Moon Animator exports are tricky if you want them working in Roblox Studio
I spent about three hours last month debugging a broken animation rig after one of my students sent me a moon animator file. The bones were there, the keyframes were correct, but the mesh was completely deformed. Turns out the export settings need to match what Roblox expects or nothing works right. Here is what actually worked for me. First, open your project in moon animator and make sure your character is properly rigged with R15 or the custom Roblox rig type. The export process only works when the bone structure matches Roblox conventions. I have seen people waste an entire afternoon because they used a basic humanoid rig instead of the proper Roblox-compatible skeleton. Click File then Export, and choose the Fbx format. The version should be FBX 7.0 binary - not the ASCII option. The binary format produces much smaller files and Roblox Studio imports it without complaining about encoding issues. Set the Up Axis to Y and Forward Axis to -Z. These axis settings are critical because moon animator uses a different coordinate system than Roblox by default.
Under the Import section in moon animator, you will see options for scale and units. Set the scale to 0.01 and make sure Apply Transform is checked. I learned this the hard way after watching an entire animation scale up to building height in Roblox Studio. The character becomes 100 studs tall and every single joint rotation gets multiplied incorrectly. You end up with a giant stretched mess that refuses to animate properly. Once the Fbx file is exported, open Roblox Studio and import it through the Model tab. The asset will appear in your workspace. You need to extract the Animation object from the model and place it into your Animations folder. The actual animation data lives inside that object, not in the mesh itself. Beginners often try to copy the entire character instead of just grabbing the animation clip. There is a common problem where the root motion gets duplicated. Moon animator exports the character's base position as part of the animation, but Roblox already handles root movement through the Humanoid object. This creates a double-movement effect where the character slides across the floor while also walking normally. The fix is to uncheck Apply Root Motion in the Animation instance properties inside Roblox Studio. It is a one-line change that usually solves the issue completely.
Another edge case I encountered involved the blend tree setup. If your moon animator project uses any kind of state machine or blending between animations, the export will flatten everything into a single animation. The transitions disappear entirely. I had to rebuild the animation hierarchy manually in Roblox's AnimationController to get the same feel. This usually takes about 20 minutes for a basic setup, but complex blends can require a full rebuild that might take two hours depending on how many states you had. The bone naming convention also matters. Roblox expects specific bone names like LeftUpperArm, RightLowerLeg, and so on. If your moon animator rig uses different naming, the import process will create mismatched hierarchies. The mesh attaches to the wrong bones and the animation plays backwards or in completely wrong directions. I developed a simple naming convention checklist that I use before every export. It cuts down the debugging time from several hours to maybe 15 minutes for most projects. If you run into severe issues with the export process, there is an alternative workflow. Some people export as obj files and rebuild the animations manually in Roblox Studio's animation editor. It is slower but gives you complete control over the final result. The typical turnaround is about 30 minutes for a simple walk cycle, versus potentially hours of troubleshooting the moon animator export for more complex sequences. Whether the direct export works or you need the rebuild path depends on your project complexity and how closely your rig matches Roblox standards.
Get the Full Details
