How can I export a Rigify rig to fbx?

Question

Can anyone help and explain how to export a character model with armature (from Rigify) and animation to fbx using Blender v4.1.0? I've already tried several times, changed the export settings, but the result is still terrible. It adds a bunch of bones from Rigify controllers, unties the armature itself from the character, creates strange things with this armature, puts textures somewhere and erases the animation as if it never existed.

I don't need the fbx to have bones from Rigify controllers. I just need a rig that is attached to the character and has retained its weight settings. And of course, so that the animation is preserved.

Answer 1

Select the rig in Object Mode. Then in the FBX export options:

• Enable Limit To Selected Objects
• Enable Only Deform Bones
• Disable Add Leaf Bones

If you already have animations, you need to bake them, which the exporter can do. It works with Rigify. But for any scenario where it wouldn't:

Before exporting, save as a different temporary file as we will break the rig, you need to be able to go back to the normal rig afterward.

↹ Tab into Pose Mode, and select only the deform bones (in Rigify it's pretty easy, they are all in a specific bone collection so you can just hide all other collections and select all the bones you see there).

Then hit F3 in the viewport to open the operator search bar, type Bake Action and run it. In the bake action options:

• Enable clear constraints and visual keying
• Make sure you bake in Pose data

Once it's done, you can export as the above (but disable baking at export, it's already done).