Object scale from Maya to Unity

Krato

Hey guys, 

I started a really nice environment tutorial for MayaLT/Maya and I want to make sure I am building things to scale correctly from the very start. Unfortunately, the artist giving the tutorial is building his concepts designed generally around working in Unreal Engine and he claims every engine has different scaling systems. Googling around it seems that Unity measures objects in 1 meter increments. How can I make sure that my models are properly scaled in Maya so when I import over to Unity I wont stumble into any sizing conflicts down the line? Do the grid spaces on the ground have any relation to size?

Hopefully this made sense,
Thanks!

FildoSaggins

The Maya default unit is centimeters, so anything exported to Unity will be 1/100th the size of what your're probably expecting it to be. You can set the scaling compensation in Unity's import settings, but you'd have to remember to do this for every model that you import. FBX has it's own settings for scale as well but as is usually the case with FBX this method can be finicky. The easiest way is to change the Maya units to meters (Window > Preferences/Settings > Preferences) and then create a default 1x1x1 cube. Export this cube to Unity and compare it to a default cube in Unity. If their sizes match than you can safely use the reference cube/grid to continue modeling.

One thing to note though -- Maya's viewports hate anything but the default units so you may get some artifacts with large scenes when working in meters. Stuff tends to clip or just disappear altogether. Welcome to Maya.

Also, what tutorial are you using? I'm looking to get back into doing some environment art and could use some good tutorial suggestions.