able to save them into the scene.
Using the workflow to automatically create a prefab variant, you can save prefab overrides like colliders to the variant, which will also stay up to date with changes to the FBX file.

Overall it's meant to simplify the round-trip process. Otherwise, if it's sufficient to update the FBX in place and use the model prefab directly, the workflow may not be as useful in that case.

 

Ok thank you. I was aware that working with the model prefab would have those limitations, but I typically, manually make a prefab out of the model prefab first and never work with the model prefab directly anyhow, which is what I was confused about.