Getting a mesh game-ready — the checklist that prevents import pain

Most "my model looks wrong in engine" problems trace back to the same handful of causes.

Before you export:

1. Apply transforms. A scale of 0.01 in Blender becomes chaos in engine.
2. Check the scale. One Blender unit is one metre — a character should be around 1.8 units tall.
3. Recalculate normals. Flipped faces show up as holes.
4. UV unwrap without overlaps, unless you are deliberately baking.
5. Apply modifiers you want baked into the mesh.
6. Name materials meaningfully. Material.001 tells the engine nothing.
7. Put the origin at the base for props that sit on the ground.
8. Triangulate if you want predictable results across engines.

Export FBX with +Y up and -Z forward for Unity; Unreal prefers +Z up.

What is on your export checklist?