Importing and Exporting between ADK and Blender

This is a guide on the fundamentals of importing and exporting Static Meshes and Animations from the ARK Development Kit and Blender. This guide is a supplement to the Modeling page of ARK modding wiki.
This assumes some basic understanding of importing and exporting files, Blender and the ADK.

Importing an .fbx into Blender. This is used if you want to modify an existing Static Mesh or Animation

Exporting a Static Mesh. When you are ready to export your Static Mesh or Animation.

To export a Static Mesh, select the static mesh in the 3D viewport, and select File->Export->FBX(.fbx).
To export a Skeletal Mesh or a Static Mesh with a single bone, select both the bone/skeleton and the mesh, and select File->Export->FBX(.fbx). Make sure to check “Selected Objects” when exporting, otherwise it will export everything in your .blend file.

 

To export a Skeletal Mesh or a Skeleton with Animations, select the Mesh and the Skeletone in the 3D viewport, and select File->Export->FBX(.fbx).

Make sure to check “Selected Objects” when exporting, otherwise it will export everything in your .blend file.

Then, on the Geometries tab, select “Smoothing: Normals Only”

On the Armatures tab, check “Only Deform Bones”

On the Animations tab, check “Baked Animations” and “Key All Bones”

Import Static Mesh into ADK. Use the default settings.

To Import Skeletal Mesh into ADK, select “Import Normals” and check “Combone Meshes”

To Import Animations into ADK, Select your skeleton(if one already exists) and selecte “Exported Time” in Animation Length