Importing Objects From Lightwave

You can import meshes and animations from Lightwave in two different ways:

Unity currently imports:

  1. All nodes with position, rotation and scale. Pivot points and Names are also imported.
  2. Meshes with up to 2 UV Channels
  3. Normals
  4. Materials with Texture and diffuse color. Multiple materials per mesh.
  5. Animations.
  6. Bone-based animations.

Detailed documentation for this from Lightwave is not available on-line but comes in the PDF manual included with your download

Note:

FBX Export

From Lightwave version 11 onwards the FBX 2012 exporter is now included:

FBX Filename : This file can contain multiple objects, Choose a filename and save to your \assets directory

Anim Layer : TBC

Type : Choose Binary to reduce filesize or ASCII for a text editable FBX

FBX Version Select 201200 from the drop down to ensure version 2012.1

Export : Select all the elements you wish to include - not cameras and lights are not read into Unity

Mesh type Choose Cage Subdivision if * otherwise choose subdivided to *

Bake Motion EnvelopesTBC

Start frame / End frame

Scale Scene Set a scale for your scene applicable to match Unity

Importing LIghtwave scenes with AppLink

To read a lightwave scene you must use the Applink package provided with your Lightwave installation from version 11 onwards only

Setup

E.g. Windows C:\Program Files (x86)\Unity\Editor\Standard Packages (for machines running a 64-bit version of Windows) or Mac: Applications/Unity/Standard Packages.

Create Unity Project for you lightwave scene

Your folder structure should look like this:

Unity_Project

   Assets
        LightWave_Content
            Images
            Objects
            Scenes

Unity will then convert the LightWave scene to an FBX

Any changes to the FBX (lightwave scene assets) will only be stored in Unity, so this is a Uni-directional pipeline, but Unity will remember any material assignments and properties applied to the FBX scene even if you update from LightWave

Page last updated: 2013-03-13