DanceXR 2025.9 Release Notes

FBX Support Preview

We now support loading FBX models. This is currently in preview as we continue to improve compatibility and performance. Please note that FBX is a very broad and complex format, we are currently only focusing on the model itself, not animations or other features.

To support the flexibility of FBX models, we have greatly improved the bone mapper and texture handling.

Texture Support Enhancements

We now support unlimited number of textures per material. You can inspect all the textures in the material settings and change the assignments for each individual channel of the texture as needed.

Basic Texture Types

Color: The main texture that gives the material its color.
Bump: A texture that adds surface detail by altering the surface normals.
Specular: A texture that defines the shininess and highlight color of the material. We use PBR workflow which does not use specular color, so these data are redirected as metallic and roughness maps.
Emissive: A texture that makes the material appear to emit light.
Alpha (Opacity): A texture that controls the transparency of the material.

Advanced Texture Types

Detail: A texture that tiles over the surface to add fine detail.
Mask: A texture that defines areas of the material that should be affected by certain properties (e.g., metallic, smoothness, occlusion).

Each channel of the advanced type can be individually assigned and adjusted for maximum flexibility.

Metallic: The metallic properties of the material.
Occlusion: The areas of the material that should be affected by ambient occlusion.
Smoothness: The smoothness properties of the material.
Roughness: The opposite of smoothness.
Bump X: Used in detail maps, the x axis of the normal map.
Bump Y: Used in detail maps, the y axis of the normal map.
Detail Mask: Used in mask map to mask the areas for detail textures.

The program will automatically assign the appropriate texture type and channels purposes based on the texture names.

Texture Inspection

With in the texture section of the material settings, you can see a list of textures available for the material. Click in to the submenu and you’ll see the texture displayed on top, with options to adjust its properties below. Clicking on the texture will give you options to display each channel of the texture individually. This will help you estimate what the texture might be used for.

Enhanced Bone Mapper

We’ve improved the bone mapper to support even wider variety of bone structures in FBX models.

Mapping Status: On top of the bone mapper you can see how many bones are missing and hover on it you can see the missing bone names in the status bar.
Improved Auto Mapping: The auto mapping feature has been enhanced to better match bones from the FBX model to the skeleton in DanceXR.
Mapping Options: Controls the pose conversion behavior. Leave them as default for most cases.
Visualization Options: You can toggle on the visualization of different types of bones.
Manual Mapping: Same as before, for each of the target bones, select the original bone to map it manually.
New Bone Preview: A new mapping method that is easier to do than the manual mapping. See details below.

Chain Mapping

This is a new mapping mode for the bone mapper that makes the manual mapping a bit easier to do.

Chains: The bones are grouped into multiple “chains” that maintains the parent-child relationships. For example previously you need to expand each level of the hierarchy to find the head from the center. Now the chain of “center - torso - torso2 - neck - head” is displayed in a list from top to bottom, making it easier to select the correct bones.
Symmetrical Chains: Many of the bones in a character’s rig are symmetrical (e.g., left arm and right arm). The new chain mapping mode automatically merges left and right side together so you only need to make the mapping once for both sides.
Mapping Entire Chain: For symmetrical chains, you can perform the mapping for the entire chain at once, rather than mapping each bone individually. For example for an arm chain from shoulder to index finger, all you need to do is to select the index finger target chain and all the mappings in between are done automatically.

To use the chain mapping mode, simply enable “Chain Mapping” and it will ignore the previous manual mapping data. You can quickly switch between chain mapping and manual mapping as needed without having to do it all over again.

Other Changes

Upgraded to Unity 6.2
Android version now uses Vulkan API and particle effects are available
Fix XRay rendering issues
Other small fixes