FBX Export
General
The export can be aborted at any time by pressing the ESC.
Coordinate System
Objects from Cinema 4D will be converted to the right-hand system; meshes and the direction of travel of the polygons will be corrected accordingly.
Parametric Objects
All parametric objects will be converted to polygon objects.
Lights
Spots, round spots and parallel lights can be converted directly. Details such as falloff, etc. cannot be set. The following allocation applies to the types that cannot be displayed:
Square Spot, Parallel Spot (round), Parallel Spot (square) -\ Round Spot
Distance -\ Directional and. Parallel
Cylinders, Area -\ Omni^
If a Null object was parented to a light upon import, it will be removed automatically upon export.
Environment Object
The environment color will be exported.
Object Visibility
The Renderer on setting (gray, red or green point at bottom right of Object Manager) will be saved as the visibility setting.
Parameters
General
Here you can select the FBX version that should be used for export. Which one should be selected depends on which version the application into which you want to import can read.
If enabled, the FBX file will be saved in ASCII text format. This makes it easier, for example, for game developers to import animations into game engines.
If this option is enabled, only the selected objects, including their Child objects will be exported.
Selected objects will be saved with global coordinates (instead of with local coordinates or the Parent object, as is usually the case with objects in hierarchies.
Enable this option if you want to export Cinema 4D light sources.
Enable this option if you want to export cameras.
Enable this option if you want to export splines.
The Cinema 4D Instance, Array and Clone objects can also be saved as an instance in the FBX file (whereby the file size will reduce accordingly). If this option is enabled, a complete polygon object will be created for each instance.
Geometry
Enable this option if you want to export Subdivision Surfaces (only as Type Catmull-Clark), including weighting.
If this option is disabled, only the cage object will be exported.
Saving Normals is important for files created for MotionBuilder, Unity or Maya. All Phong tag information (incl. broken Phong edges) is exported in the Normals.
Enable this option if all Vertex Colors should be exported.
Make sure that the Vertex Colors Type (point or polygon-based) is also saved accordingly.
If this option is enabled, a 
Subdivision Surface will be exported in a subdivided polygon object which is defined by the Subdivision Renderer. If this option is disabled, only the non-subdivided cage object will be exported.
Note in conjunction with this that tags that are ,based on’ non-subdivided cage objects (such as Selection or Weight tags) will not be adapted and will therefore no longer fit to the exported, subdivided (i.e., option enabled) object.
If this option is enabled, meshes will basically be exported as triangles (quads and n-gons will also be converted to triangles).
If this option is enabled, all vertex maps will be exported as vertex colors.
Animation
The following Tracks are supported:
- Position (XYZ)
- Rotation (HPB)
-
Scale (XYZ)
These will be exported if the option is enabled.
If enabled, a keyframe will be set for each frame of animation. If disabled, A series of neighboring keyframes with the same value will be reduced to the first and last keyframes of that value.
Enable this option if you want to export PLA animations (or splines). Vertex data will then be saved for the PLA animated objects for each animation frame. A folder named according to the FBX Project file will be created in the save path, in which 2 files (*.xml and *.mc) for each PLA animation object will in turn be saved, named accordingly. These file and folder names, as well as the hierarchy may not be modified. Otherwise they cannot be read correctly by the application importing them.
Any Muscle objects that are present will also be exported as a PLA with this option.
If this option is enabled, those joints not bound, i.e., those not included in a Weight tag and thus don’t contribute to the deformation, will not be exported.
There are several possibilities for exporting Animation Takes to FBX:
No Takes or only Basic Takes will be exported.
If you have different animations in different Takes, each Take will be exported as a separate FBX Take in the same FBX file.
With the introduction of Cinema 4D R23, FBX Animation Takes can also be defined within the Timeline via markers. Note: The Export as Animation Take option must be enabled in the Marker settings.
Materials
No materials will be exported.
Select Phong/Lambert if you want to export materials. This is a "long established" material model that supports almost all 3D applications. To get a rough impression which standard material properties can be exported, take a look at Supported material properties.
Node Materials will also be exported correspondingly (these will be saved as a simplified version in FBX and the Node setup itself cannot be saved).
Textures will be saved to the "tex" project folder (regardless if Imbed Textures is enabled or not; you will have to delete these manually, if necessary).
If you are using Node or plug-in materials that support baking in your scene, these textures can be baked. You can configure the texture size and image format uniformly for all materials. For Node Materials, the current Node Space will be taken into consideration. The actual number of textures and the quality of the baking compared to the original procedurals depends on the respective Node Space. Baking generally includes properties such as color, transparency, emission, roughness, etc.
If this option is disabled, no baking will take place, standard materials will be exported and Node Materials will be ignored.
Here you can define the width of the texture to be exported in pixels.
Here you can define the bitmap format in which the texture to be exported should be saved. The selection made here depends on the format required by the target application.
Here you can define the color depth of the texture to be exported. Note that more than 8 bits per channel is not possible for all formats. *.tif, for example, can handle all three options: 8, 16 and 32-bit channels.
If enabled, textures will be imbedded into the FBX file. If disabled, an absolute path to the texture will be saved. This will, of course, make the file smaller but the texture will no longer be found if the FBX file is moved to another computer or directory.
Enable this option if you want to export existing Substances to FBX. The substance material (as with all other materials) must be assigned to the respective object.
The following limitations exist:
- Complex shader setups are not supported. Implemented textures throughout numerous layers of the Reflectance channel cannot, for example, be exported because FBX cannot handle this. The Layer shader, which can contain numerous Substance shaders, will also not be taken into consideration.
- Animated substances are not supported for import or export.
Optional
Use these settings to optimize your scene’s axis orientation for export to an application with a different axis system.
If this option is enabled, the objects under the LOD object will be given the suffix _LODx, whereby the x represents a consecutive number. Unity 3D, for example, requires this naming convention.
Note that FBX only supports the LOD Mode Children, whereby H/V Screen Size and Screen Surface is output as a percent value, which can, for example, be read by Maya.