Camera & units
Engine Unit Converter
Direct answer
One Unreal unit is one centimetre; one Unity, Godot, Blender and Houdini unit is one metre; Maya and Cinema 4D default to centimetres and 3ds Max to inches. Converting from Blender to Unreal therefore means multiplying by one hundred, which is the FBX import scale that trips up almost everyone once.
Result
- Converted value
- —
- Scale factor to apply on export or import
- —
- In metres
- —m
- In centimetres
- —cm
- In feet and inches
- —
Method & assumptions
How this is worked out
Every application here defines its unit as some number of metres. Unreal picks a centimetre, Unity and Blender pick a metre, 3ds Max historically picks an inch. Conversion is then one multiplication: result = value x (metres per source unit) / (metres per target unit).
That same ratio is the scale factor for an FBX export or import. Blender to Unreal is 1 / 0.01 = 100, which is why a Blender-authored character arrives one hundredth of its intended size when the scale is left at one.
Defaults can be changed in every one of these applications, and studios frequently do. If your numbers come out wrong by a suspiciously round factor, check the scene units before you check the maths.
What one unit means where
| Application | One unit | To Unreal | To Unity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unreal Engine | 1 cm | 1 | 0.01 |
| Unity | 1 m | 100 | 1 |
| Godot | 1 m | 100 | 1 |
| Blender | 1 m | 100 | 1 |
| Maya | 1 cm | 1 | 0.01 |
| 3ds Max | 1 inch | 2.54 | 0.0254 |
| Cinema 4D | 1 cm | 1 | 0.01 |
| Houdini | 1 m | 100 | 1 |
These are the out-of-the-box defaults. Maya and 3ds Max in particular are very often reconfigured to centimetres at studio level.
Questions
How many Unreal units is one metre?
One hundred. Unreal's unit is a centimetre, so a 1.8 m character is 180 units tall and a 3 m ceiling sits at 300. This is also why Unreal's default cube is 100 units: it is a one metre cube.
What FBX scale do I need from Blender to Unreal?
One hundred, or equivalently set the FBX exporter's scale to 0.01 with Apply Scalings set to FBX Unit Scale. Both routes get you there; the important part is picking one convention and applying it to every asset in the project.
Why does my model arrive a hundred times too small or too large?
Because the source application's unit is a metre and the destination's is a centimetre, or the reverse. A factor of exactly 100 is nearly always this. A factor of 2.54 or 39.37 points at inches, which means 3ds Max.